By Josh Krab
Many
school teachers teach history as if it is just a collection of events that we
must remember in order to be intelligent. History is a series of events that we
can and must learn from in order to be successful in the future. Dates and
significant events are important in history but many people forget that the
events leading up to that moment are even more important. The attack on Pearl Harbor is an event that is familiar to everyone.
Many people know what happened on December 7th 1941, but what many
people don’t know is what happened before that tragic event. Why did the
Japanese decide to attack the most powerful nation on earth? The fact is that
the attack on Pearl Harbor was no accident. It
was not a failure of American intelligence. It was not permissible because of
some brilliant Japanese intelligence. It was a deliberately provoked event by
the highest levels of the U.S.
government.
In 1941, polls conducted in the United States
showed that over 80% of the citizens opposed getting involved in World War II.
However, Franklin Roosevelt was using warships to escort cargo ships across the
Atlantic to supply England
with war goods. This use of war ships triggered a series of events that led to
the attack on Pearl Harbor and our involvement
in the war. On October 16, 1941, a German torpedo hit the U.S. destroyer Kearny.
Fifteen days later, the destroyer Rueben
James was torpedoed and 100 American sailors died, being the first U.S.
warship that was sunk in the war.[1]
These events took place in the Atlantic but
yet our entrance into the war came from an attack in the Pacific.
In 1937, a group of U.S. Navy ships
led by the gunboat Panay was
escorting merchant ships through a war zone on the Yangtze River in China.
On December 12, 1937, Japanese planes attacked the group, sinking the Panay and three
oil supply vessels, and killing three people. Earlier that year, Japanese
planes had attacked the British ambassador’s car.[2]
The message in these attacks was clear to the West: get out and stay out of our
business. This event was America’s
entry into the World War II. It happened two years after the Neutrality Act in
which Congress had forbidden the President to use the U.S. armed
forces to protect people who had taken the risk of entering a war zone. FDR’s
violation of this act set a precedent for future actions in the Orient.
On the morning of December 7, 1941,
at 7:55 a.m., the Japanese navy attacked the U.S. forces in the Pacific. The
base was attacked by 353 Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes in two
waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. The main attack occurred in Pearl
Harbor but there were also secondary attacks which occurred in the Philippines, Wake Island, Midway Island,
and elsewhere. Five battleships, three cruisers, and three destroyers were sunk
and other ships damaged; 188 aircraft were destroyed on the ground; 2,403
American soldiers, sailors and civilians were killed, and 1,178 wounded.[3] The
next day, President Roosevelt addressed Congress asking for a declaration of
war and stated that the attack was “unprovoked”. But was the attack really unprovoked?
One
of the U.S. government’s top
experts on Japan
was Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum. In early 1940, McCollum was placed
in control of all intelligence information about Japan that was routed to President
Roosevelt. McCollum believed that the U.S.
should get involved in the war to help Britain
defeat Germany.[4]
But he faced a problem: a recent Gallop poll showed that 88% of the American
people opposed U.S.
involvement in the war.[5]
McCollum began to devise a way to change the minds of the American people and
believed the best way would be to lure the Japanese into attacking the U.S.
Although
we don’t have a lot of information on how much McCollum talked with Roosevelt, we do know that in October of 1940 McCollum
circulated a memo containing an eight-point plan[6]:
1.
Make an arrangement with Britain
for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.
2.
Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of
base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch
East Indies.
3.
Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek.
4.
Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore
5.
Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient
6.
Keep the main strength of the US
fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian
Islands.
7.
Insisted that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic
concessions, particularly oil.
8.
Completely embargo all trade with Japan,
in collaboration with a similar embargo
imposed by the British Empire.
McCollum’s 1940 memo ends with his
hope that by these eight steps “Japan
could be led to commit an overt act of war.”[7]
Although we cannot find very solid
evidence that President Roosevelt was intentionally following McCollum’s
eight-point plan we do know the steps that Roosevelt took to provoke the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did fall in
line with many of McCollum’s ideas. We also know that Secretary of War Stimson
wrote in his diary that he favored the plan.[8]
By
spring of 1940 events began unfolding and actions were being taken by President
Roosevelt to begin provocations for a Japanese attack. In April of 1940,
Roosevelt began moving the Pacific fleet from San Diego
to Pearl Harbor. The fleet’s commander,
Admiral Richardson, protested the move because he believed that moving the
fleet to Pearl Harbor left them too exposed to
an attack. He immediately began a nine-month campaign to persuade the President
to move them back to the safety of San
Diego.[9] In
October of 1940 Richardson flew back to Washington D.C. and told
FDR that he strongly disagrees with sacrificing navy ships to get into a war
with Japan.
By February of 1941, FDR will no longer tolerate Richardson’s protests. He fires Richardson and replaces
him with Admiral Kimmel. [10]
Roosevelt
began reducing the supply of oil and metals to Japan in July of 1940 and by September
of that year he had cut off the supply of iron to Japan. [11]
On
October 4th 1940, Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Britain, gave permission to put U.S. warships in Singapore,
which is near the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies.
