Pearl Harbor

Now we turn to how America got into World War II at Pearl Harbor, events that propelled Franklin D. Roosevelt to “greatness.” Roosevelt has always been ranked by “court historians” next to Lincoln as either the second or third greatest president in American history, and this is due primarily to his involvement in World War II. Roosevelt struggled mightily to get America into the war by provoking “incidents” with both Germany and Japan, but it was the “surprise” attack at Pearl Harbor that finally did the trick. As will be shown, this attack was no surprise to Roosevelt and his key advisers in Washington. In fact, was it provoked by Roosevelt and his policies.

Background Specific to Pearl Harbor

In 1932, as a part of the annual maneuvers, it was documented by American naval planners that if there ever was a war with Japan, the Japanese would strike the Pacific Fleet wherever it was located. It was realized then that Pearl Harbor created a very vulnerable target for a surprise attack by aircraft carriers.[107] The studies revealed that, in order to prevent such an attack, a large contingent of American aircraft would be needed for a 360-degree surveillance, which would stretch out for long distances in order to provide sufficient warning to prevent disaster. The Japanese were very familiar with the findings of this naval maneuver in 1932; in fact, the Japanese patterned their attack of December 7, 1941, on the various studies done by the Americans concerning their own weaknesses.

In January 1940, Roosevelt ordered the Pacific Fleet transferred from its home base at San Diego to Pearl Harbor, with very little air cover or support.[108] On May 7, 1940, it was announced that the entire fleet would remain in Pearl Harbor indefinitely, which was a radical departure from American naval policy. Roosevelt further weakened the fleet by transferring many of its ships to the Atlantic to assist in delivering supplies and ammunition to the British and to try to provoke the Germans into firing the first shot against America.[109] Admiral James O. Richardson, commander of the Pacific Fleet, was so strongly opposed to these ridiculous orders that he made a personal visit to the White House to protest to Roosevelt, telling him that key naval officers were losing confidence in the president. As a result of this meeting, Roosevelt removed Richardson from command and placed Admiral Husband E. Kimmel in control.[110]

The American people had become very disillusioned over being misled into World War I by President Wilson and were decidedly against entering another European war. Therefore, as Roosevelt sought to be elected to an unprecedented third term, he had to campaign for reelection as a peace candidate, as Wilson had before World War I. On September 11, 1940, Roosevelt stated, “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.”[111] Later, on October 30 in Boston, he told American mothers and fathers, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars. I have said this before but I shall say it again.”[112] Two months after this promise, in early January 1941, he sent Harry Hopkins, his alter ego, to London to deliver a much different message. This secret message was just like the one President Wilson’s alter ego, Colonel House, delivered to the British government on January 16, 1916, to promise American entry into World War I. Roosevelt made the same promise to the British. We now know through Churchill that on this visit, Hopkins reported to the prime minister the following:

The president is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you through . . . there is nothing that he will not do so far as he has the human power.[113]

Later, Roosevelt and Churchill held a meeting, which became known as the Atlantic Conference, and released a statement in August 1941 called the Atlantic Charter. The British archives were opened on this subject in 1971, and soon thereafter, in January 1972, The New York Times reported that Churchill had told his war cabinet, upon his return from the Atlantic Conference with Roosevelt, the following statement which was recorded in the cabinet minutes:

If he [Roosevelt] were to put the issue of peace and war to Congress, they would debate it for months. . . . The president had said he would wage war but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces.[114]

Churchill also reported that a decision had been made that the U.S. Navy would escort the British ships across the Atlantic, and the minutes of the British cabinet meeting contained these words from Churchill,

The president’s orders to these [United States Navy] escorts were to attack any [German] U-boat which showed itself, even if it was 200 or 300 miles away from the convoy. . . . The president made it clear that he would look for an incident which would justify him in opening hostilities,[115]

After America had actually entered the war, Churchill made a speech to the House of Commons on January 27, 1942, reflecting on the secret plans that he and Roosevelt had for America to come into the war, which is what they had discussed at the Atlantic Conference in August of 1941: “It has been the policy of the cabinet at almost all cost to avoid embroilment with Japan until we were sure that the United States would also be engaged.”[116] Soon thereafter, on February 15, 1942, Churchill told the House of Commons:

When I survey and compute the power of the United States and its vast resources and feel that they are now in it with us, with the British commonwealth of nations all together, however long it lasts, till death or victory, I cannot believe that there is any other fact in the whole world which can compare with that. This is what I dreamed of, aimed at, and worked for, and now it has come to pass.[117]

We now have the recollections of Churchill’s son, Randolph, who relates that he had a conversation with his famous father before America entered the war, and he asked his father how he was going to win the war. Churchill told his son, “I shall drag the United States in.”[118]

One member of Churchill’s war cabinet, Captain Oliver Lylleton, who was the British production minister, was well aware of the secret maneuverings of Churchill and Roosevelt to get America into the war, and he stated in a speech in London on 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 ever to say that America was forced into war.”[119] A member of the Roosevelt cabinet, Harold L. Ickes, stated, “For a long time I’ve believed our best entrance into the war would be [vial Japan . . . [which] will inevitability lead to war against Germany.”[120]

