FDR knew Pearl Harbor was coming?

March 14, 2009 3:15 PM

Is there any factual basis to the idea that FDR knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and allowed it to happen to get the U.S. citizenry behind the war?

Some of my history professors are dead certain that the Roosevelt administration, which had been agitating to enter into WWII, knew the attack was coming, and let it happen in order to move public sentiment firmly into their corner. Others say this is complete and total bunk, and even the dumbest conspiracy theorists wouldn't believe it. I've wandered through Wikipedia's entry on the topic, but, as to be expected, there are piles of conflicting information.

Is there a MeFite who has studied this, or knows a good deal about it, who can support the idea that they knew it was coming?

posted by tzikeh to law & government (42 comments total)

Can't edit, so replying: This has nothing to do with an assignment. All of my classes are in English Lit right now. :) I'm just terribly curious about the debate.
posted by tzikeh at 3:20 PM on March 14

I'm no history expert, but here's a part of a book discussing the evidence about that theory.

I guess if you've browsed this Wikipedia article, you already know about the idea that the Japanese codes perhaps had already been broken before Pearl Harbor.

If you want my amateur opinion, I think it is unlikely that Roosevelt would have allowed such massive destruction of the US Pacific Fleet. If indeed warning of the attack had been received, then that warning probably would have traveled through the upper chain of command. I think it would have required the complicity of too many senior military officials. It strikes me as entirely possible that the warning might have been received, but gotten bogged down in an unwieldy intelligence bureaucracy, and might not have made it to the war room in time to prepare.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 3:26 PM on March 14 [2 favorites]

Here are the facts. Roosevelt was able to read Japanese codes to a certain extent. Information the Americans had gleaned from this source allowed them to figure out that the Japanese were going to initiate a war with the U.S.

But the Japanese Navy wisely kept operational details off the coded transmissions. Indeed, they removed the regular radio operators from their strike force and put them on shore and had them transmit fake messages for weeks, giving the impression that the carriers were in home waters.

They did not have a date, but knew that the Japanese Empire would break off negotiations on a certain date.

So they warned the commanders. The message was sent in late November, 1941. I want to say Nov. 28th, but I'm too lazy to crack a book for the exact date. The first words were "this message is a war warning." Basically, it said, if its war, we want Japan to strike first, but defend yourself and take all measures necessary. Don't alarm the people, but don't not take measures for fear of alarming the populace.

The two Hawaiian commanders then blew it. General Short, for the Army, was more concerned about sabotage from Hawaii's significant Japanese population and put his planes close together on a well guarded airfield, where the first Japanese Zeroes found them on Dec. 7. A few shots and the lot went up in flames. Army radar picked up the Japanese strike force flying in but poor communications led to the message not getting throghm

Adm. Kimmel fared no better. They had no patrol planes which might have spotted the Japanese task force at sea.

Don't underestimate the Japanese either. They hid the location of the attack from everyone.
posted by Ironmouth at 3:49 PM on March 14 [12 favorites]

This is a touchy subject for many folks, and I look forward to AskMe's thoughtful, non-snarky handling of it. For what it's worth, that Wikipedia article may be as close as you're going to get to anything approaching a balanced view. Historians disagree over lots of things, after all. Why should this be different?

That said...There's a big difference between 1) the well-documented (and, to my mind, uncontroversial) view that Roosevelt had a long-term plan to bring the Japanese to war, with them firing the first shot, and 2) the more controversial view that Roosevelt had direct and immediate knowledge of the attack days or hours before it happened and sat on that information.
posted by mediareport at 3:51 PM on March 14

Ironmouth - that's great stuff. Do you have a source I can go to--is this in a book I can buy?

