The Actual Road to PEarl Harbor

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR by GEORGE MORGENSTERN During the war our habit was to treat Pearl Harbor day as, in F.D.R.'s words, "a day of infamy." This newspaper throughout the war protested against any such observance. The appellation was almost Oriental in its masochism—unworthy of us, a travesty of truth. It gave a totally wrong impression of a peaceloving, unoffensive, noninterfering America suddenly set upon by a bully with whom we had no quarrel. No historian will ever accept the interpretation. —Editorial in the Washington (D.C.) Post, December 7, 1951 Japan was meant by the American President to attack the United States. ... It is very questionable whether the word treachery is a legitimate one to use in these circumstances. —CAPTAIN RUSSELL GRENFELL, Main Fleet to Singapore, 1952 It is for peace that I have labored; and it is for peace that I shall labor all the days of my life.

—FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, August 1, 1944 George Morgenstern was born in Chicago on May 26, 1906. He received his Ph.B. degree at the University of Chicago, graduating as president of the undergraduate society of Phi Beta Kappa. He studied history under, among others, Ferdinand Schevill, James Westfall Thompson, William T. Hutchinson, Jose* Vasconcelos, and Carl Dorn. He has been a newspaper writer for twenty-four years and, since 1941, has been a member of the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, specializing in comment on foreign affairs and international relations. During the second World War Mr. Morgenstern served as a captain in the Marine Corps. He was attached to Headquarters as officer in charge of the news section of the Division of Public Information, supervising the work of combat correspondents. He is now a lieutenant-colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve. His Pearl Harbor: The Story oi the Secret War, published in 1947 by DevinAdair, was the first extended revisionist study of the roots of American participation in the second World War.

Though bitterly smeared by the "blackout boys/' Mr. Morgenstem's book was, perhaps, the most brilliant and impressive monograph on diplomatic history ever turned out by a nonprofessional student of the subject. Charles Austin Beard stated that it would remain "a permanent contribution to the quest for an understanding of the tragedy of Pearl Harbor." Charles Callan Tansill declared that it "discloses with great ability the lessons of secret diplomacy and national betrayal." Admiral H. E. Yarnell, former commander in chief of the United States Asiatic Fleet and former commandant of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, frankly asserted that "Mr. Morgenstern is to be congratulated on marshalling the available facts of this tragedy in such a manner as to make it clear to every reader where the responsibility lies." The Admiral held that Morgenstern's conclusions are "supported by the evidence." George A. Lundberg maintained that "this is undoubtedly the most important book that has come thus far [1947] out of World War II. In fact, it deserves a place with Machiavelli's The Prince as a concrete case study of the principles developed in that classic."

I. ROOSEVELT ADOPTS THE STIMSON POLICY TOWARD JAPAN In a statement read to his cabinet late in 1931, after Japan had moved its military forces into Manchuria, President Hoover enunciated a policy explicitly rejecting a program of collective sanctions put forward by his Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson. Said Mr. Hoover: Neither our obligations to China, nor our own interest, nor our dignity require us to go to war over these questions. These acts do not imperil the freedom of the American people, the economic or moral future of our people. I do not propose ever to sacrifice American life for anything short of this. . . . We will not go along on war or any of the sanctions, either economic or military, for those are the roads to war.1 Before Mr. Hoover yielded office in March, 1933, Secretary Stimson twice met with President-elect Roosevelt.2 Sumner Welles, Under Secretary of State for the first ten years of the Roosevelt administration, asserts that Roosevelt and Stimson saw "eye to eye."3 Seven years later, when the time had become opportune, Stimson was brought into the Roosevelt cabinet as Secretary of War.

With the renewal of Japanese military action in China in 1937, according to Welles, "the President grew increasingly restive/' He had the Navy place large-scale maps of the Pacific in his office. "He had come to a conclusion about something that could perhaps be done. . . . This was no less than to impose upon Japan a trade embargo to be enforced by units of the American and British Navies stationed at strategic points in the Pacific."4 In fact, this was the Stimson program, which, as Assistant Secretary of State 310 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Raymond Moley had foreseen, "endorsed a policy that invited a major war in the Far East. . . ."5 Roosevelt was dissuaded then. He tried another gambit. He proposed, in an address on October 5, 1937, dedicating the Outer Drive bridge in Chicago, that aggressor nations be subjected to "quarantine."6 This was his first public attempt to discard the doctrine of neutrality for the United States in favor of a policy in concert with what later were to be known as "peaceloving nations"

—among them, as history relates, Soviet Russia. With what Welles called "the stubbornness that was so characteristic of him,"7 Roosevelt cherished his plan of blockading Japan for three more years. Admiral J. O. Richardson, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, learned from Secretary of the Navy Knox in Washington on October 10, 1940, that "the President was considering shutting off all trade between Japan and America and establishing a patrol of light ships in two lines, one from Hawaii west to the Philippines, and the other from Samoa to the Dutch East Indies."8 Amazed at the proposal, Richardson inquired whether a declaration of war was contemplated. The Secretary was "displeased" at the reception accorded the President's plan by the fleet commander.9 Nor was Roosevelt more successful with the "quarantine" proposal. He could not carry the people with him. It proved "wholly impossible for him for a period of exactly four years to carry out the program that he himself believed to be vitally important to our security," Welles stated. "Isolationists" would have none of it.

"That kind of thinking," Welles confesses, "still prevailed in the Congress and throughout the country up to and including the final days before Pearl Harbor."10 The people did not want their elected servants to thrust war upon them. Roosevelt was thus compelled to trim his sails to the prevailing wind. The party platform he accepted in 1940 pledged that war would be shunned "except in case of attack." In his celebrated speech at Boston on October 30, 1940, the third-term candidate promised American parents "again and again and again" that "your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."11 His speech writer, Robert E. Sherwood, later confessed that, although the THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 319 pledge was deceitful, "I ... urged him to go the limit on this, feeling as I did that the risk of future embarrassment was negligible as compared with the risk of losing the election."12 Although by this time Mr. Roosevelt's primary concern may have been Hitler's Germany, Japanese statesmen were not unmindful that their country always occupied a share of his attention. Years before they had endeavored to convince the government of the United States that Japanese action in China was not entirely divorced from American interest, for "we, or our near posterity, will have to decide between Sino-Russian Communism, or the AngloSaxon capitalism. If China should fall under the rule of Communism, and if Japan keeps up her present policy, . . . the chance is she will be forced to play the role of ... the advance posts of the AngloSaxon capitalism/'13 When the Stimson doctrine of nonrecognition drove Japan out of the League of Nations on January 7, 19 32, Japan made the first of three overtures for a meeting to be arranged "at some point between the continental United States and Japan, such as Honolulu, between some prominent American statesman and a prominent Japanese" for the purpose of reaching an agreement on the basis for an understanding.14 The proposal came to nothing.

In the spring of 1939 Washington rejected a second and similar overture which, if given consideration, might have produced a profoundly different course in world history. The details were not revealed until a year after Japan's surrender to the United States. On May 18, 1939, Ambassador Joseph C. Grew, in Tokyo, reported to Washington a proposal made to him in behalf of the Prime Minister, Baron Hiranuma, by Hachiro Arita, Japanese Foreign Minister.15 This expression referred to gathering war clouds in Europe and looked with dread upon the possibility that civilization would be destroyed. It was the duty of the United States and Japan, as the principal Powers outside the scope of the European conflict, Hiranuma suggested, to "prevent the occurrence of such catastrophe." By this joint endeavor, said the Prime Minister, there would arise "the possibility of much closer cooperation between Japan and America as well as the foundation of a deeper mutual understanding between the two nations."

320 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE The Prime Minister had one delicately phrased suggestion: ". . . it is the ardent wish of Japan that nations should have their own proper places in the world and thus the true world peace might be established and maintained." To Herbert Feis, at that time State Department adviser on international economic affairs, this was an invitation to appeasement which could have meant "a payment by Britain and France to Germany and Japan."16 Treating as irrelevant the subsequent payments by Roosevelt to Russia at the expense of China, Japan, Poland, etc., Mr. Feis infers that any such proposal was immoral. This, of course, was long precedent to the United States and United Nations disposition of 1951 to obtain a peace in Korea by rewarding Chinese Communist aggression. The proposal of Baron Hiranuma was made at a time when Germany was pressing Japan to extend the Anti-Comintern Pact into a military alliance. By the testimony of Toshikazu Kase, the expert on American affairs in the Japanese Foreign Office, the Hiranuma cabinet devoted more than seventy sessions to this question.17 As late as April 19, a month before Hiranuma's proposal, Grew was assured that there would be no alliance.18 On May 22, four days after Arita communicated Hiranuma's message, Germany, impatient of the long delay, signed a military alliance with Italy which excluded Japan.

Before Grew's departure on leave for the United States that night, with the Embassy in the hands of Counselor Eugene Dooman, the ambassador expanded upon his discussion with Arita. He said that he had been assured that the new agreement under discussion with Germany and Italy would not contain military or political commitments binding upon Japan, "except such as may apply directly to combating Communistic activities." "Japan," he continued, "desires to avoid European entanglements. Nevertheless, Japan regards the Soviet Government and the Comintern as identical, and if Soviet Russia should become involved in a European war Japan herself might find it impossible to avoid involvement."19 On May 23 Dooman reported that he had dined privately with the Prime Minister. Baron Hiranuma said that Japanese public opinion "would not permit of the settlement of the conflict in THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 321 China being made a condition precedent to the American-Japanese move that he had in mind/' but he proposed that he would sound out Germany and Italy for the purpose of a conference "to save the world from chaos" if Roosevelt was prepared at the same time to sound out Great Britain and France.20 In referring Dooman's detailed report of the conversation to Roosevelt, Secretary of State Hull termed it "amazing" and described it as "in effect, a private demarche of the Prime Minister to us."21 Although in a previous dispatch Dooman had conveyed the substance of the proposal, his extended report added other information. Japan sought "a gesture of welcome" from the United States. Japan could not ignore the fact that Russia straddled Europe and Asia, and, whether Japan liked it or not, Japanese policies and actions "form a bridge by which events in the Far East and in Europe act on each other." As Dooman had been informed in other quarters, Japan feared involvement with the United States, "not directly across the Pacific but by way of Europe."22 Hull kept the Japanese waiting almost three months for an answer, and by the time the Secretary's note of rejection was transmitted, Hiranuma did not need the reply to know the American attitude. On July 26, 1939, the United States gave notice of its intention, effective six months from date, to abrogate the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Japan.

In the light of the fixed refusal of Washington authorities to accept the fact that, in a world where no one was pure, Japan was not unique in its impurity, subsequent diplomatic history is redundant if not wholly unreal. The keynote of subsequent American negotiations with Japan—-"looking," in Roosevelt's later pained statement, "toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific"23—was adequately struck by Hull in a memorandum of June 28, 1940: I said that this country has been progressively bringing economic pressure to bear on Japan since last summer, now a year, and I enumerated the different steps and methods, which are familiar to all, and added that our fleet is now somewhere in the Pacific near Hawaii. I said that we have and are doing everything short of a serious risk of actual mili322 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE tary hostilities to keep the Japanese situation stabilized, and that this course during the past year is the best evidence of our intentions and activities in the future.24 This campaign of economic pressure had begun with the suspension of the 1911 trade treaty, effective January 26, 1940. Ambassador Grew had remarked, "I have pointed out that once started on a policy of sanctions we must see them through and that such a policy may conceivably lead to eventual war/'25 In order to see them through, Roosevelt brought into his cabinet (June 20, 1940) as Secretary of War the inventor of the policy of sanctions—the Republican, Mr. Stimson, who had convinced him of the efficacy of that policy back in January, 1933. At the same time Roosevelt also snared Colonel Frank Knox, Republican VicePresidential candidate in 1936, and made him Secretary of the Navy, thus furthering the illusion of "bipartisan" unity.

With the advent of Mr. Stimson in the cabinet, the program of sanctions proceeded apace. On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials. He acted at once under these powers. The recent fall of France and of Holland had emboldened the Japanese to seek concessions in Indochina and economic guarantees from Indonesia. These appear to have sufficed in the minds of American authorities to provide justification for a tougher course. On July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted. This process was speeded by the dispatch, September 12, of what Ambassador Grew called his "green light" telegram—"perhaps the most significant message sent to Washington in all the eight years of my mission to Japan."26 He had felt, on July 2, when Japan was addressing various demands to Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, that "they must be met—or else."27 On August 1 Foreign Minister Matsuoka announced a "Greater East Asia" foreign policy with Japan leading the way to a "common prosperity." At the end of that month the French ambassador in Tokyo signed an agreement granting Japan military concessions in Indochina.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 323 Accordingly, Grew, who since the autumn of 1939 had sought to persuade the American government "to divert this indicated course of events"28 and had been encouraged by Hull late the following May to talk reform and cooperation to the Japanese, now hardened his mind. Referring to the evident risks of a doctrine of sanctions, especially applying to oil, Grew, after many circumlocutions, nevertheless advised Washington to go about putting Japan through the economic wringer. The sequel was that, on September 26, an embargo, effective October 16, was imposed by President Roosevelt on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Scrap had been moving across the Pacific in prodigious quantities and Japan, terming the embargo "an unfriendly act/'29 warned that further trade restrictions would make relations "unpredictable"30—a familiar diplomatic term expressing likelihood of war. Certainly the embargo had an immediate result, for on the following day Japan, overcoming the scruples of many months, signed up as partner with Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact.31 According to Kase, Prince Konoye, the Japanese premier, hoped to use this alliance as a means of improving Japan's diplomatic position vis-a-vis Britain and the United States. Nothing was further removed from Konoye's mind, Kase says, than to engage in war with them. Konoye's notion was that the United States, especially if Russia could be brought into the alliance, would be restrained from intervening in the European war and the China embroilment might be brought to a "peaceful settlement." "He wanted," says Kase, "to keep both the United States and Japan out of the European arena and, if possible, to exercise a joint mediation between Germany and Great Britain."32 But such subtleties of purpose were lost upon Washington. The program of sanctions was entered upon in the belief that there was no purpose of trifling with a transgressor: "Les Chretiens ont dwit et les pai'ens ont toit" sufficed.

On October 8, 1940, Roosevelt, at a White House conference, informed Admiral Richardson, commander in chief of the United States fleet and of the Pacific Fleet, that, "if the Japanese attack 324 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Thailand, or the Kra Peninsula, or the Dutch East Indies, we would not enter the war; that even if they attacked the Philippines he doubted whether we would enter the war, but that they could not always avoid making mistakes, and that as the war continued and the area oi operations expanded, sooner or later they would make a mistake and we would enter the war."33 So, waiting in the Pacific, as in the Atlantic, for someone to "make a mistake/' Mr. Roosevelt, now elected for a third term on the pledge that "your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars," continued during 1941 to tighten the economic vise, a little at a time, the while his assistance to China constantly expanded.

As early as January 27, 1941, Grew suggested the nature of the coming "mistake," reporting that he had learned from the Peruvian ambassador that Japan meditated an attack upon Pearl Harbor.34 Two days later, in preparation for the eventualities arising from such a "mistake," military staff conversations with the British opened secretly in Washington.35 Mr. Roosevelt had been in touch with Winston Churchill when the war in Europe was barely a week old,36 and this partnership had flourished as Churchill rose to the post of Prime Minister and as the President's sympathy for England became more outspoken. American-British staff talks had been instituted as early as the summer of 1940.37 What Sherwood calls a "common law marriage"38 was developing. The implication is that the union was real and binding, however much public acknowledgement or official ratification might be lacking. Congress was not consulted, and had the nature of the liaison been known, "demands for the impeachment of Roosevelt would have been a great deal louder."39 What Sherwood terms "the real American-British staff talks"40 began in Washington on January 29, 1941, and lasted until March 27. These produced "a plan, known as ABC-i, which suggested the grand strategy for the war,"41 calling for a principal concentration of American force against Germany while a containing war of attrition was being waged against Japan. As later explained by Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, chief of Navy war plans, it was the intention, if the United States became engaged in war with Japan without the involvement of Germany, that the Roosevelt governTHE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 325 ment "would, if possible, initiate efforts to bring Germany into the war against us in order that we would be able to give strong support to the United Kingdom in Europe."42 "The staff conference assumes," its report said, "that when the United States becomes involved in war with Germany, it will at the same time engage in war with Italy. In these circumstances, the possibility of a state of war arising between Japan and an association of the United States, the British Commonwealth, and its allies, the Netherlands East Indies, must be taken into account."43 The important word was "when." There was no "if."

The Washington staff talks were followed by a similar conference at Singapore, April 21-27, to draft an American-British-Dutch war plan for the Pacific in conformity with the master plan drafted in Washington.44 The report of this conference, known as ADB, accepted the Washington decision that the Pacific was to be considered a secondary front. It held that the Philippines were of "subsidiary interest" to maintaining the security of Singapore and of sea communications. Only a token defense of Luzon was to be made by American naval surface and air units, after which they would head southward to pass under British command. These staff agreements have been a continuing source of embarrassment to defenders of Roosevelt's course. Sherwood makes the usual formal disclaimer that there was any intent in the Washington talks to violate the Constitution. He denies that undercover commitments were implied. His rationalization is that secrecy had to be preserved because of the uproar that would have followed if Congress and the press had brought the facts before a nation still fondly believing that the peace would be kept by its leadership.45 The members of the British delegation to the Washington conferences wore civilian clothes and disguised themselves as "technical advisers to the British Purchasing Commission"46—another illustration, no doubt, of what former Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Berle calls the Rooseveltian idea that "diplomacy is a people's prerogative."47 The Washington staff report nowhere specified that notice be given Congress that any such conversations had occurred, or that ratification be sought of the Senate of any terms reached. The 326 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Singapore report worked both ways from the middle, first denying that any political commitment was implied, then specifying that the agreed arrangements were to implement the war plan previously adopted in Washington, which provided for no congressional approval.

General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, and Admiral Harold R. Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, approved, in secret, ABC-i, which called for no congressional indorsement.48 Inasmuch as ADB was drafted to implement ABC-i, its approval, as a subsidiary instrument, was comprehended in the Marshall-Stark confirmation. According to Stark, the President approved these plans, "except officially."49 As soon as the staff agreements were drafted, the Army and Navy drew up a series of supplementary war plans of their own based on these reports, envisioning concerted military action with the British and the Dutch. There was no separate over-all plan for the simple defense of American possessions against Japan.50 Herbert Feis is constrained to admit: 'To all effects and purposes, the President permitted it to be understood that he approved (the Washington staff report); and he allowed American military plans and arrangements to be guided, if not governed, by the plan."

Feis says that "had the American government refused to play its part" in the execution of the plans drafted at the staff conferences, "the British and Dutch would have felt themselves wronged. . . . If once a nation (or individual) enters deeply, as adviser or sharer, into the troubles or dangers of others, it must accept the duty of partner or name of shirker." He indicates his belief that Sherwood took the way of political convenience in saying that the plans "bound nobody."51 The reports of the staff conferences plainly showed a preoccupation with Germany. A long series of steps, all looking toward the creation of an "incident" in the Atlantic, marked the succeeding months of 1941. Hitler failed to rise to the bait. He imposed restrictions on his navy. The reports of conferences he held with his admirals reflect his determination to avoid drawing the United States into the conflict.52 One of these notations observes, "It is unmistakable that the United States government is disappointed THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 327 with this curious attitude on the part of Germany, since one of the most important factors in preparing the American people for war is thus eliminated."53 Although Mr. Roosevelt, in September, 1941, promoted the occasion to issue a "shoot on sight" order to the American navy in the Atlantic, that was as far as he progressed. The President's accounts of German "attacks" on American naval vessels were challenged, and prospects for all-out war in the Atlantic were "beclouded by crimination and recrimination/'54 Attention shifted back to the Pacific and to Japan. As the Japanese ambassador, Admiral Nomura, remarked, "I understand that the British believe that if they could only have a Japanese-American war started at the back door, there would be a good prospect of getting the United States to participate in the European war."55 Nomura and Hull had been negotiating since February, but it was obvious that tension between the United States and Japan was constantly mounting. It rose another notch when the Japanese moved into Indochina.

