Chapter 31: 31. Epilogue

World War II is now history. The generally accepted view is that the United States was brought into that war as a result of Japan’s sudden, unexpected and “dastardly” December 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. Fleet in Hawaii. As President Roosevelt pointed out the following day in his message to Congress this attack had been planned and undertaken even as U.S. and Japanese diplomats were still engaged in negotiations seeking to settle their differences in peace. In response Congress declared war on Japan almost immediately. Although it is obvious that the Japanese forces must bear the direct responsibility for the attack, the responsibility for the full extent of the disaster is much broader.

The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution provided for a government to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Except as those goals relied on the country’s being at peace, they did not deal specifically with international relations. However, inherent in the Preamble was the idea that defending this nation and safeguarding the liberty of its citizens calls for protecting them from domestic and foreign aggression. The new United States should “mind its own business,” base its policies and practices on peaceful social cooperation and permit its citizens to trade and to travel as they wished. George Washington, the first president of the United States, expressed this idea in his Farewell Address (September 1789):

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations, cultivate peace and harmony with all. . . . The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. . . . It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. . . .

And Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address (March 4, 1801) again recommended “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.” By the time of the Japanese attack, the Roosevelt administration in Washington had been violating these principles for months at least.

As we all know, the direct responsibility for the U.S. entry into World War was Japan’s catastrophic attack by her bombers and planes on the U.S. Fleet in Pearl Harbor. However, when considered in the light of the times, it seems that the attack might have been anticipated as the logical act of a beleagured nation hoping to prevent the disruption of its military plans. However, to determine responsibility for the full extent of the disaster, one must ask why the Fleet was caught so completely by surprise, unprepared and unwarned.

Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as president in 1933. From then on, in view of his powers and duties under the Constitution, his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, and the trust vested in him by the people as Chief Executive of the United States, he must bear responsibility for U.S. foreign policy. A review of the historical record from the Washington point of view—as revealed in the investigations—now shows that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor should not have been a complete surprise to the administration officials. As a matter of fact, it is now apparent also that the president himself, even before the attack, had intended to order the U.S. armed forces to make a pre-emptive strike against the Japanese in the southwest Pacific in order to assist the British in southeast Asia. But the Japanese “jumped the gun” on him by bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Thus, the attack was President Roosevelt’s excuse, not his reason, for having the United States go to war with the Japanese.

Historical Review

By the mid-1930s, the world was in turmoil. In 1933, shortly after FDR became president, the United States recognized and established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Hitler had come to power in Germany and was becoming more and more militaristic, laying claim to territory beyond his country’s borders. On October 3, 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. A civil war opened in Spain in July 1936. In July 1937 Japan was drawn into war with China. However, the people in this country did not want to become involved in any of these conflicts.

In 1935, Congress enacted and on August 31, the president signed the first Neutrality Act which prohibited “the export of arms, ammunition, and implements of war to belligerent countries” and their transportation in U.S. vessels.

Roosevelt had long sympathized with Britain personally and step-by-step he abandoned U.S. neutrality. Two years before the war actually began, he started “to explore with the British what we could do if we both found ourselves involved in a war in the Far East with Japan.” He personally instructed U.S. Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll when he left in December 1937 for a conference in London to discuss arrangements in case of a U.S.-British-Dutch-Russian-Chinese war against Japan. Then after the war had started in Europe, Roosevelt gave instructions on August 6, 1940, to three top U.S. military officers who were going on another secret mission to London.

Early in the morning on September 1, 1939, Hitler’s forces invaded Poland. England and France decided to honor their commitments to go to the defense of Poland if she were attacked. On September 3, both countries issued ultimatums to Germany which were rejected. Europe was at war. On September 3, 1939, FDR reconfirmed U.S. neutrality and during the months that followed, he continued to stress his determination to maintain U.S. neutrality. Nevertheless, FDR began almost immediately to help the British in their fight against Germany.

President Roosevelt instituted a “Neutrality Patrol” in the Atlantic and instructed the U.S. Navy, to watch for enemy vessels, to report sightings “in plain English,” so as to allow British ships to investigate and destroy. When later Churchill asked for 40 or 50 of this country’s destroyers, FDR arranged for their transfer to the British. And as Britain’s war expenditures mounted and she was running out of gold to pay for military supplies, Roosevelt gave the “green light” for her to order 12,000 aircraft. When Hitler charged that such U.S. aid to the U.K. was “moral aggression,” FDR replied that it was a defensive measure.

