Responsibility For The Attack
Modern historians have gone back and analyzed the attack. Many now believe that the attack may have been intentional. According to John Prados, Navy cryptographers had intercepted and decrypted traffic relating to the attacking planes which clearly indicated that they were under orders during the attack, and that it had not been a mistake of any kind. Writer Nick Sparks believes that the chaos in Nanking created an opportunity for renegade factions within the Japanese army who wanted to force the U.S. into an active conflict so that the Japanese could once and for all drive the U.S. out of China.
Read more about this topic: USS Panay Incident
Famous quotes containing the words responsibility for and/or attack:
“I hate Science. It denies a man’s responsibility for his own deeds, abolishes the brotherhood that springs from God’s fatherhood. It is a hectoring, dictating expertise, which makes the least lovable of the Church Fathers seem liberal by contrast. It is far easier for a Hitler or a Stalin to find a mock- scientific excuse for persecution than it was for Dominic to find a mock-Christian one.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)
“And whether it is Thursday, or the day is stormy,
With thunder and rain, or the birds attack each other,
We have rolled into another dream.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)