In his excellent book on Pearl Harbor, George Morgenstern devotes an entire chapter to an analysis of the secret agreements made primarily between Churchill and Roosevelt before America entered the war. He also points out that the Dutch were included, mainly because of their oil resources in the Pacific. Roosevelt had secretly committed America to a war in the event the British and Dutch oil interests were put at risk by the Japanese, who desperately needed oil.[121] The military plan drawn up to carry this out, called “Rainbow Five,” and this amounted to a commitment by Roosevelt to protect British, Dutch, and Chinese economic interests.[122] This secret agreement actually became public on December 6, 1941, but its significance was lost in the Pearl Harbor news the next day.[123] This secret agreement had been in place for eight months before Pearl Harbor, but it was never put into a formal treaty or even an executive agreement. It was simply an oral commitment by Roosevelt which had been committed into a definite written war plan for the Army and Navy. The plan had actually been approved in Washington by Secretary of Navy Frank Knox on May 28, 1941, and by Secretary of War Henry Stimson on June 2, 1941.[124]

Another close associate of Roosevelt and a frequent administration spokesman, Senator Claude Pepper of Florida (whose nickname was “Red” Pepper because of his leftist leanings), stated in an interview in Boston on November 24, 1941, that the United States was not far from a shooting war with Japan and that “we are only waiting for Japan to cross a line before we start shooting. I don’t know exactly where that line is . . . and I am not sure the president knows exactly where it is, but when they cross it we’ll start shooting.” Pepper added that “actual declaration of war is a legal technicality, and such technicalities are being held in abeyance as long as those brigands [the Japanese] continue in force.”[125] Pepper was obviously aware to some extent of the “Rainbow Five” plan.

It was Secretary of War Stimson, however, who revealed after the war Roosevelt’s secret wish of getting the Japanese to fire the first shot. In a statement to the congressional committee investigating the attack at Pearl Harbor, Stimson said, in looking back:

If war did come, it was important, both from the point of view of unified support of our own people, as well as for the record of history, that we should not be placed in the position of firing the first shot, if this could be done without sacrificing our safety, but that Japan should appear in her true role as the real aggressor. . . . If there was to be war, moreover, we wanted the Japanese to commit the first overt act.[126]

Stimson’s diary entry of November 25, 1941, thirteen days before Pearl Harbor, describes a meeting of the cabinet at the White House:

There the president . . . brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event 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. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.[127]

Provocations by Roosevelt

After the war had started in Europe in September 1939, but before America entered the war, Roosevelt committed numerous provocative acts in an attempt to create an incident that would involve America in the war to help the British.[128] One of the most provocative acts addressed to Germany was the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which was a virtual declaration of war. Roosevelt’s action of sending fifty destroyers to England was clearly intended to provoke the Germans, and to aid the British.[129] In regard to provoking the Germans, one critic has stated:

Many have found Roosevelt’s behavior on the eve of America’s intervention in World War II especially reprehensible. Edward S. Corwin and Louis W. Koenig protested that, in the destroyer deal, “what President Roosevelt did was to take over for the nonce Congress’s power to dispose of property of the United States . . . and to repeal at least two statutes,” while Senator William Fulbright accused Roosevelt of having “usurped the treaty power of the Senate” and of having “circumvented the war powers of the Congress.” His detractors point out that six months before Pearl Harbor, on shaky statutory authority, the president used federal power to end strikes, most notably in sending troops to occupy the strike-bound North American Aviation plant in California; and that in the same period he dispatched American forces to occupy Iceland and Greenland, provided convoys of vessels carrying arms to Britain, and ordered U.S. destroyers to shoot Nazi U-boats on sight, all acts that infringed Congress’s warmaking authority.”[130]

Also unknown to the American people was the fact that Roosevelt put an American airplane with an American commander at the service of the British Admiralty to assist in tracking down the German warship Bismarck. Roosevelt commented to his speech writer, Robert Sherwood, that if it was found out he had done this, he would be impeached.[131] Roosevelt tried to use conflicts that he intentionally provoked between U.S. Navy ships and German submarines in the Atlantic as causes for America’s entry into the war. On September 4, 1941, the USS Greer, was attacked by a German submarine off the coast of Iceland. The Greer had provoked the attack, but the president lied to the American people, stating that the ship was only carrying American mail to Iceland and was attacked without warning in international waters. The truth came out shortly thereafter when Admiral Harold Stark, chief of naval operations, disclosed that the Greer had actually been giving chase to the German submarine for more than three hours; the sub finally turned and fired two torpedoes at the Greer, which responded with depth charges.[132] Another incident is described as follows:

A few weeks later another American warship, the USS Kearny, was attacked and damaged by a German submarine. On October 27 the president told the country: “We have wished to avoid shooting. But the shooting has started. And history has recorded who fired the first shot. In the long run, however, all that will matter is who fired the last shot. America has been attacked.”