Although, on April 9, Greenland, a possession of German-occupied Denmark, was put under American military protection, and, on July 7, United States Marines were sent to Iceland, also a possession of German-occupied Denmark, further Japanese steps in Indochina, a possession of German-occupied France, did not seem in Mr. Roosevelt's mind to bear any correspondence to his own dispositions. When, on July 21, Vichy France accepted Japan's demand for military control of French Indochina, Acting Secretary of State Welles lost little time in informing Nomura that the United States considered Japan "was taking the last step before proceeding upon a policy of totalitarian expansion in the South Seas and of conquest in the South Seas through the seizure of additional territories in that region." Welles then expressed the view of Secretary Hull that "the latter could not see that there was any basis now offered"

for further pursuing conversations looking toward a peaceful settlement between the two countries.56 Having thus slammed the door, the Roosevelt government slammed it twice more in succession. On July 25 it froze Japanese 328 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end.57 One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan.58 The order did not put it that bluntly, but that was the effect. The effect of economic sanctions was well understood by all responsible American officials. Grew, in the autumn of 1939, had warned Roosevelt "that if we cut off Japanese supplies of oil and that if Japan then finds that she cannot obtain sufficient oil from other commercial sources to ensure her national security, she will in all probability send her fleet down to take the Dutch East Indies." To this Roosevelt replied, "Then we could easily intercept her fleet."59 Grew was under no illusions after the imposition of the embargo concerning what the effect would be: "The obvious conclusion is eventual war."60 Roosevelt had further advice on this subject from the Navy, which would bear the initial brunt of any Japanese retaliation. On July 20 the President received a study signed the previous day by Admiral Turner which prophesied: "It is generally believed that shutting off the American supply of petroleum will lead promptly to the invasion of the Netherland East Indies. While probable, this is not necessarily a sure immediate result . . . Japan has oil stocks for about eighteen months' war operation."61 Turner stated that an "embargo on exports will have an immediate severe psychological reaction in Japan against the United States. It is almost certain to intensify the determination of those now in power to continue their present course. Furthermore, it seems certain that, if Japan should then take military measures against the British and Dutch, she would also include military action against the Philippines, which would immediately involve us in a Pacific war."62 For these and other reasons, Turner's recommendation read: "That trade with Japan not be embargoed at this time." In forwarding this memorandum to the executive branch, Admiral Stark jotted the notation, "I concur in general."63 The idea that sanctions meant war seems to have been grasped, not reluctantly, by Mr. Roosevelt. He described himself as THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 329 "pleased" with the Turner memorandum.04 Three days after perusing it, and a week before the final embargo on oil to Japan, he warned Ambassador Nomura that if Japan "attempted to seize the 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, and war would result between Japan, the British, and the Dutch, and in view oi our own policy of assisting Great Britain, an exceedingly serious situation would immediately result/'65 Thus, having determined on a measure which his advisers assured him would force Japan to take military countermeasures, Roosevelt warned the Japanese that if they acted against countries which he accepted as unacknowledged allies, they must reckon with the United States. However veiled in the language of diplomacy, this was a threat of war.

That the Japanese also fully grasped the meaning of these moves and accepted the fact that Roosevelt was forcing them into a situation which, according to his own terms, would bring the United States down upon Japan, is attested by a dispatch of July 31 by Foreign Minister Toyoda to Ambassador Nomura: "Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas."66 Mr. Roosevelt and his associates, through the fortunate circumstance that Intelligence had cracked the Japanese diplomatic code, were privileged to read this message. [The transcripts of these decoded messages were known as "Magic."] The Roosevelt circle was unmoved by Toyoda's further observation: "I know that the Germans are somewhat dissatisfied over our negotiations with the United States, but we wished at any cost to prevent the United States from getting into the war, and we wished to settle the Chinese incident."67 330 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE II. WASHINGTON PERSISTENTLY REJECTS THE JAPANESE OVERTURES FOR PEACE The Japanese persevered in the hope of a diplomatic solution, trusting that where the efforts of intermediaries were unproductive a direct meeting of the responsible leaders of the two nations might still succeed. On August 8, 1941, Nomura, acting on instructions from Konoye, suggested to Hull that Roosevelt and Konoye confer.68 Konoye's announced purpose was that "we sincerely desire maintaining peace in the Pacific," and he thought the proposed meeting might produce "a way out of the present situation/'69 In a series of telegrams to Washington, Grew mustered strong arguments for favorable consideration. The Japanese Foreign Minister, Admiral Toyoda, informed him that although Konoye was "fully aware of the objections in certain parts of this country," his overture to the President was "the expression of his strongest desire to save the civilization of the world from ruin as well as to maintain peace in the Pacific. . . ." Toyoda expressed conviction that it would "be possible to reach a just and equitable agreement/'70 Grew supported the argument, "with all of the force at his command," that this proposal "not be turned aside without very prayerful consideration." He said that it offered the chance of "avoiding the obviously growing possibility of an utterly futile war between Japan and the United States." It was, he said, "unprecedented in Japanese history" and demonstrated that "Japanese intransigeance is not crystallized completely."71 Again, on September 27, Foreign Minister Toyoda appealed to Grew, warning that "without Prince Konoye and the present cabinet under him, an opportunity for Japanese-American rapprochement is likely to be lost for some time to come."72 Grew echoed this opinion in a message to Washington, praying that "so proTHE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 331 pitious a period be not permitted to slip by" and arguing that the "time has arrived" when "liberal elements in Japan might come to the top." Grew warned that continued foot dragging in Washington would force the conclusion in Japan "that the outlook for an agreement is hopeless and that the United States Government is only playing for time." He said the result would be that the Konoye cabinet would be discredited and that a revulsion of antiAmerican feeling "probably will lead to unbridled acts/' making it "difficult to avoid war."73 Mr. Grew's forebodings were an accurate appraisal of events to come.

Ambassador Nomura first tendered the Konoye proposal to Hull on August 8, when Roosevelt was five days on his way to another and more congenial conference—that in the Atlantic, with Prime Minister Churchill of Britain. Obviously, he was not averse to meeting other heads of states who intrigued his fancy, and he was, so he indicated not too long afterward, not inhospitable to such meetings even when they concerned heads of state who, in his view, had no great qualities to commend them. In this connection he informed Ambassador Carl ton J. H. Hayes that "he would be willing to meet and talk with General Franco in the Canary Islands or elsewhere outside of Spain ... if a real crisis threatened. . . . He was, he said, a strong believer in the advantages to be derived from personal contacts between chiefs of state." Hayes thought it quite obvious that the President "would go to unusual lengths to forestall Spain's cooperation with the Axis."74 Indeed, by later example at Tehran, Yalta, Casablanca, and Quebec, Mr. Roosevelt showed himself to be a strong believer in the advantages to be gained by personal contacts between chiefs of state, although it was not entirely apparent from these excursions that the advantages redounded to the United States.

If a meeting with Franco were deemed to justify going to unusual lengths to forestall cooperation with the Axis, there was something to be said for a conference with the Japanese premier, for he represented an Axis partner which, through a reasonable reading between the lines, was seeking encouragement to withdraw from its Axis commitments. Ambassador Grew, in his telegram of September 29, vouched for the fact that "the Japanese 332 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE government, though refusing consistently to give an undertaking that it will overtly renounce its alliance membership, actually has shown a readiness to reduce Japan's alliance adherence to a dead letter. . . ,"75 The same intention was vouchsafed by numerous other officials on both the American and Japanese sides. Despite such significant earnests of intention, the meeting never came off. Konoye resigned, Tojo acceded, and less than two months later the United States and Japan were at war. Roosevelt and Hull avoided the meeting by a haggling insistence on "agreement in principle"76 in advance of arty conference, which, in effect, meant that they expected Konoye to make a public confession of error and repentance for Japan's whole diplomatic course. In view of the touchy national sensibilities of Japan, any such self-abasement was out of the question.

An intervening event which exercised a fateful influence on the course of American-Japanese relations was the Argentia meeting which brought Roosevelt and Churchill together early in August. The evidence is that Churchill sought, primarily, two commitments from Roosevelt. The first, initiated through the Atlantic Charter, the inspiration and first draft of which were Churchill's, was intended—as it did—to announce that the nonbelligerent United States was already in league with belligerent England to the end of accomplishing "the final destruction of Nazi tyranny."77 The whole tenor of this declaration, speaking of a coming condition of "victors and vanquished," of future dispositions of territory, economic privileges, the disarmament of aggressors, and a new world organization ("a wider and permanent system of general security"), implied that the United States was committed to take a hand in the war; otherwise, such statements of hope and intention were entirely devoid of meaning. "The fact alone of the United States, still technically neutral, joining with a belligerent Power in making such a declaration was astonishing," Churchill later observed. Roosevelt's subscription to the intended destruction of Germany "amounted to a challenge which in normal times would have implied warlike action."78 The Prime Minister then pressed for his second objective—a blunt warning to Japan that further encroachments in the southTHE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 333 western Pacific would compel the United States to resort to countermeasures, "even though these might lead to war between the United States and Japan/'79 Mr. Roosevelt acquiesced. It was the understanding of Mr. Churchill and himself that this declaration might deter Japan for thirty days.80 (A pair of journalists who were in Roosevelt's favor later represented his intention to be that of "babying" Japan along for ninety days.)81 Britain and the Netherlands were to make parallel declarations, but evidence is lacking that they fulfilled this commitment according to the prescription outlined by the British for Roosevelt.

Upon his return to Washington Mr. Roosevelt summoned Admiral Nomura on August 17 and read him a variant of the agreed declaration, which had been toned down in language but not softened in effect.82 Under Secretary Welles agreed at the Pearl Harbor investigation that the two instruments meant the same thing in diplomatic language.83 Secretary Stimson once expressed himself as believing that Roosevelt's warning to Nomura was virtually an ultimatum to Japan. This threatening greeting met Admiral Nomura when he presented himself to submit Prince Konoye's proposal for a meeting with the President. It brought Konoye's diplomacy to a dead end. Ever since the inauguration of Hull's talks with Nomura in February, the professed American terms for agreement had revolved around three primary demands. They were: 1. That Japan openly forswear its Tripartite Pact pledge to intervene if the United States barged into the European war, but that the United States be privileged to rationalize such action as "selfdefense."

2. That Japan remove troops from China and Indochina and pledge that it would leave Thailand and other "neighboring countries" alone. This meant Russia, the British and Dutch colonial territories, and, of course, the Philippines. 3. That the contemplated Japanese idea of a "new order" or "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" be junked in favor of Hull's fixed notion that free trade was a cure-all for man or beast. The Japanese were disposed to go a very considerable way toward meeting these requirements, but even a conciliatory government 334 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE could not shout its acquiescence in advance from the housetops. To Japan's statement that it could not yield on the right to station troops in Inner Mongolia and North China for resistance against "Communistic activities,"84 Hull said that "although in matters affecting only this country there might be some latitude of decision as to the qualifying of rights, the matter under discussion affects the sovereign rights of a third country, and accordingly it is felt that this Government must be most scrupulous in dealing with such a matter."85 This was, indeed, a sound rule of political morality, and it is entirely regrettable that it was not later applied by the government for which Mr. Hull spoke in decisions affecting the disposition of Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and even China itself.

Concessions offered by Japan on Hull's other points were considerable and, to a reasonable and conciliatory mind, offered the basis for a settlement infinitely preferable to a terrible universal war. It is clear that if accepted they would have presented a chance to spare the United States enormous sacrifices in a two-front war, and, as is now known, illimitable future difficulties and anxieties. Even if this promise had not been fully realized in the event, still the chances under the proposed terms of agreement could not possibly have been worse than those which materialized in the absence of any attempt whatever at settlement. Such considerations seemingly did not trouble the minds of Mr. Hull or his principal. Long after the end of the war, when a cumulative series of blunders, disasters, and interminable vexations and hazards had been disclosed as the fruits of the policy of these statesmen, Mr. Hull could remark, with immense self-righteousness and satisfaction, that "my policy of being deliberate, while also being on time, resulted in a record that many of the best-informed persons say was without a major blunder."86 Because of disquieting surmises that the United States actually sought no agreement, and because of rapidly shifting developments in the European conflict, contributing to the uncertainty of the Japanese position, four conferences before the Throne were called in the latter half of 1941. Japan's decision was to engage in a THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 335 "southward advance" and to prepare for war with the United States and England if diplomatic negotiations should break down. The conferences grew out of the confusion which resulted from Germany's unannounced attack upon Russia, which, Konoye said, caused "utter consternation" in Japan.87 The decision with reference to Germany and the Axis relationship was that Japan should act independently.88 The program struck off was ambitious but was qualified by the outlook of the Prime Minister, Prince Konoye, that it was "not only necessary to continue the present negotiations with America ... it was also necessary to bring them to a successful conclusion."

Military opinion was cited concerning the "almost insurmountable difficulties" of trying to fight America and the Soviets simultaneously, and it was Konoye's view that it would be wise to abandon, if possible, the move into Indochina.89 The program was based on contingencies; it was an operating plan only to the extent that, if the worst came to the worst, Japan would have a plan of action to satisfy requirements of what was deemed necessary to the nation's preservation. Inasmuch as the government had to prepare for eventualities in the light of what was obviously a deteriorating situation, some preparatory action was indicated. The move in Indochina was representative. If diplomatic relations were to fail and war with Britain and the United States became inevitable, Japan would be installed in a strategic staging point. The second Throne conference, that of September 6, was chiefly to confirm a decision that if by the early part of October agreement had not been reached with the United States on terms of a general settlement, "we will immediately make up our minds to get ready for war against America (and England and Holland)."90 The Emperor, on the preceding day, had handled the Chiefs of the Supreme Command rather roughly, taxing them with the hollowness of their promises four years before on the estimated duration of the China operation. "If the Chinese hinterland was extensive,"

he said, "the Pacific is boundless."91 At the meeting before the Throne he exacted a pledge from them that they were giving precedence to diplomacy rather than to war. They responded that they 336 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE "advocated a resort to armed force only if there was no other way out."92 One of the requirements of the Japanese program adopted at this time was that the United States and Britain were not to obstruct a settlement of the China Incident.93 Yet two days before the imperial conference the Chinese ambassador, Dr. Hu Shih, informed Secretary Hull that "China did not desire any peace at this time." The ambassador harbored the belief that Japan was showing signs of weakening and might be obliged to abandon aggressive military activities and seek peace. Hull assured him that no American settlement would be considered until the matter had been fully discussed with China, as well as with Britain, Holland, and Australia.9* As an extraordinary sequel to the imperial conference, Konoye arranged a secret meeting with Grew and Counselor Dooman that same evening. He said if he failed to achieve concord with the United States "no succeeding Prime Minister, at least during his own lifetime, could achieve the result desired." He again urged an early meeting with Roosevelt. Time, he said, was of the essence: "resentment is daily mounting in Japan over the economic pressure being exerted by other countries." Given the will, he said, the way could be found.95 The will was not found, and Konoye departed from the government.

On the eve of the third imperial conference, November 5, high Washington officials were apprised through interception of a secret message from Foreign Minister Togo to Ambassador Nomura that diplomatic proposals to the United States forthcoming from the meeting on the morrow would be "indeed, the last." Procrastination was no longer possible, but "we have decided ... to gamble once more on the continuation of the parleys." If a quick accord could not be reached, "the talks will certainly be ruptured. Then, indeed, will relations between our nations be on the brink of chaos. ... In fact, we gambled the fate of our land on the throw of this die." If Japan's yielding were interpreted as a reflection of weakness, the Foreign Minister said, the United States would be disabused: ". . . when it comes to a question of our existence and honor, ... we will defend them without recking the cost."96 THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 337 Further instructions underscored the urgency of the situation.

"Time is becoming exceedingly short and the situation very critical. Absolutely no delays can be permitted. . . . We wish to avoid giving them the impression that there is a time limit or that this proposal is to be taken as an ultimatum."97 And then, on the same day, Nomura was given the "difficult" but "unavoidable" order that "it is absolutely necessary that all arrangements for the signing of this agreement be completed by the 25th of this month."98 By copious evidence in their hands, high American authorities were placed on notice that if a settlement was to be attained averting, or at least delaying, war, the hour of decision was before them. Alternative approaches were given for submission through Nomura. The first, termed "Proposal A," was described as "our revised ultimatum ... to meet, in so far as possible, the wishes of the Americans."99 This was a document for bargaining. Its terms represented the most that Japanese leaders, in an excess of optimism, might have hoped to obtain, and more than they knew they ever would.

Yet, in the light of subsequent American diplomatic passages, notably those of Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam, where negotiation supposedly proceeded among allies and friends, the terms were not unreasonable. They were unreasonable only when brought up against the prevailing rigidity of mind in Washington. Nor, considered in the light of the terms acceptable to the American government in the United Nations proposal of January 13, 1951, for a cease-fire agreement with the Communists in Korea, were these proposals of a character to warrant dismissal out of hand. Yet, as Feis, a spokesman for the contemporary outlook of the administration, subsequently remarked, Proposal A "was, in truth, dead before it was delivered."100 Proposal B, also relayed by Tokyo to Nomura on November 4, was put forward as a substitute plan in the event of rejection of the initial proposal, and was described as "a last effort to prevent something from happening."101 This "something" could hardly be regarded as anything else than an open break and war.

A series of feverish consultations now took place in Washington. At a meeting on November 1, Hull asked the Army and Navy if 338 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE they "would be prepared to support further warnings by the State Department." He offered the opinion that "there was no use to issue any additional warnings to Japan if we can't back them up."102 The reply of the services, in a memorandum addressed by Marshall and Stark to Roosevelt on November 5, strongly counseled against warlike action against Japan and recommended that "no ultimatum be delivered to Japan." The chiefs said that American naval, air, and submarine strength in the Pacific would be on a better footing by the middle of December, but that Army air forces in the Philippines would not achieve projected strength before February or March, 1942.103 Hull was thus under the restraint of advice from the military leaders that the force to support radical diplomatic action was lacking—which was the information he professed to seek. Had he tailored his policy to the facts presented by staff leaders and played a waiting game, the American cause would certainly not have suffered. For, as soon as the attack came on Pearl Harbor, December 7, Hitler abandoned the pretense that Moscow would fall to his forces and withdrew to winter positions. The Germans had run a bluff to encourage Japanese military action by representing that the Moscow campaign was on the verge of success.