On the other side of the world, Japan, an ally of Germany through the 1939 Tripartite Pact, was taking actions in southeast Asia that the U.S. held could threaten U.S. and British interests in that part of the world. In January 1940, the U.S. began blocking exports to Japan of certain commodities that were essential to Japan’s economy and military ventures—various chemicals, munitions, iron and steel scrap, and especially petroleum products. Upon the defeat of France in June 1940, Japanese troops were admitted into the formerly French Indochina. And in September, Japan established air bases and stationed troops there.

FDR announced that Pearl Harbor would be made the permanent base of the U.S. Fleet. This was against the advice of his naval advisers, who pointed out that the harbor’s “narrow entrance, inadequate anchorages and airfields, and its limited fuel supplies” would make the Fleet vulnerable to attack. It is quite possible that FDR’s decision was in response to British Prime Minister Churchill’s suggestion, made earlier that very same day, May 15, 1940, that the U.S. “keep that Japanese dog quiet in the Pacific.”

By midsummer 1940, U.S. cryptographers had succeeded in deciphering the very complex Japanese government’s diplomatic code and duplicating the extremely intricate typewriter, codenamed “Purple,” on which it was encoded—a tremendous accomplishment. From then on, the U.S. had access to most of the secret diplomatic messages the Japanese government sent on this machine to its emissaries throughout the world.

As FDR campaigned in 1940 for a third term as president, he continued to assure the public of the United States’s neutrality; he was doing all that he could to keep war away from these shores. He assured the voters that “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

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Yet Roosevelt continued to ask Congress to help the British who were at war. At FDR’s urging, in early 1941 Congress passed Lend-Lease, which provided many millions of dollars worth of war supplies—ships, planes, munitions, food, etc.—to the nations who were fighting Germany. The U.S. war plans, as Roosevelt outlined them at this time, called on the United States to remain on the defensive in the Pacific, with the fleet based in Hawaii, but supportive of Britain in the Atlantic. At the time, the possibility of Japan’s attacking in the southwest Pacific was discussed in Washington. Although it was felt that public opinion would support U.S. “action in the Far East if the Japanese go into Singapore or the Netherlands East Indies,” Germany was considered the greatest threat.

In February and March 1941, U.S. military officials met secretly in Washington with British officials and drew up a joint U.S.-British war plan embodying a “Beat Hitler first” principle. The Navy Basic War Plan Rainbow No. 5, based on this worldwide War Plan, was sent out to U.S. military field commanders. Under this Army-Navy plan, Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor was ordered to prepare the Pacific Fleet to undertake offensive operations against the Japanese and to support the British forces in the Far East south of the equator. However, at a White House conference it was decided that the most urgent matter still was to go “all out in the Atlantic.” As a result, approximately one fourth of the fighting ships of the U.S. Fleet, practically all the trained and equipped marines on the west coast, several small transports, and some other small craft, were transferred from the Pacific to the Atlantic. This, of course, reduced substantially the strength of the Fleet in the Pacific.

In the spring of 1941, the United States placed in “protective custody” the ships in U.S. ports of Germany, Italy, and Nazi-occupied Denmark. In June, FDR authorized the “acquisition” of all idle foreign merchant ships in our ports and ordered Axis funds in the United States frozen. The United States also “requested withdrawal of German and Italian consular staffs by July 10.”

Germany and Japan had hoped their 1939 Tri-Partite Pact alliance would keep the United States from interfering in the war in Europe. However, the U.S. started interfering with the war in Europe indirectly—by trying to keep the Japanese fully occupied in the ongoing Japan-China war so they would not go to the aid of Germany. The United States assisted Chiang Kai Shek in China financially. And she helped to build the Burma Road and organized Chennault’s American Volunteer [Flying Tiger] Group which flew supplies “over the hump” into China.

Representatives of the Americans, Dutch, and British met in Singapore in the spring of 1941. They drew a line beyond which the Japanese armed forces could not attack without evoking responses from the governments of the United States, the British, and the Dutch. This line was drawn west of longitude 100° East and south of latitude 10° North—that is south and west of French Indo-China (currently Vietnam).

Hitler attacked Russia on June 22, 1941 and two days later, FDR “released Russian credits and promised American aid” in line with his “[p]olicy of giving material assistance to any country fighting Germany.”