When the truth of the Kearny incident finally came out, it became clear that Germany had not fired the first shot at all. Like the Greer, the Kearny had sighted the German sub and fired first. The result was that the American people refused to become inflamed by the incident. Thus when the first American ship, the USS Reuben James, was actually sunk on October 30, the president did not make much of it.[133]

These efforts to provoke the Germans into firing the first shot were unsuccessful because, more than anything else, Hitler wanted to avoid a war with America.

Roosevelt also tried to provoke the Japanese into firing the first shot, and eventually he was successful. An absolutely sensational book, and maybe the most important ever written on Roosevelt’s role in the Pearl Harbor attack, was published in 2000.[134] The author, Robert Stinnett, a veteran of the Pacific war during World War II, devoted seventeen years to researching this subject. The book shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Roosevelt was directly involved in provoking the Japanese into firing the first shot at Pearl Harbor, that he was responsible for almost all of the critical military information being withheld from the Pearl Harbor commanders, and that he immediately launched a cover-up to make them the scapegoats while he pretended to be surprised and blameless. Stinnett states:

By provoking the attack, Roosevelt accepted the terrible truth that America’s military forces—including the Pacific Fleet and the civilian population in the Pacific—would sit squarely in harm’s way, exposed to enormous risks. The commanders in Hawaii, Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, were deprived of intelligence that might have made them more alert to the risk entailed in Roosevelt’s policy, but they obeyed his direct order: “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.” More than 200,000 documents and interviews have led me to these conclusions. I am indebted to the Freedom of Information Act and its author, the late Congressman John Moss (D-Cal.) for making it possible for me to tell this story.[135]

Stinnett discovered the crucial document concerning Roosevelt’s provocation in the personal files of Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum in 1995. The document reveals the eight-step plan Roosevelt used to cause the Japanese to fire the first shot. At Roosevelt’s request, McCollum prepared the document, which is dated October 7, 1940, and McCollum and Roosevelt met at the White House immediately thereafter to discuss the same.[136] Stinnett relates how Roosevelt adopted the plan step by step. The plan set out the eight steps as follows:

A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore;

B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies;

C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese Government of Chiang-Kai-shek;

D. Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore;

E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient;

F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. Fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands;

G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil; and

H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.[137]

Lieutenant Commander McCollum commented at the end of the plan, “If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better.”[138]

The recurring theme in American history is that certain ships are offered by presidents as bait to get the enemy to fire the first shot.[139] Stinnett comments on this as follows:

Roosevelt’s “fingerprints” can be found on each of McCollum’s proposals. One of the most shocking was Action D, the deliberate deployment of American warships within or adjacent to the territorial waters of Japan. During secret White House meetings, Roosevelt personally took charge of Action D. He called the provocations “pop-up” cruises: “I just want them to keep popping up here and there and keep the Japs guessing. I don’t mind losing one or two cruisers, but do not take a chance on losing five or six.” Admiral Husband Kimmel, the Pacific Fleet commander, objected to the pop-up cruises, saying: “It is ill-advised and will result in war if we make this move.”[140]

Admiral Kimmel was notified by the chief of naval operations on July 25, 1941, to be prepared to send a carrier-load of fighter planes to Russia which had been attacked by Germany in June 1941. Kimmel objected very strongly because he thought this would provoke the Japanese to fire the first shot and start a war and also because it would sacrifice a carrier and its airplanes. The idea finally was dropped.[141] Roosevelt also ordered separate suicide missions for three small ships based in the Philippines. With American captains and Filipino crews, these vessels, each of which carried at least one gun, were to sail at different times toward Japan in an effort to draw Japanese fire, but the Japanese refused the bait.[142]

Roosevelt continued to follow the McCollum plan in all respects and, on July 25, 1941, he ordered all Japanese assets in the United States frozen, thus effectively ending all trade between the countries. This freezing order, in conjunction with an identical one from the British and Dutch, effectively cut off all oil from Japan that left them with approximately one year’s supply in reserve at the time of Pearl Harbor and with no prospects for new supplies.[143]

The Japanese were aware that Roosevelt and Churchill were trying to provoke a war between America and Japan as a “back-door” entry into the European war. Japanese Ambassador Nomura in Washington sent a coded message to Tokyo on August 16, 1941, two days after the announcement of the Roosevelt-Churchill Atlantic Charter Conference, which was decoded by the U.S. as follows: “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.”[144] The Japanese, in an unprecedented diplomatic move following the Atlantic Conference between Roosevelt and Churchill, offered to send Prince Fumimaro Konoye, the prime minister, and a member of the royal family to America to negotiate personally with Roosevelt in a desperate effort to preserve peace. Roosevelt flatly refused such a meeting, thereby causing the downfall of the moderate, peace-seeking Konoye government, which was then replaced by Tojo’s militant jingoistic government.[145] Furthermore, Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, in their negotiations with Japanese diplomats, presented ultimatums requiring Japan to get out of China completely, knowing that the Japanese would not accept those terms.[146] Japan was finally placed in the position of choosing either to lose the war without even fighting—basically because all of its oil supplies and essential war materials had been cut off—or gamble that a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor would cripple the American naval forces and cause America either to negotiate a peace treaty or to be so weakened that she would be unable to win a war in the Pacific.

