Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor

Abstract

Some controversies never die. Ever since 1944, when the journalist John T. Flynn wrote a pamphlet The Truth about Pearl Harbor, the accusation remains that prominent officials, possessing foreknowledge of the Japanese attack, willingly sacrificed the American fleet in order to guarantee full-scale United States participation in World War II. In the latest of many accounts, Robert B. Stinnett argues that fresh documents, previously classified, prove conclusively that ample warning of the attack lay on the president's desk. Stinnett himself served in the United States Navy during World War II, after which he was a photographer and journalist for the Oakland Tribune. His book, he claims, is the product of seventeen years of archival research plus personal interviews with retired naval cryptographers. Unlike most Pearl Harbor revisionists, Stin-nett sees a “need to arouse America from its isolationist position.” To Stinnett, the “systematic plan” begins with a memorandum dated October 8, 1940, drafted by Lt. Comdr. Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far Eastern desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The memo was addressed to Rear Adm. Walter S. Anderson, director of naval intelligence, and Dudley W. Knox, chief of the library of the Office of Naval Intelligence. It suggested eight steps that, if executed, would prompt a Japanese attack on American, British, and Dutch outposts in the Pacific. Among McCollum's proposals was retaining the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, a move that would obviously “keep the fleet in harm's way.” The crux of Stinnett's account, however, lies in his claim that intercepted Japanese messages show that Adm. Isoroku Yama-moto's attack force broke radio silence, that crucial intercepts were forwarded to Washington, and that Franklin D. Roosevelt's top entourage willingly sent over two thousand Americans to their graves.