By guest author, diogenes (bio
below).
Robert B. Stinnett, Day
of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York, Free Press,
2000)
Stinnett
conclusively demonstrates with vast and incontrovertible documentary evidence
that in order to precipitate an unwilling American public into supporting
intervention in the Second World War, President Roosevelt oversaw the
contrivance and deployment of a closely-guarded secret plot to goad the
Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. The plan was set in motion in October
1940, and its development closely monitored through decoded intercepts of
Japanese diplomatic and military radio communications. Knowledge of the plan
was limited to 13 Roosevelt administration members and chief military officers,
and 21 members of Naval Intelligence and related operations. Once it produced
the intended result and the attack impended, the Pacific fleet’s modern naval vessels
were sent to sea from Pearl Harbor, leaving seven antiquated World War One
battleships as decoys. Meanwhile, the Japanese fleet was tracked with radio
intercepts from its formation off the Kuril Islands on November 16, and its
sailing for Hawaii on November 26; its course was cleared of all shipping with
a Vacant Sea order on the 22nd; and Pearl Harbor naval patrols were ordered out
of the area on the 25th. Intelligence of the impending attack was withheld from
the officers (Admiral Kimmel and General Short) charged with defending Pearl
Harbor, who were kept uninformed of the plan and intelligence of the impending
attack, and scape-goated afterward. A coverup of the entire operation was
maintained through eight official and Congressional investigations between 1941
and 1946, and down to Strom Thurmond’s inquiry in 1995. Stinnett’s forty-seven
pages of Appendices (p. 261-308) present photographic reproductions of
essential documents obtained from Federal archives through the Freedom of
Information Act, as well as numerous other documents reproduced in the body of
the text, and 65 pages (p. 309-374) of closely detailed and referenced notes,
all of which copiously and conclusively document Stinnett’s factual assertions,
arguments and conclusions. His voluminous research files and notes are
deposited at the Hoover Institute library at Stanford.
It is notable that Lt.
Commander McCollum’s “eight-action memo” for inciting war with the Japanese is
dated October 7, 1940; that its sixth action was set in motion on October 8,
its first, second and seventh on October 16; and that, campaigning for a third
term as president in Boston on October 30, FDR said: “I have said this
before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not
going to be sent into any foreign wars;” on November 1 in Brooklyn he said “I
am fighting to keep our people out of foreign wars. And I will keep on
fighting;” at Rochester on the 2nd he said “Your national government … is
equally a government of peace — a government that intends to retain peace for
the American people;” the same day in Buffalo he asserted “Your President says
this country is not going to war;” and in Cleveland on the 3rd he declared “The
first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war.”
These quotations are from William Henry Chamberlin, “How Franklin
Roosevelt Lied America Into War,” in Harry Elmer Barnes, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Caldwell,
Idaho, Caxton, 1953), Chapter Eight, p. 485-491.
In his
Preface Stinnett writes: “My sole purpose is to uncover the true story of
events leading up to the devastating attack on the naval base [at Pearl Harbor]
and adjoining Army facilities, and to document that it was not a surprise to
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and many of his top military and policy
advisors…. Roosevelt believed that his countrymen would rally only to
oppose an overt act of war on the United States. The decision he made, in
concert with his advisors, was to provoke Japan through a series of actions
into an overt act: the Pearl Harbor attack. As I have discovered in the course
of seventeen years of archival research and personal interviews with US Navy
cryptographers, the answer to Roosevelt’s dilemma is found in an extraordinary
number of documents whose release I have been able to obtain through Freedom of
Information Act requests. These papers outline deliberate steps that were
planned and implemented to elicit the overt action that catapulted America into
the war, and devastated military forces at Pearl Harbor and other Pacific
bases. Eight steps were suggested to provoke a Japanese attack. Shortly after
reviewing these, Roosevelt put them into effect. After the eight provocations
had been taken, Japan responded. On November 27 and 28, 1941, US military commanders
were given this order: ‘The United States desires that Japan commit the first
overt act.’ According to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the order came
directly from President Roosevelt…. Not only did we undertake provocative
steps, we intercepted and decoded military cables. We knew the attack was
coming…. 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 risks 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, CA) for making it possible for me to tell
this story.” [xiii-xiv]
“Previous
accounts have claimed that the United States had not cracked Japanese military
codes prior to the attack. We now know this is wrong. Previous accounts have insisted
that the Japanese fleet maintained strict radio silent. This, too, is wrong.