Information Withheld by Roosevelt and Marshall

The extreme deceit of the Pearl Harbor attack is revealed further by the fact that Roosevelt and his key advisers in Washington had a tremendous amount of information that clearly pointed to Japan’s intentions of launching a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor many days in advance and with plenty of time to either prevent the same or prepare for the event, but they withheld most of it from the Pearl Harbor commanders. Both Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, the military commanders at Pearl Harbor, had been promised in writing by their respective chiefs of service that all information pertaining to their posts, regardless of the source of the information, would be delivered immediately from Washington to them directly. In fact, Admiral Kimmel made a special trip to Washington in June 1941 to meet with Admiral Harold R. Stark, chief of naval operations, requesting this pledge to get the information. Stark, in turn, gave his absolute assurance that all information would be passed along.[147]

On January 27, 1941, the American ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, sent the following dispatch to Washington:

My Peruvian colleague told a member of my staff that he had heard from many sources including a Japanese source that the Japanese military forces planned, in the event of trouble with the United States, to attempt a surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor using all of their military facilities. He added that although the project seemed fantastic the fact that he had heard it from many sources prompted him to pass on the information.[148]

Admiral Stark relayed this information to Admiral Kimmel but reported that it was only a rumor and that he should put no stock in it.[149] The fact that “a rumor” was reported clearly led Admiral Kimmel to believe he was receiving all the information available to his superiors in Washington.

Prior to Stinnett’s book, it was known that certain Japanese spies were sending messages to Japan stating the location and activity of the ships in Pearl Harbor. Also, it was known that American cryptographers had solved the purple, or diplomatic, code of the Japanese. However, the critical information about the attack was in the naval or military code of the Japanese, and Stinnett discovered these secret messages that were known to Roosevelt and withheld from the Pearl Harbor commanders and the American public for more than fifty years. Stinnett states “The truth of Pearl Harbor is found in the Naval Codes, not in the diplomatic codes.”[150] The American cryptographers broke the naval or military code of the Japanese in October 1940.[151]

Some of the most startling revelations made by Stinnett show that, contrary to prior assertions made in sworn testimony at congressional hearings, the Japanese fleet that set out for Pearl Harbor on November 25, 1941, did not maintain radio silence up through December 7, 1941. In fact, American cryptographers were decoding the military communications and sending them directly to Roosevelt; through directional radio finders, they were able to determine the exact location of the fleet all the way through their fateful journey. Roosevelt ordered all ships out of the North Pacific Ocean when he learned that the Japanese forces were in that area, and he did this to prevent any discovery of the Japanese presence there. Stinnett reports:

Navy officials declared the North Pacific Ocean a “Vacant Sea” and ordered all U.S. and allied shipping out of the waters. An alternate trans-Pacific route was authorized through the Torres Strait, in the South Pacific between Australia and New Guinea. Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner, War Plans officer for the United States Navy in 1941, explained the reasoning with a startling admission: “We were prepared to divert traffic when we believed that war was imminent. We sent the traffic down via Torres Strait, so that the track of the Japanese task force would be clear of any traffic.” On November 25, the day that the Japanese carrier force sailed for Pearl Harbor, Navy headquarters sent this message to Kimmel and San Francisco’s Twelfth Naval District:

ROUTE ALL TRANSPACIFIC SHIPPING THRU TORRES STRAITS. CINCPAC AND CINCAF PROVIDE NECESSARY ESCORT REFER YOUR DISPATCH 230258.

The order was dispatched about an hour after Admiral Nagumo’s carrier force departed Hitokappu Bay and entered the North Pacific.

The “vacant sea” order dramatizes Admiral Kimmel’s helplessness in the face of Roosevelt’s desires. The admiral tried on a number of occasions to do something to defend Pearl Harbor, based on Rochefort’s troubling intercepts. Exactly two weeks prior to the attack, Kimmel ordered a search for a Japanese carrier force north of Hawaii. Without White House approval, he moved the Pacific Fleet into the North Pacific Ocean in the precise area where Japan planned to launch her carrier attack on Pearl Harbor. But his laudable efforts came to naught. When White House military officials learned Kimmel’s warships were in the area of what turned out to be the intended Japanese launch site, they issued directives that caused Kimmel to quickly order the Pacific Fleet out of the North Pacific and back to its anchorages in Pearl Harbor.[152]

Stinnett reports further that:

At the time, of course, Kimmel did not know of Washington’s eight-action policy. If McCollum’s action policy was to succeed in uniting America, Japan must be seen as the aggressor and must commit the first overt act of war on an unsuspecting Pacific Fleet, not the other way around. FDR and his highest-level commanders gambled on Japan committing the first overt act of war, and knew from intercepted messages that it was near. An open sea engagement between Japan’s carrier force and the Pacific Fleet would have been far less effective at establishing American outrage. Japan could claim that its right to sail the open seas had been deliberately challenged by American warships if Kimmel attacked first.[153]