I'd even been told that the "Day that will live in infamy" speech had been prepped (if not entirely locked down) in advance, to allow his writers as much time as possible to maximize the power of the words.
posted by tzikeh at 3:52 PM on March 14

mediareport, I agree there's a big difference. I wasn't aware, however, that this was a touchy subject for people on Metafilter. Has it been covered before? I did search for it.
posted by tzikeh at 3:53 PM on March 14

I won't comment on the "false flag" thing as a whole (though I don't buy it), but one thing that you will read on some sites that should get close attention is the issues of cryptography surrounding the attack. American signals intelligence units had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, which the Americans referred to as "Purple," and could read many messages long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The problems with Purple were apparently less its complexity and more human carelessness with it, e.g. not changing keys regularly enough. Actually, far more codes have historically been broken that way - noticing someone else's sloppiness - than by some master stroke of pure genius. American specialists were listening in on messages to the Japanese embassy in DC and managed to decrypt and translate a message instructing the ambassadors to break off relations with the US within a couple hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Some delays in typing that up and finishing the translation prevented an official notice of its contents from getting to US officials until just after news of the attack arrived.

So there are a bunch of things that get pronounced in these conversations by those pushing false flag accounts:

1. "The US read a message announcing that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked and did nothing!" - False. They read a message about a sudden, strange, drastic change in diplomatic protocol, which could only be read as indicating war was imminent. Nothing in the telegram indicated Pearl Harbor was about to be attacked.

2. "The US could read all the Japanese messages, so they knew Pearl Harbor was about to be attacked!" - Also False. The US specialists could read most of the diplomatic messages, but there were numerous cryptographic systems in use by the Japanese at the time, though all of them were eventually cracked and weren't that great to begin with. Cracking a cryptographic system doesn't guarantee that you can read all message immediately, either. You might know how the system works, but need to figure out which key is being used, etc. You also can't decrypt a message you never hear.

Of course, the US was funding and arming what the Japanese saw as guerrilla warfare in what they saw as their territory (Manchuria, Flying Tigers and all that) and blockading a variety of resources that Japan needed to keep rolling, so any analyst worth their weight in Skittles could tell you war was coming. But that's just not as exciting as FDR as evil puppetmaster for some readers.
posted by el_lupino at 3:58 PM on March 14 [4 favorites]

Roosevelt did not "want" the US to get into a war with the Japanese Empire. There are no sources from Roosevelt's hand stating this.

The go to book is "At Dawn We Slept" by Gordon W. Prangue, a history professor and former military officer. Fluent in Japanese, Prangue was a meticulous researcher and a personal friend of the Japanese strike force leader Fuchida.

Suprisingly accurate is the 1970's film Tora! Tora! Tora! Predictably inaccurate is the film Pearl Harbor.

I can't recommend the Prangue. Its history as it should be written.
posted by Ironmouth at 4:00 PM on March 14 [3 favorites]

Actually, this NYT article states that not only was there no actionable intelligence in the intercepted message mentioned by el_lupino, but that it was intercepted after the attack, not before.
The current issue of Skeptical Inquirer also has a short article about the "winds" message, but it's not available online yet.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:09 PM on March 14

There were huge Congressional investigations on this matter. Their thorough handling of this important matter is the starting place for any serious look at Pearl Harbor. It is one of the most documented events in human history. They took testimony from the principals.

The speech detail screams fake! The speech is incredibly short. There's no need to prewrite something so short. I've read the Congressional Record for that day and its fascinating. A single congresswoman tried to speak up against the war (she was a noted and out there isolationist) and she was shut down. The legislators could not wait to vote the war. Japan may have sunk battleships but they awoke a force they could never dream to stop. Japan was much weaker back then on the world stage. They had the world's 11th biggest economy, not the second biggest.

In the end Pearl Harbor was the dumbest thing the Japanese could have done. Had they just struck at only Indonesia and Malaysia (the strategic targets of the Japanese), America might not have voted to protect them by declaring war.
posted by Ironmouth at 4:12 PM on March 14

Just type "war warning message" pearl harbor into Google and you will be able to read the message Washington sent to the commanders. Make your own judgment.
posted by Ironmouth at 4:17 PM on March 14

If you have professors who are convinced FDR had prior knowledge, ask them to produce the evidence.

