Source: http://www.charlesmartelsociety.org/toq/vol1no2/ss-pearlharbor.html
The prevalent view of World War II is that of the "good war"--a Manichaean conflict between good and evil. And a fundamental part of the "good war" thesis has to do with the entrance of the U.S. into the war as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. According to this view, the cause of the war stemmed from the malign effort by Japan, run by aggressive militarists, to conquer the Far East and the Western Pacific, which was part of the overall Axis goal of global conquest. Japan's imperialistic quest was clearly immoral and severely threatened vital American interests, requiring American opposition. Since American territory stood in the way of Japanese territorial designs, the Japanese launched their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Although the Roosevelt administration had been aware of Japanese aggressive goals, the attack on Pearl Harbor caught it completely by surprise. To the extent that any Americans were responsible for the debacle at Pearl Harbor, establishment historians, echoing the Roosevelt administration, blamed the military commanders in Hawaii for being unprepared. A basic assumption of the mainstream position is that given the Japanese bent to conquest, war with the U.S. was inevitable. As mainstream historians Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon put it: "nothing in the available evidence . . . indicates that they [the Japanese] ever planned to move one inch out of their appointed path, whatever the U. S. did about it."1 There was nothing the U. S. could do to avert war short of sacrificing vital security interests and the essence of international morality.
A small group of revisionist investigators have disputed this orthodox
interpretation at almost every turn. Revisionists argue that, instead of following an aggressive
plan of conquest, Japanese moves were fundamentally defensive efforts to
protect vital Japanese interests. And instead of seeing the U. S. simply reacting to Japanese
aggression, as the orthodox version would have it, the revisionists see the U.
S. goading the Japanese--by aiding China (with whom Japan was at war), military
expansion, quasi-secret alliances, and economic warfare--to take belligerent
actions. Finally, some
revisionists go so far as to claim that Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the
attack on Pearl Harbor but refused to alert the military commanders in order to
have a casus belli to galvanize the
American people for war. These
revisionists see the effort as part of Roosevelt's effort to bring the U. S.
into war with Germany--the so-called "back-door-to-war" thesis.
Revisionism began before the end of World War II and reflected the views of
the non-interventionists who had opposed American entry into the war. Prominent figures in the revisionist
camp include Charles Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes, George Morgenstern and Charles
C. Tansill in the 1940s and 1950s; James J. Martin and Percy Greaves in the
1960s and 1970s; and more recently John Toland and Robert B. Stinnett. And some writers have accepted parts of
the revisionist position but rejected others. The idea that American foreign policy provoked the Japanese
into more belligerent actions, for example, has gained more adherents than the
view that President Roosevelt intentionally allowed the Japanese to attack
Pearl Harbor. This essay, however, will not present a historiographical
discussion of the revisionist literature bringing out the similarities and
differences of the various revisionist authors' writings. This has been done elsewhere, most
notably by Frank Paul Mintz in his Revisionism and the Origins of Pearl
Harbor.2
This essay will try to elucidate
the major revisionist themes and
to show their validity. In short,
this essay hopes to provide what its title proclaims: "The Case for Pearl Harbor
Revisionism."
Revisionists have focused on the underlying causes of Japanese expansionism
in an effort to counter the mainstream view of the nefarious nature of Japanese
policy. As Frank Paul Mintz
writes:
The revisionists demonstrated--and quite compellingly in some cases--that it makes for a poor historical interpretation to condemn Japan without coming to grips with the strategic, demographic, and economic problems which were at the root of Japan's--not to mention any nation's--imperialism.3
Revisionists emphasize that the Japanese had vital economic and security
interests in China. Lacking in natural resources, Japan had especially depended
upon foreign markets. Thus, access to China became absolutely essential to
Japan's economic well-being when, with the onset of the Great Depression, most
industrialized countries established nearly insurmountable trade barriers.4
Instead of being an aggressor,
Japan had been essentially satisfied with the status quo in China at the start
of the 1930s, but as the decade progressed, the forces of Chinese communism and
nationalisn threatened Japenese interests in China. "It seemed to
Tokyo," Charles C. Tansill wrote, "that Japanese interests in North
China were about to be crushed between the millstones of Chinese nationalism
and Russian Bolshevism."5
The revisionists portray the Japanese interests in China as similar to
American interests in Latin America. As Anthony Kubek writes:
The U.S. had its danger zone in the Caribbean and since the era of Thomas Jefferson, every effort had been to strengthen the American position and to keep foreign nations from establishing naval and military bases which would threaten American security. So Japan regarded Manchuria. Japan followed this natural policy and attempted to practice it with reference to the lands that bordered upon the China Sea. Korea, Manchuria, and Inner Mongolia were essential pillars of her defense structure.6
While the establishment interpretation emphasizes that the Japanese
incursion into China was a violation of Chinese territorial integrity, the
revisionists point out that the U. S. was highly selective in applying this
standard. During the inter-war period, the Soviet Union had converted Outer
Mongolia into a satellite and secured de facto control over Sinkiang, yet the
State Department never protested Moscow's violations of Chinese sovereignty. And Japanese actions in China were, in
part, taken as defensive measures against the growing threat of Soviet
Communism. Looking beyond the moral and legal aspects, revisionists maintain
that Japanese interests in China did not portend further aggression into
Southeast Asia or threaten vital American interests. Rather, American actions-- aid to China, military expansion,
and economic sanctions--purportedly intended to deter Japanese aggression
actually served to induce such aggression into Southeast Asia and ultimately
led to the Japanese attack on American territory. This is not to say that there were not extremist, militarist
elements in Japan who sought military conquest. But in the immediate pre-Pearl Harbor period, the Japanese
government was run by more moderate elements who sought to maintain peace with
the U. S. and who were undermined by American intransigence. As Bruce Russett writes:
This analysis is meant to establish an important proposition: that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and for that matter on Southeast Asia, is not evidence of any unlimited expansionist policy or capability by the Japanese government. It was the consequence only of a much less ambitious goal, centering on an unwillingness to surrender the position that the Japanese had fought for years to establish in China. When that refusal met an equal American determination that Japan should give up many of her gains in China, the result was war. Japanese expansion into Southeast Asia originated less in strength than in weakness; it was predominantly instrumental to the China campaign, not a reach for another slice of global salami. Of course, there were Japanese political and military leaders with wider ambitions, but they were not predominant in policy-making.7
In the two years prior to Pearl Harbor, the U.S. took a number of hostile
actions against the Japanese. While the orthodox version portrays this as an effort to
deter Japanese aggression, revisionists see this as a deliberate means of
provoking war. Robert B. Stinnett, a recent revisionist, goes so far as to
claim that the ways to goad the Japanese into war were explicitly spelled out
in an "eight action memo" by Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head
of the Far East Section at the Office of Naval Intelligence, which was dated
October 7, 1940. President
Roosevelt adopted McCollum's proposals. "Throughout 1941 . . .,"
Stinnett writes, "provoking
Japan into an overt act of war was the principal policy that guided FDR's
actions toward Japan."8 These
anti-Japanese provocative actions would fall into three categories: aid to China; military aggressiveness
that included military agreements with the British and Dutch; and economic
sanctions against the Japan.
It should be pointed out that the U.S. had, since the turn of the century,
provided vocal support for the territorial integrity of China, with emphasis on
the "Open Door" that rejected economic spheres of interest by foreign
countries. And American military strategists had long envisioned a future war
with Japan. However, it was not
until the Roosevelt administration that vocal support turned into action. By 1940, the U.S. was providing substantial support for
China, which had been at war with Japan since 1937. During that year, the U. S.
loaned China $125 million.9 In 1941, the U.S. extended Lend-Lease to
China, which enabled China to receive American war materials without involving
payment. The U.S. government
covertly sponsored an American-manned air force for China--General Claire
Chennault's American Volunteer Group or the "Flying Tigers." Although officially
"volunteers," they were
actually closely connected to the American military.10
Under the law of neutrality as
traditionally understood, a neutral state is obliged to treat the belligerents
with strict impartiality, which means abstaining from providing any of them
military support. Obviously, the
U.S. was not acting as a "neutral" in the Japanese-Chinese conflict
and, by the current "harboring terrorists" standard invoked by the U.S. in Afghanistan, provided
justification for the Japanese to make war on it.
The effect of American aid to China was to stiffen Chinese resistance, thus
precluding any type of peaceful settlement favorable to the Japanese. The Japanese actually looked to the U.S.
to mediate the war in China and thus help to extricate them from an exhausting
stalemate. As non-revisionist historian Jonathan G. Utley observes:
They [U.S. government officials] could have ended the fighting by fashioning a compromise settlement, but they saw no future in that. It was better to let the fighting continue to its inevitable conclusion, a military debacle that would drag down the Japanese militarists.11
It was Japan's inability to terminate the war with China successfully that
motivated its military expansion elsewhere.