Stinnett further shows how Roosevelt ordered Kimmel’s ships around like they were on strings:

On orders from Washington, Kimmel left his oldest vessels inside Pearl Harbor and sent twenty-one modern warships, including his two aircraft carriers, west toward Wake and Midway. Those were strange orders, for they dispatched American forces directly into the path of the oncoming Japanese fleet of thirty submarines. The last-minute circumstances that moved the warships out of Pearl Harbor were discussed during the 1945–46 Congressional inquiry. Members wondered whether the sorties were genuine efforts to reinforce Wake Island and Midway or merely ploys to move all the modern warships from the Pearl Harbor anchorages prior to the attack so they would not be hit by the First Air Fleet. . . . With the departure of the Lexington and Enterprise groups, the warships remaining in Pearl Harbor were mostly twenty-seven-year-old relics of World War I.[154]

Prior to Stinnett’s book, a British code-breaker published a book entitled Betrayal at Pearl Harbor.[155] This sensational book states that on or about November 25, 1941, the British were able to overhear the Japanese military commands relating to a large military operation, including aircraft carriers, battleships, and other vessels that were leaving Japanese waters headed to Hawaii. The book’s co-author, Captain Eric Nave, personally passed this information—which clearly indicated the Japanese were headed for a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor—directly to Churchill. The book is inconclusive, however, as to whether Churchill actually relayed this message to Roosevelt.[156] Prior to the Stinnett book, a book by former CIA director William Casey, entitled The Secret War Against Hitler, states:

As the Japanese storm began to gather force in the Pacific, the most private communications between the Japanese government and its ambassadors . . . were being read in Washington. Army and Navy cryptographers having broken the Japanese diplomatic cipher, were reading messages that foretold the attack. The British had sent word that a Japanese fleet was steaming east toward Hawaii.[157]

Some of the most important information that was never passed along to Kimmel and Short and was never even available to them to use in their own defense were the “bomb plot” messages of September 24, 1941, and thereafter.[158] Japanese spies in Hawaii regularly were reporting the positions of all ships in Pearl Harbor and this information drastically increased the week before the attack, even including information that ships were not moved. A grid system was set up so that they could tell the position of the ships within that system—a clear indication that an air attack was a strong probability.[159]

Admiral Kimmel, in his own book that was published before it was known that the Japanese military orders had been intercepted, stated that key information was withheld from him and that he thought the bomb plot messages were probably the most essential pieces of military information that should have been communicated to him:

The deficiencies of Pearl Harbor as a fleet base were well known in the Navy Department. In an interview with Mr. Roosevelt in June 1941, in Washington, I outlined the weaknesses and concluded with the remark that the only answer was to have the fleet at sea if the Japs ever attacked.

I accepted the decision to base the fleet at Pearl Harbor in the firm belief that the Navy Department would supply me promptly with all pertinent information available and in particular with all information that indicated an attack on the fleet at Pearl Harbor. . . .

The care taken to keep the commander-in-chief of our Asiatic Fleet and the British in London informed of Japanese intentions while withholding this vital information from our commanders at Pearl Harbor has never been explained. . . .

The Navy Department thus engaged in a course of conduct which definitely gave me the impression that intelligence from important intercepted Japanese messages was being furnished to me. Under these circumstances a failure to send me important information of this character was not merely withholding of intelligence. It amounted to an affirmative misrepresentation. I had asked for all vital information. I had been assured that I would have it. I appeared to be receiving it. . . . Yet, in fact, the most vital information from the intercepted Japanese messages was withheld from me. This failure not only deprived me of essential facts. It misled me.

I was not supplied with any information of the intercepted messages showing that the Japanese government had divided Pearl Harbor into five areas and was seeking minute information as to the berthing of ships of the fleet in those areas, which was vitally significant.[160]

Admiral Kimmel testified under oath that “Had we been furnished this information as little as two or three hours before the attack, which was easily feasible and possible, much could have been done.”[161]

At the time of the Pearl Harbor congressional hearings in 1945–1946, the only code the investigators knew that the Navy had broken was the diplomatic code. Much testimony was taken regarding what information was known in Washington by Roosevelt and Marshall concerning the diplomatic code and what was not passed along to Admiral Kimmel and General Short.[162] One of these important messages was that the Japanese indicated that if they were not able to secure a peace agreement with the Americans by November 26, 1941, things would automatically go into operation, indicating that an attack would occur after that point. This was not delivered to the military commanders at Pearl Harbor.[163]

Another critical diplomatic code interception received in Washington and not delivered to Pearl Harbor was called the “winds execute” message, which was received during the night of December 3, 1941. Captain Laurence F. Safford received and translated the message to mean “War with America, War with England, and Peace with Russia.”[164] The written evidence of the “winds execute” message mysteriously disappeared from Navy files before the first congressional investigation, but Captain Safford was absolutely certain of the receipt and content of the message and was certain that it was delivered to President Roosevelt immediately.[165]