Many informed people in the U.S., no doubt including FDR, believed for years that war with Japan was inevitable. Japan clearly intended to expand into China, southeast Asia and the Pacific via military force. That would put them in direct conflict with American interests in the region. Specifically, any U.S. ban on oil deliveries to Japan, on which it was dependent, was very likely to provoke war. As it turned out, the Japanese launched a rapid and widespread attack across the Pacific region, including Pearl Harbor, believing that rapid success and rapid conquest would create a fait accompli which the U.S. would have no choice but to accept.

So, did the attack on Pearl Harbor surprise FDR and other informed people? Probably not, although they likely expected the attack to come elsewhere. Remember, though, expecting an enemy to attack is a long way from knowing when and where the attack will come.
posted by justcorbly at 4:37 PM on March 14

...Pearl Harbor was the dumbest thing the Japanese could have done

A classic case of misjudging the American character. The Japanese believed the U.S. would lack the will to engage in war if they lost their fleet at Pearl Harbor.
posted by justcorbly at 4:42 PM on March 14

In the end Pearl Harbor was the dumbest thing the Japanese could have done.

I went to Yasukuni Shrine's history museum last fall which puts the best possible spin on Japanese militarism, including fun stuff like the Nanking Massacre. (Don't consider it the production of neo-Nazis, but more like cheerleaders who think the Japanese Empire was even hotter stuff than the British Empire.) According to the museum, Japan was a military power fueled by oil, and the United States cut off the great majority of this oil when they ceased trade relations. So, Pearl Harbor was an entirely necessary move to get Japan its oil back-- I'm assuming by shocking the U.S. into quick submission. Hmmm.

Okay, I'm going to have to agree with you on this one.
posted by shii at 4:43 PM on March 14

Oh, and the original "west winds clear" article is here (warning: huge-ass pdf file).
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:53 PM on March 14

Roosevelt did not "want" the US to get into a war with the Japanese Empire. There are no sources from Roosevelt's hand stating this.

Ironmouth, the absence of this (single type of) evidence is not evidence of ... well, much at all.

Your vehement assertions in your followup ponits aren't exactly convincing on their own merits, either. It's clear you are emotionally invested in your POV (as are many, many Americans, especially those of us over A Certain Age), but that's what stands between us and the facts.

The Congressional investigations were similarly biased, and therefore their unsurprising absolvement of the establishment is not absolutely reliable.

Finally, the fact that the entire aircraft carrier fleet was out to sea, and therefore safe from the attack, is particularly suspicious.

The greatest pity is that the PAC Admiral was held to blame for the incident, despite his recorded attempts to get his (ultimately tragic) orders changed leading up to that Sunday.

Personally, I'm undecided, and shall likely remain so.
posted by IAmBroom at 4:57 PM on March 14

posted by Ironmouth Army radar picked up the Japanese strike force flying in but poor communications led to the message not getting throghm

Not exactly. See item 2. on this page.

Adm. Kimmel fared no better. They had no patrol planes which might have spotted the Japanese task force at sea.

That was Washington's fault, not Admiral Kimmel's.
posted by mattdidthat at 5:03 PM on March 14

A single congresswoman tried to speak up against the war (she was a noted and out there isolationist) and she was shut down.

Credit where credit is due- she also voted against WWI. But let's not start an argument over where a win on that vote might have led.

Also - video of Adm Kimmel testifying before congress 1946. For the lover of artifacts....

(Sorry, slight derail. Carry on.)
posted by IndigoJones at 5:08 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

Just noting, because it always comes up in these discussions, that mattdidthat's 2nd link above is to the Institute for Historical Review, primarily a Holocaust denial organization. It's one of the sad peculiarities of this discussion that neo-Nazi groups have done quite a bit of digging into the subject, and their info is almost always mixed in with other, less outrageously obnoxious groups' info.
posted by mediareport at 5:20 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

Finally, the fact that the entire aircraft carrier fleet was out to sea, and therefore safe from the attack, is particularly suspicious.

Only in hindsight, now that we know how valuable aircraft carriers were in the war. At the time, they were basically an unproven asset, and it was widely felt that battleships were still the queen of the seas. After the attack on Pearl, there was widespread sentiment that the Pacific Fleet was completely out of action, just because the battleships were sunk. It wasn't until the Battle of Midway that carriers were seen to be valuable ships in their own right.

