Pearl Harbor: No, White Men Probably Weren't Piloting Pearl Harbor Attack Planes
It's Important to Sift Through Bad Leads to find the Gems
In the documents I have provided as part of the Pearl Harbor series, I have shown some documents that clearly challenge the mainstream narrative.
But this 1942 claim by Evelyn Byrd Fagan is probably 100% bogus:
There are strong claims I have made already, that I intend to keep backing up with reasonable, verifiable, credible, evidence. Here are the primary ones:
Yes, FDR was taking active steps to lead America into war, using lies and pretenses.
No, FDR was not seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis with Japan.
Yes, FDR knew that an attack was coming, when it was coming, and where it was likely to hit.
These are direct challenges to the modern scholarship on the Pearl Harbor attack. This pivotal, epoch-defining event is still viciously guarded and protected by academic and media guard-dogs.
Just the basic idea that FDR had advance warning of any attack is considered a ‘fringe theory.’
So it’s important to know what’s a legitimate lead and what isn’t. It’s important to know what is a fantastic, wild, claim and what fits a coherent counter-thesis. It’s important to draw the line somewhere so we don’t start blaming aliens, astrology, and ancient Egyptians.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. The things I believe in are backed up by evidence and make more sense than incongruent mainstream make-believe narratives.
There are a variety of reasons for the still-powerful defense of the official Pearl Harbor narrative, partially because this event is a defining moment for neoliberalism. It is the burnt offering on the altar of internationalism to start the process of building a “new world order.” The war was the crisis needed to capstone the New Deal and consolidate state control. The wartime footing allowed the permanent silencing of dissidents and political opposition. The war solved the economic crisis caused by the decade-long depression caused by the New Deal. The war focused the political energy on a glorious victory that the political left knew it would be able to monopolize so that it might aggrandize.
Pearl Harbor was the greatest thing to happen to Franklin Roosevelt. It got him the war he wanted without making him a liar in the eyes of the public.
Having spent a considerable amount of time investigating and researching the JFK assassination, I know how tempting it is to let confirmation bias determine results. The challenge is not to find and amplify only those things that fit the desired outcome, but rather to keep an open mind and review the evidence and let truth speak for itself. Easier said than done.
There’s a mountain of evidence showing FDR’s duplicity in bringing the U.S. into the war. So things that add to or challenge that narrative, especially those found within verifiable government documents, has at least a premise of credibility.
Eyewitness accounts that are totally fantastical, on the other hand, deserve much higher scrutiny. We are so far removed in time from the events in question, 81 years now, that there ought to be things that confirm a claim in some regard.
To paraphrase a quote from Carl Sagan, itself an extension of several earlier thinkers: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The story I’m about to show you is about a supposed eyewitness to Pearl Harbor who noticed that the pilots were white men, not Japanese men as expected.
Let’s work through how one should probably assess this information, without being instinctively, reactively, dismissive of its claims:
Is there any evidence she was a bona fide witness?
Was it possible, at the speeds the IJN planes were flying, to have even seen the faces of the pilots?
Are there any other eyewitness report the same phenomenon?
Are there any government documents that support these claims?
Is this news clipping an accurate reproduction of the original source?
The eyewitness is Evelyn Byrd Fagan. She died just a few years ago, at age 95 in 2014. She’s buried in Santa Rosa, California. Notably her obituary only briefly mentions that she was a witness to the Pearl Harbor attack.
Not much else goes into backing up her claims. Upon a Google search with relevant terms, this conspiratorial, but largely accurate, article is mentioned but I can’t find Fagan’s name in the article anywhere.
The Japanese attack planes were of several different designs, but one common one in the first wave was the Nakajima B5N, also known as the “Kate” with a cruise speed of 165mph and a top speed of 235mph.
I actually did my own calculation of the speed of the incoming planes as they came into Pearl, and came up with an estimated approach speed of 180-185mph. So, being able to discern racial features in that cockpit at those speeds, again seems very unlikely.
Fagan’s credibility is a bit wanting on some of these claims.
She does show up on page 4 of the January 6, 1942 Bakersfield Californian making some other unique claims:
A US bugler stood at his post for 40 minutes until he was shot down by Jap planes and incurred the wrath of incoming planes
Japanese servants warned some households about the impending attack
The attack was advertised in advance via a ‘silk ad’ that was otherwise nonsensical prior to the attack in a Honolulu paper
Vegetable peddlers, presumably of Japanese ancestry, were firing at the Pearl Harbor sailors from the ground
I have no special expertise or information to say whether any of these claims are true or false, but they certainly have the ‘feel’ of being false.
