The Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (El día del engaño: La verdad sobre FDR y Pearl Harbor). Autor: Robert B. Stinnett (2001)
Friday, December 1, 2000
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese navy attacked
the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. The following day, President Roosevelt
described it as “a date that will live in infamy.” In spite of this country’s
official neutrality, Roosevelt personally had been eager to have the United
States enter the war on the side of England. He had persuaded Congress to
assist England with money, food, munitions, planes, ships, and Lend Lease, and
by patrolling and convoying British ships in the Atlantic. These measures were
intended, Roosevelt assured the people, not to take us into war, but to keep us
out. Japan’s attack, while we were still formally at peace and negotiating to
settle various disputes, gave Roosevelt the excuse he wanted to ask Congress
for a declaration of war.
When the President
announced that the fleet had been attacked “suddenly and deliberately” by
Japan, people believed him. Only after the war did the people discover that
FDR’s administration and top military officials had not been as surprised as
they were: the U.S. government had been privy to many of Japan’s intentions
since mid-1940 when intelligence officers deciphered her top diplomatic code.
Washington officialdom had been expecting aggressive Japanese action somewhere
in the Pacific. Whether or not they were expecting the Pearl Harbor attack is
another question.
For years rumors have
circulated to the effect that Roosevelt knew that Japan planned to attack Pearl
Harbor—and just let it happen. By far the most detailed and credible claim to
date is contained in Robert Stinnett’s book Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR
and Pearl Harbor. Stinnett is a Navy veteran of World War II who spent his life
as a newspaper journalist and photographer. He argues that ample evidence was
available to U.S. administration and military officials—through Japanese
intercepts decoded and translated before the attack—to indicate that Japan was
planning to attack Pearl Harbor. The Pearl Harbor commanders, Admiral Husband
E. Kimmel and General Walter C. Short, would not have been surprised if they
had been properly informed. Washington, however, chose to keep them in the
dark.
Stinnett describes what appear to be three
“conspiracies”: the first to compel the Japanese to attack the United States
and thus to bring us into World War II; the second to deprive the Pearl Harbor
commanders of available information about Japan’s intentions; and the third an
attempt, which still persists, to keep pre-attack information from the public.
The first “conspiracy” began, Stinnett says, in
October 1940, with a memorandum by Japanese expert Captain Arthur McCollum,
chief of the Far Eastern Section of Naval Intelligence. The memorandum listed
eight steps to induce Japan “to commit an overt act of war.” First, the main
strength of the U.S. fleet should be retained in Hawaii. This Roosevelt
promptly arranged, over the objections of James Richardson, commander-in-chief
of the U.S. fleet. Over the following year, McCollum’s other suggestions were
also adopted.
According to Stinnett, U.S. cryptographers had deciphered not
only Japan’s diplomatic code known as MAGIC, but also some of her military
codes, enabling operators in U.S. monitoring stations around the Pacific to
intercept and decode countless Japanese military dispatches. Significant
information was received from these intercepts, Stinnett says, including the
Japanese Task Force’s last-minute choice for its staging area, its destination,
and its attack order. But that intelligence was purposively withheld from the
Pearl Harbor commanders.
On November 23, Kimmel, as the Fleet’s Commander in Chief, had
ordered, without White House approval, a search for Japanese forces north of
Hawaii and had moved the Pacific fleet into the North Pacific. When White House
officials learned of this and feared the fleet might encounter the Japanese
attack convoy, Kimmel’s ships were ordered back to Pearl Harbor. Also on
November 25, the Navy in Washington told Kimmel to route all transpacific
shipping southward leaving the north Pacific “vacant” and thus, according to
Stinnett, open for the approach of the Japanese convoy.
Judging by the words and actions of Roosevelt and his advisers
it is hard to believe that they were as sure as Stinnett indicates they were
that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which they wanted, was imminent.
For
instance, at a meeting of Roosevelt’s “War Cabinet” on November 25, Secretary
of War Henry Stimson remarked that “the Japanese are notorious for making an
attack without warning, and the question was . . . how we should maneuver them
into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to
ourselves.”
Even though Stinnett’s case does not seem to me entirely
convincing, he has certainly assembled a great deal of information previously
unavailable. His book makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the
events leading up to the Japanese attack and the administration’s subsequent
attempts to deny responsibility and pin the blame on the commanders, who were
not only deprived of vital military intelligence, but also were impeded in
their efforts to gather it themselves.
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