Also, the aircraft carriers were performing relatively routine delivery missions of aircraft at the time. It's not like they'd been sitting around for six months, only to be surged out at the last minute.

This Straight Dope column does a good job summarizing the facts in a popular (i.e., non-historian grade) way. Particularly notable is that in the months prior to the attack, American sentiment was 2 to 1 that war with Japan was inevitable, and that America should risk war with Japan in order to prevent them from getting stronger. At the time of the attack, Roosevelt's staff felt that it would be easy to get a declaration of war, so the premise of the conspiracy, that the attack was allowed to occur in order to sway isolationist sentiment, is itself false.

Lastly, consider a counterfactual that assumes the conspiracy theorist's premise, that Roosevelt needed Pearl Harbor to rouse public sentiment against Japan, and knew the specific attack against Pearl was coming: Wouldn't it have been just as effective to meet the attack and kick Japan's ass, thus being not only the victim of a surprise attack but also starting the war off with the U.S. fleet intact and the Japanese fleet sunk?
posted by fatbird at 5:22 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

OK, turning on the laptop so I can actually link,

A good place to start is the National Security Agency page.

For more detail, they have a 13-page article.

From the National Park Service, the text of the war warning message:

This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days. The number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of naval task forces indicate an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines, Thai or Kra peninsula or possibly Borneo. Execute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to carrying out tasks assigned in WPL 46. Inform District and Army authorities. A similar warning is being sent by War Department. Spenavo (Special Naval Observer in London) inform British. Continental districts Guam, Samoa directed to take appropriate measures against sabotage.

How can anyone say that Roosevelt did not warn? There is no denying the Nov. 27 message. It is clear as day: War with Japan approaches, make ready. What else does Roosevelt have to do?
posted by Ironmouth at 5:23 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

Mattdidthat:

Those links go to Harry Elmer Barnes. They also think the Holocaust never happened.
posted by Ironmouth at 5:25 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

HOLY CRAP. My sincerest apologies. Serves me right for not examining that link and site more closely. Please strike that second link from my earlier post. (Special message to the ihr.org folks: Fuck you.)

The first link goes to the National Park Service. I think they're okay.
posted by mattdidthat at 5:34 PM on March 14

I think the only thing fair to say is that the war propaganda myth, literally encapsulated in the title At Dawn We Slept, is wildly inaccurate. We knew war was coming, incontrovertibly.

I don't think it's fair, though, to say that we knew war would come at Pearl Harbor. It was an audacious, risky attack at the very limits of what the JIN could accomplish. There were critical mistakes made in the weeks prior and on the day of the attack, any one of which could have revealed the attack in progress. If it weren't for that we wouldn't be having this discussion.

To say let it happen is probably a matter of semantics. The precursors to any war provide countless examples of where a turn from the road would have produced different results. Read some Polybius. This sort of second-guessing is perennial.
posted by dhartung at 5:40 PM on March 14

Just a minor point: according to this, the "A Date Which Will Live In Infamy" speech was dictated and then edited by Roosevelt himself on December 7th. The original typed draft read "A date which will live in world history", but was then hand edited to replace "world history" with "infamy".
posted by steveminutillo at 5:41 PM on March 14

Combined Fleet Decoded is a great book for a deeper look at this kind of stuff. If I recall correctly, there were some more explicit indications that had landed on the desks of JICPOA (Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area) or whatever it was called then, but weren't decoded until months after the war began.
posted by atchafalaya at 5:42 PM on March 14

In "The Codebreakers", David Kahn devotes nearly an entire chapter to examining this exact question, and comes to the conclusion that no one in the US intelligence community knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor.

Among other things, he documents exactly what the American code breakers had learned, and shows why it wouldn't have suggested where the first attack would fall.

As mentioned above, it was known that war was coming, and certainly if there was a war the Japanese were going to attack somewhere. But no one expected Pearl Harbor.

This idea that FDR knew the attack was coming and allowed it to happen is one of the all time great conspiracy theories, ranking right up there with the "grassy knoll" and "9/11 Truth".