By December, it could not be long sustained, and Japanese impetuosity would, without a doubt, have yielded to cautious reflection when German retreat became apparent. By February or March, 1942, the American position, together with the prospects of averting war, would have been greatly improved. But such considerations required the moderation of inflexible attitudes which had been long in developing, and there was no disposition of that kind in Washington. In fact, at a cabinet meeting on the afternoon of November 7, the day on which Nomura submitted Proposal A to Hull, Roosevelt polled his cabinet on the question "whether the people would back us up in case we struck at Japan down there and what the tactics should be/'104 The vote was unanimous that the people would support the administration. This was a peculiar exercise in reference to the constitutional requirements relating to war, and was even more strange as a method of sampling public opinion. Stimson THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 339 noted that the sentiment would have been even stronger "if the Cabinet had known—and they did not know, except in the case of Hull and the President—what the Army is doing with the big bombers and how ready we are to pitch in/'105 In this state of mind, Proposal A was quickly brushed aside, and there could be little doubt that a similar fate awaited Proposal B.

Indeed, the fears of Ambassador Grew, far away in Tokyo, were in process of being fulfilled. In an earnest message to Hull on November 3, he rejected the thought that economic pressure would bring Japan to its knees and warned that refusal to support conciliation would lead to an ''all-out, do-or-die attempt" by Japan, "actually risking national hara-kiri." He asked whether "war with Japan is justified by American national objectives," but recognized that this consideration had been rendered irrelevant: "The Ambassaor does not doubt that such a decision, irrevocable as it might well prove to be, already has been debated fully and adopted, because the sands are running fast." In the circumstances, he cautioned that a belligerent Japanese response "may come with dangerous and dramatic suddenness."106 Grew followed this warning with a memorandum for Hull on November 7 reporting an indirect communication from Foreign Minister Togo that "the Tojo government has decided the limits to which it will be possible to go in an endeavor to meet the desires of the United States," but urging that negotiations not be permitted to break down.107 This was no news, of course, to Washington, which had had word from "Magic" that Japan was submitting "our absolutely final proposal."108 Grew's exertions, as he later despondently remarked in his diary, "brought no response whatsoever; they were never even referred to, and reporting to the Department was like throwing pebbles into a lake at night; we were never even permitted to see the ripples."109 With the arrival on November 15 of Saburo Kurusu, who had come to assist Nomura, Japan moved to play out the last of its string. On November 18 Nomura suggested to Hull, and requested Tokyo's approval of, the restoration of the situation as it was before July, which would embody lifting of the American embargo 34O PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE and freezing restrictions and removal of Japanese troops from French Indochina.110 It seemed to him that Hull was not''particularly receptive,"111 although the device would have offered a modus vivendi for carrying on negotiations on disputed points which Nomura felt could not possibly be settled within "any specified time limit/'112 Nomura's purpose obviously was to escape the imposed time limit of November 25 set by his government, to keep the talks going, to avert war, and "to enable the peaceful leaders in Japan to get control of the situation . . . and to assert their influence."113 If Hull was not particularly receptive to Japanese proposals—he said at one point in the conversation that he "frankly did not know whether anything could be done in the matter of reaching a satisfactory agreement with Japan"114—the Japanese government did not feel that this was the time to shift the premises upon which it had been proceeding. It directed Nomura to present Proposal B,115 which was looked upon as a tentative "arrangement" subject later to being "embodied in the final agreement."116 Its terms were: 1. Both Japan and the United States to agree to make no armed advance anywhere in southeastern Asia and the southern Pacific area (except that part of French Indochina where Japanese troops already were stationed).

2. Japan to withdraw its troops from French Indochina either when peace is restored between Japan and China or when an equitable peace is established in the Pacific. (In the meantime, upon conclusion of the agreement, Japan would move its troops in southern French Indochina to the northern section.) 3. Japan and the United States to co-operate in acquiring the goods and commodities which the two countries need in the Netherlands East Indies. 4. Japan and the United States to restore commercial relations to those prevailing prior to the freezing of Japan's assets, with the United States supplying Japan a required quantity of oil. 5. The United States to refrain from such measures and actions as will be prejudicial to restoring general peace between Japan and China.117 The merit of these proposals could be established only by refTHE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 341 erence to utilitarian and empirical tests, among them whether the United States was willing to accept war as an alternative, whether it was militarily prepared for war, whether its national interests were sufficiently concerned to warrant a decision for war, whether acceptance would enhance the security both of its own territory and of the positions occupied by associated nations, whether the agreement encouraged Japanese aggression or gave promise of tending to contract it, whether Japan could be expected as a result of this agreement to withdraw from former courses and treaty commitments, whether the United States was called upon to make concessions substantially less than those of Japan, whether those concessions were in fact no concessions at all but represented merely a reversion to practices and methods of intercourse previously countenanced between the countries, in return for which Japan agreed to affirmative limitations upon national action.

It is possible on all of these counts to contend that the United States would have lost nothing and stood to gain much by use of the Japanese paper as a basis for possible adjustment. Not the least important commodity to be gained was time, during which the dust in Asia and the snow around Moscow might have found time to settle. That some attention was given to these conceptions is attested by three proposals originating within the Washington official circle in November to effect a modus vivendi which would divert a crisis. Roosevelt himself suggested this approach on November 6, and in an undated memorandum proposed trading points which might carry matters along six months.118 These did not differ too greatly from what Japan offered on November 20. Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, despite his previous advocacy of freezing Japanese funds, was not enthusiastic over what might have appeared to him, primarily interested as he was in Europe, to be the distraction of a Pacific war. He suggested proposals.119 So did the Far Eastern Division of the Department of State.120 The Japanese proposal was "clearly unacceptable"121 to Hull, although he professed to know the consequence: Japan would not "stop short of war with the United States if by November 25 we had not agreed to her demands."122 But, despite this knowledge, 342 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE he regarded the Japanese proposal as "so preposterous . . . that no responsible American official could ever have dreamed of accepting it."123 Mr. Hull is more reticent about the possibility that any responsible Japanese official could dream of accepting his counterproposal of November 26, but the Japanese reaction and his own estimate of the evolving situation provide an adequate answer. The Secretary considered his course with the full knowledge that, if a constructive solution were to be attained, it must be reached very soon.

An intercepted message from Tokyo to Nomura and Kurusu on November 22 extended the deadline previously fixed at November 25 to November 28, Washington time. This message told the Japanese ambassadors that "there are reasons beyond your ability to guess" why the settlement must be achieved within a fixed time, but that "this time we mean it, that the deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that things are automatically going to happen"12* Hull's interpretation was not mistaken: "After that, war."125 And, he observed, "The sword of Damocles which hung over our heads was therefore attached to a clockwork set to the hour."126 The Secretary's method was not to try to stay the hands of the clock. He improved his time drawing up both the outline of a modus vivendi and a ten-point statement incorporating American demands for a general settlement. The Chinese improved their time by raising an hysterical clamor against even the thought of a tentative agreement with Japan. Hull was in a mood to complain about these activities and voiced his grievances to colleagues and to Lord Halifax, the British ambassador. He expressed the belief to Halifax that Churchill, in giving countenance to the Chinese outcry, had let him down.127 From other testimony, Chinese accusations of "appeasement" hit Hull in a tender spot and were influential in his decision to drop the modus vivendi.128 On the morning of November 25, however, when he conferred with Stimson and Knox, Hull displayed to them "the proposal for a three months' truce." Stimson thought it "adequately safeguarded our interests," but thought it unlikely Japan would accept.129 Nevertheless, as Admiral Stark later remarked, it was "nothing like THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 343 so drastic as the socalled ten-point note which he handed to the Japs on the 26th."130 Following the meeting of the three Secretaries, the "War Cabinet" met at the White House, where Roosevelt expressed the belief that "we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do."131 Stimson restated this dilemma in a now celebrated form: "The question was how we should maneuver them into filing the £ist shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition."132 Interestingly enough, on the basis of a careful examination of Stimson's Diary and private papers, Professor Richard N. Current has shown in an article in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, June, 1953, that Stimson, himself, was impatient with the idea of sitting idly by and waiting for Japan to attack at Pearl Harbor or elsewhere. Rather, he advocated a policy of getting us into the war by executing a Pearl Harbor in reverse. He recommended that American planes should attack the Japanese fleet without warning from the Philippines.

The discussion centered about what could be done if the Japanese moved southward. Chiang Kaishek had forecast new Japanese action to attack Yunnan through French Indochina.133 Other possible movements might be toward Thailand or toward the British and Dutch possessions. The preoccupation arose from the fact that such action would not involve a direct attack upon United States territory and therefore would fail to present a constitutional cause for counteraction. It is implicit in this discussion that the President and cabinet were thinking of the contingencies for American military action envisioned in the staff agreements early in 1941. Although it has always been studiously asserted that these were without binding effect, Marshall and Stark, in their memorandum of November 5 to the President, urging avoidance of diplomatic action tending to hasten war, had, nevertheless, acted upon the assumptions of the Singapore paper in stating that the United States should fight in the following contingencies: (1) A direct act of war by Japanese armed forces against the territory of the 344 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE United States, the British Commonwealth, or the Netherlands East Indies; (2) the movement of Japanese armed forces into Thailand to the west of 1000 East, or south of io° North, or into Portuguese Timor, New Caledonia, or the Loyalty Islands.134 How to reconcile these secret undertakings with constitutional methods and to obtain the necessary public support to execute them was, as Stimson said, indeed "difficult."135 He "pointed out to the President that he had already taken the first steps toward an ultimatum in notifying Japan way back last summer that if she crossed the border of Thailand she was violating our safety and that therefore he had only to point out (to Japan) that to follow any such (southward) expedition was a violation of the warning we had already given."136 Undertaking to explain all this to the congressional committee in 1946, Stimson said, "In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in any one's mind as to who were the aggressors. We discussed at this meeting the basis on which this country's position could be most clearly explained to our own people and to the world, in case we had to go into the fight quickly because of some sudden move on the part of the Japanese."137 General Marshall stated the same dilemma in saying that "it was the accepted thought in all of our minds at the time that if we were forced to take offensive action, immediate offensive action, that it would be a most serious matter as to its interpretation by the American people, whether we would have a united nation, or whether we would have a divided nation in getting into a world conflict."138 Not until after his return to his office following the White House meeting did Stimson receive reports that some five Japanese divisions from Shantung and Shansi had boarded transports at Shanghai and were headed south.139 This intelligence had not entered into the cabinet discussion, and, although Stimson communicated the information to Hull, it does not appear to have influenced the Secretary of State's decision to abandon the modus THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 345 vivendi in favor of his ten-point proposal.140 When Hull informed Stimson on the twenty-sixth of his intention to "kick the whole thing over/' he mentioned Chinese objections to the modus vivendi but said nothing about Japanese movements.141 Stimson also sent a copy of the intelligence summary reporting the Japanese troop movements to Roosevelt. The summary expressed the opinion of Military Intelligence that, in the absence of other information, "this is more or less a normal movement."

Military Intelligence had a further significant estimate: "From the foregoing it appears evident that the Japanese had completed plans for further aggressive moves in southeastern Asia. These plans will probably be put into effect soon after the armed services feel that the Kurusu mission is a definite failure."142 As an indication, even in advance of any possible Japanese reaction to the Hull proposals, which were not tendered until the following day, this is an interesting disclosure of what store Washington authorities were inclined to put in American diplomatic action as a means of keeping peace. When Hull outlined his proposals of November 26 to the Japanese he knew what the outcome would be, for, reporting to Stimson that he had "broken the whole matter off," he informed the Secretary of War, "I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox—the Army and the Navy."143 He repeated this estimate on November 29 in telling Lord Halifax that "the diplomatic part of our relations with Japan was virtually over and that the matter will now go to the officials of the Army and Navy." He also forecast that "Japan may move suddenly and with every possible element of surprise."144 The Hull proposals of November 26 were of a nature to justify the Secretary's belief that the frock coat would now be replaced by the tunic. In another place he conceded, "We had no serious thought that Japan would accept our proposal of November 26. I said at the time that there was only the barest possibility of her accepting it." But, Hull contended, "She would have proceeded to attack us whether we had presented that proposal or any other proposal—unless it had been one of humiliating and abject surrender."145 346 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE The note of November 26 was cleared by Hull with Roosevelt before submission. The major points called for complete Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina, for Japan to support only the Nationalist government of China, with which it had been in conflict for four years, and to interpret its pledges under the Tripartite Pact and the Hull program so that Japan would be bound to peace in the Pacific and to noninterference in Europe, while the United States should be free to intervene in Europe.146 These proposals went far beyond Roosevelt's warning of August 17. They were not confined to the necessities of safeguarding purely American territory or even the territory of the Western imperialisms, but embodied an application of the Stimson doctrine on such an extended scale that everybody's business became America's business, and represented, not a limited approach to outstanding problems between two nations, but what has appropriately been called "the maximum terms of an American policy for the whole Orient."147 Defenders of this course have employed many ingenious legalistic and casuistical explanations of this document. These exercises, while seeking out the protections of verbal forms, sedulously avoided the plain effect which the conditions had upon the recipient nation. Grew was told in Tokyo that the impression was "that Washington has delivered an ultimatum to us/'148 Foreign Minister Togo, in a defense deposition at the Tokyo war crimes trial, said of the Hull note, 'The reaction of all of us to it was, I think, the same. Ignoring all past progress and areas of agreement in the negotiations, the United States had served upon us what we viewed as an ultimatum containing demands far in excess of the strongest positions theretofore taken/'149 Admiral Nomura brought up substantially the same point in immediate response to Hull, noting that the conversations had been concerned with relating previous Japanese and American positions and that Hull's new conditions were 'Vastly different from either/'150 Upon hearing the conditions, Nomura and Kurusu said they despaired of the reception that could be expected of their government, which "would be likely to throw up its hands." Kurusu said he considered the American response to be "tantamount to

meaning the end" and asked whether America was not interested THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 347 in a modus vivendi. Hull curtly said, "We have explored that."151 To Tokyo Nomura reported that he and Kurusu had been "dumbfounded" at "such hard terms/' suggesting, with considerable justice, that England, the Netherlands, and China had put the United States up to it.152 Tokyo, on November 28, referred to the terms as "humiliating."153 In a doting account of this fateful episode, entitled "On the Rock of Principle," Basil Rauch contends that in its decision to make no counterproposal of a modus vivendi but to present the Hull conditions "the Roosevelt administration met the supreme test of its statesmanship in service of the policy of collective security against aggression. . . . The Roosevelt administration refused to make a deal with Japan affecting China's fate without its consent. It refused to ignore the rights of China as Chamberlain had ignored those of Czechoslovakia at Munich."154 This judgment looks a trifle strange in the light of later events, such as Mr. Roosevelt's disposition of Chinese territory and rights at Yalta without representation or knowledge of the Chinese government. The Truman administration also was able to view the later forced submission of its wartime ally—the Nationalist government of Chiang Kaishek—to Communist arms with detachment.

Finally, there was the savagely ironic stroke by which the United States, having fought a war to liberate China from foreign domination, ended by finding herself engaged in war with Communist China. Strange, indeed, are the workings of "collective security." After November 26 the fact that war was certain was apparent to both sides. The Japanese had already made contingent military and naval dispositions. On November 25 the Japanese First Air Fleet sailed from Hitokappu Bay, Etorofu Island, in the southernmost part of the Kuriles, at almost the very hour that the White House conference which had been considering how to "maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot" was dispersing.155 This fleet had the mission of striking at Pearl Harbor if Japanese-American negotiations proved unsuccessful. At the fourth and final conference before the Throne December 1 the military was authorized to proceed.156 On November 21, while the fleet was assembling in the Kuriles, 348 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE orders were given that if the negotiations were successful the fleet was to be ordered back immediately.157 As late as December 2 inquiry was made whether the fleet could be recalled in the event of a belated settlement being reached in the Washington negotiations. Assurances were given that it could.158 Meanwhile, the Japanese divisions which had come to Stimson's notice on November 25 were proceeding south along the China coast on an undisclosed mission which Army Intelligence thought would go into effect when the Japanese armed services felt "that the Kurusu mission was a definite failure."159 That the mission was a failure, in the light of the proceedings of November 26, was attested by a great variety of Japanese cryptographic communications which were intercepted and decoded by United States Intelligence. High Washington authorities had the privilege of reading Japanese intentions by this convenient means.

Having been apprised on November 22 that, in the absence of a successful conclusion to the diplomatic negotiations by November 28, "things are automatically going to happen/' it may be conjectured that Washington authorities awaited with no little interest a disclosure of the nature of these "things." Another storm warning had been posted November 19 when a weather code relating to wind directions and atmospheric conditions had been established "in case of emergency (danger of cutting off our diplomatic relations), and the cutting off of international communications." This code was to apply to possible courses of action involving the United States, England, and Russia. Overseas Japanese agents were to look for the signal during short wave Japanese language news broadcasts.160 Whether the "winds" code meant war or severance of diplomatic relations has been debated, but the obvious inference is that it meant war. The conditions under which it was to be invoked— "emergency: danger of cutting off our diplomatic relations"—anticipated a severance of relations and denial of the usual channels of communication. There was no point in using the code to warn overseas agents of the very condition which would necessitate using the code.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 349 III. ON THE EVE OF PEARL HARBOR Evidences of Japan's decision were not long in arriving. On the day Hull submitted the American terms, Washington learned that they were unacceptable. On November 28 Tokyo informed Nomura and Kurusu that within two or three days ''negotiations will be de facto ruptured." The emissaries were instructed: "However, I do not wish you to give them the impression that negotiations are broken off. Merely say to them that you are awaiting instructions. . . . From now on do the best you can."161 The deadline for accomplishing a settlement having passed without result, things now were "automatically going to happen" and the ambassadors were instructed to stall in an attempt to mislead Washington—which certainly had no excuse now for being misled. Other intercepted messages in ensuing days to various Japanese outposts throughout the world clearly indicated war with Britain and the United States, referred to pledges of Germany and Italy to act with Japan in the war, and conveyed instructions to various diplomatic offices to destroy codes and code machines—the invariable prelude to war. Predictions were read in Washington that the new war "may come quicker than any one dreams." An invasion of Thailand in defiance of Roosevelt's August 17 warning was discussed. "Magic" also designated the United States, Britain, and Netherlands Indies as "enemy countries." In various other forms decoded dispatches made the Japanese decision abundantly clear.162 On December 4, three days before the Pearl Harbor attack, the "winds" signal was intercepted by the Navy radio receiving station at Cheltenham, Maryland.163 The purloining of the original typescript of this notice of the existence of unadmitted war and of all copies, the efforts made by Washington officials to silence those 350 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE who had seen it or to induce them to change their earlier sworn testimony concerning its existence, and the political denial of the receipt of this communication, are among the great scandals of Pearl Harbor. Only one witness, Captain L. F. Safford, chief of Navy Communications Intelligence, stuck to his story from first to last that the "winds execute" message had been received, that "it meant war—and we knew it meant war," and that it was translated: "War with England (including N.E.I., etc.). War with the U.S. Peace with Russia."