As the war in the Atlantic heated up, German U-boats were sinking British ships in large numbers. FDR extended the area of the U.S. “Neutrality Patrol” to cover most of the Atlantic. In July, we occupied Iceland and we soon began convoying British ships in the North Atlantic. It wasn’t long before U.S. ships were shooting, being shot at, and even sunk, with the loss of American lives.

In August 1941, Roosevelt and British P.M. Churchill met personally for the first time in secrecy off the coast of Newfoundland. Churchill pleaded with President Roosevelt to enter the war. FDR reminded Churchill that in the United States, only Congress could declare war: “I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war, they might argue about it for three months.” The two men discussed the Japanese situation also. Although FDR said that, to strengthen America’s force, he must seek to delay a break with Japan, he agreed to warn Japan that if she encroached further in the southwest Pacific, the U.S. “would be compelled to take counter-measures, even though these might lead to war.” Moreover, he assured Churchill “that the United States, even if not herself attacked, would come into a war in the Far East. . . . [and] that if Japan ran amok in the Pacific, we [the British] should not fight alone.”

In the spring of 1941, the U.S. and Japan had embarked upon diplomatic negotiations in Washington in the attempt to settle the China-Japan conflict and establish peace in the Pacific area. These discussions concerned Japan’s war in China, her role on the Asian mainland, the Tri-Partite Pact binding Japan to the Axis and the U.S. trade embargo of Japan. These negotiations continued off and on through November. During all this time, we were reading Japan’s secret diplomatic messages to her emissaries throughout the world.

In September, FDR issued a “shoot on sight order” to U.S. Navy ships in the Atlantic.

[W]hen you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him. These Nazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic. . . . [O]ur patrolling vessels and planes will protect all merchant ships—not only American ships but ships of any flag—engaged in commerce in our defensive waters. . . . From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters the protection of which is necessary for American defense they do so at their own peril.

The Japanese moved forces into Indo-China. The U.S. officials remonstrated. By mid-1941 it became apparent that as a result of Japan’s war in China and her military ventures in S.E. Asia her most serious shortage was of oil. Roosevelt told the Japanese ambassador:

[I]f Japan attempted to seize oil supplies by force in the Netherlands East Indies, the Dutch would, without the shadow of a doubt resist; the British would immediately come to their assistance; war would then result between Japan, the British and the Dutch; and, in view of our own policy of assisting Great Britain, an exceedingly serious situation would immediately result.

FDR said that Japan would do much better if she tried to obtain the supplies she needed peacefully rather than by occupying Indochina. But the United States continued to embargo oil to Japan. And she persuaded the British and Dutch to do the same.

In July, Japan was advised that the United States considered it self-defense to protect the British against aggression in the Atlantic—also in Singapore. The Japanese Ambassador spoke of Japan’s deteriorating economic situation, her objections to U.S. support of China, improving the Burma Road and supplying planes and pilots to Chungking, also of her, Japan’s, plans to occupy French Indochina and her need to station troops in Inner Mongolia to suppress Chinese Communist elements and hinted that were the United States to accept these conditions, Japan would not be particularly concerned about any action the United States might take in the Atlantic. In response, the U.S. Director of the Navy’s War Plans equated protecting the British from the Nazis with defending the U.S.:

[I]t is decidedly against the military interests of the United States to permit the United Kingdom to be overcome by Germany. . . . Furthermore . . . [t]he occupation of Indo-China by Japan is particularly important for the defense of the United States since it might threaten the British position in Singapore and the Dutch position in the Netherlands East Indies.

The Joint Board of the Army and Navy was not eager for the United States to become involved in a war with Japan. A major war effort in the Pacific “would require an enormous amount of shipping . . . from the Atlantic and other essential areas,” which “would materially affect United States aid to England.” CNO Stark warned his Admirals: “Since the US and Britain are held responsible by Japan for her present desperate situation there is also a possibility that Japan may attack these two powers.”

Kimmel in Pearl Harbor had to rely on Washington for “intelligence.” CNO Stark assured Kimmel that the Office of Naval Intelligence recognized its responsibility on that score. In mid-October, Stark wrote Kimmel:

Personally I do not believe the Japs are going to sail into us. . . . Perhaps I am wrong, but I hope not. In any case after long pow-wows in the White House, it was felt we should be on guard, at least until something indicates the trend.