And it should be taken just as seriously. By which I mean "not at all".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:48 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

There's no doubt an attack was expected. But the American military did not feel the Japanese were up to that attack. It was highly risky.

As for the carriers, Kimmel sent them to Guam to ferry aircraft to the American base there--the Japanese threat was thought greater there. It was a good thing, as none were sunk at Pearl. A little over seven months later, those same carriers would, for all practical purposes end the Imperial Japanese Navy's bid for dominance in the Pacific permanently at Midway.

For years, Kimmel argued that had he gotten the full text of the intercepts, he would have done differently. I have no doubt he believed it. But the strength of the warning should have been enough.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:51 PM on March 14

Actually, this NYT article states that not only was there no actionable intelligence in the intercepted message mentioned by el_lupino, but that it was intercepted after the attack, not before.

No, we did receive actionable intelligence shortly before the attack. As el_lupino mentioned, it was related to diplomatic negotiations that were ongoing between the US and Japan at the time, encrypted using the Purple cipher.

To add another crypto book to the pile, James Bamford discusses some of this in The Puzzle Palace. About 8 hours before the strike, the last part of a 14 page message was intercepted indicating that Japan was to break off negotiations with the US at 1:00PM in Washington (dawn in Hawaii), which could only be interpreted as an indication of war. But this analysis didn't get to Hawaii in time. According to Bamford, this was due to disorganization and inefficiencies in the American intelligence community. For example, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall had the message in hand, but considered relaying the information to Hawaii via his "scrambler" phone as too risky.

Bamford's retelling strongly indicates that American military did know where and when the attack would fall. They just didn't get the memo in time.

Much like 9/11 led to reorganization and increased power in our contemporary intelligence agencies, Pearl Harbor precipitated huge changes in the communications intelligence services of the time.

As to the stronger claim that FDR knew ahead of time. When people mention that they usually imply that he knew days, weeks or months in advance. I haven't seen any proof of that.
posted by formless at 7:05 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

First things first: I don't know.

Pearl Harbor got the US fighting not only the Japanese, but the Germans as well.

It was the Depression. Money was extremely tight. Socialism was a very popular idea, and Nazi Germany was often cited as a Socialist success story, with the Nationalist bit going mostly unnoticed. A hell of a lot of Americans were German or had ties to Germany. Few people had any idea what Hitler was really up to until after the war.

There is no way in hell Roosevelt could have sold a war with Germany--which had absolutely nothing to do with the United States (...or Japan)--while millions of Americans were starving.

Let's just say the Pearl Harbor bombing came at an extremely convenient time.

It's interesting to note that Lyndon "Gulf of Tonkin" Johnson modeled much of his presidency after FDR's. I'd be a huge fan of both if it weren't for all the war. That said, I give FDR some slack, since entering WWII--even under false pretenses--was significantly less evil than LBJ's Vietnam bullshit.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:25 PM on March 14

Pearl Harbor got the US fighting not only the Japanese, but the Germans as well.

Because they were part of the Tripartite Alliance (along with Italy). As soon as the US and Japan declared war on one another, Germany immediately declared war on the US. The US had been financing most of Britain's war effort via the Lend-Lease Act and other measures, so Germany had no hesitation about declaring war as soon as it had some fig leaf to do so and could assume that American involvement was likely to be split between Europe and the Pacific. The US didn't just declare war on Germany for the hell of it. Germany declared it first, with every intention of sinking every American ship and downing every American plane it could.
posted by el_lupino at 7:48 PM on March 14

Because they were part of the Tripartite Alliance (along with Italy). As soon as the US and Japan declared war on one another, Germany immediately declared war on the US. The US had been financing most of Britain's war effort via the Lend-Lease Act and other measures, so Germany had no hesitation about declaring war as soon as it had some fig leaf to do so and could assume that American involvement was likely to be split between Europe and the Pacific.