The significance of this intercepted signal was that it removed the last possible doubt concerning what was coming and gave Washington authorities seventy-two hours in which to order every outpost in terms allowing of no equivocation to go on an all-out alert against approaching war. This was not done. While the evidence was accumulating that Japan would strike, not at Britain alone, not at the Netherlands Indies alone, not at the United States alone, but at all of them, the attention of the Washington official circle was focused on the progress southward of the Japanese troop transports whose movement had been reported November 25. On the twenty-sixth, the Joint Army and Navy Board, with Marshall and Stark in attendance, met to consider the situation, actuated by the primary conviction that "we should not precipitate a war."164 As Marshall put it, "I was hunting for time."165 On the basis of decisions reached at this meeting, a memorandum was drafted for Roosevelt166 on the twenty-seventh, too late to head off the Hull proposals to Japan. Among other points, it stated that "the most essential thing now ... is to gain time,"

adding, "Precipitance of military action on our part should be avoided as long as consistent with national policy." What "national policy" was considered to be was suggested by succeeding references to the terms of agreement which had been reached at the secret American-Dutch-British staff conference at Singapore in April. Roosevelt was advised: After consultation with each other, United States, British, and Dutch military authorities in the Far East agreed that THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 351 joint military counteraction against Japan should be undertaken only in case Japan attacks or directly threatens the territory or mandated territory of the United States, the British Commonwealth, or the Netherlands East Indies, or should the Japanese move forces into Thailand west of 100 degrees East or south of 10 degrees North, Portuguese Timor, New Caledonia, or the Loyalty Islands. Japanese involvement in Yunnan or Thailand up to a certain extent is advantageous, since it leads to further dispersion, longer lines of communication, and an additional burden on communications. However, a Japanese advance to the west of 100 degrees East or south of 10 degrees North, immediately becomes a threat to Burma and Singapore. Until it is patent that Japan intends to advance beyond these lines, no action which might lead to immediate hostilities should be undertaken.

It was therefore recommended that "prior to the completion of the Philippine reinforcement, military counteraction be considered only if Japan attacks or directly threatens United States, British, or Dutch territory as above outlined; in case of a Japanese advance into Thailand, Japan be warned by the United States, the British, and the Dutch governments that advance beyond the lines indicated may lead to war; prior to such warning no joint military opposition be undertaken; (and) steps taken at once to consummate agreements with the British and Dutch for the issuance of such warning." This paper demonstrated that, whether described as binding or not, the conditions stipulated at the secret Singapore conference were those upon which American military leaders determined to act; that these conditions envisioned American military action if Japan struck at British or Dutch territory, or beyond certain limits in Thailand, but not necessarily against American possessions, and that no legislative authorization for such action was contemplated.

The high command was entirely silent on this vital constitutional point. Before these recommendations went to the President, they were 352 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE scrutinized by Secretary Stimson, who consulted, in the absence of Marshall, who had gone to North Carolina to observe maneuvers, with General L. T. Gerow, Chief of the War Plans Division, General Staff. 'The Secretary," stated Gerow, "wanted to be sure that the memorandum would not be construed as a recommendation to the President that he request Japan to reopen the conversations. He was reassured on that point."167 As Stimson observed, "I also would be glad to have time, but I did not want it at the cost of humiliation of the United States or of backing down on any of our principles which would show a weakness on our part."168 In the estimation of the Secretary of War, therefore, the Hull terms of the twenty-sixth had brought the diplomatic negotiations to an end—a conclusion in which he had been confirmed "the first thing in the morning" when Hull informed him, "I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox —the Army and the Navy."169 This view of the moribund status of the conversations was fortified later on the twenty-seventh by the nature of a celebrated message (No. 472) sent to Army commanders in the Pacific by Stimson, Gerow, and Colonel Charles W. Bundy.170 "The President himself . . . had now actually directed the sending of the message," recounted Stimson; so "in order that it should be strictly accurate, I called up Hull myself on the telephone and got his exact statement as to the status of the negotiations, which were then incorporated in the first sentence of the message,"171 as follows: "Negotiations with Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes with only the barest possibility that the Japanese Government might come back and offer to continue."172 The Army Board's judgment was that this entire message was so ambiguous and contained so many conflicting instructions that it could only be characterized as a "Do-or-don't" message.173 The Majority Report of the congressional investigation also was constrained to lay down the rule that henceforward "communications must be characterized by clarity, forthrightness, and appropriateness." Dispatches, it said, "must be unmistakably clear, forthright, and devoid of any conceivable ambiguity."174 Among other things, General Short in Hawaii and other comTHE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 353 manders were instructed: ''If hostilities cannot, repeat cannot, be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act."175 This "was a direct instruction from the President/' said General Marshall.176 General Gerow explained that "the President had definitely stated that he wanted Japan to commit the first overt act."177 Roosevelt apparently was very mindful of his pledge not to send Americans into foreign wars "unless we are attacked."

Together with this admonition was the instruction that, while commanders were not to jeopardize their defense, they should not "alarm civil population or disclose intent." In combination, these various warring wishes and commands contrived to tie General Short's hands and to confuse him concerning what was wanted. He reported to Marshall, in response, that he had instituted an alert against sabotage (the least urgent of three conditions of alert which he had devised) and effected liaison with the Navy.178 If these measures were inadequate, it was Marshall's responsibility, as he later admitted, to correct Short's misapprehensions.179 Stimson and Gerow also saw the report. If they were dissatisfied, all they had to do was give an order. Nobody did anything, and Short, confused further by subsequent warnings pointing to subversive activities and sabotage, was convinced that he had taken the action Washington considered appropriate.

On the same day the Navy sent a message to the Pacific which was received by Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor, among others.180 This was introduced with the statement: "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning." It said "negotiations with Japan . . . have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days"—against the Philippines, Thai, or Kra peninsula, or possibly Borneo. Nothing was said about danger to the fleet or Hawaii, and Kimmel interpreted the instruction to "execute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to carrying out the tasks assigned in WPL-46" as orders to get ready to send an expedition against the Japanese mandated islands. The dispatch, however, did not place the Navy war plan in effect. As to the phrase "war warning," which in the context of the dispatch did not herald war directly against the fleet and forces in Hawaii, Admiral Kimmel said that he had construed all of the messages he had 354 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE .previously received as "war warnings." Two other orders Kimmel received on the twenty-seventh suggesting use of his carriers to ferry 50 per cent of the Army's pursuit planes in Hawaii to Wake and Midway Islands181 also tended to confirm his reading that no likelihood of an attack on Hawaii was foreseen by Washington.

Otherwise, so much of the striking defenses against air attack would not have been ordered removed from Pearl Harbor. Admiral Thomas C. Hart, commander in chief of the Asiatic Fleet, seems to have read Washington's veiled intentions correctly. His explanation of how he interpreted the order to "deploy" was: The Asiatic Fleet had to await attack. It could not attack. So, manifestly, the measure was to so dispose ourselves that when the attack came it would inflict as little damage as was possible; and under the circumstances that obtained out there, the only way to do that was to follow the principle of dispersal and concealment. That is what we did. The submarines, in which lay the main power of the Asiatic Fleet—their concealment is inherent in the type. The surface ships were dispersed and disposed in a southerly direction,* where they would be farthest away from what would have to be the points from which the Japanese would jump off, and that was about all there was to it.182 Admiral Kimmel was not so clairvoyant in interpreting the Washington intention, although the suggestion was later made by Admiral Turner, director of Navy War Plans, that, under the order to execute a preparatory deployment, Kimmel should have "taken his fleet to sea."183 General Marshall later remarked in a reflective moment: So far as public opinion was concerned, I think the Japanese were capitalizing on the belief that it would be very difficult to bring our people into a willingness to enter the *He sent them into the Netherlands Indies, "ostensibly to get fuel," "informally" notifying the Dutch commander, Admiral Helfrich, and never brought them back.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 355 war. That, incidentally, was somewhat confirmed by the governmental policy on our part of making certain that the overt act should not be attributed to the United States, because of the state of the public mind at the time. Of course, no one anticipated that that overt act would be the crippling of the Pacific Fleet.184 Little reading between the lines is required to discern what was sought: a belligerent act by Japan to unify American public opinion for war without sustaining a crippling blow. Prudent politicians found it difficult to formulate this prescription in sufficiently precise terms without exposing themselves to the possibility of recrimination. The consequence was to credit the commanders in the field with the necessary discernment to fill in the gaps of what otherwise must have appeared as a highly ambiguous series of directives. That Pearl Harbor might be expected to serve as the locus of the "overt act" was clearly established by the Japanese coded traffic out of Hawaii which was intercepted and deciphered by Intelligence. This fact was also supported in logic, for Japan could not afford to undertake major operations anywhere in the Pacific while leaving the American fleet loose on its flank. The official War Department history of prewar plans and preparations of the General Staff asserts that the "specific peril to Hawaii . . . should have been discerned in the messages because the invaluable fleet was based there/'185 This source further states that "the strategic planners of Army and Navy themselves in estimating Japanese intentions failed to make a surmise which in retrospective clairvoyance seems to have been almost inescapable, namely, that a crippling raid on the U.S. Fleet could be regarded as a necessary preliminary to any major Japanese campaign in the Pacific."186 The coded dispatches to and from Honolulu, where Japan maintained a consular staff of two hundred, showed an interest in fleet movements and berthings extending to no other American base.187 On October 9, 1941, when a message from Tokyo to Honolulu was translated in Washington, it was found that the consul was under instructions to divide the waters of Pearl Harbor into five subareas, 356 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE specifying the vessels in port in each area, with special interest for warships tied up at wharves, buoys, and in the docks.188 As the diplomatic situation grew more tense, the consul was ordered to make his "ships in harbor report" at the rate of twice a week.189 On November 29, after the deadline when "things are automatically going to happen" had passed, he was notified: "We have been receiving reports from you on ship movements, but in future will you also report even when there are no movements/'190 Related to Tokyo's previous interest in the position of the ships in harbor and how moored or docked, this was a tipoff that it was interested in picking off sitting ducks.

These messages, to the minority in the congressional investigation, "meant that the ships of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor were marked for Japanese attack. No other American harbor was divided into subareas by Japan."191 The minority report very logically noted that such meticulous detail was not necessary to enable Japan to keep track of the fleet for general purposes; that the messages were sent to Tokyo for the execution of a purpose obviously originating from there—air or sea attack; that they could not have been for purposes of sabotage, for the saboteurs would have to be in Hawaii, not Tokyo, and they needed no "bomb plot" because they could depend on local observation; and that the only purpose of sending out such information would be to guide external operations.192 Nevertheless, some defenders of the Washington circle contend that only certain messages from Honolulu referring to the absence of barrage balloons and anti-mine nets, and to the fact that the fleet air arm was conducting no air reconnaissance, which Intelligence stated were not translated until after December 7, could have been interpreted as forecasting attack. One of these, reported to have been translated one day late, said, "I imagine that in all probability there is considerable opportunity left to take advantage for a surprise attack against these places."193 It is argued by at least one Roosevelt administration sympathizer that the information contained in all of the previous messages "was well within the requirements of a Japanese plan of sabotage by Japanese agents."194 Leaving aside such questions as how saboteurs THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 357 expected to crash the confines of a heavily guarded naval station burdened down with quantities of explosives capable of wrecking powerful warships, this suggestion is ludicrous, for the hypothetical saboteurs were on the spot to see for themselves where the ships lay and had no need to relay to Tokyo information on matters which would depend upon their own execution in Hawaii.

The "bomb plot" intercept was distributed to Roosevelt, Knox, and high Army and Navy officials,195 but no word on any of these espionage reports was ever conveyed to Admiral Kimmel or General Short before the attack.196 All the word they had from Naval Intelligence was that, as of December 1, Japanese "major capital ship strength remains in home waters, as well as the greatest portion of the carriers"197-—an estimate that could not have been more wrong, for six carriers with 351 planes were bearing down on Pearl Harbor. Despite all assurances of "Magic" that the United States would be involved in Japanese plans of attack, the Roosevelt circle remained concerned lest Japan restrict belligerent action to British, Dutch, or neutral territory. This would bring the administration face to face with the obligation to discharge undertakings to Britain and Holland which, while covert and devoid of the sanctions appertaining to treaty commitments, were yet being acted upon by Roosevelt's military leaders as if fully binding, and were being regarded in the same light by the President and cabinet. How to discharge them, when and if sprung upon an unsuspecting Congress and public? This consideration may have had much to do with the "terrible moral problem" which Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins noted was burdening the President during these difficult days.198 Having decided in their own minds as of November 7 that "the people would back us up in case we struck at Japan down there,"

the Roosevelt official family continued to fret over this and to endeavor to reassure one another. As the Japanese forged through the South China Sea, Stimson, on November 28, hurried to Mr. Roosevelt before he was out of bed. The President said that "there were three alternatives and only three that he could see before us.

358 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE I told him I could see two. His alternatives were—first, to do nothing; second, to make something in the nature of an ultimatum again, stating a point beyond which we would fight; third, to fight at once. I told him my only two were the last two, because I did not think any one would do nothing in this situation, and he agreed with me. I said of the other two my choice was the latter one."199 Stimson returned to the White House at noon for a meeting of what had been designated for some time as the "War Cabinet," consisting of the President, Knox, Stark, Marshall, and himself. The Secretary of War confided to his diary: It was now the opinion of every one that if this expedition was allowed to get around the southern point of Indochina and to go off and land in the Gulf of Siam, either at Bangkok or further west, it would be a terrific blow at all of the three Powers, Britain at Singapore, the Netherlands, and ourselves in the Philippines. It was the consensus of everybody that this must not be allowed. Then we discussed how to prevent it.

It was agreed that if the Japanese got into the Isthmus of Kra, the British would fight. It was also agreed that if the British fought, we would have to fight. And it now seems clear that if this expedition was allowed to round the southern point of Indochina, this whole chain of disastrous events would be set on foot of going. It further became a consensus of views that rather than strike at the Force as it went by without any warning on the one hand, which we didn't think we could do; or sitting still and allowing it to go on, on the other, which we didn't think we could do—that the only thing for us to do was to address it a warning that if it reached a certain place, or a certain line, or a certain point, we should have to fight.200 Roosevelt's mind ran toward a message to the Emperor of Japan, Stimson's to a message to the people of the United States, indicating "what the real nature of the danger was." Stimson thought the best form of message would be "an address to Congress, reporting THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 359 the danger, reporting what we would have to do if the danger happened/' The decision finally was to address both a message to the Emperor and a speech to Congress, and Hull, Knox, and Stimson were asked to "try to draft such papers."201 Mr. Roosevelt then took himself off to Warm Springs, where he made a speech, very conservatively predicting that "in days like this it is always possible that our boys at the military and naval academies may actually be fighting for the defense of these American institutions of ours." Another year, he added, might see American boys at war.202 In Tokyo the same day the Premier, General Tojo, spoke more vehemently to the effect that Britain and the United States were seeking "to fish in the troubled waters of East Asia" and promised "to purge this sort of practice from East Asia with a vengeance."203 Hull telephoned Roosevelt and the President said he would be back on December i.204 The week end was improved by Hull, Stimson, and Knox in drafting the projected message to condition Congress and the people. Prime Minister Churchill attempted to jog matters by sending a message205 to Roosevelt professing to "realize your Constitutional difficulties" but urging, nonetheless, that Roosevelt inform Japan that "any further Japanese aggression would compel you to place the gravest issues before Congress"—which, of course, was to say that the President would ask a declaration of war.

While these activities were in progress, Tokyo instructed its ambassadors in Berlin and Rome on November 30 to notify the German and Italian governments that conversations with the United States "now stand ruptured—broken." The dispatch warned that "there is extreme danger that war may suddenly break out between the AngloSaxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms and . . . that the time of the breaking out of this war may come quicker than any one dreams."206 Part of this message was never intercepted, but related evidence suggests that the Japanese went on to invoke the mutual obligations of the Tripartite Pact and to seek assurance that Germany and Italy would enter the war at Japan's side. Germany had already indicated its willingness on November 29 and Mussolini did so on December 3.207 360 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Mr. Roosevelt's interest in Tokyo's dispatch to Rome and Berlin was sufficient to cause him to retain his copy, which was not in accordance with his usual practice.208 On the night of December 7, when he summoned cabinet members and congressional leaders to the White House, he showed that he knew what he had been reading. "We have reason to believe that the Germans have told the Japanese that if Japan declares war, they will, too," he said.

"In other words, a declaration of war by Japan automatically brings. . . ,"209 Although he was interrupted, he had expressed his foreknowledge that a warlike act by Japan meant war with all of the Axis. Upon his return to Washington, Mr. Roosevelt, shortly before noon of December 1, conferred with Hull and Stark, and Harry Hopkins left a hospital bed to come to the White House for lunch. The product of these huddles appears in the extraordinary instruction subsequently dispatched by Admiral Stark to Admiral Hart of the Asiatic Fleet: President directs that the following be done as soon as possible and within two days if possible after receipt of this dispatch. Charter 3 small vessels to form a "defensive information patrol/' Minimum requirements to establish identity as U.S. men-of-war are command by a naval officer and to mount a small gun and 1 machine gun would suffice. Filipino crews may be employed with minimum number naval ratings to accomplish purpose which is to observe and report by radio Japanese movements in West China Sea and Gulf of Siam.

One vessel to be stationed between Hainan and Hue, one vessel off the Indo-China Coast between Camranh Bay and Cape St. Jacques and one vessel off Pointe de Camau. Use of Isabel authorized by President as one of the three but not other naval vessels. Report measures taken to carry out President's views.210 Hart, in response, recommended against using the Isabel because of her short radius but said he was looking for chartered ships, although he could not estimate the time required to obtain them THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 361 and equip them with radio. He deemed it improbable that he could start the ships within two days.211 Stark, in a return message, approved substituting a chartered ship for the Isabel, but in the outcome the Isabel was the only ship ever to start on this venture.212 The Japanese attack came along when she was a few hours out and she abandoned the mission, no longer necessary.

Admiral Stark put on a deadpan display before the congressional committee four years later, saying that the dispatch read that the "patrol" was to be sent out for information; so that was its sole purpose.213 Adults will persist in the belief that Roosevelt was attempting to rig a lynching which would relieve him of his embarrassments by putting this sacrifice force in the path of the Japanese fleet, where it would be run down or shot up. The formula was ingenious as a means of procuring "the first overt act" and inducing Japan to fire "the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." The Democratic platform reservation —"except in case of attack"—would be fully met, and Mr. Roosevelt would be free to embark on his crusade for the Four Freedoms "everywhere." Representative Keefe, at the conclusion of the Pearl Harbor investigation, in a statement of "Additional Views," devoted extended consideration to the various slippery devices contemplated by Roosevelt to produce a war incident that would unify public opinion behind his policy of intervention.214 The President meditated sending a detachment of vessels to the Far East and "leaking" the news, saying that he would not mind losing one or two cruisers, but that he did not want to take a chance on losing five or six. He thought of the scheme of ordering Admiral Kimmel to send a carrier load of planes to a Russian Asiatic port through waters contiguous to Japan. Kimmel's response, "If we have decided upon war, it would be far better to take offensive action, li ior reasons of political expendiency, it has been determined to force Japan to fire the first shot, let us choose a method which will be more advantageous to ourselves,"215 was a model of sound counsel in an amoral intellectual climate.

