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- As Americans honor those 2403 men, women,
and children
killed -- and 1178 wounded -- in the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
on December 7, 1941, recently released government
documents concerning
that "surprise" raid compel us to
revisit some troubling questions.
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- At issue is American foreknowledge of Japanese military
plans
to attack Hawaii by a submarine and carrier force 59 years ago. There
are two questions at the top of the foreknowledge list: (1) whether
President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and his top military chieftains
provoked Japan into
an "overt act of war" directed at Hawaii,
and (2) whether Japanís
military plans were obtained in advance
by the United States but concealed
from the Hawaiian military
commanders, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant
General Walter
Short so they would not interfere with the overt act.
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- The latter question was answered in the
affirmative on
October 30, 2000, when President Bill Clinton signed
into law, with the
support of a bipartisan Congress, the National
Defense Authorization Act.
Amidst its omnibus provisions, the Act
reverses the findings of nine previous
Pearl Harbor investigations and
finds that both Kimmel and Short were denied
crucial military
intelligence that tracked the Japanese forces toward Hawaii
and
obtained by the Roosevelt Administration in the weeks before the
attack.
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- Congress was specific
in its finding against the 1941
White House: Kimmel and Short were cut
off from the intelligence pipeline
that located Japanese forces
advancing on Hawaii. Then, after the successful
Japanese raid, both
commanders were relieved of their commands, blamed
for failing to ward
off the attack, and demoted in rank.
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- President Clinton must now decide whether to grant the
request
by Congress to restore the commanders to their 1941 ranks. Regardless
of what the Commander-in-Chief does in the remaining months of his term,
these congressional findings should be widely seen as an exoneration of
59 years of blame assigned to Kimmel and Short.
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- But one important question remains: Does the blame for
the Pearl Harbor disaster revert to President Roosevelt?
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- A major motion picture based on the attack
is currently
under production by Walt Disney Studios and scheduled for
release in May
2001. The producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, refuses to
include Americaís
foreknowledge in the script. When Bruckheimer
commented on FDRís
foreknowledge in an interview published
earlier this year, he said "Thatís
all
b___s___."
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- Yet, Roosevelt
believed that provoking Japan into an
attack on Hawaii was the only
option he had in 1941 to overcome the powerful
America First
non-interventionist movement ledby aviation hero Charles
Lindbergh.
These anti-war views were shared by 80 percent of the American
public
from 1940 to 1941. Though Germany had conquered most of Europe,
and her
U-Boats were sinking American ships in the Atlantic Ocean ñ
including warships ñ Americans wanted nothing to do with
"Europeís
War."
-
- However, Germany made a strategic error. She, along with
her
Axis partner, Italy, signed the mutual assistance treaty with Japan,
the Tripartite Pact, on September 27, 1940. Ten days later, Lieutenant
Commander Arthur McCollum, a U.S. Naval officer in the Office of Naval
Intelligence (ONI), saw an opportunity to counter the U.S. isolationist
movement by provoking Japan into a state of war with the U.S., triggering
the mutual assistance provisions of the Tripartite Pact, and bringing
America
into World War II.
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- Memorialized in McCollumís secret memo dated October
7,
1940, and recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,
the
ONI proposal called for eight provocations aimed at Japan. Its centerpiece
was keeping the might of the U.S. Fleet based in the Territory of Hawaii
as a lure for a Japanese attack.
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- President Roosevelt acted swiftly. The very next day,
October
8, 1940, the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet, Admiral James
O.
Richardson, was summoned to the Oval Office and told of the provocative
plan by the President. In a heated argument with FDR, the admiral objected
to placing his sailors and ships in harmís way. Richardson was then
fired and in his place FDR selected an obscure naval officer, Rear Admiral
Husband E. Kimmel, to command the fleet in Hawaii. Kimmel was promoted
to a four-star admiral and took command on February 1, 1941. In a related
appointment, Walter Short was promoted from Major General to a three-star
Lieutenant General and given command of U.S. Army troops in Hawaii.
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- Throughout 1941, FDR implemented the
remaining seven
provocations. He then gauged Japanese reaction through
intercepted and
decoded communications intelligence originated by
Japanís diplomatic
and military leaders.
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- The island nationís militarists used the
provocations
to seize control of Japan and organized their military
forces for war against
the U.S., Great Britain, and the Netherlands.
The centerpiece ñ
the Pearl Harbor attack ñ was leaked to
the U.S. in January 1941.
During the next 11 months, the White House
followed the Japanese war plans
through the intercepted and decoded
diplomatic and military communications
intelligence.
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- Japanese leaders failed in basic security
precautions.
At least 1,000 Japanese military and diplomatic radio
messages per day
were intercepted by monitoring stations operated by
the U.S. and her Allies,
and the message contents were summarized for
the White House. The intercept
summaries were clear: Pearl Harbor would
be attacked on December 7, 1941,
by Japanese forces advancing through
the Central and North Pacific Oceans.
On November 27 and 28, 1941,
Admiral Kimmel and General Short were ordered
to remain in a defensive
posture for "the United States desires that
Japan commit the first
overt act." The order came directly from President
Roosevelt.
-
- As I explained to a
policy forum audience at The Independent
Institute in Oakland,
California, which was videotaped and telecast nationwide
over the
Fourth of July holiday earlier this year, my research of U.S.
naval
records shows that not only were Kimmel and Short cut off from the
Japanese communications intelligence pipeline, so were the American
people.
It is a coverup that has lasted for nearly 59 years.
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- Immediately after December 7, 1941,
military communications
documents that disclose American foreknowledge
of the Pearl Harbor disaster
were locked in U.S. Navy vaults away from
the prying eyes of congressional
investigators, historians, and
authors. Though the Freedom of Information
Act freed the foreknowledge
documents from the secretive vaults to the
sunlight of the National
Archives in 1995, a cottage industry continues
to cover up
Americaís foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor.
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- _____________
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- * Robert B. Stinnett has
worked as a journalist for the Oakland Tribune and the BBC, and is the
author of the book, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor
(Free Press, 2000). This article is adapted from his presentation before
the Independent Policy Forum held earlier this year at The Independent
Institute in Oakland, California. Click here to order copies of this
Independent
Policy Forum transcript, audio tape, video, and/or the
book, Day of Deceit.
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