Hitler did a huge favor to Roosevelt, as the terms of the Tripartate Pact only required member states to come to the aid of one another if those states were attacked by a third state. It was a defensive alliance. Hitler's declaration helped Roosevelt.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:14 PM on March 14

There is no way in hell Roosevelt could have sold a war with Germany--which had absolutely nothing to do with the United States (...or Japan)--while millions of Americans were starving.

Let's just say the Pearl Harbor bombing came at an extremely convenient time.

This is actually wrong. As I said above, at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 67% of Americans thought war with Japan was inevitable, and that the U.S. should do what was necessary to prevent Japan from getting stronger even at risk of war. Where Germany was concerned, it was 70%.

At the outbreak of WWII in 1939, yes, isolationist sentiment was strong. By December of 1941, though, the U.S. population was well aware of Germany's invasion of Europe and the Soviet Union, and Japan's depredations in China. Additionally, the U.S. was already effectively at war with Germany in the Atlantic, with U.S. naval vessels escorting convoys and directly engaging (and being sunk by) German submarines; Americans knew this. By the time the Pearl Harbor attack came, Americans were at least resigned to war, with most expecting it. There was absolutely no need for a Pearl Harbor to rouse the sleeping giant--it was already waking up.
posted by fatbird at 9:14 PM on March 14 [1 favorite]

What ironmouth, fatbird, and chocolate pickle said. The answer to tzikeh's question is no. Wish I could favorite all their replies multiple times, just to make it easier to link back to for the (inevitable) next time this question comes up. Just for the record, my father worked with Signal Intelligence in India (with the guys breaking Japanese code there) later in the war. He knew lots of WWII codebreakers, worked with them at the time, and says the accusations against Roosevelt are hogwash.
posted by gudrun at 12:13 AM on March 15

If you're Roosevelt and you're expecting an attack on Pearl, wouldn't you:

a. Make sure the battleships aren't there, or at least put anti-torpedo booms next to them?
b. Make sure the planes are in the air?
c. Make sure the soldiers are manning the anti-aircraft guns?
d. Have the entire Pacific sub fleet buzzing around Pearl?

Remember, you don't need a catastrophic loss to provoke war with Japan. A single Japanese bomb does the job. Had we annihilated the attack fleet, we'd still have a perfect casus belli, and we'd have our fleet, too.
posted by musofire at 6:23 AM on March 15 [1 favorite]

The two Hawaiian commanders then blew it.

It's interesting to note that Vice President Joe Biden strongly disagrees with Ironmouth on this point. Here's a short speech from Biden in May of 1999 arguing for a reinstatement of rank for Kimmel and Short (one of Kimmel's sons was a resident of Delaware). The case is strongest when it argues the two men never got a fair hearing from the December 1941 Roberts Commission:

Here's how I see it. Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter Short were publicly vilified and never given a chance to clear their names...If we perpetuate the myth that Admiral Kimmel and General Short bear all of the blame for Pearl Harbor then we miss the real story. We fail to look at the readiness shortfalls they were facing--the lack of adequate reconnaissance planes, pilots, spare parts, and maintenance crews. We fail to look at the flawed intelligence model that was used--the disconnect between what was obtained and what got to the commanders in the field...

In 1941, after lifetimes of honorable service defending this nation and its values, Admiral Kimmel and General Short were denied the most basic form of justice--a hearing by their peers. Instead of a proper court-martial, their ordeal began on December 18th with the Roberts Commission. A mere 11 days after the devastating attack at Pearl Harbor, this Commission was established to determine the facts.

In this highly charged atmosphere, the Commission conducted a speedy investigation, lasting little over a month. In the process, they denied both commanders counsel and assured both that they would not be passing judgement on their performance. That assurance was worthless. Instead, the Commission delivered highly judgmental findings and then immediately publicized those findings. The Roberts Commission is the only investigative body to find these two officers derelict in their duty and it was this government that decided to publicize that false conclusion. As one might expect, the two commanders were vilified by a nation at war.

Every succeeding investigation was clear in finding that there was no dereliction of duty. The first of these were the 1944 Army Board and Navy Court reviews. Again, it was government action that prevented a truthful record from reaching the public--a decision by the President. The findings of both of these bodies that placed blame on others than Kimmel and Short were sequestered and classified....In fact, every investigation of Admiral Kimmel and General Short's conduct highlights significant failings by their superiors...