In the first part of 1941, joint military staff conferences took place
between the Americans, British, Canadians, and the Dutch to develop plans for
global war against the Axis, although the U.S. was not yet a belligerent. Of greatest importance for the Pacific
theater was a meeting in Singapore in April 1941 between the Americans, British,
and Dutch. Out of this meeting came the ADB
(sometimes called ABCD because of the Canadian involvement in the other
meetings) agreement, which
committed the conferees to joint action to fight Japan if Japanese forces
crossed a geographic line that approximated the northerly extremity of the
Dutch East Indies. War would
result if Japan invaded British or Dutch territories in Southern Asia or moved
into neutral Thailand. In essence,
Roosevelt had committed the U.S. to war even if American territory were not
attacked. And he had committed the U.S. to war even if the Japanese did not
fire the first shot. Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon try to argue that the ADB
agreement did not actually commit the U.S. to make war but only "outlined
the military strategy to be followed if the U.S. joined the conflict."12
This interpretation, however,
ignores the fact that central to the ADB agreement was the criterion for
joining the conflict--the Japanese crossing of a particular geographical line. Even one of the early defenders of the
Roosevelt administration, Herbert Feis, acknowledged this significance in his
history: "Had not the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines,
this line would have become the boundary between war and peace."13
Though America's commitment to the ADB agreement was only verbal, the
British and Dutch took it as a solid commitment, and the U.S. armed forces drew
up a war plan in harmony with it, which became known as WPL 46. When the Japanese actually crossed the
critical geographic line in December 1941, the Dutch invoked the ADB and were
expecting help from the U.S. Navy in repelling the Japanese.. Obviously, the
Dutch believed the U.S. would back them up, since they would hardly dare to
face the mighty Japanese military by themselves.14
That the U.S. was preparing military opposition to an armed Japanese advance
southward is illustrated by actions as well as words. For this was the whole purpose of
American buildup of air power in the Philippines, discussed in the next
section. Certainly, the message conveyed to the British and Dutch as well as
the Japanese was that the U.S. would go to war even if its territory were not
attacked.
According to the U.S. Constitution, of course, the U.S. could not just make
war because of the President's military commitment. Only Congress has the power
to declare war. Roosevelt needed an armed incident with Japan so as to have the
public support to comply with his commitment to war. (Roosevelt did promise
"armed support" to the British prior to a declaration of war.15)
Without such an incident, a declaration of war to counter a Japanese armed
advance southward would have been politically difficult, if not impossible.
That is why Pearl Harbor was a godsend from Roosevelt's standpoint.
Historian Robert Smith Thompson shows that the military action planned by
the Americans, British, and Dutch went beyond simply a defensive effort to stop
a Japanese aggressive move southward. They actually planned to go on the offensive. Thompson
writes:
First, the ABD powers intended to confine Japan 'as nearly as possible to the defense of her main islands.' Second, they proposed to 'cut Japan off from all sea communications with China and the outside world by intensive action in the air and waters around Japan, and to destroy by air attack her war industries.
Two months before the Pearl Harbor attack, that is, the U.S. of America was party to a secret international agreement to firebomb Japan.16
In order to carry out its anti-Japanese policy, the United States was
building up its military strength in the Far East. In 1940, President Roosevelt
had ordered the move of the Pacific Fleet from its permanent base in San Diego,
California to Pearl Harbor. By the
fall of 1941, however, the development of a B-17 bomber force in the
Philippines had been given precedence over the fleet as the key means of
combating Japan. Its purpose could be construed as
offensive as well as a deterrent since the U.S. was planning to bomb Japanese
cities. A secret memo General
MacArthur received in September 1941 underscored the offensive purposes that
American forces would undertake. It read
commence operation as soon as possible, concentrating on propaganda, terrorism, and sabotage of Japanese communications and military installations . . . Assassination of individual Japanese should also be considered. Prepare to defeat Japan without suffering grievous loss ourselves. . . We must base mobile forces as near to Japan as is practicable. . . To the west there is China where air bases are already being prepared and stocked. . . . to the south there is Luzon in the Philippine Islands, within easy air range of Hainan, Formosa, and Canton, and extreme range of southern Japan. . . Development of further air bases is proceeding.17
Earlier, Roosevelt had gone so far as to deploy American warships within or
adjacent to Japanese territorial waters. Roosevelt called these
"pop-up" cruises, saying, "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 E. Kimmel, commander of the
Pacific Fleet, opposed this provocation, saying: "It is ill-advised and
will result in war if we make this move." Between March and July 1941,
Roosevelt sent naval task groups into Japanese waters on three different
occasions. Japan protested but fired no shots.18
America took a number of measures to punish Japan economically. In July 1939, the United States
announced that it would end its trade treaty with Japan in January 1940. In October 1940, the U.S. banned the export of scrap iron
thus impeding the Japanese production of weapons-grade steel. In July 1941,
when Japanese forces moved into southern French Indo-China (having already
occupied the northern part in 1940), Roosevelt announced his most drastic
measure: the freezing of all
Japanese assets in the U.S.. This
deprived the Japanese of the means to purchase American goods, the most
critical of which was oil.19 The British
and Dutch governments followed suit. Japan had to import all of its oil from foreign
countries--most coming from the U.S.--because neither Japan nor
Japanese-controlled territory in China produced oil. Without oil, the life
blood of the mechanized Japanese army, Japan would be unable to continue its
war in China. The U.S. (and the
British and Dutch) made it clear to the Japanese that the oil embargo would be
relaxed only in exchange for an end to Japanese involvement in China. The New
York Times referred to Roosevelt's action
in its July 27 issue as "the most drastic blow short of war."20
Mainstream historians have interepreted American cooperation with the
British and Dutch as well as the military build-up in the Far East as simply
deterrents against further Japanese expansion. Nonetheless, it is easy to
understand how the Japanese perceived these developments as a threat to their
own security. Such a view seemed
to be confirmed by the assets freeze, which implied a move beyond a simple
defensive containment of Japan, indicating
rather an effort to roll back Japan's existing gains in China.
All factions of the Japanese government--moderates as
well as extremists--saw the complete abandonment of China as unacceptable. Japan had expended too much blood and
treasure simply to pull out. Abandoning China would destroy Japan's status as a great
power and would cause dire economic harm. But without oil, Japan would ultimately be militarily
threatened in its own backyard by the Anglo-American alliance. Moreover, it was not the Japanese war
machine alone that was affected. For in addition to freezing assets, the U.S. government had
closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping. As a result of these economic sanctions, along with the
decline in trade stemming from the Russo-German war, Japanese imports fell by
75 percent, and the civilian economy spiraled downward, with serious food
shortages.21 The Japanese Foreign Minister, Shigenori Togo, vigorously
protested to American Ambassador Joseph Grew that "Economic pressure of
this character is capable of menacing national existence to a greater degree
than the direct use of force."22
To save the domestic economy and to be able to continue prosecuting the war
in China, Japan required oil and other natural resources--tin, rubber, quinine,
rice-- that could only be obtained by seizing Thailand, British Malaya, and the
Dutch East Indies. These areas
would have to be attacked soon before the Japanese Navy's fuel supplies ran low
and before the Anglo-American alliance had developed a powerful military force
in the Far East. Of course, Japanese armed movement into
these areas would automatically lead to conflict with the ADB powers. "In
the last estimate," revisionist George Morgenstern averred, "Japan
was confronted with the option of striking out for a rich new empire or
abandoning its conquests and resigning itself to the future of a third-rate
nation."23
Significantly, the U.S. government had enacted the economic sanctions with a
clear realization that this could lead to war. Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner,
Navy chief of war plans, had prepared a report for President Roosevelt on the
probable consequences of imposing an oil embargo on Japan, which read:
It is generally believed that shutting off the American supply of petroleum will lead promptly to an invasion of the Netherlands East Indies. . . . An embargo on exports will have an immediate severe psychological reaction in Japan against the U.S.. It is almost certain to intensify the determination of those now in power to continue their present course. Furthermore, it seems certain that, if Japan should then take military measures against the British and Dutch, she would also include military action against the Philippines, which would immediately involve us in a Pacific war.24
To think that American forces in the Far East, with their small number of
American B-17 bombers and weak British and Dutch allies, could actually stand
up to the powerful Japanese war machine in late 1941 was to engage in wishful
thinking in the extreme. But when such military developments reached the ears
of the security conscious Japanese, they could easily serve as an inducement to
launch a preemptive strike on American forces in the Pacific. Japanese leaders had for some time
thought that the United States would make war on Japan if it made an armed
advance southward toward British and Dutch territory, even if such territories
were not actually attacked. For example, on December 3, 1941, the Japanese
embassy in Washington cabled Tokyo: "Judging from indications, we feel
that some joint military action between Great Britain and the U.S., with or
without a declaration of war, is a definite certainty in the event of an
occupation of Thailand."25
Considerable information on the buildup of American air power in the Far
East and its threat to Japan could be easily gleaned from the public media. For example, the U.S. News of October 31, 1941 carried a two-page relief map of
the globe with Japan at the center. Arrows were drawn from American bases to
Japan with flying times of American bombers. Time magazine
of November 21, 1941 carried a story about the builder of the new B-24 bomber,
Reuben Harris, and said that these new bombers were already being transported
to the Dutch East Indies. The
headline of an article by noted
columnist Arthur Krock in the November 19, 1941 New York Times read: "New Air Power Gives [Philippine] Islands
Offensive Strength Changing Strategy in Pacific."26
On November 15, 1941, General George Marshall held a secret press briefing
for representatives from the major media--the New York Times, New York
Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, the Associated Press, United Press, and
International News Service. Pledging the group to secrecy, Marshall asserted
that "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan." Marshall said
that war would probably begin during the first ten days of December and then he
went on to delineate a bombing scenario of the Japanese home islands. If this military information were
intended to be secret, it is odd that Marshall would mention it to the press at
all. Robert Smith Thompson infers
that this reflected President Roosevelt's aim to pass this information on to
the Japanese indirectly. "Acting as Roosevelt's representative," Thompson
opines, "General Marshall spoke to the press, quite likely in the full
knowledge that somebody would leak his remarks."27
This exaggerated depiction of American air power that could hit Japanese cities certainly would have the effect of
inducing the Japanese to gamble on striking the first blow against the U.S.
while there was still time.
