Talk:McCollum memo

message: In the review "A deceitful book" by Rear Admiral Richard E. Young (which I downloaded a PDF of but now can't locate a link for...) calls in question the reliability of Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit. It misrepresents the position of McCollum, mistates the number of intercepts, misrepresents the meaning of radio silence, & makes unsubstantiated claims about FDR's having seen an important memo, just to name examples offhand. It is also contradicted in its thesis by one of Stinnett's own sources, as quoted in his own footnotes. This doesn't sound reliable to me.  TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura  02:40, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: We can't use Amazon reviews, customer or otherwise. They aren't reliably published, see WP:VERIFY. Doug Weller talk 16:21, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A deceitful book? 

message: The article was assessed Start-class. The article suffers from a deficiency of references, as it relies too heavily on a single source. Article suffers from {{WP:NPOV|POV issues]]. Overall, the article seems less about the memo, and more about criticizing or exposing the deception in one work about the memo. Boneyard90 (talk) 11:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:Japan Assessment Commentary 

message: This article has been protected from editing for three days to try to generate talk page discussion of the disputed content. Please follow the WP:BRD guideline. You may also wish to consider dispute resolution (WP:DR). Mark Arsten (talk) 22:59, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article protected 

message: Should the entire text of the memorandum be included in the article? The answer is no. Binksternet, you referred to the page Wikipedia:NOTREPOSITORY, which is part of a Wikipedia policy page titled "What Wikipedia is not". Point #3 under the subheading "Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files" states that Wikipedia shall not host the original unmodified text of source documents. Such materials are to be added to Wikisource, not here. This is a Wikipedia policy, not an editorial choice. There's a link to the McCollum Memo at the bottom of the article. Comments? -- Diannaa (talk) 01:08, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite correct. Policy has us discussing the memo, but not hosting the whole thing. We can certainly quote parts of it if the WP:SECONDARY sources point to those parts. The quotes that are currently in the article ought to be checked to see if they are directly discussed by secondary sources. Binksternet (talk) 03:43, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of entire text of McCollum memorandum 

message: It should be stated Conrad Crane, the US army representative and reviewer of "Day of Deceit" who thinks that McCollum's "overt act of war" was just an "offhand remark" works as the Director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, PA. He may be a US army historian, but he also gets paid by the US army. This highly important fact should be told to the reader, and not hidden or omitted. Stating Crane's position as "Director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, PA" would present the reader with the necessary information. Pounamuknight (talk) 01:59, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conrad Crane 

message: Putting attacks on the honesty or integrity of Stinnett is not really appropriate to this article.  In the first place even though it was Stinnett that found the McCollum memo by a FOIA request, his "interpretation" of McCollum's intent in writing the memo is not properly a subject of this article either, and so NEITHER Stinnett's opinion, nor refutation of Stinnetts opinion belong in this article.  The appropriate place for such would be in an article on Stinnett's book.  
Furthermore, and lots of documetation back this up.  The memo was classified till 1994, McCollum died in 1976, so McCollum could not legally refute jack about the memo.  Any article he wrote for public consumption, or testimony given in congress prior to the memo being declassified could not involve a discussion of the memo or classified USN or White House policies regarding the Japanese.
The claim that McCollum writing in a public forum some 10+ years after the memo is in any way relivent to the memo is absurd.  This is obvious bias on it's face.   The memo clearly shows that in upper USN Intelligence circles they knew that the actions taken could result in war.  To assert FDR did not know is ludicrous. Montestruc (talk) 18:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Anybody who is foundational to a topic is part of the historiography of that topic. Stinnett is inextricably linked to the topic. Stinnett's unfortunate book was a travesty of falsehood and manufactured conclusions. The "attack" on Stinnett by people who know the actual story is appropriate here because it relates to the historiography – the wrong narrative that Stinnett created about the memo to sell his book. Binksternet (talk) 22:01, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stinnett is not the subject of this article. 

message: One important claim that is circling on the Internet is that all eight of the listed actions were implemented before the Pearl Harbor attack. If this claim is true, then it would be strong evidence of the influence of this memo. If the claim is not true, then it would be strong evidence of the memo's lack of influence. So I would love to see a section of the article that reports on the implementation of the eight actions or lack thereof. --ApostateAbe (talk) 19:13, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: A section on its lack of implementation might be a good idea, except for the inability to demonstrate absence. How do you show a thing was not done? It's possible to show FDR never saw the memo; I'm not clear how you show he took none of the actions supposedly offered in it, except by the fact they weren't done.  TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:06, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fulfillment of the eight-action plan?