I want to stress again for all my colleagues that this amendment simply sets the record straight--responsibility for Pearl Harbor must be broadly shared. It cannot be broadly shared if we fail to acknowledge the government's historic role in clouding the truth, nor if we continue to perpetuate the myth that Kimmel and Short bear singular responsibility for the tragic losses at Pearl Harbor.

Again, that was our current Vice President talking. The next day, the Senate voted to clear Kimmel and Short of responsibility and return their rank, but no president since then has acted on that suggestion.
posted by mediareport at 8:14 AM on March 15

Here's a transcript of a 1995 Senate hearing where a variety of relatives and military officials make the case for reinstating rank for Kimmel and Short. Again, worth reading for anyone who wants to get a clearer understanding of their argument.
posted by mediareport at 8:16 AM on March 15

Maybe I'm covering ground in others' posts, nevertheless ...

The first O.J. Simpson murder trial was a circus and a fiasco, and I think Judge Lance Ito has a large responsibility for how that played out. Nevertheless, there is one thing he said back in 1995 that stuck with me - he admonished the jurors to remember, that circumstantial evidence was just as valid as other types of evidence.

With that in mind, let's consider:

* The US had begun planning on fighting Japan as the next adversary in the Pacific theater, shortly after the Spanish-American War. The basics of the plan were developed quickly - war is declared, US naval forces go island hopping, capturing island after island, until finally the Japanese mainland is surrounded, and then Japan is bombarded into surrender. The basic plan was developed while ships were still coal-powered and aircraft were not militarily relevant; it was tweaked over the next 40 years and went through controversy (would the US abandon or defend the Philipines? for example) but when war came, the plan was executed.

* In the immediate time frame before 1941, the US had been provoking Japan through a series of financial, economic, military and political maneuvers.

* The US itself had a multi-stage action plan of how to induce Japan into war. The specific military memorandum is reproduced in the appendix of that book. [Also see this for a good discussion of the political context of US / Japan relations at the time].

* Several of the above works record that, Prior to Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt sent some US naval ships on a provocative patrol between two of the main islands of Japan. He quipped that if he lost a few cruisers (and thereby precipitating an act of war) it would be acceptable.

* Immediately before Pearl Harbor, in Nov. '41, the US essentially presented an ultimatum to Japan, that it end its war in China along with draconian embargoes on raw materials and currency transactions that would essentially shut down Japan's war regardless what its government decided. After Japan refused, the White House internally stated that the situation was now "in the hands of the military". The Charles Beard book and the Stinnett book cover this.

The circumstantial evidence establishes that the attack wasn't an 100% surprise. Maybe it was a bit of a surprise (certainly to the US military in Hawaii it was) but it wasn't the complete, total surprise that it was made out to be.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 3:04 PM on March 15

* The US had begun planning on fighting Japan as the next adversary in the Pacific theater, shortly after the Spanish-American War. The basics of the plan were developed quickly - war is declared, US naval forces go island hopping, capturing island after island, until finally the Japanese mainland is surrounded, and then Japan is bombarded into surrender. The basic plan was developed while ships were still coal-powered and aircraft were not militarily relevant; it was tweaked over the next 40 years and went through controversy (would the US abandon or defend the Philipines? for example) but when war came, the plan was executed.

The US and many other countries have plans prepared. If you are discussing the ABCD plan or War Plan Orange, these had been in place since the 1920's. The existence of these plans is not evidence that FDR knew.

* In the immediate time frame before 1941, the US had been provoking Japan through a series of financial, economic, military and political maneuvers.

If embargoing steel and oil to an aggressor nation involved in trying to take over another country and who had committed huge atrocities against the civilian population is "provoking."

* The US itself had a multi-stage action plan of how to induce Japan into war. The specific military memorandum is reproduced in the appendix of that book. [Also see this for a good discussion of the political context of US / Japan relations at the time].

Please specify said memorandum.