In early November 1941, Army Chief of Staff General Marshall and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark advised FDR that United States policy in the Far East should be based first on the defeat of Germany. War between the United States and Japan should be avoided while the U.S. built up her defensive forces in the Far East. They told FDR that it was all right to continue to send U.S. armed forces and other aid to China for intervention against Japan. However; Marshall and Stark wanted time before the eruption of any conflict and they recommended that “no ultimatum be delivered to Japan.” [italics added]

U.S. ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew warned FDR, November 3, 1941, that “war between Japan and the United States may come with dangerous and dramatic suddenness.”

At the Cabinet’s weekly Friday meeting at the White House, November 7, 1941, FDR took

the first general poll of his Cabinet . . . on the question of the Far East—whether the people would back us up in case we struck at Japan down there. . . . It was unanimous in feeling the country would support us.

Secretary of War Stimson believed the vote would have been much stronger if the Cabinet members had known “what the Army was doing to reenforce the Philippines and how ready the Army was to pitch in” in case of an attack on the British or Dutch in southeastern Asia.

To facilitate the U.S.-Japanese diplomatic negotiations in Washington, Japan sent a second ambassador, Kurusu, to Washington in November. When Hull presented him to the president, Hull reminded Kurusu of Japan’s alliance with Germany:

[W]hen Hitler starts on a march of invasion across the earth with ten million soldiers and thirty thousand airplanes, . . . this country from that time was in danger. . . . [T]his country with no other motive except self-defense has recognized that danger, and has proceeded thus far to defend itself before it is too late.

The president and Hull “made it clear that we were not the aggressors in the Pacific but that Japan was the aggressor.”

The U.S. cryptographers intercepted a message from Tokyo setting a deadline for the U.S.-Japanese diplomats to reach agreement in their negotiations:

Because of various circumstances, it is absolutely necessary that all arrangements for the signing of this agreement [being negotiated with the United States] be completed by the 25th of this month [later extended to the 29th]. . . .

On November 20, the two Japanese Ambassadors suggested a modus vivendi, a temporary arrangement, to continue the status quo while negotiations continued. Both Japan and the United States would make some concessions. The United States would “supply Japan a required quantity of oil.” China’s Chiang Kai-shek “bombarded Washington with demands that no further concessions be made to Tokyo.”

Japanese ship movements in Far East grabbed the attention of Washington’s top officials. At a November 25, 1941, meeting, FDR said “we were likely to be attacked [by Japan] perhaps [as soon as] next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning.” Stimson remarked: “The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” Hull was asked to prepare an “ultimatum” to Japan like that of August, notifying her that “if she crossed the border into Thailand she was violating our safety.”

Stark sent a warning to Kimmel. Neither FDR nor Hull “would be surprised over a Japanese surprise attack. . . . [A]n attack on the Philippines would be the most embarrassing thing that could happen to us.” Stark didn’t believe the Japanese would proceed against Russia; he considered “an advance into Thailand, Indo-China, Burma Road area as the most likely.”

November 26, 1941: Stimson told FDR that a Japanese expedition of five divisions had gone south from Shantung and Shansi to Shanghai, whence they had embarked on 30, 40, or 50 southbound ships.

November 26, 1941: The modus vivendi was jettisoned. And a 10-point “ultimatum” was issued to Japan.

After this November 26 “ultimatum” had gone out, Washington officials discussed what to tell MacArthur in the Philippines. It was agreed “we should send the final alert; namely, that he should be on the qui vive for any attack.” FDR was “particularly concerned . . . by current southward troop movements from Shanghai and Japan to the Formosa area,” preparing

for an early aggressive movement of some character . . . directed against the Burma Road, Thailand, Malay Peninsula, Netherlands East Indies or the Philippines. . . . [T]his next Japanese aggression might cause an outbreak of hostilities between the U.S. and Japan.

November 27, 1941: Washington warned (1) Manila, (2) Hawaii, (3) Atlantic fleet that Japanese southbound convoys were heading for the Philippines, Thai, or Kra Peninsula or possibly Borneo.

November 27, 1941: Marshall and Stark ask for time to prepare U.S. defenses. They were especially concerned about the Philippines: “The most essential thing now, from the United States viewpoint is to gain time.” It is recommended that: “military counteraction be considered only if Japan attacks or directly threatens United States, British or Dutch territory.” And Japan should be warned “that advance beyond the lines indicated . . . may lead to war.”

