PEARL HARBOR

In the spring of 1940, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France were conquered by Germany. Britain's RAF was successful in defending the country from Hitler's Luftwaffe, and the German invasion of England was postponed. Hitler turned his blitzkrieg eastward in the spring of 1941 and attacked Russia.

There is every reason to believe that when France fell, President Roosevelt became convinced that the United States should join the side of Great Britain and the Allies. If the United States didn't fight now, they would face Germany alone, as the last democratic force in the world. But what was FDR to do? His people supported isolationism.

Not only did the President have to strengthen its armed forces, but he had to unite all Americans in support of the war effort. The question was, how could the country be made to fight? Only a cataclysmic event, even more drastic than the Panay Incident, could get the Congress to issue a declaration of war. Even more importantly, the people of the United States were needed to make the total mobilization of the country possible and successful. One of the Axis powers must be forced to involve the United States in the war and to arouse the anger of the American people. This was unquestionably a difficult decision for the President to make.

It should be noted that the Tripartite Pact was signed on September 28, 1940. It was an alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan. In it, the three nations agreed to help one another if attacked. This meant that war with Japan meant war with Germany and Italy. This played an important part in FDR's diplomatic strategy.

These are the steps which Roosevelt chose to take:

1. He strengthened the United States military.

2. He violated U.S. neutrality with the Lend Lease Act.

3. He applied increasing economic pressure on Japan with the embargo.

4. He made commitments to help Britain against Germany in Europe if the U.S. was attacked by Japan in the Pacific.

5. He told Japan to get out of China or the embargo would continue.

6. He kept a weak U.S. fleet in the Pacific against military advice for one purpose, an invitation to a Japanese surprise attack.

7. He furthered the surprise by withholding decoded Japanese messages from the U.S. Navy, which gave Pearl Harbor as the destination of the attack.

If the information had been given to the naval commanders in Hawaii, the fleet would have been put on alert and kept at sea. Japanese spies in Hawaii would have informed Tokyo and the surprise attack would have been cancelled. Instead, the whole fleet was docked in the harbor, like sitting ducks just waiting to be sunk.

Diplomatically, Roosevelt's strategy was a complete success. Militarily, our ship and personnel losses mark December 7, 1941 as the day of tragic defeat. Japan had been made to commit the first act of war. Despite that fact that the people of the United States unified behind the war effort and were victorious in the end, a terrible price was paid. . . .

Sources: Paul Burtness and Warren U. Roin, The Puzzle of Pearl Harbor

(Evanston, Illinois: Peterson & Co., 1962), pp. 228-229.

Robert A. Theobald, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor

(Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair Publishers, 1954), pp. 2-5.

PEARL HARBOR

Since the United States had the Japanese decoding machine, it is true then that the leaders of this country had a huge amount of information at hand concerning the enemy. Unfortunately, they did not know the exact date of the attack. Stalin and Russia had received much more precise information concerning the when (the exact date & time), the where (a five point attack), the why (Hitler had finished conquering France), and the how (the blitzkrieg). This was not the case with the United States and Pearl Harbor.

It is much easier after the event, to sort the relevant information from the irrelevant information. After the event, of course, the signal is always crystal clear. We can now see what disaster it was signaling, since the disaster did, in fact, occur. We must remember that the decisionmakers of the time had to hear the signal through all of the "noise". In Washington D.C., Pearl Harbor signals were coming in at the same time as signals were coming in from Europe. Since Europe was the center of the war, its signals were probably given more importance than those of the Pacific and Asia. Also, there were other signals coming in from the Pacific. Japan was making plans to attack Russia from the East. Japan was already conducting a war in China and those signals, too, reached the United States.

In short, we failed to anticipate Pearl Harbor not because we lacked relevant information, but because we had a multitude of irrelevant information to deal with.

How could the unthinkable have happened? How could a large Japanese fleet enter Hawaiian waters undetected? How could their aircraft have evade our radar? Where were the U.S. scouting planes? Why were U.S. planes lined up outside in plain sight, perfect targets for Japanese bombing? How could the U.S. be caught by surprise?

It was no secret that in 1941 U.S.-Japanese relations were deteriorating. But could the whole tragedy have been avoided by a more creative, more flexible U.S. stance? Had American embargoes hurt Japan so much that she had no other choice but to fight for her life? Had Secretary of State Cordell Hull offered terms that were so harsh to Japan concerning the China Incident that no nation could have accepted them? Was Washington D.C. too preoccupied with the war in Europe and in the Atlantic? Had the U.S. made itself too weak and vulnerable by sending ships and military supplies to Britain?

What did President Roosevelt know? Was he alone responsible or even able to hold back information concerning an attack? Does the President of the United States have that kind of power? What did the President's advisors know and did they fail to inform the President?

These and many other questions have plagued the American public from December 7, 1941, until this very day. Eight official investigations by congressional committees produced a huge amount of testimony and documentation but could not come up with the clear-cut answers that would have satisfied the American people. Nor could the investigators decide upon any single individual as solely responsible for this tragedy. Today the story of American unreadiness at Pearl Harbor remains a puzzle with no single answer, a drama with no individual villain.

Sources: Roberta Nohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision

(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 386-387.

Gordon W. Prange, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History

(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1986), pp. xxxii-xxxiii.