On December 1 it was reported that the Japanese expedition had landed near Saigon, Indochina,216 instead of continuing into the 362 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Gulf of Siam, which, according to the decision of the 'War Cabinet" on November 28, required that "we would have to fight." Roosevelt, however, ordered Sumner Welles, acting in Hull's temporary incapacity, to demand through the Japanese envoys "what they intended by this new occupation of southern Indochina —just what they are going to do."217 While these "complicated moves"218 were in train, the President and Hull continued to cultivate the pretense for home consumption that all was serene between the United States and Japan. Although affecting injured innocence at his press conference of December 2 over Japan's new move southward, Roosevelt described that nation as "a friendly power with which the United States was at peace."219 Hull, on December 3, emphasized that negotiations were still in progress and called Nomura and Kurusu his "friends."220 On December 4 Stimson flew up to New York to see his dentist,221 an act which failed to suggest that any immediate tasks confronted the military establishment, and, upon his return, said he had done so in the assurance that "the conversations were still in progress."222 While Hull said insistently that the conversations were exploratory and tentative,223 he knew that Japan considered them final and formal, that Japan's secret messages showed them "ruptured"

and "broken," that the Japanese continued to talk only to mask something Tokyo had promised would "automatically" happen, and that Japan had announced to its diplomatic agents and Axis partners that it soon would be fighting the United States—"quicker than any one dreams." Who was fooling whom? The Japanese weren't fooled. The President, Hull, and their associates weren't fooled; they knew. Could it have been the American people who were intended to be fooled? Indeed, when Hull, on November 29, forwarded, as part of the program of conditioning public opinion for war, the draft of the proposed address to Congress and a message to go to Hirohito, he showed his real opinion of the value of both of them. The message to the Emperor would be "of doubtful efficacy, except for the THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 363 purpose of making a record."224 Of the other the Secretary said, "I think we agree that you will not send message to Congress until the last stage oi our relations, relating to actual hostilities, has been reached."225 This stage was now at hand. On December 3 the American Embassy in Tokyo was instructed to destroy its code machine.226 The "East wind, rain" intercept arrived December 4.227 On December 5, Mr. Roosevelt, in a note to Mr. Willkie, who had shadowboxed him in the campaign of 1940, looked for the "next four or five days" to decide whether there would be "an armed clash."228 In a cable to London for the attention of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who was bound for Moscow, Roosevelt talked as if the United States were already at war by the side of England and Russia. He expressed his view on the spirit in which "the post war settlement" would be approached by these three nations "upon the conclusion of hostilities."229 On every hand codes, ciphers, and confidential files were being destroyed—from Tokyo and Bangkok to Panama and Washington.230 Now, on December 6, the Roosevelt circle received intelligence that gave it a cold sweat. On December 1 reports indicated that the Japanese expedition headed southward had shown evidence of disembarking at Saigon. This would stop it short of crossing the "line" which, in the opinion of the "War Cabinet" on November 28, would require the United States to fight. Certainly Mr. Roosevelt and his associates were not averse to hostilities, but hostilities without "the first overt act" coming from Japan were not what they wanted. Congress and the people could be persuaded only with difficulty, if at all, of the necessity of war simply because an imaginary "line" drawn on distant waters were transgressed. So, upon news of the Saigon landing, short of the "line," there was general relief. "This appeared to give us a little respite," said Stimson.231 But on Saturday, December 6, Roosevelt and his colleagues learned that the previous intelligence had been wrong. The Japanese were not only proceeding but they had crossed the invisible line which, by the terms of the Singapore staff conference, the 364 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE recommendations of November 5 and 27 by Marshall and Stark, and by the "consensus" of Roosevelt, Stimson, Hull, Knox, Marshall, and Stark, required the administration to go to war.

The first word came from Ambassador Winant in London in a message marked 'Triple priority and most urgent" and "Personal and secret to the Secretary (Hull) and the President." It reached the hands of Roosevelt and Hull at 10:40 A.M. December 6, almost twenty-seven hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The dispatch read: British Admiralty reports that at 3:00 A.M. London time, this morning two parties seen off Cambodia Point, sailing slowly westward toward Kra, 14 hours distant in time. First party 25 transports, 6 cruisers, 10 destroyers. Second party 10 transports, 2 cruisers, 10 destroyers.232 By the previous unanimous decision of the "War Cabinet," the United States—at least, in the estimation of the six men who thought they had the power of that decision—was at war as of 10:40 A.M. that day. These six were at war, with one hundred and forty million Americans ignorant of the fact, with no constitutional warrant from Congress for making war, and with no certain knowledge of how to obtain public and legislative support. They knew what the other Powers of the ADB agreements would be expecting of them, and they were bound, in a thousand ways, by their whispered assurances, their spoken words, their warnings and threats, and their compacts among themselves.

Winant again reported at 3:05 P.M. This dispatch gave either Kra or Bangkok as the Japanese destination and noted the latter would not be reached before Monday—a time factor which prompted some erroneous calculations by Roosevelt. The interesting passage in this message was: "British feel pressed for time in relation to guaranteeing support Thailand fearing Japan might force them to invite invasion on pretext protection before British have opportunity to guarantee support but wanting to carry out President's wishes in message transmitted by Welles to Halifax."233 Late on December 5 Halifax had called on Hull to set forth THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 365 Foreign Secretary Eden's view "that the time has now come for immediate cooperation with the Dutch East Indies by mutual understanding ... [in] the matter of defense against Japan."234 But what the "President's wishes" were, as conveyed on this subject or any other by Welles to Halifax, is a mystery. Welles later said he didn't remember.

From the tenor of the Winant dispatch, however, certain things seem evident. The first was that the British were complaining that Roosevelt was holding them up in offering a guarantee to Thailand and preparing to take military action against Japan. The second is that they were confident of Roosevelt's backing but were forced to submit to delay in accordance with his "wishes." The British complaint had reference to time being lost by reason of humoring these "wishes," not to uncertainty concerning the President's position in events that were fast developing. By inference, therefore, the British already had Roosevelt's support in joint action, but they did not have it from him publicly and that is what they wanted and what they were waiting on. There is powerful, if controverted, evidence to sustain the belief that this was the precise state of affairs. On December 6 Admiral Hart in the Philippines radioed Stark: "Learn from Singapore we have assured Britain armed support under three or four eventualities. Have received no corresponding instructions from you."235 The occasion for this radiogram was a message received by Hart from the American naval observer in Singapore, Captain John M.

Creighton. The Creighton dispatch read: Brooke Popham received Saturday from War Department London: "We have now received assurance of American armed support in cases as follows: "A) We are obliged execute our plans to forestall Japs landing Isthmus of Kra or take action in reply to Nips' invasion any other part of Siam. "B) If Dutch Indies are attacked and we go to their defense. "C) If Japs attack us, the British.

366 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE "Therefore, without reference to London, put plan in action if, first, you have good info Jap expedition advancing with the apparent intention of landing in Kra; second, if the Nips violate any part of Thailand. "If N(etherlands) E(ast) I(ndies) are attacked, put into operation plans agreed upon between British and Dutch."236 The testimony of Captain Creighton before the congressional committee reads a good deal like that of an officer who has, in the navy saying, a finger on his number. At one point he suggested that his testimony might sound "a little odd."237 It does. He had been preceded on the witness stand by Admiral Hart, then a member of the United States Senate. Hart testified that his inquiry to Washington concerning American military commitments to Great Britain had been predicated on a dispatch to him signed by Creighton at Singapore.238 Creighton said that when he read in the newspaper of Hart's testimony "it meant nothing to me at all, nor could I remember what he was referring to." He told Hart that "I could not support his evidence by recalling the matter." Hart responded, "Well, you sent it all right because I can produce a copy of it." He authorized his secretary to give Creighton a key to his office file so that he could obtain the original dispatch. Another Navy officer, Captain John Moser, accompanied Creighton to Hart's office. He had been Creighton's assistant in Singapore. They found the telegram but "after reading it I am sorry to say that our memory is no more clear."239 Creighton identified the dispatch as his own because "I have such a trust in the fidelity of the Navy communication system." He conceded that it was signed with his code signature in Singapore.240 Creighton identified Sir Robert BrookePopham as an air chief marshal who commanded the Royal Air Force and the British Army Forces in Malaya in December, 1941. BrookePopham was, in fact, no obscure or transitory figure, but was British Commander in Chief, Far East, and British representative at the Singapore staff conference in April, 1941. Captain Creighton said, however, that he was not well acquainted with BrookePopham and his THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 367 business in Singapore was to maintain liaison with the British admiral in charge but not with BrookePopham.

He then said that he "never knew BrookePopham intimately enough to have received from him directly such information as this, nor did I receive this information directly. ... I haven't the faintest idea at the moment to be able to tell you who BrookePopham had told that to—who told me that BrookePopham had told him of those things."241 Having testified repeatedly that he could remember nothing about the dispatch, Creighton then termed its contents "a matter of hearsay/'242 When Chairman Barkley, later Democratic VicePresident, finally accommodated the captain with the suggestion that the information "was really nothing more than rumor/' Captain Creighton agreed: "That is right."243 On this subject Charles A. Beard cogently remarks: Respect for the elementary principles in the law of evidence calls for a question: How could Captain Creighton remember that the information in the dispatch was nothing more than hearsay and/or rumor just a few minutes after he had testified that he could remember nothing whatever about the dispatch and that he did not remember who sent it, on what information it was based, where the information came from, the nature of the information, or whether BrookePopham had ever said what was ascribed to him in this dispatch?

Given Captain Creighton's total loss of memory with regard to the dispatch in 1946, only one rational conclusion is admissible, namely, that his testimony about the dispatch as hearsay and/or rumor is worthless, that the dispatch is to be taken as it stands for whatever it is worth, and that the authenticity of the information contained in it is to be tested by a huge array of collateral evidence and undoubted facts which have a bearing on it.244 And again Beard observes: "It is scarcely credible that such a definite commitment on the part of the United States was passed around in British Army circles in the Far East without any 368 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE authorization whatever from London."245 After all, Creighton was considered a responsible officer, and a responsible officer would hardly have sent a message conveying such momentous intelligence if it rested on, say, hearsay picked up at the bar of the Raffles Hotel.

Another point which bears on the authenticity of the message is that it is stated in quotations of a form that the British authorities in London would use in addressing other British officers in Singapore. If these were not, in fact, true and direct quotations, why such locutions, as "We have now received assurance of American armed support/' "us, the British," "our plans," "without reference to London," etc., and why a discussion of Britain's exclusive plan of military cooperation with the Dutch? At this point in the proceedings, the distraction of the Japanese southward movement seems to have occupied the concerned attention of everyone in Washington. The reason was obvious: the time had come to put up, and there was considerable less certainty than there had been that "the country would support us." One effect of this anxiety was to divert, for the moment, attention from Hawaii, despite the growing evidence that the attack would take place at Pearl Harbor.

The "President's wishes," judging from the evidence of what was said and done, tended toward obtaining sufficient delay in the face of importunities from the British, the Dutch, and his own officers in the Asiatic sector to carry out a program that would serve to condition public opinion and cushion the reaction to what he and the "War Cabinet" felt called upon to do. In this endeavor it is apparent that his wishes ran to the kind of "parallel action" with the British which had been outlined at the Atlantic Conference. Thus, in the late afternoon of the sixth, the Australian minister, Richard G. Casey, conferred with Roosevelt and learned that the President planned the following steps: 1. President has decided to send message to Emperor. 2. President's subsequent procedure is that if no answer is received by him from the Emperor by Monday evening, (a) he THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 369 will issue his warning on Tuesday afternoon or evening, (b) warning or equivalent by British or others will not follow until Wednesday morning, after his own warning has been delivered repeatedly in Tokyo and Washington.246 The Australian government relayed this information to the British Secretary for Dominion Affairs, saying that "subject to condition that President gives prior approval to text of warning as drafted and gives signal for actual delivery of warning," Australia would go along with a warning Churchill had drafted and proposed to address to Japan in the name of Britain and all Dominion governments.247 This promised war if the Netherlands Indies or Malaya were attacked or if Japan entered Thailand. "Should hostilities unfortunately result/' the declaration concluded, "the responsibility will rest with Japan/'248 In the execution of his program, Roosevelt, on the night of the sixth, ordered the final draft of a message prepared by Hull and others sent to Hirohito at once.249 As Hull had indicated in submitting the preliminary draft to the President, the message was of "doubtful efficacy, except for the purpose of making a record."250 The note of the sixth got into the Emperor's hands about twenty minutes before the Pearl Harbor attack.251 Mr. Roosevelt's cardinal observation was that none of the people of East Asia or the Pacific "can sit either indefinitely or permanently on a powder keg."252 The Emperor's dry response, communicated through Foreign Minister Togo after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was that peace "in the Pacific and consequently in the world has been the cherished desire of His Majesty, for the realization of which he has hitherto made the government to continue its earnest endeavors."253 370 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE IV. GENERAL SHORT AND ADMIRAL KIMMEL ARE NOT WARNED CONCERNING THE IMPENDING JAPANESE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR Meanwhile, Intelligence had been learning through "Magic"

that the blowoff impended. By 2:00 P.M. on December 6 a "pilot message" from Tokyo had been decoded informing the Embassy in Washington that, having "deliberated deeply on the American proposal of the twenty-sixth of November/' it was transmitting a reply in fourteen parts which was to be kept secret pending receipt of later instructions relative to the time when it should be transmitted to the United States government.254 This notice was in the hands of Hull, Stimson, and others by 3:00 P.M.255 The first thirteen parts were transmitted and were in the hands of Navy Communications Intelligence by 2:51 P.M.256 They were transmitted that night to Mr. Roosevelt, Secretary Knox, and various high officers of the Army and Navy. It is a disputed point whether Secretary Hull saw them the night of the sixth. The evidence indicates that he was at least informed of their purport by Secretary Knox.257 Secretary Stimson professed inability to recall whether they were delivered to him, but Knox twice called him after 8:30 that night.258 As a result of these conversations, Stimson asked the Navy Department on Saturday evening to furnish him by nine o'clock Sunday morning the following information: Compilation of men-of-war in Far East: British, American, Japanese, Dutch, Russian; also compilation of American men-of-war in Pacific Fleet, with locations, with a list of American men-of-war in the Atlantic without locations.259 The testimony is clear, however, that the "pilot message" was delivered in the afternoon to everyone of importance.260 How, THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 371 under the circumstances, knowing that the ensuing message in fourteen parts would mark the de iacto rupture and breaking of negotiations, any of these officials could have remained indifferent to its contents is a mystery. Especially should this have been true because, in all Japanese wars of modern times, the severance of relations was timed to coincide with the outbreak of hostilities and this, in turn, was inaugurated by a surprise attack on the enemy fleet. This had been true in the war with China in 1895, the attack on Port Arthur opening the war with Russia in 1904, and in the war with Germany launched at Tsingtao in 1914. These facts had been pointed out and should have been familiar to all responsible officials.261 Yet, according to statements before the congressional committee, not only did Secretaries Hull and Stimson fail to receive the thirteen parts on the night of the sixth but the operating chiefs of the Army and Navy, General Marshall and Admiral Stark, also did not.262 Stark, having been apprised that this vital message was coming in, went to dinner and the theater.263 General Marshall suffered a famous case of amnesia and never was able to recall for certain where he was the night of the sixth.264 When the thirteen parts were submitted to the Secretary of the General Staff, Colonel (later General) Walter Bedell Smith, he took no steps to bring them to Marshall's immediate attention,265 although, as the Army Board remarked, war by then "was not a question of fact; it was only a question of time."266 What about the President? The thirteen parts were taken to the White House the night of the sixth. Roosevelt was having a dinner party for a British vice admiral. The message was left with the request "to get word to the President that this was very urgent." The naval aide on duty was to interrupt Roosevelt's dinner party and let him see it as soon as possible.267 Shortly after 9:30 P.M., Lieutenant L. R. Schulz, assistant naval aide, delivered the intercept to Roosevelt in the President's study. With Roosevelt was Harry Hopkins, who paced back and forth as the President read. Having finished, Roosevelt handed the papers to Hopkins, who also read them. According to Schulz, Roosevelt then turned to Hopkins and said in substance, "This means war."268 372 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Hopkins, in reply, said that since war was imminent and that the Japanese intended to strike when they were ready, at a moment

that was most opportune for them, and that since war was going to come at their convenience, "it was too bad that we could not strike the first blow and prevent any sort of surprise."* The President nodded and then said, "No, we cant do that. We are a democracy and a peaceful people." Then he raised his voice. He said, "But we have a good record!'* Roosevelt, while Schulz was still in the room, asked the White House operator to attempt to reach Admiral Stark. Informed that Stark was at the theater, he said he would reach the Admiral later —that he could get him "within perhaps another half hour in any case"—and that he "did not want to cause public alarm."269 Familiar themes run through these comments. It was "too bad," but it was undeniably a fact, that "we could not strike the first blow and prevent any sort of surprise." Japan was being given the first blow, and, with it, the opportunity for surprise, for it was necessary (according to orders sent to the field at the President's direct instruction) that Japan "commit the first overt act." As phrased by Stimson, "The question was how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." So, when it was remarked that it was "too bad" that the United States would not fire the first shot and head off the surprise, the President could only echo, "No, we can't do that."

And when he said, "But we have a good record," to whom was he referring? To the American people, who had no record at all, because no voice, in moves toward war, or in the situation that had developed in relation to Japan? Or to himself, his administration, and his close associates, who had made the record and had managed it so cleverly that now they were about to be liberated from the party platform pledge, "We will not participate in foreign wars, and we will not send our Army, naval, or air forces to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas, except in case of attack"?* For the moment of liberation was here: "This means war." The President knew it. Convinced of that fact, knowing that Japan was soon to get in * Italics supplied.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 373 the first shot, knowing that the blow would fall within the territory and possessions of the United States, knowing that Japan was being allowed the opportunity of surprise, what did Roosevelt do? The attack would not come at Pearl Harbor for almost sixteen hours. Much can be done in sixteen hours. One thing that the President did was to talk on the telephone to Stark upon his return from the theater. Stark professed inability to recall this fact independently. Another naval officer, Captain Krick, who had been in the theater party, jogged his memory. Stark could recall nothing of the conversation, so he said.270 Captain Krick said Stark went to his upstairs study and returned after five or ten minutes. Krick was not told, but deduced, that Stark must have talked to the President. All that Stark told him was that "conditions in the Pacific were serious . . . that conditions with Japan were in a serious state . . . something of that sort. . . ."

Stark could "only assume/' on the basis of having been told by Krick, that when he talked with Roosevelt the President mentioned the thirteen parts, but that "he did not, certainly did not, impress me that it was anything that required action."271 So, accepting Stark's account, the President, having decided that "this means war," did not think that that "was anything that required action." Some fascinating intimations appeared in various statements of Secretary Knox that this was not all that happened on the night of December 6. When, soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Knox went to Hawaii to investigate personally, he asked Admiral Kimmel whether the Admiral had received "our dispatch" of the night before the attack. Kimmel told Knox he had not. He then quoted Knox as saying, "Well, we sent you one—I'm sure we sent one to the commander of the Asiatic Fleet."272 There was no such message in Kimmel's files. Admiral W. W. Smith, Kimmel's chief of staff, corroborated the fact that Knox had made the inquiry. Told that no such message was received, Knox, according to Smith, remarked, "That's strange. I know the message went to Admiral Hart and I thought it was sent to Hawaii."273 Knox's naval aide said he had the "impression" that there had been a "midnight warning" on December 6.274 In his report to 374 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Roosevelt, dated December 15, 1941, following his return from Pearl Harbor, Knox had two confused references to such a "midnight" warning. He stated: "General Short told me a message of warning sent from the War Department on Saturday night (December 6) at midnight, before the attack, failed to reach him until four or five hours after the attack had been made/'275 Again he said that "a special war warning sent out by the War Department at midnight December 7th to the Army was not received until some hours after the attack on that date."276 This statement was obviously in error, for midnight of December 7, in Washington, would have been almost eleven hours after the attack, and no one would have sent any warnings then. Although Kimmel and Smith were given to understand by Knox that the warning was to the Navy commanders in the Pacific, Knox, in his report to the President, indicated that it was to the Army in Hawaii. There is no evidence that Roosevelt disputed that there was such a message.