November 28, 1941: The members of FDR’s “War Cabinet” all agreed that

if the [Japanese] expedition were permitted to land in the Gulf of Siam it would place a strong Japanese force in such a strategic position as to be a severe blow at all three of the powers in southeast Asia—the British at Singapore, the Netherlands in the Indies, and ourselves in the Philippines. We all agreed that it must not be allowed; that, if the Japanese got into the Isthmus of Kra, the British would fight; and, if the British fought, we would have to fight.

According to Stimson, “The possibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor was not [then] discussed sinceour thoughts were all focused on this movement toward southeast Asia.”

November 28, 1941: We intercepted Japan’s instructions to her ambassadors in Washington concerning our November 26 “ultimatum.”

The Imperial Government can by no means use it as a basis for negotiations. Therefore . . . the negotiations will be de facto ruptured. . . . However . . . [don’t] give the impression that the negotiations are broken off. Merely say . . . that you are awaiting instructions.

How should the United States respond if the Japanese attacked British territory in southeast Asia? Secretary of State Hull proposed that FDR present a message to Congress concerning the Japanese aggression. Hull, Stimson and Knox drafted such a message.

The supreme question presented to this country along with many other countries by the Hitler-dominated movement of world conquest is that of self-defense. . . . We do not want war with Japan, and Japan does not want war with this country. If, however, war should come, the fault and the responsibility will be those of Japan. The primary cause will have been pursuit by Japan of a policy of aggression.

At a meeting on December 1, 1941, the Japanese ambassadors told Hull that the U.S. “ultimatum’s” ten points, “had been communicated” to their government which was studying the case. Hull responded: The “heavy Japanese troop movements into Indochina. . . . create an increasing menace to America and her friends. . . . [W]e will not allow ourselves to be kicked out of the Pacific.” Hull accused the Japanese of using Hitlerian methods in China. “[W]e cannot lose sight of the movement by Hitler to seize one-half of the world.” The Japanese militarists, Hull said, were “moving in a similar direction to seize the other half of the earth. . . . [T]his Government cannot yield to anything of that kind.”

On December 1, Roosevelt directed Admiral Hart in Manila to dispatch three small ships [minimally armed and equipped to be classified as “men of war”] to take up positions in the path of the southbound Japanese convoys—“to observe and report by radio Japanese movements.”

On December 1, Japan ordered her embassies worldwide to destroy their codes and code machines.

On December 3, 1941: Japan ordered its embassy in Washington to destroy all secret files, documents and codes but those now being used with their code machine. A December 1 Tokyo to Berlin “Purple” intercept decoded and translated in Washington read in part: “war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms . . . quicker than anyone dreams.” A second Tokyo-Berlin message intercepted, decoded, and translated read: Before rejecting Japan’s modus vivendi, the United States

conferred with England, Australia, the Netherlands, and China . . . . [I]t is clear that the United States is now in collusion with those nations and has decided to regard Japan, along with Germany and Italy, as an enemy.

The United States continued to assure British and Dutch of American support. FDR to British Ambassador Lord Halifax: In the case of a direct attack on the British or the Dutch, “we should obviously all be together.” According to Halifax, the president said the British “could count on American support if we [the British] carried out our move to defend the Kra Isthmus [on Thai territory] in the event of a Japanese attack.”

On December 2,Roosevelt told the Japanese ambassadors that the continuing troop movements to southern Indochina portend Japanese aggression against the Philippines, NEI, Burma, Malaya, Thailand. “Such new aggression would, of course, be additional to the acts of aggression already undertaken against China, our attitude towards which is well known.”

The next day FDR reconfirmed his pledge of “armed support” to the British and he told Halifax

that, when talking of support, he meant “armed support,” and that he agreed with the British plan for operations in the Kra Isthmus if the Japanese attacked Thailand. The U.S. and British talked about joint war plans, as to when and where the U.S. and Great Britain should strike.

On December 4, Lord Halifax expressed his Government’s “very deep appreciation” for FDR’s promises of “armed support.” He thought the warning they had talked about should apply

to an attack by Japan on Thailand, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, or the Burma Road (through Indo-China). Mr. Roosevelt was doubtful about including the Burma Road, but otherwise agreed to the warning.