Finally, the code interceptors received and translated a fourteen-part message from the Japanese government to its diplomats in Washington, D.C.; the first thirteen parts were received on December 6, 1941.[166] The first part of this message was delivered about 9:15 P.M. to Lieutenant Lester R. Schulz at the White House, and he immediately took the locked pouch containing the message to Roosevelt. Harry Hopkins, of course, was also present, and Schulz heard Roosevelt state to Hopkins, “This means war!” Hopkins then replied, “It’s too bad we can’t strike the first blow and prevent a surprise.” Roosevelt replied, “No, we can’t do that. We are a democracy and a peaceful people. But we have a good record!”[167]

There is a great deal of controversy about what transpired between this point and the actual bombing the next morning. However, Captain Edward L. Beach’s recent book, Scapegoats, addresses the issue of why the fourteen-part message was not delivered to the Pearl Harbor commanders. He references the new evidence concerning a meeting at midnight at the White House on December 6, which lasted until approximately 4:00 A.M. on December 7. According to Beach’s book, James G. Stahlman, a close friend of Secretary of Navy Frank Knox, said that Knox told him he attended this meeting, along with Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Marshall, Admiral Stark, Harry Hopkins, and Roosevelt. The purpose was to discuss the message already received and to review the fourteenth part of the message, which was expected to be delivered at any moment but did not come while the meeting was taking place. Stahlman did not report that Secretary Knox informed him about the actual content of the discussions, but one is led to surmise what occurred by the actions of the parties after their meeting during the early morning hours of December 7.[168] This particular decoded message has been called the “delivery message” which informed the Japanese diplomats that the fourteenth part of the message must be delivered to Secretary of State Hull on December 7 no later than 1:00 P.M. Washington time—which was dawn, Pearl Harbor time. The intent of the Japanese was to give notice to the American government that an attack was going to be made on Pearl Harbor just before the attack actually occurred, so that they could never be accused of launching a surprise attack. The fourteenth part was late in being delivered to Hull, but of course, the key people in Washington—especially Roosevelt and Marshall—had full knowledge of all the decoded messages before this, so the attack was clearly no “surprise” to them.

When Admiral Stark arrived at his office at 8:00 A.M. on December 7, he was met by Rear Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson and Commander Arthur McCollum. These two officers had with them the first thirteen parts of the message and stated that they were waiting to receive the “delivery message,” which arrived while they were meeting with Stark. Wilkinson indicated that it was absolutely imperative that Admiral Stark get on his scrambler telephone and issue a warning first to Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor and then to Admiral Thomas C. Hart in Manila.[169] The scrambler telephone was an instrument that allowed direct and immediate contact between the parties, but the message was scrambled so it could not be intercepted and understood; however, at each end, it was unscrambled and immediately understood. Kimmel would have received this warning at 3:00 P.M. Pearl Harbor time, and that would have given him sufficient time to either prepare for or prevent the surprise attack. According to these witnesses, Stark picked up his scrambler telephone and hesitated for a long period of time, then put the phone down and instead tried to call President Roosevelt. The White House operator stated that the president was unavailable! The witnesses then stated that Stark tried to reach General Marshall, who was not in his office, and all witnesses agreed that Stark did nothing at all after that for the next few hours, until Marshall finally returned his call.[170]

The transcript of the Joint Congressional Committee hearings in 1945–1946 shows that General Marshall testified he had been riding his horse during the early morning hours of December 7, and that he did not arrive at his office until about 11:00 A.M. at which time he was given the complete, fourteen-part message by two of his most senior intelligence officers, Brigadier General Sherman Miles and Colonel Rufus Bratton. Marshall also had a scrambler telephone on his desk that would have allowed him to make a direct call to General Short, but instead of making the call he slowly and deliberately read through the message while both Miles and Bratton frantically tried to tell him about the crucial delivery message and the time limitation of 1:00 P.M. Washington time. Finally, with the office clock showing nearly noon, Marshall wrote out a warning message in pencil in nearly illegible handwriting and then told Miles and Bratton that the message was to be sent to Admiral Kimmel on a nonpriority basis. The message, therefore, went by normal Western Union telegram and arrived at Kimmel’s office after the attack had occurred.[171] General Marshall then returned the call to Admiral Stark, who had been waiting for about two hours to talk with him.

Admiral J.O. Richardson, the original commander at Pearl Harbor who was relieved by Roosevelt, wrote his memoirs in 1956 but delayed publication until 1973, a year after his friend Admiral Stark died and a year before Richardson’s own death.[172] He gave his opinion that Stark and Marshall were under orders from President Roosevelt not to warn Kimmel and Short. Elsewhere Richardson has written:

I am impelled to believe that sometime prior to December 7, the president had directed that only Marshall could send any warning message to the Hawaiian area. I do not know this to be a fact and I cannot prove it. I believe this because of my knowledge of Stark and the fact that his means of communications with Kimmel were equal to, if not superior to those available to Marshall for communication with Short. He made no effort to warn Kimmel on the morning of December 7, but referred the matter to Marshall.[173]

Captain Beach has also written:

Richardson stated that he was positive that there had been “some directive from higher authority” that only Marshall was to make any such call, but he believed Stark should have done it anyway, and he never forgave him. Richardson was clearly outraged, and the entire Navy would have been also, had it known.[174]

The obvious question is, why would President Roosevelt not want Marshall and Stark to communicate the warnings to General Short and Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor? During the Joint Commission hearings, Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan questioned General Short about what he thought would have happened had the commander at Pearl Harbor been notified of the impending attack. General Short testified:

There would have been a very excellent chance that they would have turned back. . . . That would have been the tendency, because they would have felt, or they would be sure, that they would take heavy losses. Surprise was the only opportunity they had to succeed.[175]

The conclusion seems obvious: Roosevelt did not want to take a chance on the Japanese backing off from firing the first shot, and therefore he gambled that the losses would not be too heavy if the Japanese achieved total surprise. Unlike Lincoln at Fort Sumter, where no injuries or deaths occurred as a result of the South firing the first shot, Roosevelt suffered immense damages with his gamble.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson recorded in his diary the relief from the anxiety over the question of how to get into the war by the fact that the Japanese had now bombed Pearl Harbor. He wrote that at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, December 7, he received a telephone call from the president informing him that the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor. He confided in his diary, “We three [Hull, Knox, and Stimson] all thought that we must fight if the British fought. But now the Japs have solved the whole thing by attacking us directly in Hawaii.”[176] Stimson also wrote in his diary:

When the news first came that Japan had attacked us my first feeling was of relief 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 up by unpatriotic men had been hitherto very discouraging.[177]

Morgenstern’s editorial comment at this point about Stimson’s diary entry is, “In other words, Stimson’s view was that it was patriotic to go to war for the British and Dutch empires, and unpatriotic to try to stay at peace.”[178] Stimson was clearly stating the viewpoint of the American portion of the Anglo-American Establishment, which now was the combined Morgan and Rockefeller interests.[179] Murray Rothbard comments on the merger of the Morgan and Rockefeller efforts for the purpose of getting America into World War II:

During the 1930s, the Rockefellers pushed hard for war against Japan, which they saw as competing with them vigorously for oil and rubber resources in Southeast Asia and as endangering the Rockefellers’ cherished dreams of a mass “China market” for petroleum products. On the other hand, the Rockefellers took a non-interventionist position in Europe, where they had close financial ties with German firms such as I.G. Farben and Company, and very few close relations with Britain and France. The Morgans, in contrast, as usual deeply committed to their financial ties with Britain and France, once again plumped early for war with Germany, while their interest in the Far East had become minimal. Indeed, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew, former Morgan partner, was one of the few officials in the Roosevelt Administration genuinely interested in peace with Japan.

World War II might therefore be considered, from one point of view, as a coalition war: the Morgans got their war in Europe, the Rockefellers theirs in Asia.[180]

Roosevelt knew that if Japan entered the war, Germany would soon follow. One of the diplomatic messages intercepted by the Americans on November 29, 1941, was a conversation between the Japanese ambassador and Von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, in which Ribbentrop stated, “Should Japan become engaged in a war against the United States, Germany, of course, would join the war immediately.”[181] On the night of December 7, 1941, after the bombing, Roosevelt summoned his cabinet members and congressional leaders to the White House to discuss the Pearl Harbor attack. He said to the assembled group that, “We have reason to believe that the Germans have told the Japanese that if Japan declares war, they will too. In other words, a declaration of war by Japan automatically brings.”[182] The president was interrupted at this point and did not finish his sentence, but this comment indicates clearly that he was familiar with the Japanese code intercepts and knew that an attack by Japan would open the back door to a war with Germany, and that was Roosevelt’s real intention.

Roosevelt’s defenders have maintained that adequate warnings were sent to the Pearl Harbor commanders by his administration in Washington. The following warnings were sent and are summarized by Morgenstern as follows[183]:

1. On October 16, 1941, Kimmel received a message that a new cabinet had been formed in Japan and that war between Japan and Russia was a strong possibility. It was also stated that a possible war by Japan could occur with the U.S. and Britain.

2. On November 24, 1941, Admiral Kimmel received word that successful negotiations were doubtful and to look for a possible attack by Japan on the Philippines or Guam.

3. On November 25, 1941, there was a message which hardly constituted a warning at all.

4. On November 27, 1941, the message stated “consider this dispatch a war warning.”[184] It speculated that the likely targets for Japan would be the Philippines, the Kar Peninsula or Borneo. The message specifically stated to take precautions against sabotage, which caused the airplanes to be moved to the middle portion of the airfield to guard against sabotage, but this made them an easy target to be bombed on December 7.

5. Finally, a second warning on November 27, 1941, stated that the negotiations with Japan had ended.

This message included a specific statement that, “the United States desires that Japan commit first overt act.“It also instructed Kimmel that they should not make any movements or demonstrate actions which might “alarm the civil population.”[185]

It is obvious in comparing these warnings with all of the information that was known in Washington, but was not communicated to the Pearl Harbor commanders that Roosevelt did not want to destroy the surprise element and thereby take the chance that the Japanese would call off the attack and not fire the first shot. He needed to comply with his campaign promise that he would not go into a foreign war unless attacked first. He needed to comply with his commitment to Churchill and the British that he would get into the war against Germany by some means, even if it required going through the “back door” by having a war with Japan.