Japan was not induced into war. Indeed, they did not even have to attack the United States to obtain the oil supplies in the Dutch East Indies. Nor was the US able to shut down Japan's war machine as you suppose--had we been able to do that, how would Japan fight us for 4 years? Furthermore, how did FDR control their minds and make them do his bidding? FDR was determined to stop fueling Japan's war machine. Unless you think supporting agression via oil and steel to be OK, then I don't understand any issue anyone would have with it.

The war warning messages informed commanders throught the entire area that an attack was to be expected.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:48 PM on March 15

The memo spoken of above is the McCollum Memorandum. It is an estimate of the situation by a mid-level intelligence analyst. Two people who looked at it were advisers of FDR. However, nowhere in it is any evidence that FDR knew anything about where the Japanese were going to attack. Here is a copy. Read it for yourself and decide.

Regardless, FDR warned all Pacific Commanders of the imminent threat of war above.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:42 PM on March 15

Japan was not induced into war. Indeed, they did not even have to attack the United States to obtain the oil supplies in the Dutch East Indies. Nor was the US able to shut down Japan's war machine as you suppose--had we been able to do that, how would Japan fight us for 4 years? Furthermore, how did FDR control their minds and make them do his bidding? FDR was determined to stop fueling Japan's war machine. Unless you think supporting agression via oil and steel to be OK, then I don't understand any issue anyone would have with it.

Maybe I'm digressing, but the issue isn't whether you or I think supporting agression is OK or not OK [for the record, I think the Nanking massacre was evil, as was Hiroshima]. The mentioned embargoes had little to do with humanitarian concerns, but much to do with the fact that, at the start of the 20th century, Asia was a western sphere of influence (US, Britain, western europe, etc.). Japan's foreign policy was to kick out the western powers and create a so-called "co-prosperity sphere", a.k.a. a Japanese empire in Asia. The moves by the US need to be seen in this light, as a chess game by two rival 'empires' (I realize that most people don't like to think of the US as an empire, but have a look at this for instance for another viewpoint).

If you read 'The war of the world' by Niall Ferguson, he documents that the 1920's and 1930's were a time of great unpleasantness all over the world, not just what Japan was doing in China. I'm not aware of any similar US embargoes against other nations in this time period (like Germany for example, which likewise was grabbing territory and treating non-Aryans poorly). Pre-Pearl Harbor, the US was ostensibly neutral. As such, there would be no issue with selling materials to Japan or Germany.

Getting back to the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese military situation, grabbing S.E. Asian resources without taking out the Phillipines would have left the Japanese flank exposed. It's also questionable if they could have moved against British, French and Dutch colonies (Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia) to grab oil and raw materials, and have the US sit idly by.

Ferguson also points out that with the embargoes, the Japanese military situation was going to deteriorate over time, and that their chances of a favorable outcome of a military confrontation would become worse over time. As such they had three choices: (1) overtly agree to US demands to curtail their empire, (2) keep expanding their empire, while their military capacity diminishes over time to the benefit of the US position, until finally the US is dominant enough to dictate to Japan what to do, or (3) attack the western powers while conditions were as favorable as they could hope for, expecting to give the US a quick bloody nose to show them who's the boss in Asia, like they did to Russia in 1905.

True, none of this indicates FDR actually knew anything about Dec. 7/41.

But the point of my original post was, even in the absence of a smoking-gun document, that there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that the Dec. 7/41 attack was far from being a complete surprise.

And the US military commanders were indeed warned to be ready for war.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 5:05 AM on March 16

It wasn't a complete surprise. FDR knew an attack was coming. He didn't know where.

I think that answers the question.

The US certainly had said that they would declare war if Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies in diplomatic messages. But politically it would have been a far different thing for FDR than an all-out surprise attack on US ships, a move certain to bring the US into all-out war with Japan.

As for the US being an 'empire' somehow equivalent to the naked agression of the Japanese, I must differ. With the exception of the Mexican War in 1848, and the Spanish-American war in 1898, the US had never been much of a imperialist nation, especially in comparison with Europe and Japan. If a nation behaved the way Japan did today, an embargo would be immediate.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:08 AM on March 16