The United States warned its U.S. outposts in Asia of the imminence of war with Japan. Navy Captain McCollum, in charge of the Far Eastern section of Naval Intelligence’s foreign branch, drafted a warning message (December 3, 1941) to Admiral Hart (Manila), Admiral Kimmel (Pearl Harbor), and to commandants of the naval districts in Hawaii and the Philippines:

[I]nstructions were sent yesterday to Japanese diplomatic and consular posts at Hongkong x Singapore x Batavia x Manila x Washington and London to destroy most of their codes and ciphers at once and to burn all other important confidential and secret documents.

During the first week of December 1941, several warnings of impending Japanese aggression were received in Washington from Purple code MAGIC intercepts. The Japanese consul was asked to report to Tokyo, at irregular intervals but at a rate of twice a week, on a system of grids, the location of “ships in [Pearl] Harbor.” A special Japanese code based on false weather reports, the “Winds Code,” had also been set up so Tokyo could communicate secretly with its embassies and consulates around the world if, as, and when, it was no longer possible to reach them with coded messages after their code machines had been destroyed. This code was implemented December 4, by a “Winds Code Execute” indicating troubled relations with Great Britain, the Dutch East Indies and the U.S., but not with Russia. These crucial intercepts, indicating that U.S territory, quite possibly the U.S. Fleet in Pearl Harbor, was likely to be a target of Japan’s aggression, were sent to all the top brass in Washington, but not to our commanders in Hawaii—not to General Short, who was responsible for the safety of the fleet while in port, nor to Admiral Kimmel, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor. Upon receipt of the “Winds Execute,” Safford, Chief of Security of Naval Communications, alerted U.S. outposts in the Pacific to destroy classified documents, but his alerts were delayed and didn’t reach their addressees until after the attack.

Captain McCollum, Naval Intelligence, Far Eastern Branch, drafted a message based on the “Winds Execute” to warn Pearl Harbor, but he learned later that it had not been sent.

On December 3, U. S. Army military intelligence cabled the U.S. military attaché in Tokyo to destroy its codes. On December 4, the State Department suggested that the U.S. and British coordinate their withdrawal or exchange of Americans from Japan, Manchuria, and Japanese-occupied China in the event of British-Japanese hostilities.

More indications of the imminence of war were intercepted December 6, 1941: Messages from Italy, the Japanese Embassy in Washington, and Tokyo, indicated that war was imminent. Japanese offices worldwide acknowledged Tokyo’s code-destruct order. The British and Dutch were on the qui vive in Southeast Pacific. Admiral Hart in Manila reported U.S. overflights had sighted Japanese convoys in South China Sea heading toward Malaya and the Isthmus of Kra.

On Saturday, December 6, U.S. cryptographers started to pick up Japan’s several-part response to the United States November 26 “ultimatum.” A “Pilot Message” announced that Japan’s 14-part reply was en route to her ambassadors in Washington. The first 13 parts were received, deciphered and delivered to top Washington officials and to FDR about 9:30 p.m. After reading it, FDR said to his aide, Mr. Hopkins: “This means war’.” The two men speculated as to where and when the strike would come. Pearl Harbor was not mentioned. Nor was there any indication that tomorrow was the day. No mention was made of sending a further warning or alert.

On December 6, 1941, FDR announced to the press and to the world that he had sent Japanese Emperor Hirohito a plea-for-peace. The State Department had completed on December 5, its draft of a message for the president to present to Congress, possibly on December 8–9, depending on Hirohito’s response to FDR’s “plea for peace.”

December 6–7, 1941: A late night meeting of FDR’s “inner circle” was held in the White House; they were waiting for what they expected was coming—a Japanese strike against British Malaya or Thailand’s Isthmus of Kra, and possibly the Dutch East Indies. They had been agonizing over this for weeks and FDR’s Cabinet Secretaries had been asked to draft statements presenting the rationale for our going to war against Japan to defend the British and Dutch.

In the Philippines, on the other side of the dateline (December 7, 1941) Admiral Hart, after talking with the top British admiral who had been visiting Manila from Singapore, cabled Washington for instructions concerning U.S. commitments to the British in southeast Pacific, thousands of miles west of Pearl Harbor.

In the morning of December 7, 1941, Hull and Knox, at the request of Secretary of War Stimson, each drafted a statement as to what the United States should do in the event of Japanese action in southeast Asia.