Cover-up

One of the first actions Roosevelt took after asking Congress for a declaration of war was to form a commission that was limited in its scope to the investigation of what happened at Pearl Harbor to allow the surprise attack to succeed with such disastrous results. The directions to the committee specifically excluded any investigation of what went on in Washington, D.C.[186] This commission held secret hearings in Pearl Harbor; neither Commander Kimmel nor Short was allowed to submit any evidence or confront any witnesses, and they were completely denied due process. The commission concluded that these two commanding officers, Kimmel and Short, were solely at fault for the lack of preparation that caused the debacle. President Roosevelt had both of them reduced in rank and forced them to resign in disgrace.[187]

Stinnett reports the following reaction by the admiral who preceded Kimmel at Pearl Harbor: “Admiral James Richardson condemned the findings. ‘It is the most unfair, unjust and deceptively dishonest document ever printed by the government printing office. I cannot conceive of honorable men serving on the commission without greatest regret and deepest feelings of shame.’”[188]

It was not until Stinnett’s book was published that it was learned that the official cover-up began before the commission even began its work. Stinnett reports:

The key evidence of what really happened began to be concealed as early as December 11, 1941, only four days after the attack. The first step in the clean-up came from Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, the Navy’s Director of Communications. He instituted the fifty-four-year censorship policy that consigned the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese military and diplomatic intercepts and the relevant directives to Navy vaults. “Destroy all notes or anything in writing,” Noyes told a group of his subordinates on December 11.[189]

Stinnett shows how the cover-up continued even after the war:

Two weeks after Japan surrendered in August 1945, the Navy blocked public access to the pre-Pearl Harbor intercepts by classifying the documents TOP SECRET. Even Congress was cut out of the intercept loop. The Navy’s order was sweeping; it gagged the cryptographers and radio intercept operators who had obtained the Japanese fleet’s radio messages during the fall of 1941. Fleet Admiral Ernest King oversaw the censorship. He threatened imprisonment and loss of Navy and veteran’s benefits to any naval personnel who disclosed the success of the code-breaking. . . .

When the congressional investigation into the Pearl Harbor attack began on November 15, 1945, Americans believed they would be given full details on breaking the Japanese code prior to the attack. Witnesses introduced intercepts into evidence and read decrypted messages to the senators and representatives of the Joint Committee. It was a total sham. None of the details involving the interception, decoding, or dissemination of the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese naval messages saw the light of day. Only diplomatic messages were released. Republicans suspected a stranglehold but could not pierce King’s gag order.[190]

It was not until May 1999, almost fifty-eight years later, that the U.S. Senate held another hearing and tried to rectify this grave injustice inflicted by President Roosevelt upon these capable career officers by making them the scapegoats for the “surprise attack” on Pearl Harbor. A Senate resolution posthumously restored their full rank and declared that both men had performed their duties “completely and professionally” and that the Japanese attack was “not a result of dereliction of the performance” of their duties.[191] The U.S. Senate further made an extremely important finding:

Numerous investigations following the attack on Pearl Harbor have documented that then Admiral Kimmel and then Lieutenant General Short were not provided necessary and critical intelligence that was available, that foretold of war with Japan, that warned of imminent attack, and that would have alerted them to prepare for the attack, including such essential communiques as the Japanese Pearl Harbor Bomb Plot message of September 24, 1941, and the message sent from the Imperial Japanese Foreign Ministry to the Japanese Ambassador in the United States from December 6–7, 1941, known as the Fourteen-Part Message.[192]

The Senate did not know about the sensational revelations in Robert Stinnett’s book, which was published after the hearings. Perhaps someday the American people will finally understand that the real reason the day of December 7, 1941, will “live in infamy” will be because their president had become an “imperial president” who betrayed the American servicemen at Pearl Harbor and badly misled the U.S. Congress and the American people into an unnecessary war.

Stinnett’s book reveals the ugly truth of the crimes, if not treason, of President Roosevelt and leaves no doubt about how Roosevelt provoked the Japanese into firing the first shot and how he withheld essential information from his Pearl Harbor commanders that would have allowed them either to prevent the attack or protect themselves. The book further shows the massive cover-up instigated by President Roosevelt. It further shows the sinister conspiracy instigated by the president and carried out by his military and civilian subordinates to make Admiral Kimmel and General Short the scapegoats by diverting the attention away from the political intrigue in Washington. The book confirms that the power of the presidency and the executive branch has led to deceit and corruption the depths of the worst caesars of Rome. The Roosevelt supporters are now reduced to the erroneous, ridiculous, and evil Machiavellian defense that the end—(war with Germany—justified the means—provoking the Japanese to fire the first shot by sacrificing the men and ships at Pearl Harbor.[193]