The truth is clear: FDR knew.” [5]
“A
memorandum circulated in Washington, originating in the Office of Naval
Intelligence (ONI) and addressed to two of FDR’s most trusted advisors suggests
… provoking Japan into an overt act of war against the United States. It was
written by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk
of the ONI.” [6; Stinnett does not address the obvious conclusion that McCollum
was instructed to design such a plan; it is highly improbable that this key
policy was initiated by a junior officer on his own initiative. McCollum’s memo
is photographically reproduced in Appendix A, 261-267]
Lieutenant
Commander McCollum’s five-page “eight-action memo, dated October 7, 1940 … puts
forward … a plan intended to engineer a situation that would mobilize reluctant
America into joining Britain’s struggle against the German armed forces…. Its
eight actions call for virtually inciting a Japanese attack on American ground,
air, and naval forces in Hawaii, as well as on British and Danish colonial
outposts in the Pacific region…. McCollum oversaw the routing of
communications intelligence to FDR from early 1940 to December 7, 1941 and
provided the President with intelligence reports on Japanese military and
diplomatic strategy. Every intercepted and decoded Japanese military and
diplomatic report destined for the White House went through the Far East Asia
section of ONI, which he oversaw. The section served as a clearinghouse for all
categories of intelligence reports…. Each report prepared by McCollum for the
President was based on radio intercepts gathered and decoded by a worldwide
network of American military cryptographers and radio intercept operators…. Few
people in America’s government or military knew as much about Japan’s
activities and intentions as McCollum.” [8]
Appendix E
307-308 lists the 34 “Americans who were cleared for unrestricted access to
decoded and translated Japanese diplomatic intercepts.” They comprise FDR, his
Secretaries of War, State and the Navy (Stimson, Hull, Knox), three senior
military staff members (Gen. Marshall, Adm. Stark, Rear Adm. Ingersoll) and
three key naval staff officers, two field commanders (Gen. MacArthur, Adm.
Hart), FDR’s naval aide (Capt. Beardall) who acted as his liaison with ONI, and
21 senior officers and cryptographers of ONI and other intelligence operations.
Kimmel and Short were pointedly restricted in their access.
McCollum’s
memorandum lists eight actions that he predicted would provoke a Japanese
attack:
“A.
Make an arrangement with Britain for 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 [now Indonesia].
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 US 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.
H.
Complete embargo all trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar
embargo imposed by the British Empire.” [8. Stinnett shows the routing of
this memo to senior ONI officers and thence to Sect. of the Navy Knox and to
FDR 8-9.]
Action C
was already US policy. Action F was initiated on October 8, 1940; Actions A, B,
and G by October 16, 1940; D and E by November 12, 1940. The plan was completed
on July 26, 1941 with Action H. [Chap. 1 n. 8 p. 311-312; 120 ff. & passim]
Admiral
Richardson, commander of the Pacific Fleet, opposed FDR’s orders to station the
fleet at Pearl Harbor as putting the fleet at risk, so FDR replaced him with
Kimmel and placed Admiral Anderson of ONI as Kimmel’s third in command at Pearl
Harbor, to supervise the radio intercept operation there unbeknownst to Kimmel.
[10-14; 33-34] “Anderson was sent to Hawaii as an intelligence gatekeeper.”