Hull: The Japanese government is dominated by “military fireeaters” who were aiming to acquire military control over one-half of the world with nearly one-half its population. . . . [A]ll of the conquered peoples would be governed . . . militarily, politically, economically, socially, and morally by the worst possible military despotism

such as that used by Japan in China and Hitler in Europe.

[C]ontrol of the South Sea area by Japan is the key to the control of the entire Pacific area, and therefore defense of life and commerce and other invaluable rights and interests . . . must be commenced within the South Sea area. . . . Self-defense, therefore, is the key point for the preservation of each and all of our civilized institutions.

Knox: We are tied up inextricably with the British in the present world situation. The fall of Singapore and the loss to England of Malaya will automatically not only wreck her far eastern position but jeopardize her entire effort. . . . If the British lose their position the Dutch are almost certain to lose theirs. . . . If the above be accepted, then any serious threat to the British or the Dutch is a serious threat to the United States . . . [T]he Japanese should be told that any movement in a direction that threatens the United States will be met by force.

The fourteenth part of Japan’s reply to the U.S. “ultimatum” was picked up and delivered to top U.S. Army and Navy officials on the morning of December 7. Also the Japanese government’s message directing its Ambassadors in Washington to deliver Tokyo’s 14-part reply to the United States at precisely One p.m. Washington time.

December 7, 1941 (just before noon): Marshall, with Stark’s approval, messaged Manila, Panama, Pearl Harbor:

Japanese are presenting at one p.m., Eastern Standard Time today what amounts to an ultimatum. Also, they are under orders to destroy their code machines immediately. Just what significance the hour set may have we do not know but be on alert accordingly. Inform naval authorities of this communication.

This message went right through to Manila and Panama, but due to atmospheric conditions it did not reach Hawaii until late that afternoon.

December 7, 1941 (8 a.m. , Hawaii time; 1:30 p.m. Washington time): Japanese planes, launched from aircraft carriers a few hundred miles north, bombed and torpedoed the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Kimmel in Hawaii radioed all U.S. stations that “an air raid attack was on and that it was ‘no drill’.”

Post Attack

So the United States had been attacked. More than 2,500 soldiers, sailors and marines had been killed at Pearl Harbor on that December 7, 1941. In his address to Congress the following day, President Roosevelt called immediately for a declaration of war against Japan. And Congress complied.

The people were mad at the Japanese and eager to revenge the “dastardly attack.” Apparently Japan’s brilliantly planned and brilliantly executed attack had caught the U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor completely unawares. The people wanted to know who was responsible. They wanted to know why the U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor had been caught off guard—unwarned, ill-equipped, and poorly prepared.

It was obvious that Japan was directly responsible for the attack. However, it is not so easy to determine responsibility for the extent of the Pearl Harbor disaster—the element of surprise, the tragic loss of life, and the catastrophic devastation of ships, planes, etc. The Pearl Harbor commanders, Admiral Kimmel and General Short, were held responsible and publicly blamed for the disaster. However, it is now apparent that in the final analysis it was President Roosevelt himself, who was truly responsible for Pearl Harbor’s lack of preparedness. It was he who determined U.S. policy and who directed the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy how to implement that policy. The top Washington officials who were privy to MAGIC also contributed to the extent of the disaster by not adequately warning Pearl Harbor in a timely manner. Their contributions, however, were sins of omission rather than sins of commission.

An Administration “cover-up,” under the guidance of FDR and with the support of his loyal lieutenants, was apparently aimed at keeping the public from learning of the Administration’s role in failing to keep the Pearl Harbor commanders adequately equipped and informed of the imminence of war with Japan, and of the likelihood that Pearl Harbor could be a target. Moreover, it has never been explained how the secret Japanese intercepts, which had been received, decoded, translated and distributed before the attack, which had revealed a great deal—not all—of Japan’s thinking to those in Washington who were privy to MAGIC, disappeared from both Army and Navy files where they had been held under tight security.

Upon a review of the events that took place over the months preceding the attack—as revealed in the several investigations—the top Washington officials had ample reason to expect that a Japanese attack on U.S. territory was imminent. Yet they did not relay that sense of urgency to Kimmel and Short. Moreover, their warnings directed the attention of the Pearl Harbor commanders to the southeast Pacific.