Under pressure from FDR, the Dutch reduce their supply of oil to Japan and give permission to base U.S. warships in the Dutch
East Indies.[12] A
succession of trade restrictions put in place on December 31st 1940
begins halting U.S.
shipments of aviation fuel, metals, machinery, and machine tools to Japan.[13]
On
January 1, 1941, twenty-four U.S.
submarines were sent to the Orient. This was step five in McCollum’s
eight-point plan. Roosevelt begins sending
cruisers and destroyers into Japanese home waters on March 15 1941. His orders
are kept in secret from the public but the Japanese are fully aware that U.S.
warships are in their territory.[14]
Congress
passed FDR’s “Lend-Lease Act” on March 11 1941. This act gives funding to the
governments of Britain and China to help
fight the Germans and Japanese. Within three months, U.S. aid is sent to Stalin to help
in the fight.
By
May of 1941, the Japanese economy is becoming shaken by FDR’s embargoes and
Admiral Kimmel starts to become nervous. He warns FDR that U.S. Pacific forces
are under-gunned, vulnerable to Japanese attack, and spread too thin to protect
troops at widely scattered bases.[15]
On July 26, 1941 FDR freezes all Japanese assets and reduces Japanese oil
supply by 90%, which further shakes the Japanese economy.[16]
On
September 11, 1941, FDR told the nation that the destroyer Greer had been attacked by a German submarine, and henceforth U.S.
warships now had the standing order to “shoot on sight” at any German vessel
west of Iceland. He did not reveal to the public that the Greer had stalked the submarine for three hours in cooperation with
a British patrol plane before the German turned and fired. In response, Germany
accused President Roosevelt of “endeavoring with all means at his disposal to
provoke incidents for the purpose of baiting the American people into war.”[17]
In
October 9, 1941 the U.S.
government intercepted a Japanese “bomb plot” message indicating Pearl Harbor as a target for attack by carrier-based
planes.[18]
FDR met with his war council on November 25 1941 and Secretary of
War Stimson noted in his diary that he believes that U.S. forces will “likely be
attacked perhaps as soon as Monday.” Roosevelt
becomes concerned over the problem of “how we should maneuver them into the
position of firing the first shot.[19]
On December 6 1941 General Hap Arnold landed in Sacramento,
California, to warn the air base that war with
Japan
is imminent. Roosevelt reads an intercepted
message and tells his assistant Harry Hopkins, “This means war.”[20]
The
next day, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.
The U.S.
has terrible losses. The main Japanese goal was to steal oil and other natural
resources in the Dutch East Indies. To do this
they had to chase the U.S.
armed forces from the Pacific.
The
events discussed above are events that are hardly talked about in history
class, if mentioned at all. Each one of these events played a significant role
in provoking a Japanese attack on U.S. armed forces and from what
evidence we have, President Roosevelt and his advisors knew full well that this
would happen and were indeed desiring an attack in order to change the public’s
mind about getting involved in World War II.
Captain
Russel Grenfell, of the British navy, wrote in his 1952 book Main Fleet To Singapore that,
No reasonably
informed person can now believe that Japan
made a villainous, unexpected attack on the United States. An attack was not
only fully expected but was actually desired. It is beyond doubt that President
Roosevelt wanted to get his country into the war, but for political reasons was
most anxious to insure that the first act of hostility came from the other
side; for which reason he caused increasing pressure to be put on the Japanese,
to a point that no self-respecting nation could endure without resort to arms. Japan was meant by the American President to
attack the United States.
As Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, then British Minister of Production, said in 1944, “Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor.
It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into war.”[21]
This point could not be truer. It is a shame that
President Roosevelt said in his speech that the attack was “unprovoked”.
President knew full well that he had provoked the attack. Instead, he lied, and
used this opportunity to get involved in the war. It was a great crime that
should have been punished but FDR got away with it.
Thanks to the Freedom of
Information Act of 1966 this information has come out in the open and
historians can see the true story of why the Japanese attack us.
[1] Richard
Maybury, World War II: the Rest of the
Story and How It Affects You Today (Placerville:
Bluestocking Press, 2003), 117.
[2] Ibid.,
117.
[3] Ibid.,
108.
[4] Robert
Stinnett, Day of Deceit (New York:
The Free Press, 2000), 261-267.
[5] Ibid.,
17.
[6] Ibid.,
8.
[7] Robert
Stinnett., 8.
[8] Robert
Stinnett., 9.
[9] Edwin
Layton, And I Was There (New York:
William Morrow, 1985), 52-55.
[10] Robert
Stinnett., 10-11.
[11] Richard
Maybury., 133.
[12] Robert
Stinnett., 10.
[13] Robert
A. Theobald, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor (New York: Devin-Adair, 1954), 12.
[14] Richard
Maybury.,134-136.
[15] Edwin
Layton., 112.
[16] Richard
Maybury., 138.
[17] Thomas
Fleming, The New Dealers’ War (New York: Basic Books,
2001), 89.
[18] Edwin
Layton., 158-163.
[19] Edwin
Layton., 195.
[20] Robert
Theobald., 28.
[21] Richard
Maybury., 142.
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