The Japanese viewed the American arms to China, the military build-up, and
the apparent military alliance between the ABD powers as constituting the
Anglo-American "encirclement" of Japan. As Bruce Russett
writes: "The freezing of assets on July 26, 1941, was seen as the final
link in their bondage."28 Japan's aim was to become a powerful,
industrial nation that would not be dominated by outside powers as the Far East
had been treated by the European colonial powers. But the Japanese saw this goal as being frustrated by the
United States, which, in conjunction with European colonial powers, seemed bent
on making Japan a weak, third-rate country, like other Asian nations. To the Japanese this was unbearable. There was nothing abnormal about this
response. It should be emphasized
that since the time of the Monroe Doctrine the U.S. has sought to have its way
in the Western hemisphere, unhindered by the interference of European powers. It would seem to be an empirical fact of
world affairs that only weak countries allow themselves to be dictated to by
outside powers within their own geographical region.
According to Japanese calculations, the U.S. would go to war against them if
they made a military advance toward British or Dutch territory. In November 1941, the Japanese envoys in
the U.S. were even reporting to Tokyo that the U.S. might soon militarily
occupy the Dutch East Indies as it had earlier occupied Iceland and Dutch
Guiana.29 All of this meant that if Japan wanted
to acquire the necessary resources of Southeast Asia and break out of the
ever-tightening Anglo-American "encirclement," it would have to
strike a blow against American power quickly. As Robert Smith Thompson asserts: "With American
economic sanctions in place and with American B-17s en route to the Pacific,
Japan had only one choice. Japan had to strike--and strike first."30
The Japanese saw America's Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor as a
significant threat to their military designs in Southeast Asia. "The implication was clear,"
Thompson concludes, "Japan's only salvation lay in taking out the U.S.
Pacific fleet, wherever it lay."31
The Japanese military leadership recognized the much greater military
potential of the U.S. and opted for war only because there seemed to be no
other alternative. Its aims against the U.S. were limited: to destroy existing
U.S. offensive capabilities in the Pacific by tactical surprise. The Japanese military leadership hoped
only to give its forces time to occupy the islands of the Southwest Pacific, to
extract the raw materials of those islands, and to turn the region into a
virtually impregnable line of defense, which could frustrate an American
counteroffensive.32
Japanese war planners emphasized that the attack would have to take place
soon because oil supplies were running out. Although Japan was preparing for war, however, it still
sought a last minute peace with the United States. In short, war would be the instrument of last resort if Japan
were unable to restore trade with the U.S. by diplomatic means. It sent its major diplomats to
Washington in an effort to achieve peace. In August 1941, Prime Minister Prince Konoye even offered to
come to meet President Roosevelt in Washington for negotiations. As Morgenstern writes: "The American diplomatic representatives in Tokyo noted that, almost until the
very end, Konoye and the moderate elements were willing to go to almost any
lengths to bring off the meeting and avert war."33
Roosevelt rejected Konoye's offer.
As a result of its failure to achieve a diplomatic
solution, Konoye's moderate
government fell from power in October and was replaced by a more militant group headed by General
Hideki Tojo. Although this
indicated a step toward war, Japan still sought to negotiate with the U.S.. Among its offers, Japan was willing to
promise the U.S. that it would pull out of southern Indo-China and not join
Germany in an offensive war. In
return, Japan expected the U.S. to restore trade, to encourage the Chinese
government to negotiate with Japan, and to stop backing China militarily once
the negotiations had begun. The
U.S. refused to accept the Japanese offer.34
Japan was still seeking a diplomatic solution in November while it prepared
to attack. American intelligence
had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, and thus the American leadership was
aware that if no diplomatic solution were reached, Japan would then go to war. However, the only conciliatory move the
Roosevelt administration ever considered making was a "modus
vivendi," which would have been a temporary truce, sought by American
military leaders, to avoid war until America had built up its military strength
in the Far East. The modus
vivendi would have entailed mutual American
and Japanese pledges against aggressive moves in the Pacific. Japan would
withdraw from southern Indo-China and limit its troops in the north. In return the United States would supply
Japan with limited supplies of oil and other materials.
The U.S. government ultimately rejected the modus vivendi on November 26 and instead offered Secretary of
State Cordell Hull's "10
point proposal." This virtual
ultimatum told Japan to withdraw all military and police forces from China and
Indo-China and that it must not support any government in China other than the
Nationalist government under Chiang. Japan regarded the message as an insult and completely
unacceptable. Japan regarded a sphere
of influence in China as absolutely essential to its national security, and it
had expended much blood and wealth to attain this objective. To accede to the American proposal would
be tantamount to surrender. The American proposal essentially cemented Japan's
decision to initiate war and strike Pearl Harbor.
A brief aside here regarding the rejection of the modus vivendi. Revisionists, such as Anthony Kubek in How
the Far East Was Lost, have pointed out
that pro-Communists in the U.S. government, most importantly Harry Dexter
White, pushed for the elimination of the modus vivendi in order to enhance the security interests of the
Soviet Union. The Soviet aim was
to guarantee war between Japan and the West in order to prevent a Japanese
attack on the Soviet Far East. This Communist role has been confirmed by recent revelations
from the Verona files by Herb Romerstein and John Earl Haynes.35
Most revisionists, however, would maintain that Roosevelt did not require the
push from Soviet spies to induce his movement toward war. "Despite all
this volume of evidence of communist pressure in the Far East for war between
the U.S. and Japan," wrote Harry Elmer Barnes,
I remain unconvinced that it exerted any decisive influence upon Roosevelt, who, after all, determined American policy toward Japan. Roosevelt had made up his mind with regard to war with Japan on the basis of his own attitudes and wishes, aided and abetted by Stimson, and he did not need any persuasion or support from the Communists, however much he may have welcomed their aggressive propaganda.36
On the surface, it would seem that the United States pursued a policy that
led to war in order to preserve the territorial integrity of China over which
it was unwilling to make any compromise with Japan that could preserve the
peace. As historian Basil Rauch
wrote in defense of the Roosevelt administration's uncompromising policy:
No one but an absolute pacifist would argue that the danger of war is a greater evil than violation of principle. . . . The isolationist believes that appeasement of Japan without China's consent violated no principle worth a risk of war. The internationalist must believe that the principle did justify a risk of war.37
However, the preservation of Chinese territorial integrity, which did not
seem to involve American security, appears an odd reason for which to go to
war. Moreover, it should be
pointed out that the professed American concern for Chinese territorial
integrity was highly selective. After entering the war, the U.S. did very
little to help China, focusing instead on fighting Germany. Also, the U.S. government had never
criticized the Soviet Union for its violations of Chinese territorial
integrity--detaching Outer Mongolia in the 1920s (making it a satellite) and
gaining control of Sinkiang province in the 1930s. And in 1945,
Roosevelt explicitly violated Chinese territory in the Far East protocol of the
Yalta Accord by giving the Soviet Union rights to the ports of Darien and Port
Arthur and control of the railways in Manchuria. As
historian Anthony Kubek incisively points out:
The Soviet Union had no more right to hold these ports and railways in Manchuria than did Japan. . . . Roosevelt gave to Stalin at Yalta effective control of the same territory over which the U.S. had gone to war with Japan.38
It should be emphasized that in contrast to Japan, which actually controlled
Chinese territory, the Soviet Union did not already occupy these territories. Rather, Roosevelt seemingly held Chinese
sovereignty in such low regard that he thought he had the right to dispose of
this Chinese territory in order to bribe Stalin into making war on Japan.39
But if China was not the real issue, what was America's motive for war? Roosevelt, like all interventionists,
believed Japan was part of an Axis plot to dominate the world, which would
threaten American security and values. But once the war began the Roosevelt administration put most
of its effort into fighting Germany, which it had planned to do before Pearl
Harbor. Because of this emphasis on Germany, revisionists see Roosevelt's
effort to provoke war with Japan as an indirect way of getting the country into
war with Germany--the back-door-to-war thesis.
Roosevelt had to take such an indirect approach to war with Germany because
a direct approach was not politically feasible. Throughout 1941, Roosevelt
believed it was essential for the United States to enter the war against
Germany, but he recognized that the majority of the American people opposed
such a war even as late as the fall of 1941. Thus, Roosevelt had to rely on deceptive means to edge the
country into war. To placate
public sentiment, Roosevelt, in his 1940 reelection campaign, had pledged that
he would keep the country out of war. Roosevelt publicly preached that his aid-short-of-war
policies--such as Lend-Lease, the destroyers-for-bases deal, de facto naval
convoys of British ships--were intended to keep the U.S. out of war. However, such clearly unneutral acts
would inevitably lead to incidents with Germany.
Despite America's unneutral provocations, Hitler sought peace with the U.S.
because he wanted to concentrate on the war with the Soviet Union. Thus, he ordered German submarine
commanders to avoid incidents with American ships. Incidents, however, were inevitable. In an apparent effort to generate war
fever, Roosevelt deliberately distorted two naval incidents in Fall of
1941--involving the U.S.S Greer and the U.S.S Kearney--claiming that the
Germans had fired on innocent American vessels.40
In reality, the German submarines were responding to American provocations. Roosevelt also promoted other falsehoods
in the hopes of stoking the fires of war, which included the claim that the
U.S. government had come into the possession of a "secret Nazi map"
of South and Central America showing how that continent would be organized
under Nazi rule. Also, Roosevelt
said he had a Nazi German document that detailed a plan to abolish all
religions and liquidate all clergy and create an "International Nazi
Church." Needless to say, the
alleged map and document were not made public then or since.41
By the end of November 1941, an undeclared naval war existed in the Atlantic
as American ships were following a "shoot-on-sight"
policy. Roosevelt had the power to do almost everything to aid Great
Britain and the Soviet Union--including transporting arms and, for the British,
convoying troops--except to send in American land and air forces to fight
Germany directly. But despite the impact of events and the
pro-war propaganda, fully eighty percent of the American public still opposed a
declaration of war. And Congress
was still staunchly opposed to war. And America's belligerent actions could not provoke Germany
into a serious incident that could generate American support for full-scale
war. Thus, Roosevelt would have to
enter war through the back door. That Roosevelt made use of falsehoods and deception regarding
the European War made it understandable that he would rely on the same
deceptive tactics to become involved in war with Japan.