Stark, however, testified that he never heard of any conference at the White House the night of December 6 "and Colonel Knox never mentioned any such thing to me."277 It was still his belief that there was nothing that night "that required action." On the following morning, despite overnight developments, very few people acted as if anything required action. Marshall, still supposedly ignorant of the first thirteen parts of the Japanese final reply, went on a leisurely two-and-one-half-hour horseback ride278 and did not reach his office until 11:25 A.M.,279 two hours before the impending sunrise attack at Pearl Harbor. Stark was in his office somewhere between 8:30 and 11:30 o'clock. Accounts vary.280 Hull, Stimson, and Knox, apparently by appointment of Knox the previous night, gathered at the State Department at 10:00 A.M.281 In the newspapers that morning was a summary of Knox's annual report as Secretary of the Navy. It said that the American people "may feel fully confident in their Navy," that it was "without superior" and "second to none."282 The picture presented by Mr. Roosevelt, after breakfast and before lunch, was one of studied ease. He had "dedicated this day to rest. Today, tieless and in shirt sleeves, he hoped to catch up with his neglected stamp collection. The President might have THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 375 been any one of a million Americans putting in a loafing Sunday with a crony and a hobby. Mr. Roosevelt expected war—but not this week end."283 The crony was Hopkins.

Meanwhile, much had been happening, but nothing was done about it. At five o'clock that morning the message fixing the time of delivery of the Japanese note was available in the Navy Department.284 It read: "Will the Ambassador please submit to the United States Government (if possible, to the Secretary of State) our reply to the United States at 1:00 P.M. on the 7th, your time."285 Other messages from Tokyo disclosed that the showdown was at hand. "All concerned/' said one, "regret very much that due to failure in adjusting Japanese-American relations, matters have come to what they are now. . . ."286 Another referred to the "unprecedented crisis," suggesting that what was to come was a test unique in the annals of Japan, and praying that Japanese officials in the United States "will continue in good health."287 Inasmuch as none had complained of poor health, the implication was that they faced an altered condition not of a happy nature. An internment camp was the obvious answer. Still another directed Ambassador Nomura to destroy his sole surviving cipher machine and all machine codes and secret documents—an act invariably associated with the coming of war.288 Why, in view of all these messages, and what had gone before, Mr. Roosevelt and everyone around him should not have expected war on this particular week end is not easily explained.

Finally, before 8:00 A.M., Navy Intelligence had ready for responsible members of the government and high command the fourteenth and final part of Japan's memorandum.289 If it had taken no expert interpretation to determine that the first thirteen parts "meant war," as the President had determined, the concluding section of the message made that unmistakably clear, for it used bellicose language in reference to AngloAmerican designs and declared that the hope of Japan "to preserve and promote the peace of the Pacific through cooperation with the American Government has finally been lost."290 When peace and the hope of peace are lost, what is left? What, indeed, but war?

376 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE The first order of business of subordinate officers in possession of the decoded messages was to seek out the high officers of the government and of the Army and Navy who would be concerned with the momentous decisions arising from these statements. It was the earnest desire of some, at least, of these officers to communicate their ideas of how the messages were to be evaluated, with specific reference to the military deductions that were to be drawn from them. But the duty of evaluation already reposed with the ten men in Washington—291 the high officials of the government and the Army and Navy. By official order, delivery of the English texts of the intercepted messages was confined, within the War Department, to the Secretary of War (Stimson), the Chief of Staff (Marshall), the Chief of the War Plans Division (Gerow), and the Chief of the Military Intelligence Division (Miles); within the Navy, to the Secretary of the Navy (Knox), the Chief of Naval Operations (Stark), the Chief of the War Plans Division (Turner), and the Director of Naval Intelligence (Wilkinson); to Mr. Roosevelt in the White House, and to Harry Hopkins.292 General Miles testified that this restricted circulation was the result of a policy of "closing in on the secret."293 The commanders at Oahu were denied the flow of code messages,294 although Admiral Kimmel received a few texts irrelevant to his station—enough, only, to constitute "affirmative misrepresentation,"295 for he had asked for all vital information, and these few messages persuaded him that he was getting it.

In relieving the commanders in Hawaii of the opportunity of evaluating "Magic," the high officials in Washington inescapably assumed the responsibility, especially the responsibility of instructing their field commanders in the light of information in their possession alone. What, on the morning of December 7, was the nature of this information, and what the responsibility? To this fundamental question, the Navy Court of Inquiry answered: "In the early forenoon of December 7, the War and Navy Departments had information which appeared to indicate that a break in diplomatic relations was imminent, and, by inference and deduction, that an attack in the Hawaiian area could be expected soon."296 THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 377 That the Court confined its reference to knowledge by the War and Navy Departments was a direct result of limiting orders that it should report "whether any offenses have been committed or serious blame incurred on the part of any person or persons in the Naval service/' thereby removing from the sphere of its inquiry the determination of responsibility of civilian officials.297 Despite the fact that it was hardly likely that any board of officers would have had the temerity to criticize the President, the Secretaries of War and Navy, or the Secretary of State, the Army Pearl Harbor Board, operating under somewhat broader terms of reference than the Navy Court, did just that. Among those responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster, it listed Secretary Hull.298 Officers entrusted with the distribution of the latest intercepts on the morning of December 7 were at no loss in determining that this information was of a vital and threatening character, demanding immediate action. Colonel R. S. Bratton, chief of the Far Eastern section, Military Intelligence, stated that when he saw the one o'clock delivery message he dropped everything, as it meant to him that Japan planned to attack the United States at or near one o'clock that day.299 Other officers concerned with bringing to the attention of high Washington authorities these crucial decoded Japanese messages in the final hours before action had even shrewder and more specific surmises relative to their meaning. Among them were Captain A. H. McCollum, head of the Far Eastern section of Naval Intelligence, and Captain Alwyn D. Kramer, who occupied the Japanese desk in Naval Intelligence.

Captain McCollum testified that on the morning of December 7, perhaps as early as 8:30 o'clock, he discussed the significance of the fourteenth and final part of the Japanese memorandum with Admiral Stark and with Admiral Wilkinson, chief of Naval Intelligence. While they were talking, the instruction to Nomura directing one o'clock delivery was brought in. Stark "immediately called the White House on the telephone, and the draft was taken over to the Secretary of State and the White House." To this McCollum added, "At the time, the possible significance of the time of delivery was pointed out to all hands."

378 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE As McCollum later explained, "all hands" meant Stark, Wilkinson, Admiral Ingersoll, assistant chief of operations under Stark, and Captain Schuirmann, liaison officer with the State Department. But all of these officers had responsibilities to the civil leaders of government, and Stark called Roosevelt. What was the "possible significance," as pointed out by McCollum to his fellow officers? It was that 1:00 P.M., Washington time, was about 7:30 in the morning, Honolulu time. It was also very early morning at that hour in the Far East, and "if an attack were coming, it looked like the timing was such that it was timed for operations out in the Far East and possibly on Hawaii at the time. . . . We felt that there were important things which would move at that time, and that was pointed out not only to Admiral Stark but I know it was pointed out to the Secretary of State."300 Captain Kramer, who went over with the completed fourteenpart message and the one o'clock delivery dispatch for delivery to Hull, Stimson, and Knox, had "instructions to point out the time business to the Secretary [Hull]." This was an order. So important were these final dispatches that the Navy undertook to deliver them to the Secretary of State although that was the Army's job. Stark and his subordinates did not want to lose a moment's time.

"Now, the danger wasn't in Washington," pointed out Senator Ferguson. 'The danger wasn't in Washington, because of which you were delivering this message out of the ordinary rules to the Secretary of State. The danger was on our fronts, was it not, and our outposts?" McCollum agreed. Suggestion, he said, "was definitely made that a dispatch be sent to the Fleet pointing out that something could be expected to happen at that time."301 The suggestion was that the dispatch be sent to the fleet. The fleet was at Pearl Harbor. So the interpretation of the one o'clock delivery was that something—obviously, attack—could be expected at the corresponding hour in Pearl Harbor and no place else. Suggestion was not made that a warning be sent anywhere else. Directly after this suggestion, Stark tried to get in touch with Marshall by telephone, but the Chief of Staff was still out cantering.302 THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 379 At or about 10:00 A.M. Captain Kramer arrived at Hull's office, where the Secretary of State was sitting down with Stimson and Knox. Stark had already called Hull. Kramer bore the crucial Japanese messages. It was Kramer who first pointed out the significance of the one o'clock delivery:303 One o'clock, Washington time, was dark night over East Asia and 2:00 A.M. at Manila, but 7:30 A.M., an hour and four minutes after sunrise, at Hawaii. That hour was "probably the quietest time of the week aboard ship at Pearl Harbor/' A large percentage of the crew would be ashore. The crew would be in the process of being piped in for breakfast.304 It was a military axiom that the hour around dawn was the most favorable period for surprise air attack. And Sunday, as the quietest time of the week aboard ship, was the most favorable day.

At the State Department Kramer pointed out that one o'clock in Washington meant dawn, or 7:30 A.M., in Hawaii.305 Spread before Stimson was the information he had requested the previous night from the Navy Department: the compilation of all men-ofwar in the Far East, also the compilation of American men-of-war in the Pacific Fleet, with locations. Tying together the one o'clock delivery time factor pointing to Pearl Harbor and the location of the bulk of the Pacific Fleet, also at Pearl Harbor, was an elementary mental exercise—all that was required to show where the danger lay. This computation had been worked out by Captain McCollum. "Were you surprised when the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning at Hawaii?" asked Senator Ferguson. "I was not surprised at the Japanese attack, sir," the Captain responded. "I was astonished at the success attained by that attack, sir." Captain McCollum had "for many years felt that in the event of an outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Japan that the Japanese would attempt to strike the Fleet at or near the commencement time of these hostilities." If the fleet had been at San Pedro, he would have anticipated the attack there. "I felt that the fact that the Japanese intended to go to war carried with it the possibility of an attack on the Fleet wherever it might be, sir." 306 380 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE The one o'clock delivery time merely reinforced a deduction long entertained.

So, with all of these intimations of what was afoot, with three hours still in which to get a warning to the fleet commander, what did Hull, Knox, and Stimson discuss or do? By way of action, they did nothing. They discussed, by the showing of Stimson's diary, the progress of the Japanese troop transports into the Gulf of Siam,307 upon which their minds in these last days had so constantly dwelt—dwelt because here was a conflict between the private determination of Roosevelt and his "War Cabinet" that "we must fight" and the constitutional impediments to executing that decision. Yet, though Mr. Stimson indicates no consideration of the danger to Pearl Harbor, he was to say, after the attack, "Well, I was not surprised!"308 The three conferees carried on, by the Secretary of War's showing, a highly irrelevant seminar expressing their doubts and fears concerning what might impend in southeast Asia.

In his diary notations, Stimson said, "Today is the day that the Japanese are going to bring their answer to Hull, and everything in Magic indicated that they had been keeping the time back until now in order to accomplish something hanging in the air. . . . Hull is very certain that the Japs are planning some deviltry and we are all wondering where the blow will strike. We three stayed in conference until lunch time, going over the plans for what should be said or done. The main thing is to hold the main people who are interested in the Far East together—the British, ourselves, the Dutch, the Australians, the Chinese."309 Hull gave "the broad picture of it" and Knox "also had his views as to the importance of showing immediately how these different nations must stand together." Stimson had them record their statements. Hull argued that "the defense must be commenced within the South Sea area at such time and places as in the judgment of naval and military experts would be within sufficient time and at such strategic points as would make it most effective. In no other way can it be satisfactorily determined that the Pacific area can be successfully defended."310 This was a brief in support of Presidential declarations of war at THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 381 the discretion of the Executive and his military advisers. It had no possible reference to the constitutional requirement that only Congress ''shall have power ... to declare war." Further, it takes but slight acquaintance with the decisions of the Singapore staff conference and with the recommendations of Marshall and Stark on November 5 and 27 to detect that Hull was engaged in special pleading in support of a course of action which would take the Administration off the hook—dangling, as it was, between the commitments it had extended to other Powers and the constitutional limitations upon Executive action.

Knox dictated the familiar view that America's destinies were tied up with the fate of the British and Dutch colonial possessions, postulated that "any threat to any one of the three of us is a threat to all of us," and declared for a warning to the Japanese "that any movement in a direction that threatens the United States will be met by force"—a non sequitur of majestic proportions in view of what had gone just before.311 Then Knox got himself into accord with Hull on the desirability of giving the President a free hand in deciding when the United States should be at war. "The President/' he said, "will want to reserve to himself just how to define this." Then, as "suggestions to shoot at," he repeated the lines of prohibition upon Japanese military movements originally defined at the Singapore conference and repeated twice in November by the Chief of Staff and Chief of Naval Operations.312 Some time before this edifying seminar was adjourned for lunch, Marshall, having parted from his horse and scrubbed himself in the shower, turned up at his office, where he found the "pilot message,"

the fourteen parts, and the one o'clock delivery message all awaiting his attention. After considering these intercepts, with General Gerow, General Miles, and Colonel Bratton, among others, contributing to their elucidation,313 Marshall professed to see "some definite significance" pointing to the fact that "something was going to happen at 1 o'clock."314 He then drafted a dispatch to General Short in Hawaii and to other Pacific outposts. This message read: "The Japanese are presenting at 1 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, 382 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE today, what appears to be an ultimatum. Also they are under orders to destroy their code machine immediately. Just what significance the hour set may have we do not know, but be on alert accordingly/'315 Marshall informed Stark of his intention to dispatch this message. Stark put up the phone, thought it over, and then called Marshall back, requesting him to have the message transmitted to naval commanders in the Pacific. Marshall added the instruction.316 The Chief of Staff completed this message at 11:58 A.M., one hour and twenty-seven minutes before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.317 It was typed for clarity, encoded, and finally sent off by commercial radio. The explanation for this decision was that the Army radio in Hawaii had been having difficulty that morning communicating with the War Department. But Marshall knew that the time was short. The FBI radio was available.318 When he talked with Stark, the Admiral volunteered the use of the powerful Navy transmitter.319 Above all, there was on Marshall's desk a scrambler telephone by which he could have reached Hawaii in a matter of minutes.320 He refrained from using it, he said, because of the "possibility of a leak which would embarrass the State Department."321 How the State Department could be embarrassed to any greater degree than by having Mr. Hull's diplomacy rewarded with war, and what conceivable effect the embarrassment would have had on negotiations already broken off, are matters which General Marshall may be able to explain, but which elude normal processes of ratiocination.

The message reached Honolulu at 7:33 A.M. and was being carried through the streets by a bicycle messenger when the first Japanese bombs began to drop. It was delivered to the signal office of the Hawaiian Department of the Army at 11:45 A.M., two hours after the last Japanese plane had retired, and, because it was not marked "Priority" or "Urgent," as were other waiting coded messages, it was laid aside and not decoded until 2:58 P.M., seven hours and three minutes after the attack.322 It finally reached the hands of General Short eight hours and twelve minutes after being filed for transmission. At 7:55 A.M., the Japanese carrier planes, having received no THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 383 word from Tokyo to withhold their attack because of a successful outcome of negotiations with the United States, struck the fleet at Pearl Harbor and Army and Navy air fields on Oahu.323 The surprise was complete. Eight American battleships and several smaller naval vessels were knocked out, most of the Army planes were destroyed on the ground, and 2,326 soldiers, sailors, and marines were killed. Japan lost a relatively small number of planes and a few midget submarines.324 V. "WE WERE ATTACKED. THERE IS NO QUESTION ABOUT THAT."

Word of the disaster reached Secretary Knox, who reported to Roosevelt. "No!" the President is supposed to have cried.325 The reaction would suggest that he was surprised. "Of course, he was surprised," said Jonathan Daniels much later. Daniels was the President's administrative assistant and press secretary. Then this trusted subordinate of Roosevelt made some revealing remarks: "The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be. . . . But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price. . . ,"326 Looking back over an extended history of the private thoughts of the President and his intimates, one encounters markers in the mentality that produced Pearl Harbor: "... except in case of attack."327 "... again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."328 ". . . they (the Japanese) could not always avoid making mistakes, and that as the war continued and the area of operations expanded, sooner or later they would make a mistake and we would enter the war."329 ". . . there might be a possibility of war with Japan without the involvement of Germany . . . and it was determined that in such 384 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE a case the United States would, if possible, initiate efforts to bring Germany into the war against us in order that we would be able to give strong support to the United Kingdom in Europe."330 ". . . the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act"331—inserted as "a direct instruction from the President."332 "The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."333 "Of course, no one anticipated that that overt act would be the crippling of the Pacific fleet."334 "The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be. ... But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price. . . ."335 To this collection members of the President's close circle added other glosses.

MRS. ROOSEVELT: "December 7th was like any of the later D-Days to us. We clustered at the radio and waited for more details but it was far from the shock it proved to the country in general. We had expected something of the sort for a long time."336 SECRETARY OF LABOR PERKINS: ". . . in spite of the terrible blow to his pride, to his faith in the Navy and its ships, and to his confidence in the American Intelligence Service . . . [Mr. Roosevelt] had, nevertheless, a much calmer air. His terrible moral problem had been resolved in the event."337 SECRETARY OF WAR STIMSON: "We three [Hull, Knox, Stimson] all thought we must fight if the British fought. But now the Japs have solved the whole thing by attacking us directly in Hawaii."338 And, again, STIMSON: "When the news first came in that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of xeliei that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly developed. For I feel that this country united has practically nothing to fear; while the apathy and divisions stirred by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging."339 MRS. CHARLES HAMLIN, for many years a close friend of Mr.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 385 Roosevelt and a guest in the White House in November and December, 1941: The President, the night of his broadcast to the nation on the coming of war, "looked relieved, as if a load was off his mind at last, now that fate and the Japanese had finally settled everything that had been brewing for so long."340 MRS. HAMLIN: "His cigarette was tipped at its usual jaunty angle."341 MRS. HAMLIN, quoting the President at his dinner of December 22, 1941, with Prime Minister Churchill and Lord Halifax as honored guests: "I have a toast to offer—it has been in my head and on my heart for a long time—now it is on the tip of my tongue —To the common cause/ "342 MRS. HAMLIN: "The band played 'God Save the King' and then The Star-Spangled Banner' .... Every night we drank to the health of the United States and Great Britain and then to the common cause."343 POSTMASTER GENERAL FRANK WALKER: "I think the boss really feels more relief than he has had for weeks."344 MR. ROOSEVELT, the night of Pearl Harbor: "Well, we were attacked. There is no question about that."345 MR. ROOSEVELT, in a message on December 8 asking Congress to declare the existence of a state of war with the Japanese Empire: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy— the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. . . . Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us."346 MR. ROOSEVELT, in a radio message to the nation on the night of December 9: "We are all in it—all the way."347 CAPTAIN OLIVER LYTTELTON, Minister of Production in the Churchill cabinet, June 20, 1944: "America provoked Japan to such an extent that the Japanese were forced to attack Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history to say that America was forced into war."348 PRIME MINISTER CHURCHILL to Prime Minister Smuts of South Africa, November 9, 1941: "I do not think it would be any use for me to make a personal appeal to Roosevelt at this juncture to enter the war. At the Atlantic meeting I told his circle that I would rather have an American declaration of war now and no supplies 386 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE for six months than double the supplies and no declaration. When this was repeated to him, he thought it a hard saying. We must not underrate his Constitutional difficulties. He may take action as Chief Executive, but only Congress can declare war. He went so far as to say to me, "I may never declare war; I may make war. It I were to ask Congiess to declare war, they might argue about it (ox three months."*49 CHURCHILL: "The President and his trusted friends had long realized the grave risks of United States neutrality . . . and had writhed under the restraints of a Congress whose House of Representatives had a few months before passed by only a single vote the necessary renewal of compulsory military training. . . . Roosevelt, Hull, Stimson, Knox, General Marshall, Admiral Stark, and, as a link between them all, Harry Hopkins, had but one mind ... A Japanese attack upon the United States was a vast simplification of their problem and their duty."350 CHURCHILL: "NO American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy ... I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! . . . We had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. . . . We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end.