[36] When he arrived he established his personal housing well away from
Pearl Harbor, out of range of the coming attack. Though he was commander of the
seven battleships which bore the brunt of the attack with the loss of well over
a thousand lives, Adm. Anderson was safe at home on the other side of the
mountain when the attack came. [36-37; 244, 247]
In early
January 1941, the Japanese decided that in the event of hostilities with the US
they would commence with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. American
intelligence learned of this plan on January 27. [30-32]
Among the
radio intercepts was a bomb plot map of Pearl Harbor developed by a Japanese
spy at their consulate in Honolulu to aid in targeting. This, too, was kept
from Kimmel and Short. The ONI operatives tracking this spy’s operations kept
the FBI and other counter-intelligence operations away from him in order to
sequester this — and all — intelligence. [66 etc.; 83-97, 98-110]
“Roosevelt discovered
Germany’s plans for the invasion of Russian through a [Japanese diplomatic]
Purple [code] intercept on June 14, 1941.” [69. He informed Churchill
immediately, or Churchill learned from shared intelligence. Churchill quotes his
cable to FDR referring to it dated June 15 in his memoir,The Second World War, vol. 3]
Radio
intercepts revealed the formation of the Japanese fleet near the Kuril Islands
north of Japan beginning November 16, 1941 and tracked it across the Pacific to
Hawaii from November 26 through the first week of December. [41-59 etc.]
On 22
November 1941, a week after the Japanese fleet began to assemble and four days
before it set off for Hawaii, Adm. Ingersoll issued a “Vacant Sea” order that
cleared the path of the Japanese fleet of all shipping, and on 25 November
ordered Kimmel to withdraw his ships patrolling the area from which the aerial
attack would be staged. [144-145]
Shortly before the Japanese
attack, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark (one of the 34 Americans in on
the plot) ordered Kimmel to dispatch his aircraft carriers with a large escort
to deliver planes to Wake and Midway Islands. “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…
With their departure the warships remaining in Pearl Harbor were mostly
27-year-old relics of World War I.” That is, the
battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor and their crews were used as decoys. [152-154]
FDR kept
close tabs on the plot’s final unfolding. [161-176]
“Pearl Harbor’s Battleship
Row and its old dilapidated warships presented a mouth-watering target. But it
was a major strategic mistake for the Empire. Japan’s 360 warplanes should have
concentrated on Pearl Harbor’s massive oil stores … and destroyed the
industrial capacity of the Navy’s dry docks, machine shops, and repair
facilities…. By the Battle of Midway in June 1942, America had regained the
offensive; repaired US warships staged from the relatively undamaged Pearl
Harbor naval base [as well as the modern fleet absent during the attack], sank
four of the aircraft carriers that had attacked them six months before.” [249]
At the Battles of Midway and Coral Sea, a month earlier, the US Navy
permanently destroyed the offensive capacity of the Japanese Navy in the eastern
Pacific, and permanently crippled its defensive capacity in the western
Pacific. [George N. Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road To
Russia (Chicago, Regnery, 1959) 166] Thus there was no possibility thereafter of a Japanese attack or
invasion of the West Coast, and this was known several months before the
internment of West Coast Japanese American citizens commenced in August 1942.
The coverup
of the operation commenced immediately afterward, continued through eight
Congressional investigations during and just after the war, with the purging
and withholding of documents and false testimony by participants and others
[253-260 & passim; 309-310], and persisted through the Congressional
hearings chaired by Strom Thurmond in 1995 [257-258]. At the date of publication
(2000) numerous documents were still withheld from Stinnett or released in
extensively censored form, and the pretense that the Japanese naval codes had
not been deciphered and that the Japanese fleet maintained radio silence was
still being maintained.
**
Diogenes is an over-educated
American landless peasant. His great-grandfather, a co-operative orchardist,
helped California progressives overturn Southern Pacific’s corporate political
machine in 1910. He thinks this advance needs to be re-established and greatly
extended, nationally, not reversed. He regards progressive successes in many
states during this era as a recommendation for their non-partisan grassroots
methods of public education and legislative action and for their targeting of
the legal enablements of financial predation, and he considers it crucial to
extract lessons for the present from their history of defeats and failures as
well as of successes, and to understand the methods by which they were
thwarted, the better to succeed in the future.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/pearl-harbor-facts-proof.html#more-63816