Revisionists contend that entrance into war with Japan would facilitate
American war with Germany. Although many revisionist critics fail to see the connection
because the Axis alliance did not require German entrance into an offensive war
initiated by Japan, people at the time saw an inextricable link between war
with Japan and war with Germany. As Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, one of
the more strident and committed interventionists in the Administration,
confided to his diary:
For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan. . . . And, of course, if we go to war against Japan, it will inevitably lead to war against Germany.42
In his December 9, 1941 radio address, President Roosevelt accused Germany
of being closely involved in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. According to Roosevelt, "We know
that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations with
a joint plan." Roosevelt alleged that "Germany has been telling Japan
that if Japan would attack the U.S. Japan would share the spoils when peace
came."43 With the American public outraged about the underhanded
"surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor, it would not have been difficult
to direct that anger at Germany, especially with the inevitability of
additional incidents in the Atlantic. And given the likelihood of all-out war with the U.S., Hitler
quite reasonably declared war on the U.S. on December 11, in order to gain the
good will of the Japanese government, who, he hoped, might reciprocate by
making war on the Soviet Union. As Thomas Fleming writes in his The New
Dealers' War, Roosevelt was "trying to
bait Hitler into declaring war, or, failing that, persuade the American people
to support an American declaration of war on the two European fascist
powers."44
It should be emphasized that the United States took a hard-line approach to
Japan even though it was aware that such an approach would cause Japan to make
war. U.S. military intelligence
had broken the Japanese top diplomatic code and was reading Japanese diplomatic
communications. Besides the actual
code-breakers, only a few top-level people in the Roosevelt administration had
access to this information. Through Japan's diplomatic messages, it was apparent that
Japan would take military action to grab the necessary resources, if a
favorable diplomatic solution were not achieved. How much more
the U.S. knew about Japanese war plans is debated among historians. Even among revisionists, some would hold
that at least as late as the first days of December 1941, Roosevelt was not
certain that the Japanese would directly attack American territory.
All of this put Roosevelt in a
bind because of his secret commitment to the British and Dutch that the U.S.
would make war against Japan if it moved southward. The problem was whether the American people would be willing
to support a war against the Japanese to preserve British and Dutch colonial
possessions or (even less likely) to help the British prevent the Japanese
occupation of Thailand. which was part of the ADB military plan
Harry Elmer Barnes wrote that the secret military arrangements with the
British and the Dutch "hung like a sword of Damocles over Roosevelt's
head" as the Japanese moved toward a war.
It exposed him to the most dangerous dilemma of his political career: to start a war without an attack on American forces or territory, or refusing to follow up the implementation of ABCD and Rainbow 5 [the military plan based on the agreement] by Britain or the Dutch. The latter [decision] would lead to serious controversy and quarrels among the prospective powers, with the disgruntled powers leaking Roosevelt's complicity in the plan and exposing his mendacity.45
In the early days of December, Roosevelt assured the nervous British that
the U.S. would honor its commitment to fight the Japanese if they moved
southward. As the British
historian John Costello writes, British documents
can leave no doubt that Roosevelt by the eve of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor had given a number of clear, carefully worded assurances of U.S. 'armed support' of Britain in advance of delivering his intended appeal to Congress.46
Roosevelt's monumental problem was how to get Japan to attack the U.S. in
some way in order to solidify the American public behind war. As Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote
in his diary of November 25, 1941: "The question was how we should maneuver them into the
position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to
ourselves."47 The wording
here is critical and is usually glossed over by defenders of orthodoxy. Stimson's writing definitely implies
that the U.S. would not simply passively await a possible attack by Japanese
but would actively "manuever" Japanese into attacking U.S.. Roosevelt
thus sought to create an incident in which the U.S. would be attacked by the
Japanese. It is here that certain
apparent differences among revisionists appear. If, as many revisionists have
claimed, Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, why would he see any reason to create an incident, rather than simply
await the attack? It would thus
seem that as of the beginning of December, Roosevelt either was not certain
that the Japanese war plan included an attack on American territory, or else he
sought a less destructive incident in order to save the Pacific Fleet.
Roosevelt's planned incident consisted of sending "three small
vessels" on an alleged reconnaissance mission. He personally authorized this mission in a December 1 message
to Admiral Thomas Hart, head of the Asiatic Fleet at Manila. Roosevelt specified that each ship was
to be manned by Filipino sailors and commanded by an American naval officer. Furthermore, each vessel was to be armed
with cannon so as to give it the minimum requirements of an American "man
of war." The three little
ships were directed to sail into the path of a Japanese naval task force that
Washington knew was then steaming southward for an invasion of Southeast Asia.48
It was highly unusual for a President to be giving such a detailed order for
a lower level military function. Moreover, as Thomas Fleming writes, "such a voyage might
have made sense in the eighteenth or nineteenth century," but was rather
absurd in an age when airplanes had infinitely greater reconnaissance
capability.49 And the only radio available for one of
the ships could only receive messages, not transmit them. Moreover, Admiral Hart was already
carrying out the necessary reconnaissance by air and was reporting the results
to Washington. From the outset
Hart seemed to recognize the real sacrificial "fishbait" purpose of
the alleged reconnaissance mission.50
Roosevelt's apparent intention of sending the little ships was to have them
blown out of the water, thus providing an incident for war.51
Equipped with cannon, the ships could be presented as far more significant than
they actually were. The incident could be reported as American warships
destroyed by the Japanese. And the killing of a Filipino crew would engender
war fever in the Philippines, where there was strong resistance to getting
involved in war with Japan.52
However, the attack on the little ships never took place. Only one ship, the Isabel could be equipped in short order. Admiral Hart, apparently wanting to preserve the ship, gave
it instructions that were far less provocative than Roosevelt had ordered. As a result, the Isabel was able to avoid Japanese fire. A second ship, the Lanakai, was just about to leave Manila Harbor on December 7
when the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced, and a third ship had not yet
been selected. In short, the Pearl
Harbor attack precluded the need for Roosevelt to create an incident. However, had the American ships been attacked by the
Japanese, Harry Elmer Barnes believed that Pearl Harbor could have been saved.
There can be little doubt that the Cockleship plan of December 1st was designed to get the indispensable attack by a method which would precede the Pearl Harbor attack, avert the latter, and save the Pacific Fleet and American lives.53
This, of course, reflects the revisionist belief that Roosevelt knew in
advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
That Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and had
deliberately withheld information is the most controversial, and perhaps best
known, of the revisionist arguments. The argument runs that Washington intentionally kept the
military commanders in Hawaii in the dark about the impending Japanese attack. This would ensure that no
countermeasures were undertaken that might cause the Japanese to call it off. It would also preclude the possibility
of the American military commanders launching a preemptive attack on the
Japanese fleet, which could have muddied the Japanese culpability needed to
forge a united American public in favor of war.
There is ample evidence of warnings of an impending Japanese attack being
sent to American government authorities. For many years, this argument centered around the American
breaking of the top Japanese diplomatic code. It was discussed at the Army and Navy Pearl Harbor hearings
in 1944 and the 1945-46 congressional hearings. The United States military had
broken the top Japanese diplomatic code, which was called "Purple, "
with a specially-constructed code-breaking machine, also called
"Purple." The deciphered
texts were referred to as "Magic." Only a few top-level people in the Roosevelt administration
had access to this information. The military commanders at Pearl Harbor were not provided
with a "Purple" code-breaking machine. And although they were given
some intelligence information based on "Purple," they were denied the
most crucial information that pointed to war. By late November 1941, code intercepts read in Washington
indicated that Japan was about to make war and break relations with the U.S.. The deciphered diplomatic messages did
not specify Pearl Harbor as the target, but, given that top Washington
officials recognized the imminence of war, it is odd why they did not order a full military alert for
Hawaii in order to play it safe. The actual code-breakers such as Captain Laurance F. Safford,
head of the Communications Security Section of Naval Communications, assumed
that such a warning had been given.
Defenders of the administration would claim that Washington had provided
adequate warning to the Pearl Harbor commanders of a possible attack and that
the latter had failed to take sufficient defensive preparations. This view was embodied in the 1942
Roberts Commission investigation on Pearl Harbor and, in a milder form, in the
1946 Majority Report of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation
of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Pearl
Harbor investigator Henry Clausen, who in 1944-1945 had investigated the
background of the attack at the behest of Secretary of War Stimson, goes to
great lengths in his Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement (published in 1992) to try to show that even if the
military leaders in Hawaii had simply read the newspapers they should have
prepared for a possible Japanese attack.54
In Henry Stimson's final statement
to the Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor
Attack, which was drafted by Clausen, he asserted that even without a warning
from Washington, General Walter C. Short, who was responsible for the defense
of Hawaii,
should have been on the alert. If he did not know that the relations between Japan and the U.S. were strained and broken at any time, he must have been the only man in Hawaii who did not know it, for the radio and newspapers were blazoning these facts daily . . . . And if he did not know that the Japanese were likely to strike without warning, he could have read his history of Japan or known the lessons taught in the Army schools in respect to such matters.55
This defense of the Roosevelt administration is filled with obvious
contradictions. If the commanders
in Hawaii are to be blamed for failing to anticipate an attack on Pearl Harbor,
how can the defenders of the Roosevelt administration likewise claim that there
was no reason for Washington to realize that the Japanese would target Pearl
Harbor? And if the likelihood of a Japanese attack should have been realized by
simply keeping abreast of public news reports, how could Roosevelt make so much
of the idea of a "surprise attack"--the major theme of his famous
"Day of Infamy" speech?