... I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful/'351 JESSE JONES, associated with the Roosevelt administration for twelve years and a member of the Roosevelt cabinet for five: "He changed his tactics whenever politics seemed to dictate, and with no intention of leaving the White House until voted out—or carried out. . . . Regardless of his oft-repeated statement, 'I hate war/ he was eager to get into the fighting since that would insure a third term."352 Such are the appearances and realities, moral, political, intellectual, and philosophical, of the "date which will live in infamy."

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 387 EPILOGUE: THE NEW YORK TIMES' WHITEWASH OF GENERAL MARSHALL (by Harry Elmer Barnes) On December 2, 1951, commemorating the tenth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the New York Times published an article on 'Ten Years Ago This Friday/' by Cabell Phillips of the Washington Bureau of the Times. It was a very interestingly written article but repeated most of the old myths about That Day, even though the Editor of the Times Sunday Magazine assured the readers that Mr. Phillips had "combed the 39 volumes of the Pearl Harbor Report and consulted with eye-witnesses on the spot to prepare this article/' While naturally annoyed, I did not write to the Editor of the Times. When, however, in the Sunday Times of December 16, Mr. Phillips, in answer to a query by a correspondent, alleged that General Marshall had no way of communicating speedily with General Short on December 7, 1941, I was moved to send the Editor a letter, which was mailed on January 3, 1952. The Times did not print the letter but sent it on to Mr. Phillips in Washington. He sent me a short letter on January 15, and enclosed a letter of the same date which, he informed me, he was sending to the Times for publication. This was published in the issue of January 20. In reply to this letter, I mailed Mr. Phillips a rather detailed reply on February 6. This correspondence follows and is printed in order to clear up this vitally important and disputed point for all time. Mr.

Percy L. Greaves also wrote a letter on this same subject to the Times, which is printed at the close of the following chapter by Mr. Greaves. It hardly needs to be said that the Times did not print Mr. Greaves' letter.

388 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Cooperstown, New York January 3, 1952 Editor of the New York Times Sir: It has been a long time since I have written a letter to the New York Times. I have avoided any controversy regarding responsibility for the second World War, recognizing the futility of any such activity in the "blackout press" of our day. I even avoided any temptation to comment on the article by Cabell Phillips on Pearl Harbor, though I regarded it as the most misleading article on that episode to be published in any reputable journal since the facts became available. The only close runner-up is the chapter on the same subject which Jonathan Daniels contributed to the symposium The Aspirin Age back in 1949. But my patience and restraint ran out after reading Mr. Phillips7 arrogant and irresponsible answer to the letter of Mr. Dekkers Davidson in the Times, December 16, 1951. Mr. Phillips writes: "The Army had no direct telephone communication with Pearl Harbor—scrambler or otherwise—in December, 1941. Naval communications with Pearl Harbor were not available to General Marshall on that Sunday."

How any responsible person could dare to make so indefensible a statement before a literate reading audience is beyond my understanding. Many alibis have been offered by the Army and Navy for their failure to inform General Short and Admiral Kimmel of the danger of an immediate attack on Pearl Harbor, but I have never before read or heard of this one. General Marshall had a scrambler telephone on his desk with which he could have reached General Short in the matter of minutes, unless connections with Pearl Harbor had been cut off. General Marshall never made any effort to find out. When he was deeply embarrassed before the Congressional Committee, investigating Pearl Harbor, he made no attempt to excuse himself by alleging that the telephonic connections had been cut off. Further, both the Navy Department and the FBI had available powerful radio transmitters that could have been used to send a priority message to Pearl Harbor with great speed. Admiral Stark THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 389 offered General Marshall the use of the Navy transmitter, but Marshall declined the offer. The message was sent by ordinary radio, not even marked "urgent/' just as Marshall might have sent a birthday greeting to his grandmother. It reached General Short seven hours and three minutes after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began.

Had Mr. Marshall been as alert as his knowledge of events warranted, he could have warned Short at least twelve hours before the attack. Indeed, he could and should have warned him three days before the attack, when the "East Wind, Rain" Japanese coded message announcing the impending attack was intercepted by our Naval Intelligence. The Times states that Mr. Phillips "combed the 39 volumes of the Pearl Harbor Report." If so, he must have combed them with his eyes closed, for there is little resemblance between his article and the facts disclosed in that Report. Sincerely yours, HARRY ELMER BARNES THE NEW YORK TIMES WASHINGTON BUREAU Albee Bldg., Washington, D. C. January 15, 1952 Harry Elmer Barnes, Esq. Cooperstown, N.Y. My dear Sir: Your letter of January 3 concerning my article on Pearl Harbor was forwarded to Washington while I was away on vacation, and I am only now able to reply to it.

I am rather shocked but not particularly distressed by the vehemence of your communication. There have been so many inquiries of a similar nature, however, that rather than undertake to answer them individually I have prepared a letter to the editor of the Magazine covering the main points in dispute. This letter probably will be published in the forthcoming issue of the Magazine, and I am enclosing a copy herewith for your information. I hope this 390 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE is sufficient to persuade you that I did not, as you put it, comb the 39 volumes of the Pearl Harbor report with my eyes closed. Sincerely yours, (Signature) CABELL PHILLIPS Washington Correspondent Sunday Department January 15, ig$2 To the Editor of The New York Times Magazine: Since the publication of my article on Pearl Harbor, "Ten Years Ago This Friday—," in the issue of December 2, I have received a number of letters from readers demanding, with varying degrees of vehemence, to know why I did not point out that General Marshall "muffed* the last minute warning to General Short in Hawaii of the impending disaster.

Several of these correspondents have asked uwhy General Marshall didnt pick up the scrambler telephone on his desk and call General Short directly." Others have demanded to know why he did not avail himself of Admiral Stark's "offer" of the use of Navy communications facilities instead of depending on the commercial wires. The implication in several of these letters is that either I didn't have my facts straight or that I was covering up General Marshall's dereliction. I am happy to be able to claim innocence on both counts. As to the scrambler telephone. I am informed by authoritative sources in the Pentagon that there was no such device in existence in December, 10.41 (which I pointed out in an earlier letter in this space). What the Army did have was a "speech converter" (Western Electric model B-3) which was capable of reversing telephonic speech at the receiving instrument only; it gave no security in the course of transmission. Furthermore, it could be used for distant communications at that time only over commercial wires or radio channels.

So even if General Marshall had had such an instrument available to him (which is not conclusively shown by the printed testimony of the Pearl Harbor investigation) it would have offered no advantage either in speed or in secrecy in communicating with General Short THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 391 Now, as to why Naval communications were not used. On pages 223-224 of the investigating committee report it is clearly shown that General Marshall called Admiral Stark at about 11:40 that morning and asked that he join him in a warning message to all army and navy commanders. "Admiral Stark hesitated/' the report states, "because he regarded the theater commanders as already alerted and he was afraid oi confusing them further. General Marshall nevertheless wrote in longhand the draft of the message. . . . He instructed Colonel Bratton to take the message immediately to the message center. . . . As Colonel Bratton was leaving the room Admiral Stark called General Marshall to request that there be placed in the dispatch 'the usual expression to inform the naval officers'. . . ."

This seems to me to establish without question that General Marshall did seek the cooperation of his opposite number in the Navy in this last minute warning, and that this cooperation was for a time withheld. I have found no reference in the report to an "offer" hy Admiral Stark of the use of Navy communications facilities. It is not an unreasonable conjecture under these circumstances, therefore, that General Marshall did not feel free to ask the use of Navy communications for a message to Army commanders exclusively. There was no reason, indeed, why he should have made such a request. The Army had its own radio. He did not learn until after the message had gone commercial that the Army radio was temporarily out of commission. CABELL PHILLIPS Cooperstown, New York February 6, 1952. Mr. Cabell Phillips New York Times Washington Bureau Albee Bldg.7 Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. Phillips: The statements in your letter of January 15 to me concerning General G. C. Marshall's handling of the final message of December 7 to Hawaii reflect such a lack of familiarity with the Pearl 392 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Harbor record as to raise serious doubts in my mind whether you are qualified to write on that subject at all.

You "claim innocence" both to the allegation that you may not have had your facts straight, or that you endeavored to cover up some dereliction on Gen. Marshall's part. It would be unprofitable to explore your possible motives, but the question of fact is certainly subject to verification, and here, I regret, I find you hardly precise. You refer to Admiral Stark's "offer" (quotations yours) of the use of Navy communications facilities to General Marshall. The use of the quotation marks implies that there was no such offer. You rely here on the Majority Report of the Congressional Committee {page 224) to suggest that the only proposal made by Stark was that a line be added to Marshall's message directing that Naval commanders in the field also be informed of the contents of the Marshall message. As any one at all familiar with the subject knows, the Majority Report is hardly the best evidence, for political partisanship dictated most of its composition. The printed Record of the Congressional Committee, however, sets forth the evidence as it was actually presented by the witnesses concerned, and it tells a different story.

Admiral Stark did, in fact, offer General Marshall the use of the Navy radio. About that there can be no possible dispute, for the Admiral himself so testified. I quote from the Record, Part 5, page 2133, Stark speaking: '7 asked him (Marshall) if his communications were such that he could get it (the message) out quickly because our communications were quite rapid when the occasion demanded it." And again from the testimony of Admiral Stark, Part 5, page 2184: "I also asked General Marshall, knowing that the time was rather short, whether or not he could get it out quickly. I told him our system under pressure was very fast. And, he said, no, that he was sure he could get it out quickly also. And with that I did nothing more." Stark then responded as follows to questions of William D. Mitchell, committee counsel: Mr. Mitchell: What is your system? Admiral Stark: Radio. Mr. Mitchell: You had a powerful sending apparatus, did you?

Admiral Stark: Yes, sir; very. There is also the testimony of General Marshall himself on this THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 393 point. I quote from the Record, Part 3, page 1110: "Admiral Stark tells me, and I am quite certain he is right—I do not recall it but he is undoubtedly light—that he asked me at the time of our second conversation that morning, or he said that they had rapid means of communication and if I wished to use it, and I told him no. That must be a fact—I do not recall—that must be a fact." You do not seem to be aware that the Army Pearl Harbor Board took General Marshall very severely to task for his handling of the December 7 message. You will find the pertinent references in the Record, Part 39, pp. 94-95. There it is set forth that the War Department radio was of much lower power than those of the Navy and Federal Bureau of Investigation, both of which were available; that the War Department radio on the morning of December 7 could not get through to Hawaii, but that General Marshall did not even ascertain this fact; that there was also available for rapid communication a scrambler telephone with a direct connection to the Hawaiian Department; and that General Marshall's use of only one form of communication in dispatching the final, vital message of warning "violated all rules requiring the use of multiple means of communication in an emergency." This was the judgment of a board of regular general officers who spoke from thorough acquaintance with prescribed Army practices relating to emergency communications. Certainly it will not be contended that General Marshall was less well informed than they about the requirements under the emergency circumstances which he confronted.

Your dismissal of this phase of the subject with the implied fact that all Admiral Stark did was to extend his "cooperation" in the phrasing of the message, after Erst withholding it, and that you "have found no reference in the report of an 'offer by Admiral Stark of the use of Navy communications facilities," is rendered incompetent and irrelevant by the record. You offered a judgment without attempting to inform yourself of the facts. Your further observation that Marshall did not "feel free" to ask the use of Navy facilities, and that he felt no requirement to do so because he did not learn until later that the Army radio was out of commission, is no excuse for his slipup, or, as you say, with evident distaste, his "muffing" the warning. It was his business, as the effective chief of the Army and the author of the message, to make certain, personally or through his subordinates, what 394 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE facilities were available, how the message would go out, and how it could be sent the fastest way. General Marshall was sufficiently impressed with the urgency of the situation to write the message; the same sense of urgency should have impelled him to the understanding that the writing of the message was the least important part of his responsibility: that the message could only be translated into effective action by its prompt receipt in the field. Yet he did not bother to inform himself concerning whether the message would be transmitted by the speediest means to guarantee prompt receipt and action.

As to the scrambler telephone, the information which you cite as currently provided by the Pentagon is news to me, and, in fact, would appear to have been news to all the witnesses and investigating committees which have so far dealt with the Pearl Harbor affair. The present explanation that the instrument scrambled messages only at the receiving end hardly makes sense, for the very purpose of the scrambler was to render confidential communications unintelligible if intercepted in transit. If the Army did, indeed, select an instrument which rendered the communication unintelligible only to the intended recipient, for whose benefit and information it was transmitted, then, indeed, the ways of the Army are even more mysterious than they usually appear. It could be, of course, that the present Pentagon explanation of the communications situation obtaining in 1941 may be another of the all too frequent attempts to provide an ex post facto justification of General Marshall's behavior. The State Department's China White Book of August, 1949, has sometimes seemed to have had that intended purpose with reference to the General's ill-starred mission to China, which was originally regarded as of such moment that the New York Times wrote at Jeast one indignant editorial berating members of the Congressional Committee for detaining him from departing for Cathay. These members of Congress, of course, were acting in the not unreasonable hope that the General might give some coherent explanation of his strange activities at or about the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Such conjectures, admittedly, do not materially advance our inquiry; so, again, it will be more fruitful to refer to the record. On pages 94-95 of Part 39, the Army Pearl Harbor Board notes: uThe Hawaiian Department had a scrambler telephone connection direct with Washington by which you could ordinarily get a message THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 395 through from Washington to Hawaii in ten or fifteen minutes. After the attack on December y, Colonel Fielder (G-2) himself talked to Washington twice on this phone and received a call from Washington on the same phone." General Marshall is quoted by General Short as having explained that he did not employ this telephone because of the "possibility of a leak which would embarrass the State Department.77 Of Marshall's final message, the Board states: "We End no justification for a failure to send this message by multiple secret means either through the Navy radio or F.B.I, radio or scrambler phone or all three.77 On page 95 of Part 39 the Board quotes General Short as testifying: "If they had used the scrambled phone and gotten it (the message) through in ten or fifteen minutes we would probably have gotten more of the import and a clearer idea of the danger from that message and we would have had time to warm up the planes and get them in the air to meet any attack77 The Board clearly concluded that General Marshall was remiss in his conduct on December 7 and so stated unequivocally (Part 39>PP-145>146)-Marshall's own explanation for his failure to use the scrambler phone is to be found in Part 3, pp. 1111—13, 1212—13, and 1289.

His several statements are, to some degree, contradictory and confusing. Originally, he said he made no inquiry about reaching Hawaii on the telephone, implying that he did not consider that means of communication. Later, he seems to suggest that he ruled out the telephone on the ground that the Japanese might possibly have broken security by intercepting a telephonic message. Again, he says that he could not say with certainty "what was going on in my head at that particular moment'7 The suggestion, dropped by the General once, that if Japan had overheard his final message on a telephonic call the Japanese might have cited the message itself as an "overt act" justifying their resort to war, does not appear rooted firmly in logic. The Japanese intended to attack anyway. The mere fact of intercepting a telephone call would neither add to nor subtract from that decision. It could not have affected or altered the decision. The same judgment applies to the contention that Japanese eavesdropping might have constituted "a leak which would have embarrassed the State Department.77 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor very forcibly brought home the fact that American diplomacy had not succeeded 396 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE in its professed intentions. How could the State Department have been more deeply embarrassed than by the evidence of this fact provided by the attack?

It is not my purpose to try to reduce General Marshall's statements to crystal clarity—a task which, in any event, would exceed my powers of interpretation. But I do think that what he said in his swoin testimony is relevant to your contention that it "is not conclusively shown by the printed testimony of the Pearl Harbor investigation" that he had at his disposal a scrambler telephone. He testified that he didT and other witnesses testified to the same fact Certainly, also, you cannot stand on your contention that this telephone would have offered no advantage in speed in communicating with General Short. The incontrovertible evidence is that General Marshall's message, by the method of transmission which he approved, did not reach General Short until eight hours and twelve minutes after it was filed for transmission, and seven hours and three minutes after the attack. The Ending of the Army Board was that Hawaii could ordinarily be reached on the scrambler telephone in ten or fifteen minutes, and that even after the attack on December y, calls were put through on this instrument, despite heavy traffic on the wire, within an hour as a maximum. As to the security of the scrambler telephone, the Army Board, comprised of professional experts, referred to this instrument as one of the "multiple secret means" which General Marshall should have employed. If there was any danger of communications being intercepted by a hostile power, if spoken over this phone, this board of general officers showed not the slightest awareness of it. We may therefore conclude that the danger, if it existed at all, was negligible, and we may inquire, if it did exist, what difference it would have made—except, perhaps, that of giving the American forces at Pearl Harbor a fighting chance to meet the enemy.

Sincerely yours, HARRY ELMER BARNES THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 397 FOOTNOTES-CHAPTER 6 1. R. L. Wilbur and A. M. Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), p. 601. 2. Sumner Welles, "Roosevelt and the Far East," Harper's Magazine, February, 1951, p. 27. 3. Ibid., p. 30. 4. Ibid., p. 29. 5. Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939)'PP-93~946. Public Papers and Addresses of Fianklin D. Roosevelt; edited by Samuel I. Rosenman (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941), VI, 408 ff. 7. Welles, op. cit., p. 31. 8. Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79 Cong., 2 sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946), Part I, p. 305. (The Hearings will hereinafter be designated Pearl Harbor Attack.) 9. Ibid., p. 306. 10. Welles, op. cit., p. 37. 11. Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, IX, 517.

12. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 201. 13. Admiral Tejiro Toyoda to Ambassador Cameron Forbes, Tokyo, March 3, 1932. 793.94/4877, Confidential file, MS, Department of State. 14. Endorsement of Secretary of State Stimson upon the memorandum of Stanley K. Hornbeck, January 28, 1933. 793.94/6063, Confidential file, MS, Department of State. 15. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XX, pp. 4135-38. 16. Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 20. 17. Toshikazu Kase, Journey to the "Missouri'; edited with a foreword by David Nelson Rowe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950), p. 38. 18. Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years In Japan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944), p.281. 19. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: Japan, 19311941, Department of State Publication 2016 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), II, 2. (Hereinafter referred to as Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941,1 or II.) 20. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XX, p. 4139.

21. Ibid., p. 4168.

398 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 22. Ibid., pp. 4144-64. 23. Message to Congress, December 8, 1941. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, p. 793. 24. Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 19311941, Department of State Publication 1983 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), pp. 559-60. 25. Grew, op. cit., p. 295. 26. Ibid., p. 334. 27. Ibid., p. 321. 28. Feis, op. cit., p. 41. 29. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, p. 224. 30. Ibid., p. 225. 31. Ibid., pp. 164-65. 32. Kase, op. cit., p. 41. 33. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part I, p. 266. (Italics supplied.) 34. Ibid., Part XIV, pp. 1042-44. 35. Mark S. Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1950), pp. 367 ff. 36. Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), p. 440. 37. Sherwood, op. cit., p. 271.

