Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York, Free Press, 2000)
Stinnett conclusively demonstrates with vast and incontrovertible documentary evidence that in order to precipitate an unwilling American public into supporting intervention in the Second World War, President Roosevelt oversaw the contrivance and deployment of a closely-guarded secret plot to goad the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. The plan was set in motion in October 1940, and its development closely monitored through decoded intercepts of Japanese diplomatic and military radio communications. Knowledge of the plan was limited to 13 Roosevelt administration members and chief military officers, and 21 members of Naval Intelligence and related operations. Once it produced the intended result and the attack impended, the Pacific fleet’s modern naval vessels were sent to sea from Pearl Harbor, leaving seven antiquated World War One battleships as decoys. Meanwhile, the Japanese fleet was tracked with radio intercepts from its formation off the Kuril Islands on November 16, and its sailing for Hawaii on November 26; its course was cleared of all shipping with a Vacant Sea order on the 22nd; and Pearl Harbor naval patrols were ordered out of the area on the 25th. The intelligence of the impending attack was withheld from the officers (Admiral Kimmel and General Short) charged with defending Pearl Harbor, who were kept uninformed of the plan and intelligence of the impending attack, and scape-goated afterward. A coverup of the entire operation was maintained through eight official and Congressional investigations between 1941 and 1946, and down to Strom Thurmond’s inquiry in 1995. Stinnett’s forty-seven pages of Appendices (p. 261-308) present photographic reproductions of essential documents obtained from Federal archives through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as numerous other documents reproduced in the body of the text, and 65 pages (p. 309-374) of closely detailed and referenced notes, all of which copiously and conclusively document Stinnett’s factual assertions, arguments and conclusions. His voluminous research files and notes are deposited at the Hoover Institute library at Stanford.
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It is notable that Lt. Commander McCollum’s “eight-action memo” for inciting war with the Japanese is dated October 7, 1940; that its sixth action was set in motion on October 8, its first, second and seventh on October 16; and that, campaigning for a third term as president in Boston on October 30, FDR said: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars;” on November 1 in Brooklyn he said “I am fighting to keep our people out of foreign wars. And I will keep on fighting;” at Rochester on the 2nd he said “Your national government … is equally a government of peace — a government that intends to retain peace for the American people;” the same day in Buffalo he asserted “Your President says this country is not going to war;” and in Cleveland on the 3rd he declared “The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war.” These quotations are from William Henry Chamberlin, “How Franklin Roosevelt Lied America Into War,” in Harry Elmer Barnes, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Caldwell, Idaho, Caxton, 1953), Chapter Eight, p. 485-491.
In his Preface Stinnett writes: “My sole purpose is to uncover the true story of events leading up to the devastating attack on the naval base [at Pearl Harbor] and adjoining Army facilities, and to document that it was not a surprise to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and many of his top military and policy advisors…. Roosevelt believed that his countrymen would rally only to oppose an overt act of war on the United States. The decision he made, in concert with his advisors, was to provoke Japan through a series of actions into an overt act: the Pearl Harbor attack. As I have discovered in the course of seventeen years of archival research and personal interviews with US Navy cryptographers, the answer to Roosevelt’s dilemma is found in an extraordinary number of documents whose release I have been able to obtain through Freedom of Information Act requests. These papers outline deliberate steps that were planned and implemented to elicit the overt action that catapulted America into the war, and devastated military forces at Pearl Harbor and other Pacific bases. Eight steps were suggested to provoke a Japanese attack. Shortly after reviewing these, Roosevelt put them into effect. After the eight provocations had been taken, Japan responded. On November 27 and 28, 1941, US military commanders were given this order: ‘The United States desires that Japan commits the first overt act.’ According to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the order came directly from President Roosevelt…. Not only did we undertake provocative steps, we intercepted and decoded military cables. We knew the attack was coming…. The commanders in Hawaii, Admiral Husband Kimmel, and Lieutenant General Walter Short, were deprived of intelligence that might have made them more alert to the risks entailed in Roosevelt’s policy, but they obeyed his direct order: ‘The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.’ More than 200,000 documents and interviews have led me to these conclusions. I am indebted to the Freedom of Information Act and its author, the late Congressman John Moss (D, CA) for making it possible for me to tell this story.” [xiii-xiv]
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“Previous accounts have claimed that the United States had not cracked Japanese military codes prior to the attack. We now know this is wrong. Previous accounts have insisted that the Japanese fleet maintained strict radio silent. This, too, is wrong. The truth is clear: FDR knew.” [5]
“A memorandum circulated in Washington, originating in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and addressed to two of FDR’s most trusted advisors suggests … provoking Japan into an overt act of war against the United States. It was written by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the ONI.” [6; Stinnett does not address the obvious conclusion that McCollum was instructed to design such a plan; it is highly improbable that this key policy was initiated by a junior officer on his own initiative. McCollum’s memo is photographically reproduced in Appendix A, 261-267]
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Lieutenant Commander McCollum’s five-page “eight-action memo, dated October 7, 1940 … puts forward … a plan intended to engineer a situation that would mobilize reluctant America into joining Britain’s struggle against the German armed forces…. Its eight actions call for virtually inciting a Japanese attack on American ground, air, and naval forces in Hawaii, as well as on British and Danish colonial outposts in the Pacific region…. McCollum oversaw the routing of communications intelligence to FDR from early 1940 to December 7, 1941, and provided the President with intelligence reports on Japanese military and diplomatic strategy. Every intercepted and decoded Japanese military and diplomatic report destined for the White House went through the Far East Asia section of ONI, which he oversaw. The section served as a clearinghouse for all categories of intelligence reports…. Each report prepared by McCollum for the President was based on radio intercepts gathered and decoded by a worldwide network of American military cryptographers and radio intercept operators…. Few people in America’s government or military knew as much about Japan’s activities and intentions as McCollum.” [8]
Appendix E 307-308 lists the 34 “Americans who were cleared for unrestricted access to decoded and translated Japanese diplomatic intercepts.” They comprise FDR, his Secretaries of War, State and the Navy (Stimson, Hull, Knox), three senior military staff members (Gen. Marshall, Adm. Stark, Rear Adm. Ingersoll) and three key naval staff officers, two field commanders (Gen. MacArthur, Adm. Hart), FDR’s naval aide (Capt. Beardall) who acted as his liaison with ONI, and 21 senior officers and cryptographers of ONI and other intelligence operations. Kimmel and Short were pointedly restricted in their access.
McCollum’s memorandum lists eight actions that he predicted would provoke a Japanese attack:
“A. Make an arrangement with Britain for use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.
B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies [now Indonesia].
C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek.
D. Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.
E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.
F. Keep the main strength of the US Fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian islands.
G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.
H. Complete embargo all trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.” [8. Stinnett shows the routing of this memo to senior ONI officers and thence to Sect. of the Navy Knox and to FDR 8-9.]