It is hard to see how the Hawaii commanders were culpable. The most crucial alleged warnings from
Washington were those of November 27, in which the phrase "war
warning" was actually used. However, these warnings were totally lacking in clarity. The
message to General Short was characterized by the Army Pearl Harbor Board
(which investigated the Pearl Harbor attack in 1944) as a "Do-or-don't"
message because of its ambiguities and contradictions.56
The message referred to possible
Japanese hostile actions with the breaking of diplomatic relations and
authorized Short to take any measures he thought necessary as long as those
actions did not "alarm" the general populace or "disclose
intent." Moreover, Short was
required to allow the Japanese to commit the first "overt act." These
restrictions essentially ruled out any effective defensive preparations.
General Short interpreted this message as a call to counter sabotage, which
required doing such things as bunching airplanes wing tip to wing tip, thus
making them sitting ducks for a bombing attack. Short informed Washington of
the steps he was taking, and no corrections were forthcoming. In fact, subsequent warnings from
Washington regarding subversion and sabotage convinced Short of the
appropriateness of his actions.57
Admiral Stark's message to Kimmel referred to possible Japanese advances in
the Far East but said nothing about any possible attack on Hawaii. As the 1944
Naval Court of Inquiry asserted, the so-called "war warning" message
sent to Kimmel "directed attention away from Pearl Harbor rather than
toward it."58 Furthermore, in November, Navy officials declared the north
Pacific Ocean a "vacant sea" and ordered all United States and allied
shipping out of this area. This,
of course, was the region over which the Japanese task force would travel. Two weeks before the Pearl Harbor
attack, Kimmel actually dispatched a portion of the fleet to the sea north of
Hawaii for surveillance purposes but he received an order from Washington to
bring his ships back to Oahu. In essence, it would seem that information from
Washington served to hinder if not prevent the commanders in Hawaii from taking
the proper steps to protect their forces.59
To reemphasize, the defenders of the Roosevelt administration want to have
it both ways: that Washington had
no reason to believe that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor and that the
commanders in Hawaii were derelict for not realizing that Hawaii might be
attacked. But having access to the
decoded intercepts obviously meant that Washington possessed more information
on Japanese intentions than did Hawaii. And if the preparations by the military commanders in Hawaii
were deficient, there would seem to be no justifiable reason why Washington did
not put Hawaii on a full alert. Washington ordered such a full alert in June 1940
when the likelihood of war had been infinitely less.60
Another controversial issue regarding the diplomatic code involved the
so-called "winds signals." On November 19th, the Japanese announced
in their J-19 diplomatic code (a lower level code than "Purple,"
which United States was able to decode) the setting up of a so-called
"Winds System," by which Japanese diplomatic officials and consulates
could learn of Tokyo's war intentions in non-coded form (that is, after their
code books had been destroyed) in a regular weather forecast broadcast from
Tokyo. The key phrase "East
Wind Rain" would mean the breaking of diplomatic relations (and probable
war) with the U.S.. The code
destruction orders went out on the first and second of December. On December 4, American intelligence
picked up the "East Wind Rain" message. This was the so-called
"winds execute" message. That American monitors received this message
was accepted in the Army and Navy hearings on Pearl Harbor in 1944. However, at the time of the
Congressional hearings of 1945-46 a major coverup took place. Authorities claimed that no "winds execute" message
had ever been received. And it was true that no messages were
around--they had been apparently destroyed. And a number of witnesses who had previously claimed to have
seen the message were pressured into recanting. Captain Laurance F. Safford, however, despite intense
pressure to change his story, continued to maintain that the "winds execute" message had
been intercepted, decoded, and widely distributed.61
Crucial confirming evidence for the receipt of "Winds" message was
a 1977 interview with Ralph T. Briggs, conducted by the Naval Security Group
and declassified by the National Security Agency in March 1980. Briggs said in
this interview that he was the one who had intercepted the crucial message,
while on duty as chief watch supervisor at the Naval Communication Station at
Cheltenham, Maryland. Briggs further stated that he was ordered by his superior
officer in 1946 not to testify about the matter to the joint Congressional
Committee and to cease any contact with Captain Laurance Safford.62
In addition, both of the Japanese assistant naval attachŽs posted at the
Washington embassy in 1941 have verified that the message was transmitted on
December 4th, exactly as Safford said.63 Defenders of
the administration claim that even if this message had been intercepted, it did
not really tell anything not already known--that diplomatic relations were to
be broken.64 But if the government would go to such great lengths to
cover-up this allegedly harmless evidence, one would expect cover-ups and lies
about much more important matters.
Finally, there is the question as to what leading officials in Washington
were doing in the last 24 hours before the Pearl Harbor attack. Early in the morning of December 6
(Washington time), American intelligence intercepted the so-called "pilot" message, which
announced that Japan's response to America's November 26 ultimatum was
forthcoming. It would come in 14
parts. The first 13 parts were intercepted and decoded by the early hours of
the evening of December 6th, and copies were passed on to the President and to
the military and naval chiefs. The
harsh language recounting the alleged wrongs done by the United States to Japan
clearly pointed to a break in relations. As soon as Franklin D. Roosevelt read
the 13 parts, he reportedly told Harry Hopkins that "This means war."65
On Sunday morning, the final 14th part of the message was picked
up and decoded. It stated that
diplomatic relations with the U.S. were terminated. Ominously, the
time of 1:00 P.M. at which the Japanese ambassador was instructed to deliver
the entire message to Secretary Hull was recognized by the cryptographers as
corresponding with a sunrise attack on Pearl Harbor. A number of intelligence officers urged that a warning to be
sent to Pearl Harbor. But General George Marshall, who had to authorize the
warning, could not be found. Allegedly he was out horseback riding. No warning was sent to
Pearl Harbor until it was too late.66
The various investigations of the Pearl Harbor attack--by the Army, the
Navy, and the Congress--brought out numerous discrepancies in the testimony
regarding these last hours, which revisionists have focused upon. Leading figures could not recall where
they were at the time. Lesser
military figures altered their testimonies to make them fit in with what their
superiors wanted. Revisionists see
this as part of a conspiracy purposively to withhold critical information from
the Pearl Harbor commanders and later to cover-up this operation. As John
Toland writes:
What novelist could persuade a reader to accept the incredible activity during those two days by America's military and civilian leaders? Was it to be believed that the heads of the Army and Navy could not be located on the night before Pearl Harbor? Or that they would later testify over and over that they couldn't remember where they were? Was it plausible that the Chief of Naval Operations, after finally being reminded that he talked to Roosevelt on the telephone that night, could not recall if they had discussed the thirteen-part message. Was it possible to imagine a President who remarked, 'This means war,' after reading the message, not instantly summoning to the White House his Army and Navy commanders as well as his Secretaries of War and Navy? One of Knox's close friends, James G. Stahlman, wrote Admiral Kemp Tolley in 1973 that Knox told him that he, Stimson, Marshall, Stark and Harry Hopkins had spent most of the night of December 6 at the White House with the President: All were waiting for what they knew was coming: an attack on Pearl Harbor.67
While establishment historians admit that the Purple intercepts provided the
evidence that Japan would make war, they make much of the fact that nothing in
the deciphered Japanese diplomatic messages explicitly pinpointed Pearl Harbor
as the target. But at that time lower echelon people did perceive that
possibility. And the Naval Court
of Inquiry, which investigated Pearl Harbor in 1944, maintained:
In the early forenoon of December 7, Washington time, the War and Navy Departments had information which appeared to indicate that a break in diplomatic relations was imminent and, by inference and deduction, that an attack in the Hawaiian area could be expected soon.68
And what was the rationale for not warning Pearl Harbor even if it were not
assumed to be a definite target? Washington had put Hawaii on a full alert in June 1940 with
much less justification. It would seem that if Japan were on the verge of war
with the U.S., a clear warning to Pearl Harbor would have been expected. And the fact of the matter is that there
was a considerable amount of additional information beyond the diplomatic
messages that pointed to an attack on Pearl Harbor. A convergence of evidence should have been noted.
One very important piece of intelligent information pointing to an attack on
Pearl Harbor was the so-called "bomb plot message." This consisted of
requests from the Japanese government in Tokyo to the Japanese consul-general
in Honolulu, Nagoa Kita. One group
of messages, beginning in September 1941, divided Pearl Harbor into a grid and
directed the Japanese consul in Hawaii to report to Tokyo the locations and
number of ships. The Japanese consul's reports were made throughout the fall of
1941 and decoded in Washington. (Washington was also keeping close surveillance on the
leading Japanese spy, cover name Tadashi Morimura, who was engaging in this
espionage.) This information was popularly referred to as the "bomb
plot" messages since a grid is the classic method of planning a bombing
attack. There was no need to know exact ship positions unless the purpose was
to attack them. None of this
information was passed on to the commanders in Hawaii.69
Those who have sought to minimize the significance of these "bomb
plot" messages have contended that Japanese spies made inquiries at other
leading American naval bases; but no such detailed or comprehensive reports,
containing as they did grids and coordinates, were demanded of Japanese
officials and spies at any other American base in the world. That alone
indicated that Hawaii was a special target.