38. Ibid., p. 270. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., p. 272. 41. Ibid., p. 273. 42. PearJ Harbor Attack, Part XXVI, p. 265. 43. Ibid., Part XV, p. 1489. 44. Ibid., pp. 1551-84. 45. Sherwood, op. cit., pp. 273-74. 46. Ibid., p. 273. 47. "Roosevelt's Rendezvous with History," New York Times Book Review, June 4, 1950, p. 23. 48. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XXVI, p. 264; Part XV, p. 1485. 49. Ibid., Part V, p. 2391. 50. Ibid., Minority Views (unnumbered volume), p. 14. 51. Feis, op. cit, pp. 168-69. 52. These documents were published by the Office of Naval Intelligence, United States Navy, in a series of volumes covering the years 1939 through 1945 under the title Fuehrer Conferences on Matters Dealing With the German Navy. They are also printed with certain omissions and textual differences in Brassey's Naval Annual, 1948; edited by H. G. Thursfield (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948). 53. Fuehrer Conferences 1941 (Washington, D.C.: Navy Department, Office of Naval Intelligence, 1947), ^f ^9: Annex 1 of "Conference of the Commander in Chief, Navy, with the Fuehrer at the Berghof on 22 May 1941: The Present Problem of Naval Warfare in the Atlantic in View of the Attitude of the U.S.A. May 1941." (Omitted in Brassey.) THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 399 54. Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948), p. 175.

55. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, Nomura to Tokyo, No. 703, Part 2, p. 17; 56. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 525. 57. Press release issued by the White House, July 25, 1941, at Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; Executive Order No. 8832 signed the following day. 58. White House Release No. 1892, August 1, 1941; Department of State Bulletin, August 2, 1941, p. 101. 59. Quoted by Feis, op. cit., p. 41, from unpublished section of Ambassador Grew's diary. Senators Brewster and Ferguson of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Minority Views, p. j, note that the diary of Ambassador Grew was "denied to the Committee," together with the complete diary of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. They termed this denial "particularly obstructive because these principals placed excerpts of the diaries in the record and withheld the rest. This was contrary to the prime rule in American law that if part of a document is put into the record by a witness in his own behalf, the court is entitled to demand the whole of the document. Concerning each of these diaries the Committee, by majority vote, refused to issue subpoenas for their production." Feis, in his Preface, p. v, notes that he had access to the "full private diaries" of Grew, Stimson, and former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

60. Quoted by Feis, op. cit., p. 248, from unpublished Grew diary. 61. Pear] Harbor Attack, Part V, p. 2383. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., p. 2384. 64. Ibid., p. 2382. 65. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 527. 66. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 9: No. 433, Part II. 67. Ibid. 68. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 550. 69. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 12; Tokyo to Washington, No. 452. 70. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 563. This entire dispatch, beginning at p. 560, is of the utmost interest. Note especially Points 11 and 12 of Toyoda's exposition. 71. Ibid., p. 565. 72. Peace and War, p. 754. 73. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 645-50. 74. C. J. H. Hayes, Wartime Mission in Spain, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1945), p. 11. 75. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 650. 76. Ibid., p. 588 ff. 77. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Hough ton Mifflin Company, 1950), pp. 427, 433-34; Sumner Welles, Where Are We Heading?

(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946), p. 6. 78. The Grand Alliance, p. 444. 79. Ibid., pp. 438-40.

4OO PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 80. Ibid., pp. 439, 441; Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XIV, p. 1283: Memorandum of conversation of August 11, 1941, prepared by Sumner Welles. 81. Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley, How War Came (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942), p. 10. 82. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 554-57. 83. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part II, pp. 460-61, 484-85. In Pearl Harbor Attack, Part III, p. 1253, Capt. R. E. Schuirmann, Navy liaison officer with the State Department, is quoted as describing the President's August 17 declaration to the Ambassador of Japan as "an ultimatum to Japan." 84. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 485. 85. Ibid., p. 486. 86. Memoirs oi Cordell Hull, third installment, January 28, 1948, as serialized in the New York Times. The Memoirs, as published by The Macmillan Company, New York, 1948, show a variation in text from the preceding serialization. This passage is rendered (Vol. I, p. 185): ". . . my policy of being deliberate, while also being on time, resulted in a record containing less of error than would otherwise have been the case." (Italics supplied.) Between serialization and book publication, Hull, or his editors, evidently thought it advisable to modify the original fatuous judgment pronounced by the Secretary on his own work.

87. "Memoirs of Prince Konoye," Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XX, p. 3993. 88. Ibid., p. 4019. 89. Ibid., p. 3994. 90. Ibid., p. 4022, Appendix V, Paragraph 1. 91. Ibid., p. 4004. 92. Ibid., p. 4005. 93. Ibid., p. 4022: Annex Document, Section 1, Paragraph 1. 94. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XX, pp. 4085-87. 95. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 604-6. 96. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, pp. 92-93: Tokyo to Washington, No. 72597. Ibid., p. 99: Tokyo to Washington, No. 735. 98. Ibid., p. 100: Tokyo to Washington, No. 736. 99. Ibid., pp. 94-96: Tokyo to Washington, No. 726. 100. Feis, op. cit., p. 304. 101. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, pp. 96-97: Tokyo to Washington, No. 727. 102. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1063. 103. Ibid., pp. 1061-62. 104. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5432. 105. Ibid. 106. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 701-4. 107. Ibid., pp. 705-6. 108. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 99: Tokyo to Washington, No. 735.

109. Feis, op cit., p. 298: cited from unpublished section of Grew diary for December, 1941.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 4OI 110. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, p. 750; Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, pp. 146, 149, 152. 111. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 146: Washington to Tokyo, No. 1127. 112. Ibid. 113. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19312941, II, 750. 114. Ibid., p. 745. 115. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, pp. 155-56: Tokyo to Washington, No. 798. 116. Ibid., Part II, p. 431; Peace and War, p. 802. 117. Paraphrase of the text as printed in Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 755-56; and Peace and War, pp. 801-2. 118. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XIV, pp. 1108-9. 119. Ibid., Part XIX, pp. 3667-82. 120. Ibid., Part XIV, pp. 1097-1102, pp. 1110-21. 121. The Memoirs oi Cordell Hull, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), II, 1069. 122. Ibid., p. 1057. 123. Jbid., p. 1070. 124. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 165: Tokyo to Washington, No. 812. (Italics supplied.) 125. Hull, op. cit., p. 1074.

126. Ibid., p. 1077. 127. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XIV, pp. 1194-95. (Cf. other documents in Exhibit 18, Part XIV, for a resume of Chinese importunities and Hull's reaction to them.) 128. Ibid., Part V, pp. 2329-31; Part XI, p. 5434. 129. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5433. 130. Ibid., Part V, p. 2316. 131. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5433. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1079. 134. Ibid., pp. 1061-62. 135. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5433. 136. Ibid. 137. Ibid., pp. 5421-22. 138. Ibid., p. 5188. 139. Ibid., pp. 5422, 5433-34. 140. Ibid., p. 5434. 141. Jbid. 142. Ibid., Part III, p. 1336. 143. Ibid., Part XI, pp. 5434-35. 144. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1196. 145. Jbid., Part XI, p. 5392. 146. Text in Foreign Relations, II, 768-70. 147. Beard, op. cit., p. 238. 148. Grew, op. cit, p. 486. 149. Record oi the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1946), Exhibit No. 3646.

402 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 150. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 183: Washington to Tokyo, No. 1191, Part I. 151. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 764-66. 152. PearJ Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 182: Washington to Tokyo, No. 1189, Part II. 153. Ibid., p. 195: Tokyo to Washington, No. 844. 154. Basil Rauch, Roosevelt From Munich to Pearl Harbor, (New York: Creative Age Press, 1950), pp. 471-72. 155. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part I, pp. 184, 192, 220. 156. Ibid., Report of the Joint Committee, unnumbered volume, p. 414; Record of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Exhibits 2954-55. 157. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XIII, p. 395. 158. Ibid., p. 417. 159. Jbid., Part III, p. 1336. 160. Ibid., Fait XII, p. 154: Tokyo to Washington, Circular No. 2353. 161. Jbid., p. 195: Tokyo to Washington, No. 844. 162. Cf., code intercepts in Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 195 ff.

163. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part VIII, pp. 3579-91. 164. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1083; Part IX, p. 4259. 165. Jbid., Part XI, p. 5197. 166. Jbid., Part XIV, p. 1083. 167. Jbid., Part XV, p. 1471. 168. Jbid., Part XI, p. 5423. 169. Jbid., Part XI, pp. 5422, 5434. 170. Jbid., Part XIV, p. 1328. 171. Jbid., Part XI, p. 542 3. 172. Cf., Note 170. 173. Jbid., Part XXXIX, p. 8.5. 174. Jbid., Report of the Joint Committee, unnumbered volume, pp. 259-60. 175. Jbid., Part XIV, p. 1328. 176. Jbid., Part III, p. 1310. 177. Jbid., Part XXXIX, p. 85. 178. Jbid., Part XXXIX, p. 90. 179. Jbid., Part III, pp. 1420-24. 180. Jbid., Part XIV, p. 1406. 181. Jbid., Part VI, pp. 2518, 2520. 182. Jbid., Part X, p. 4812. 183. Jbid., Part IV, pp. 1950-51. 184. Jbid., Part VII, p. 2935. 185. Watson, op. cit., p. 497. 186. Jbid., p. 499. 187. Printed as Exhibit No. 2, Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII. 188. Jbid., p. 261: Tokyo to Honolulu, No. 83.

189. Jbid., p. 262: Tokyo to Honolulu, No. 111. 190. Jbid., p. 263: Tokyo to Honolulu, No. 122. 191. Pearl Harbor Attack, Minority Views, unnumbered volume, p. 518. 192. Jbid., p. 519. 193. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XII, p. 269: Honolulu to Tokyo, No. 253.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 403 194. Rauch, op. cit., p. 466. 195. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part IX, p. 4196; Ibid., Minority Views, pp. 51819. 196. Ibid., Minority Views, p. 519. 197. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part VI, p. 2521. 198. Francis Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, (New York: Viking Press, 1946), p. 380. 199. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XI, p. 5435. 200. Ibid., p. 5436. 201. Ibid. 202. New York Times, November 30, 1941, 1:5. 203. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 148-49. 204. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XI, pp. 5400-5402. 205. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1300. 206. Ibid., Part XII, p. 204: Tokyo to Berlin, No. 985. 207. Ibid., pp. 202, 229. 208. Ibid., p. 9, 4072. 209. Ibid., Part XIX, p. 3506. 210. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1407. 211. Ibid., Part VI, pp. 2670-71. 212. Ibid., Part V, p. 2190. 213. Ibid., pp. 2190-91. 214. Ibid., Report of the Joint Committee, unnumbered volume, pp. 266-N, 266-O.

215. Ibid., p. 266-O. (Italics supplied.) 216. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5427. 217. Ibid., p. 5437. 218. This description of Mr. Roosevelt's operations was used by Mr. Justice Felix Frankfurter in a memorial address at Harvard University in April, 1945, in which the statement was made that "while engaged in this series of complicated moves, he (Roosevelt) so skillfully conducted affairs as to avoid even the appearance of an act of aggression on our part." 219. New York Times, December 3, 1941, 1:8. 220. Ibid., December 4,1941, 4:3. 221. Ibid., December 6, 1941, 3:1. 222. Ibid. 223. Ibid., December 4,1941, 4:3. 224. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XIV, p. 1202. 225. Ibid., p. 1203. (Italics supplied.) 226. Ibid., p. 1409: No. 40; Ibid., Part III, pp. 1317-18. 227. Ibid., Part XXXIX, pp. 223-26: Top Secret Report oi Army Pearl Harbor Board; Part VIII, pp. 3579-91. For a concise summary of the evidence on this controverted signal, cf. Beard, op. cit., pp. 532-36.

228. Ibid., Part XVII, p. 2457. 229. Ibid., Part XIX, pp. 3648-51. 230. Ibid., Part XII, pp. 236, 237, 249; Part II, pp. 744-45. 231. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5427. 232. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1246.

404 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 233. Ibid., p. 1247-48. No explanation could ever be obtained from Welles or others concerning the nature of the "President's wishes in message transmitted by Welles to Halifax." But see below. 234. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5472. 235. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1412. 236. Ibid., Part X, pp. 5082-83. 237. Ibid., p. 5081. 238. Ibid., pp. 4802-3. 239. Ibid., p. 5081. 240. Jbid., pp. 5082-83. 241. Ibid., p. 5084. 242. Ibid. 243. Ibid., p. 5087. 244. Beard, op. cit., p. 539. 245. Ibid., p. 541. The facts in reference to the Creighton message are ably summarized by Beard, op. cit., pp. 537-41. 246. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XI, p. 5166. 247. Ibid., pp. 5165-66. 248. Ibid. 249. Ibid., Part XIV, pp. 1238-39. 250. Ibid., p. 1202. (Italics supplied.) 251. Grew, op. cit., p. 493; Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 786, footnote 72. 252. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 784-86.

253. Ibid., II, 385. 2 54. Pearl Haiboi Attack, Part XII, p. 238. 255. Ibid., Part IX, p. 4512. 256. Ibid., Part XIV, pp. 1414-15. 257. Ibid., Minority Views, unnumbered volume, p. 528; ibid., Part VIII, p. 3568. 258. Ibid., Part II, p. 443; Part XV, 1633. 259. Ibid., Minority Views, p. 528. (Italics supplied.) 260. Ibid., pp. 527-28. 261. Ibid., Part VIII, p. 3443. 262. Ibid., Report of the Joint Committee, unnumbered volume, pp. 212, 219; Pearl Harbor Attack, Part III, pp. 1108, 1176, 1321, 1430. 263. Ibid., Part XI, pp. 5543-44. 264. Ibid., Part III, pp. 1110, 1327-29, 1430. 265. Ibid., Part XXXIX, pp. 228-29, 139. 266. Ibid., p. 139. 267. Ibid., Part VIII, p. 3568. 268. Ibid., Part X, pp. 4660-64. 269. Ibid., p. 4663. (Italics supplied.) 270. Ibid., Part XI, pp. 5543 ff. ., p. 5545. (Itali( 272. Ibid., Part VI, pp. 2835-36, 2886-89. 271. Ibid., p. 5545. (Italics supplied.' 273. Ibid., Part VII, p. 3360 274. Ibid., Part VIII, p. 3822.

275. Ibid., Part V, p. 2338.

THE ACTUAL ROAD TO PEARL HARBOR 405 276. Ibid., p. 2344. 277. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5549. 278. Ibid., Part III, p. 1108. On May 7, 1951, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin informed the Senate that he had established that General Marshall was at Boiling Field, the army air base at Washington, on the morning of December 7, 1941. Senator McCarthy said that General Marshall was there to welcome Maxim Litvinov upon his arrival as Soviet ambassador. Cf. Congressional Record, May 7, 1951, p. 5085. 2 79. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part IX, p. 4 5 2 5. 280. Ibid., Part V, p. 2183. 281. Ibid., Part XI, pp. 5427-28. 282. New York Times, December 7,1941, 1 :^. 283. Davis and Lindley, op. cit., p. 4. 284. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part IX, p. 3997. 285. Ibid., Part XII, p. 248: Tokyo to Washington, No. 907. 286. Ibid.y Tokyo to Washington, No. 908. 287. Ibid., Tokyo to Washington, No. 909. 288. Ibid., p. 249: Tokyo to Washington, No. 910.

289. Ibid., Part IX, p. 4006. 290. Ibid., Part XII, p. 245: Tokyo to Washington, No. 902, Part XIV of fourteen parts. 291. Ibid., Minority Views, unnumbered volume, p. 521. 292. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part IX, pp. 4033-34. 293. Ibid., Part II, p. 812. 294. Ibid., pp. 811-12. 295. Ibid., Part VI, p. 2540. 296. Ibid., Part XXXIX, p. 318. 297. Ibid., p. 297. 298. Cf., ibid., p. 134 et seq., "Responsibilities in Washington." 299. Ibid., Part IX, pp. 4517, 4518, 4524, 4571; Part X, p. 4627. 300. Ibid., Part VIII, pp. 3427-34. 301. Ibid., pp. 3428-30. (Italics supplied.) 302. Ibid., p. 3430. 303. Ibid., pp. 3432-33. 304. Ibid., pp. 3910-11. 305. Ibid., pp. 3428, 3910; Part IX, p. 4110. 306. Ibid., Part VIII, pp. 3436-37. 307. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5427. 308. Ibid., Minority Views, unnumbered volume, p. 524. 309. Ibid., Part XI, p. 5437. 310. Ibid., p. 5440. 311. Ibid. 312. Ibid. 313. Ibid., p. 5191.

314. Ibid., Minority Views, p. 223. 315. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1334, No. 529 7th. 316. Ibid., Part V, p. 2184. 317. Ibid., Part IX, p. 4519.

406 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 318. Ibid., Minority Views, p. 225; Part XXXIX, p. 94. 319. Ibid., Part V, p. 2184. 320. Ibid., Part XXXIX, pp. 94-95. 321. Ibid., p. 95. 322. Ibid., p. 94; Part VII, p. 3116; Part XIV, pp. 1409-10. 323. Ibid., Part XXXIX, pp. 3, 123. 324. Ibid., Part I, pp. 46-48, 58-59. 325. Davis and Lindley, op. cit., p. 5. 326. "1941: Pearl Harbor Sunday: The End of An Era," The Aspirin Age, 1919-1941: edited by Isabel Leighton (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949), p. 490. (Italics supplied.) 327. Platform of the Democratic National Convention of 1940; cf., Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 291. 328. Speech by F. D. Roosevelt at Boston, October 30, 1940. Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, IX, 517. 329. Roosevelt to Admiral J. O. Richardson, Pearl Harbor Attack, Part I, p.

266. 330. Admiral Richmond K. Turner, ibid., Part XXVI, p. 265. 331. Ibid., Part XIV, p. 1328: War Department instruction to General Short in Hawai. 332. Ibid., Part III, p. 1310. 333. Secretary of War Stimson, ibid., Part XI, p. 5433. 334. General Marshall, ibid., Part VII, p. 2935. 335. Jonathan Daniels. Cf. Note 326 above. 336. New York Times Magazine, October 8, 1944, pp. 40-41. 337. Perkins, op. cit., pp. 379 f. 338. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XI, p. 5438. (Italics supplied.) 339. Ibid. (Italics supplied.) 340. New Republic, April 15, 1945. (Supplement, "Roosevelt: A First Appraisal by Those Who Knew Him.") 341 Ibid. 342. Ibid. 343. Ibid. 344. Cited by Perkins, op. cit., pp. 379 f. 345. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XIX, p. 3505. (Italics supplied.) 346. Foreign Relations, Japan: 19311941, II, 793-94. 347. Peace and War, p. 843. 348. Associated Press dispatch from London, June 21, 1944, published in the Chicago Tribune, same date, 1:2.

349. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, p. 593. (Italics supplied.) 350. Ibid., p. 602. 351. Ibid., pp. 606-8. 352. Jesse H. Jones, with Edward Angly, Fiity Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC (1932-1945), (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951)^.260.