It seems in retrospect that the U.S. diplomatic negotiations, which were officially still ongoing at the time of the attack, were not always conducted in completely good faith; time and again U.S. officials rejected compromises offered by the Japanese. The U.S. embargoed the sale to Japan of oil and other commodities she needed, and persuaded the British and Dutch to follow suit. U.S. officials in Washington apparently failed to realize that Japan might consider the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor a threat to Japan’s plans for military expansion in the southwest Pacific, and thus might try to put it out of commission before embarking on a war against the U.S. They not only failed to furnish the Pearl Harbor commanders with the men, planes, munitions and other materiel they requested, but a substantial number of the Fleet’s ships had been transferred to the Atlantic thus reducing substantially the U.S. defensive strength in the Pacific. Moreover, Washington officials had reminded Kimmel and Short again and again that the United States’s principal enemy was Hitler, and that the war was in the Atlantic.

Top Washington officials failed repeatedly to relay important “intelligence” to the commanders in the field. They failed to advise Kimmel and Short that Japan was reporting regularly to Tokyo on a grid plot the locations of ships in Pearl Harbor. They failed to recognize the importance of the “East Winds Rain” message, intercepted on December 4, 1941, indicating that an attack on U.S. territory, as well as the British and Dutch, was a likely first target. As a matter of fact, no record has ever been found of what happened to the “East Winds Rain” message after it was delivered to Naval Communications on the morning of December 4, 1941. The top Washington officials warned Kimmel and Short of Japan’s advances being made thousands of miles west of Pearl Harbor, toward the Philippines and southeast Asia—Thailand, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies and the Isthmus of Kra. U.S. intelligence officials had lost track of the Japanese aircraft carriers. Apparently they did not dream that they could be steaming across the Pacific toward Hawaii with bombers and torpedo planes onboard, and that November 29 was the Japanese ambassadors’ deadline for completing their diplomatic negotiations because it might be the deadline for recalling Japanese forces from an intended mission several days away.

Roosevelt and his top Washington advisers were undoubtedly concerned lest blame be attached to them for failure to fulfill their responsibilities for the country’s defense. According to Roosevelt confidant and speechwriter Robert Sherwood, the President may even have had qualms that his pre-attack dealings with the British might be considered impeachable offenses. Secretary of Navy Knox apparently felt guilty for not having more adequately warned the Pearl Harbor commanders. And General Marshall too, must have had qualms about his dilatory tactics in warning the area commanders, for he began his own investigation almost immediately into the delay in delivering his last minute message to Pearl Harbor. Thus, the leading principals in Washington were hesitant to have investigations that might reveal some of their own actions as “derelictions in duty” and/or “errors in judgment.”

Moreover, FDR was especially anxious to keep the world from learning that, all the time he had been assuring voters that he had no intention of sending their sons to fight in a foreign war—unless we were attacked—he had been planning a pre-emptive strike to send U.S. armed forces to defend the British and Dutch from the Japanese thousands of miles from our shores. And that Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor had been under orders to prepare the Fleet to take offensive action against the Japanese in the southeast Pacific.

After the war’s end, Congress commissioned the year-long Joint [Congressional] Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Many of the facts presented in this book were revealed in its hearings (November 15, 1945–May 31, 1946).

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Conclusion

It must be said also that the evidence revealed in the course of the several investigations leads to the conclusion that the ultimate responsibility for the catastrophe inflicted on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, must rest on the shoulders of President Roosevelt, to whom the Constitution assigns authority as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and the responsibility to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is now evident that the stage was set for a Japanese attack on U.S. territory by President Roosevelt’s decisions and actions. He was responsible for squeezing the Japanese economically until they were forced to try to use force to seize the resources they needed and to prevent the U.S. Fleet from trying to stop them. It was thanks to Roosevelt’s decisions and actions that an unwarned, ill-equipped, and poorly prepared Fleet remained stationed far from the shores of continental United States, at a base recognized by his military advisers as indefensible and vulnerable to attack. Given that situation, it is not strange that the Fleet was surprised by the attack of Japanese torpedo planes and bombers that fateful Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.And then when the extent of the damage was known, it was Roosevelt who orchestrated a cover-up to make Admiral Kimmel and General Short scapegoats and to conceal any negligence on the part of the administration.

The revelation herewith of the address Roosevelt would have made to Congress on December 8 or 9, if the December 7 attack had not intervened, indicates that Roosevelt would have ordered the U.S. armed forces to take the offensive against the Japanese, without waiting for an attack on U.S. territory. Thus the attack on Pearl Harbor became FDR’s excuse, not his reason, for calling for the United States’s entry into World War II.

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