Military intelligence officials realized the significance of the "bomb
plot" messages. They were
specially marked so their significance could not be missed. The FBI also was following these
espionage activities at Pearl Harbor and sending the information to the White
House. Roosevelt would have been
aware of these activities both through information from naval intelligence and
from the FBI.70 President Roosevelt's personal involvement in this issue was
especially demonstrated in his October 1941 meeting with David Sarnoff,
president of RCA. Roosevelt arranged to have Sarnoff provide copies of the cables
between Tokyo and the Honolulu consulate, which were sent through RCA's
Honolulu office, to the Office to Naval Intelligence.71
The most crucial message from the Honolulu consulate was sent to Tokyo on
December 3rd. It informed Tokyo that the Japanese spies had set up a
system of codes confirming the movement of various American warships through
the use of signals in windows at Lanikai Beach, which could be spotted by
off-shore Japanese "fishing" boats and submarines. This vital
information could then be passed on to the Japanese carrier task force. The
signal system would operate through December 6th. Thus, the messages revealed the time of the planned attack.72
None of the information of the bomb plot messages was provided to the Hawaii
military commanders. The Director
of Naval Intelligence, Captain Alan Kirk, was replaced in October 1941, because
he insisted on warning Hawaii.73 It is also noteworthy that the Roosevelt
administration allowed such flagrant spying at Pearl Harbor, going against the
requests of J. Edgar Hoover to arrest or deport the spies.74
It has been acknowledged in establishment circles that if the United States
government had broken the Japanese naval codes, it would have been aware of the
impending attack on Pearl Harbor.75 Claims have been made that the British
and the Dutch had broken the Japanese naval codes. The most prominent individual who has made such a claim is
Eric Nave, an Australian officer attached to the Royal Navy, who was one of the
actual code-breakers.76 But mainstream historians have doubted
these allegations and have held that American intelligence had not yet broken
the Japanese naval codes, especially the leading Japanese naval code, generally
called JN-25. In contrast, Robert B. Stinnett contends that American
code-breakers were able to read the Japanese naval codes. (Stinnett uses
different terminology for the codes, claiming that the name "JN-25"
was not in use until after the Pearl Harbor attack.)77
Stinnett writes:
Testimony given to various Pearl Harbor investigations suggests that the navy codes were not solved until Spring 1942. The author's research proves otherwise. Their solution emerged in the early fall of 1940.78
According to Stinnett, American code-breakers were reading the Japanese
coded naval communications, called the "Kaigun Ango," the most
important of the codes being the 5-Num (naval operations), SM (naval movement),
S (merchant marine), and Yobidashi Fugo (radio call sign) codes.. The intercepted messages made it clear that Pearl Harbor
would be attacked on December 7, 1941. Stinnett continues:
A sixty-year coverup has hidden American and Allied success in obtaining the solutions to the Kaigun Ango prior to Pearl Harbor. American naval officers hid key code documents from congressional investigators. Naval intelligence records, deceptively altered, were placed in the U.S. Navy's cryptology files to hide the cryptographic success.79
Stinnett points out that much of this information is still classified or
blacked out in those documents available the public.80
However, he was able to locate
some documents that explicitly show that the naval codes were broken, and he
had this confirmed by interviews with surviving code-breakers.81
Proponents of the mainstream
position categorically reject Stinnett's contention that American code-breakers
were reading Japanese naval codes. In a recent article, Stephen Budiansky
writes that the U.S. was unable to read JN-25 or any other high level naval
code prior to Pearl Harbor, in part because the Japanese kept changing the code
books. By the time the American code-breakers made some headway in breaking a
code, the code would be changed to the extent that the code-breakers would have
to start over again. It was only
after Pearl Harbor that successful decoding took place. All of this is brought
out, Budiansky intones, in recently released documents in the National
Archives, which provide month-by-month reports on the code-breaking progress of
the Navy cryptanalytic office in Washington (known as OP-20-GY) during the
entire 1940-1941 period. These
monthly reports include the progress of navy decryption units in the Pacific. Budiansky writes:
The monthly reports filed by OP-20-G confirm that at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, not a single JN-25 message from the previous 12 months had been read. . . . The reports also confirm only two other Japanese naval code systems being examined seriously before Pearl Harbor, and neither was yielding any results, either."82
Budiansky implies that unwary researchers sometimes do not realize that
information intercepted in 1941 was not decoded read until 1945-1946.
But even if American intelligence had been unable to read the Japanese naval
code, Stinnett provides additional information that American monitors had
actually tracked the Japanese Pearl Harbor task force by means of radio
direction finding techniques. American stations could intercept radio transmissions that
enabled trained operators to pinpoint the location of the sender even if the
message were indecipherable. The mainstream position has
long been that no radio transmissions from the Japanese task force were
intercepted after it had begun its movement toward Hawaii. And Japanese naval officials have
testified that the fleet was under orders to maintain radio silence.83
Stinnett, however, points out that the order for radio silence from Admiral
Yamamoto allowed radio communication in an extreme emergency.
Radio intercepts obtained by U.S. Navy monitoring stations disclosed that the broadcasts continued after the order was issued. Instead of radio silence there was substantial, continuous radio traffic from the Japanese naval ministry, foreign ministry, and warships.84
John Toland had earlier made the claim that the Pearl Harbor task force had
been tracked, though with less hard evidence. He wrote that a Dutch naval attachŽ in Washington, Johan
Ranneft, received information at the Office of Naval Intelligence indicating
that the Americans knew a Japanese task force was heading toward Hawaii. Ranneft revealed this information in his
diary.85
Also, an American steamship, the
Lurline, had picked up the Japanese task force's radio traffic and reported it
to the FBI. Finally, Toland cited
a seaman in the intelligence office of the 12th Naval District
headquarters in San Francisco who had intercepted the Japanese radio traffic
and used it to plot the location of the task force as it headed eastward toward
Hawaii. This information was supposedly sent on to the White House. Toland initially referred to this
individual as "Seaman Z," who was later identified as Robert D. Ogg.86
What Stinnett provides is
documentary evidence to complement and give credence to these eyewitness
accounts.
How do these findings mesh with the Japanese claims of radio silence? In essence, Stinnett maintains that
ships in the Japanese fleet only engaged in limited radio communication. Radio
communication was necessary in order to regroup the task force after a storm
had scattered ships beyond visual signaling range. The Japanese were under the impression that low-power
frequencies would travel only a few miles and thus be secure from enemy
interception. However, a solar
storm caused the radio transmissions to travel vast distances, allowing for
interception by American listening posts.87
Furthermore, Stinnett maintains
that American monitors were able to determine the location of the Japanese
fleet from transmissions to it from shore-based stations in Japan. This involved analysis of the changing
radio frequencies. As the
distances increased between the ships and the shore transmitters, the radio
frequencies, by necessity, changed. Stinnett asserts: "A first day
communications intelligence student, aware that Radio Tokyo and Radio Ominato
were transmitting to warships could approximate--if not pinpoint--the position
of the vessels." 88
If, as Stinnett claims, the United States had actually tracked the Japanese
task force while knowing that Japan was on the verge of war, it would provide
conclusive proof that high American officials were aware of the impending
attack. And one might add, why would the U.S. government make the onerous
effort to keep tabs on the movement of the Japanese fleet and then not make use
of this crucial information? The
only counter argument is that Stinnett is completely wrong about the
documentary evidence--that no tracking had taken place. And it would seem that
Stinnett would be so radically wrong on this issue that it could only be the
result of fraud on his part, not simply error.
It should be added that unlike other revisionists Stinnett's argument posits
a very large conspiracy that stretched beyond Washington. (In contrast, Barnes,
by the 1960s, had limited to conspiracy to Roosevelt and Marshall.)89
Stinnett goes so far as to
maintain that Joseph J. Rochefort, the commander of the cryptographic center at
Pearl Harbor, and Edwin Layton, the Pacific Fleet's chief security officer,
were aware of the approaching Japanese fleet and refrained from warning Kimmel.
This tends to stretch credulity. However, Stinnett does cite documentary
evidence, which, though ridiculed by proponents of the mainstream position, has
not been directly refuted.90
Revisionist Mark Willey puts forth an argument that would keep Hawaiian
Intelligence out of the loop. Willey points out that it requires two bearings
to determine the location of radio transmissions, while Hawaii had only one. He claims that Hawaii was deliberately
sent false cross-bearings that precluded accurate tracking.91
In addition to the American code-breaking, revisionists have cited a number
of other warnings of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor that were provided to
the United States government. One
of the most intriguing came from Dusko Popov, a Serb who worked as a double
agent for both Germany and Britain. Popov's true sympathies, however, were with
the Allies. Popov was also a
notorious playboy, who was code-named "Tricycle" because of his
proclivity for bedding two women simultaneously. It is reputed that Popov was Ian Fleming's model for James
Bond.92
In the summer of 1941, Germany sent Popov to the U.S. to establish an
espionage cadre. Popov's
instructions were contained in an questionnaire miniaturized to microdots,
which could only be read by a microscope. The instructions asked Popov and his subordinates to obtain
information about American war material production and, more ominously, called
for a detailed study of Pearl Harbor and its nearby airfields. Popov learned from a German spy that the
Japanese needed this information for their planned attack on Pearl Harbor
before the end of 1941. Popov made
this information known to his British handlers, and the British had him provide
this information to the FBI when he came to America in August 1941.93
It has been argued that the FBI did not trust Popov's information and the
microdots, and did no0t fully transmit it to the White House. One explanation is that the prudish J.