First of all, how would airborne pilots even be able to hear a bugler on the ground? There were people being shot on the ground, but to single out the bugler just seems a bit… indulgent. The Japanese are known to be fond of the Suzuki method, though, so perhaps this was a different political statement about brass versus strings.
There were apparently quite a few buglers on December 7th. Here’s the story of family members getting a commemorative plaque for one. But no story stands out of a bugler who was mercilessly targeted and gunned down by Imperial planes.
Here’s a great scene from “From Here to Eternity” about Pearl Harbor featuring a bugler in any case:
I’ve never heard the thoughtful servants, suspicious ‘silk ad’, or guerrilla tomato merchant stories before. That doesn’t mean that they’re false, but it makes their claims very unique, extraordinary, and difficult to prove or disprove.
I found the evidence for the ‘silk ad’ claim running Dec. 3rd 1941, four days before the attack, and it feels unpersuasive. Here’s the ad in question:
It seems fair to say that Evelyn Byrd Fagan was probably a witness to Pearl Harbor, but was also prone to repeat unsubstantiated gossip that seemed accurate.
There were certainly many who felt as though there must be German-designs behind the Japanese attack. Just two months prior, FDR himself was lying to the nation about German designs on South America. So, in the heat of battle, perhaps they saw faces in the plane cockpits and their imaginations took over.
Here’s another source that suggests there were other phantom German sightings the day of the attack:
There were also certainly many fears about fifth-column activity by Japanese nationals in Hawaii, which was predominantly Japanese at the time, and also infamously similar fears in California which led to the internment camps. So her claims fit into that well-known prejudice and bias finding facts to validate those fears. There well may have been some espionage and spy activity at the time, but the servant story and the veggie peddler stories seem pretty fantastical.
All of these tips confirm known stereotypes, and are not backed-up by corroboration. Again, that doesn’t mean that they’re false, but they are certainly extraordinary claims that do not have substantial extraordinary evidence validating their claims.
If you read the Mae Saunders piece again carefully, the one from the Bakersfield Californian, she doesn’t even source Fagan as the person making the claims. She just cites to ‘rumors’ flying around. So, perhaps the source here isn’t even Fagan, it’s not immediately clear from the writing and the language.
Using that kind of weasel language confers a certain insincerity about the tip, because the author is cleverly getting readers to come to a conclusion without the confidence to properly source the material so that it could be verified and thereby challenged.
I had no problem verifying the accuracy of the reproduction of this story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Meaning only that this copy of the Inquirer was an accurate copy from the original paper.
Everything else from this story doesn’t add up.
Every age has so-called ‘disinformation’ which is often just unreliable gossip, and it’s important to have a robust system to protect against falling into the traps laid as a result. Not every claim is accurate, not every bit of newsprint is accurate, and false claims ultimately hurt dissidents the most because they are mercilessly used by the mainstream to silence dissenting views.
Evelyn Byrd Fagan is not a reliable source and these are not credible claims. But they’re interesting and fun to share, so here you go.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday January 18, 1942, page 3:
Politica | PEARL HARBOR SERIES:
Pt 12 - FDR was Jap Oil 'Appeaser'... Until he Cut it Off a Week Later to Start a War
Pt 11 - A Week Prior to the Pearl Attack, Admirals Discuss "Offensive" Against Jap Fleet on the Move
Pt 10 - Fr. Aloysius Schmitt & John Austin aboard the sinking USS Oklahoma
Pt 9 - Weak Leads-- Pearl Military Judge Drafts Martial Law Before Attack
Pt 8 - Reporter Tells US Japs Will Attack After Midnight on Dec. 6th
Pt 7 - Toward a Taxonomy of Claims about “Advance Knowledge” of the Attack
Pt 6 - Japs Were Trying to Escape Panama on Dec. 2nd
Pt 5 - Yes, there was Warning of the Pearl Harbor Attack
Pt 4 - ‘Very Bitter’ Housewife in ‘45 Notes Flaws in the Official Story
Pt 3 - Lloyd’s of London Cancelled Insurance Policies in August 1941
Pt 2 - Tips About The Pearl Harbor Attack 77 Years Late
Pt 1 - Pearl Harbor Revisionism