12/7 part VI: PREVENTING PREVENTION

(A fuller investigation would certainly turn up more such evidence, but for the time being this is adequate for my purposes, which is merely supportive.)

After the October 8 1940 decision by FDR to keep the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, the other seven proposals of Arthur McCollum’s October 7 memo were followed as well; as FDR began his third term of office in January 1941, be embarked on a year-long campaign of covertly provoking Japan into an overt act of war. Robert Stinnett concluded this “was the principal policy that guided FDR’s actions toward Japan” in 1941. [1] For example, Roosevelt favored “pop-up” missions in which American ships would occasionally appear in Japanese waters to keep them wondering and on edge.

Cabinet members, notably Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, also favored and worked toward the goal of provoking a Japanese attack. [2] "On November 27 and 28," Stinnett noted, "US military commanders in the Pacific were given the order: “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.”” According to Stimson, the order came directly from President Roosevelt. [3] Once the points of McCollum’s memo were carried out to that end; and as if on cue, the Japanese made the “mistake” Roosevelt, Stimson, and McCollum had been working toward. All that remained after the provocation was failing to prevent the inevitable “sneak” attack.

Such prevention indeed failed to materialize. Japanese movements in early December were not effectively detected by US radar, since America was still basically in the pre-radar era. This is actually odd, since the technology had been invented by a British scientist in 1939, and had been effectively used by the Brits as early as 1940. But in Spring 1941 the U.S. Signal Corps was still uncertain of a final design for their own radar device. [4] It seems quite possible that someone, somewhere, was purposefully holding it up to keep the attack path in the Pacific blind. By December radar devices were in place, but little-understood, improperly deployed, and poorly supported, which is officially the reason they did not detect the incoming attack squadron.

So all the signal corps had to go on was intercepted radio messages, which were encoded – so they had to not break the Japanese naval codes. But most of these, if not all, actually were broken, as Robert Stinnett spends a great deal of the book explaining. One example of an ignored forewarning was the “Climb Niitaka” message, intercepted, decoded, and filed early on December 2. It indicated a major attack on “1208” – December 8th, Tokyo time. [5] This warning was suppressed by higher-ups, Stinnett explains, and not passed on to Admiral Kimmel. Five days later, the attack was realized a cost of well over 2,000 lives, and the American public was swept up into the furor of a global War on Fascism.

[1] Stinnett, Bobert B. Day of Deceit. Page 9.
[2] See [1].
[3] See [1]. Page xiv
[4] Morrison, Elting E. “Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson.” College Edition. New York. Athenium. 1960.
[5] See [1]. pp 218-222