Edgar Hoover gave little credibility to Popov's information because of his
distaste for his playboy lifestyle.94 However, documents the FBI released in
1983 show that it assigned considerable importance to Popov's information and
that this information was passed on to high ranking officers in Army and Naval
intelligence. In Frank Paul
Mintz's analysis of the FBI material on Popov, he found that much of the
information had been blackened out, so it would be impossible to know that the
important parts were not transmitted to the military intelligence and the White
House.95
As Mintz concludes:
It passes credibility to assume that the microdot questionnaire remained effectively dead to the world in 1941. English intelligence knew about it; the FBI knew; and so did the intelligence services of U.S. armed forces. Most likely both Churchill and Roosevelt became familiar with the full contents of Popov's microdots during the last quarter of the year.96
On the January 27, 1941, Dr.
Ricardo Shreiber, the Peruvian envoy in Tokyo, told Max Bishop, third secretary
of the United States embassy, that he had just learned from his intelligence
sources that there was a Japanese war plan involving a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. After being presented to
Ambassador Joseph Grew, this information was sent to the State Department,
where it was read by Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Naval Intelligence.
Arthur McCollum of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt's close confidante according
to Stinnett, sent a cable on this issue to Kimmel, with the analysis that
"The Division of Naval Intelligence places no credence in these
rumors" and that "no move against Pearl Harbor appears imminent or
planned for the foreseeable future."97
In contrast to the reaction of
Naval Intelligence, Ambassador Grew was much impressed by the information. As he wrote in his diary:
There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case of a break with the U.S., are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor. I rather guess that the boys in Hawaii are not precisely asleep.98
The American ambassador was not the only source from Japan providing
warnings of the impending attack. Early in the fall of 1941, Kilsoo Haan, a
Korean agent-lobbyist in Washington, told Eric Severeid of CBS that the Korean
sources in Korea and Japan had proof that the Japanese were going to attack
Pearl Harbor before Christmas. In late October, Haan finally convinced Senator
Guy Gillette of Iowa that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor. Gillette alerted the State Department,
Army and Navy Intelligence, and President Roosevelt personally. Stanley K.
Hornbeck, then the number three-man at the State Department and an intimate of
Henry Stimson, wrote a memorandum to Secretary of State Hull stating that
Haan's Pearl Harbor warning should be taken seriously.99
In early December 1941, the Dutch Army in Java succeeded in decoding a
dispatch from Tokyo to its Bangkok embassy, referring to planned Japanese
attacks on the Philippines and Hawaii. The Dutch passed the information on to
Brigadier General Elliot Thorpe, the U.S. military observer. Thorpe found this
information so disturbing that he sent Washington a total of four warnings, the
last one going to General Marshall's intelligence chief. Thorpe's message was acknowledged and he
was ordered to send no further messages concerning the matter. The Dutch also
had their Washington military attachŽ, Colonel F. G. L. Weijerman, personally
warn General Marshall.100.
Dr. Hans Thomsen, the German charge d'affaires in Washington, who was
anti-Nazi, told Colonel William J. Donovan, American intelligence chief (and
later head of the OSS), that the Germans intended to attack Pearl Harbor. This information was put into a
memorandum. It is hard to believe that Donovan would not have brought this to
Roosevelt's attention since he conferred with him several times in November and
early December 1941.101
According to Congressman Martin Dies, his House Un-American Activities
Committee's investigation into Japanese intelligence activities in 1941 had
uncovered a map and other documents providing "precise information of the
proposed attack" on Pearl Harbor. When Dies informed Secretary of State Hull, he was told to
keep quiet on the matter because of "extremely delicate" relations
between Japan and the U.S.. Dies
claimed that representatives from the State Department and the Army and Navy
inspected the map.102
>Revisionists also cite a number of revelations that officials of the
United States government, including Roosevelt, had prior knowledge of the Pearl
Harbor attack. In his November 15, 1941, secret press briefing, Marshall told
his audience that the U.S. had information derived from encrypted Japanese
messages that war between the U.S. and Japan would break out during the first
ten days of December. Although
Marshall apparently did not specifically mention Pearl Harbor, his reference to
the cracked codes implied that American intelligence would have been aware of
the location of the impending attack.103
Colonel Carleton Ketchum substantiates J. Edgar Hoover's claim that
Roosevelt knew of the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor. According to
Ketchum, at the behest of Congressmen George Bender of Ohio, he attended a private meeting of a
select group of congressmen and government officials in Washington in early
1942 at which J. Edgar Hoover
referred to various warnings of the attack on Pearl Harbor that he had passed on to FDR. Hoover also said that Roosevelt had
received information on the impending attack from other sources. Hoover was
allegedly told by Roosevelt to keep quiet on that matter. Ketchum said that before Hoover spoke,
the group was reminded of their usual pledge of secrecy (confidential matters
were supposedly often discussed before the group), but that Ketchum believed
that since the release of Toland's Infamy in
1982, which discussed similar matters, he was freed of his pledge of secrecy.
Ketchum had referred to this meeting and the talk on Pearl Harbor in general
terms in his 1976 autobiography, in which he stated that he still observed his
pledge of silence on the specifics of what was discussed. It was this earlier reference that helps
to give Ketchum's later statement regarding Hoover's actual message some
credibility.104
In an oral history, John A.
Burns, a governor of Hawaii, said that while he was a police officer on the
Honolulu force, an FBI agent informed him in early December 1941 of the
impending attack on Pearl Harbor. Other witnesses identified the agent as
Robert Shivers.105
One of the most fascinating revelations comes from Joe Leib, a newspaper
reporter who had formerly held posts in the Roosevelt administration. Leib claimed that his friend, Secretary
of State Cordell Hull, confided to him on November 29, 1941 that President
Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor within a few
days, and that the President was going to let this happen as a way to get the
country into war. Hull was strongly opposed to this scheme. He turned over to Leib a document
containing a transcript of Japanese radio intercepts which allegedly concerned
the Pearl Harbor plan. While making Leib promise never to reveal his source,
Hull urged him to take the story to the press. Leib took the story to the United Press bureau, which it
refused to run it. Although Leib
did manage to get a version of it placed onto United Press's foreign cable,
only one newspaper took it, the Honolulu Advertiser, which created a front-page banner headline in its
Sunday, November 30 issue: "Japanese May Strike Over Weekend."106
A recent Pearl Harbor investigator, Daryl S. Borgquist, contends that Don C.
Smith, who directed War Services for the Red Cross before WWII, was told by Roosevelt in November 1941 to prepare secretly for
an impending Japanese attack on Hawaii. This story came to light in a 1995 letter from Smith's
daughter, Helen C. Hamman, to President Clinton dealing with the issue of the
culpability of Admiral Kimmel and General Short, which was then being
reconsidered by the U.S. government. Roosevelt, Ms. Hamman wrote, told her father that he was to
keep this effort secret from the military personnel on Hawaii. Roosevelt said that "the American
people would never agree to enter the war in Europe unless they were attack
[sic] within their own borders." Borquist was able to confirm the basics
of Hamman's story--the Red Cross did quietly send large quantities of medical
supplies and experienced medical personnel to Hawaii shortly before Dec. 7,
1941.107
How is one to evaluate the various parts of the revisionist position? The evidence would seem to be clear that
Roosevelt provoked the Japanese to attack the United States. It is apparent that the U.S. could have
taken alternative policies aimed at the preservation of peace. And given the threat the U.S. posed to
Japan in its very own geographical region, it was quite understandable that
Japan would strike at the U.S.. Moreover, American government officials clearly recognized
that the American policies would push Japan into belligerency. Furthermore, it seems clear that
Roosevelt desired a Japanese attack on an American territory or ship in order
to galvanize public support behind a declaration of war that would enable him
to honor his commitments in the ADB agreement.
Nevertheless, some qualifications are necessary. It is not as apparent, or necessary for the revisionist
thesis, that Roosevelt was following some rigid plan to achieve war with Japan
going back to the first part of 1940, as some hard revisionists such as
Stinnett maintain. It is quite conceivable that at times
Roosevelt considered maintaining peace with the Japanese so as to focus on the
European war. Moreover, it does
not seem to have been in Roosevelt's character to have a perfectly consistent
policy--certainly this was the case in his domestic policy. As revisionist Frederic Sanborn opines:
Therefore it may be true that there was a complex ambivalence, not thoroughly thought out, in Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward the expedience of peace or war with Japan. It is quite possible that he did not fully commit himself to the latter choice until late in November 1941. By his own express declarations we know that he deliberately temporized. Temporizing is sometimes merely a way to postpone making a decision, but it may also be a method of awaiting a favorable opportunity to put into effect a decision already made.108
That Roosevelt had foreknowledge of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
requires some qualifications. It is likely that not all failures to see the
impending attack on Pearl Harbor were the result of conspiracy. As Harry Elmer Barnes realized, part of
the reason for the failure of official Washington to alert Hawaii was its
fixation on Japanese troop movements in the Southeast East Asia because of the
implications this had on the ADB agreement.109
Also as late as the first days of December, there seems to have been extreme
nervousness among Roosevelt and his inner circle that the Japanese might avoid
attacking American territory. Certainly, the British government seemed to be of this
opinion in its effort to get assurances from the U.S. that it would honor its
commitment to fight the Japanese when they moved southward.110
And, of course, why would
Roosevelt try to arrange an incident with the three little ships if he knew the
Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor? Perhaps, Roosevelt was aware of the possibility of the attack
on Pearl Harbor but lacked certitude. Then again, as Harry Elmer Barnes implied, perhaps Roosevelt
sought to save the fleet by getting the U.S. into the war earlier through an
incident involving the little ships.
But while Roosevelt might not have been certain of the Pearl Harbor attack,
it would seem that he was at least aware of its likelihood. There is just too much converging
evidence to conclude otherwise--that the attack on Pearl Harbor took Roosevelt
completely by surprise. Perhaps, some of this evidence can be questioned, but
it is hard to question all of it. Even before the new information provided by Stinnett became
known, Frank Paul Mintz concluded that "the 'argument from saturation' is
the most persuasive one in behalf of the contention that Washington was
forewarned."111 If the information provided by Stinnett
is accurate--that the U.S. actually was reading the Japanese naval codes and
was tracking the task force as it moved toward Hawaii--it would by itself be
sufficient to prove the revisionist case.
Of course, a number of arguments (some mutually exclusive) have been used to
criticize the overall revisionist position. (Earlier in this essay, criticisms of specific revisionist
points have been noted and countered.) One of the mildest deals with the idea
that while the agencies of the U.S. collected information that would show that
Pearl Harbor was a target, such information was not in Roosevelt's hands. However, Roosevelt was actively involved
in American foreign policy decision-making, so it would seem hard to believe
that he would be uninformed regarding intelligence issues. And as discussed earlier in this essay,
Stinnett points out that Roosevelt was given access to, and was interested in,
specific intelligence information regarding Pearl Harbor.
A more fundamental criticism of the revisionist position relies on an
argument made by Roberta Wohlstetter in Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decisions112
that claims that American intelligence was so overwhelmed with information,
which she refers to as "noise," that it could not make an accurate
evaluation. Wohlstetter
acknowledges that in hindsight one could see that information pointed to a
Japanese attack, but that before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor it was
impossible to select out the valid information, which was "imbedded in an
atmosphere of 'noise.'"113 However,
it is hard to see how this could be an insurmountable problem for intelligence
gatherers. Being able to select
the wheat from the chaff is their fundamental function. "Noise" would exist in any
intelligence situation. It is not
apparent that the situation American intelligence faced in 1941 was vastly more
complicated than what is normally the case.
Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon write that in a "thorough search of more
than thirty years, including all publications released up to May 1, 1981 we have
not discovered one document or one word of sworn testimony that substantiates
the revisionist position on Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor."114
One wonders what the authors mean here. Certainly, there is evidence for the
revisionist case.. If Goldstein
and Dillon115 use the term "substantiate"
to mean something like absolute proof, it must be admitted that no one
document, to date, absolutely proves the revisionist case. But then again a single document rarely
"proves" any historical argument. It is numerous pieces of evidence that point to one
conclusion. Michael Shermer makes
use of this "convergence of evidence" argument to prove that the
Holocaust happened and for historical proof in general.116
It would certainly seem to be applicable to Pearl Harbor. And this argument meshes with Mintz's
"argument from saturation."
Another criticism of the revisionist position is the rejection of the
possibility of a successful conspiracy. Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon assume
that such a conspiracy would have had to have encompassed a large number of
individuals.
To accept the revisionist position, one must assume that almost every one of those individuals, from the President on down, was a traitor. Somewhere along the line someone would have recalled his solemn oath to defend the U.S. against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and have blown the whistle.117
But there is no need to assume a massive conspiracy because its actions were
extremely limited--the conspirators simply refrained from sending necessary
information to Hawaii. And there
is no reason to assume that the members of Roosevelt's inner circle would ever
publicly confess to this operation because instead of regarding their action as
traitorous, they undoubtedly believed that they were acting for the good of the
country.
Other arguments against the revisionist thesis make assumptions about
Roosevelt's character--that he was too humanitarian to sacrifice American lives.
Dillon and Goldstein, for example,
write that "nothing in his history suggests that this man could plot to
sink American ships and kill thousands of American soldiers and sailors."118
But, as demonstrated by his efforts to get into the war, Roosevelt, like
many other leaders considered great, was not squeamish about the loss of lives
to achieve a higher good. And
contrary to the Goldstein and Dillon scenario, revisionists do not accuse
Roosevelt of actively plotting to kill Americans. He simply allowed the attack to take place. Moreover, as
pointed out earlier, Roosevelt could have reasonably expected the damage to
have been much less than it was. According to the conventional wisdom of the day, the
battleships in Pearl Harbor were virtually invulnerable to air attack and the
harbor was too shallow for torpedoes to be effective.119
A related argument assumes that allowing the fleet to be destroyed was just
too much of a risk for Roosevelt to have taken. But leaders considered
"great" have been known for taking risks--think of Napoleon, or
Alexander the Great. And the American risk was actually not that great
considering what Roosevelt thought to be the alternative if the U.S. did not
enter the war--Axis domination of the world that would imperil the U.S..
Moreover, because of the anti-war stance of the American public, Roosevelt
realistically believed that only an overt attack on the U.S. could generate the
necessary public support for war. Thus, from Roosevelt's point of view, only an attack on the
U.S. would enable to U.S. to take the necessary step--i.e., war--for its
survival. Any risk would be worth
it--somewhat like the risk a terminal cancer patient takes in having a serious,
even experimental operation, in order to stave off an otherwise unavoidable
death. But again there was no
reason for Roosevelt to regard the risk to be of any great magnitude--certainly
the security of continental U.S. was not endangered. Moreover, as pointed out
earlier, Roosevelt could have reasonably expected the damage to have been much
less than it was. And Japan was
not perceived as an all-powerful foe. Once the Allies, which included the Soviet Union, had taken
care of the greatest danger--Germany--it could reasonably be assumed that they
could easily defeat Japan.
Henry Stimson revealed in his diary that the White House proponents of war
could see the positive results of the Pearl Harbor attack from the very outset:
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.120
Finally, many mainstream historians, instead of writing with any type of
detachment, have closely identified with World War II as the "good
war," and are automatically hostile to any ideas that might tarnish this
image. This is quite apparent in
Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon, who refer to the Allies as the "free
world" even when Stalinist Russia is included. Ultimately,
Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon view the revisionists as not simply producing
erroneous history but as posing a deliberate threat to human freedom. Prange,
Goldstein, and Dillon write:
We would not devote so much space to it [the revisionist interpretation] except for two frightening aspects. First, such disregard for the laws of evidence undermines the structure of Occidental justice, so laboriously erected over the centuries. If contemporary documents and sworn testimony can be disregarded in favor of unsupported charges and personal venom, no citizen is safe. . . . It also recalls uncomfortably the notion so widespread among the Germans after World War I, and such a favorite thesis with Hitler, that Germany did not really suffer military defeat, but had been stabbed in the back by politicians on the home front.121
Thus, Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon connect Pearl Harbor revisionism with
Nazism. The emotionalism evident in such thinking can easily distort their
writing. In short, they judge the
revisionist account by much higher standards of proof than are conventionally
applied to historical events.
It can be wondered what could possibly constitute proof of the revisionist
argument that could satisfy adherents of the establishment position. It should
be noted that in rejecting the revisionist thesis mainstream historians are
quite willing to abandon establishment arguments fervently held in the past. For example, John Prados, a proponent of
the mainstream position, actually accepts Stinnett's contention that the
Japanese fleet approaching Hawaii did not maintain radio silence and that
American intelligence monitored its radio transmissions. Now the radio silence argument had been
a bulwark of the mainstream position to explain why the Japanese task force
could reach Pearl Harbor undetected. The fact that the mainstream historians might have been
completely wrong on this crucial point, however, does not cause Prados to
consider the idea that the revisionists might be right in their overall view. Rather, Prados goes on to chastise
Stinnett for
attributing every failure to a nefarious 'plan,' giving no attention to the ambitions of certain Navy officers who wanted to dominate all intelligence, operations and communications services to the fleet . . . . and their plan was not a conspiracy to get the U.S. into World War II.122
But what evidence would be necessary to prove the revisionist thesis? It
appears that for some establishment thinkers no type of evidence would provide
sufficient proof. Certainly, Prados' argument allows for a pre-emptive
rejection of revisionism even if the revisionist contention that American
intelligence could read the Japanese naval codes would be accepted as true.
As revisionist James J. Martin aptly points out:
There are never enough data to enable one to prove an unpopular historical thesis. An establishment, having anchored its lines, predictably vilifies a rival and subjects those involved to ridicule and ultimately to personal detraction and traducement which goes far beyond that. This ad hominem denigration is expected to transfer to their intellectual product. And no matter what the latter put on the record, the former insist that it is not enough 'proof,' regardless of how flimsy or unconvincing was the 'proof' used to create the establishment position.123
Pre-conceived ideas generally control historical observations. Historians, especially those who make
their living in academic circles, must necessarily work within the paradigmatic
confines of the prevailing orthodoxy, especially where taboo topics are
involved. The heretic must labor on the scholarly fringes, with little or no
financial backing and no major avenues for dissemination. Perhaps this would be considered a
tautology, but it is likely that the revisionist account of Pearl Harbor and
the origins of the war with Japan can never receive a fair hearing in
mainstream circles until the presentation of World War II as the "good
war" is no longer of great instrumental value to the reigning
establishment.124 Obviously, the "good war"
scenario still serves a vital purpose as America, victorious over the mighty
Taliban, marches forward to make the world safe from "terrorism."
[http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/articles/pearl.html].
[http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200106185.shtml].
http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/11/4/Lutton431-467.html