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Made by Elder Nick Quan of Period 4

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1No question has tantalized historians of the wartime period more than this one. Did Roosevelt know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and did he deliberately allow the attack that took more than 2,000 American lives?

1No question has tantalized historians of the wartime period more than this one. Did Roosevelt know the Japanese were going to attack Pear Harbor, and did he deliberately allow the attack that took more than 2,000 American lives?

There are two basic views about America’s entry into the war. The first say that FDR was preoccupied with the war in Europe and didn’t want war with Japan. American strategic thinking, perhaps reflecting Anglo-Saxon racism about Japanese abilities, dismissed the Japanese military threat.

Hitler is a much bigger threat than Tojo. I

don’t need to worry about

Japan.

1No question has tantalized historians of the wartime period more than this one. Did Roosevelt know the Japanese were going to attack Pear Harbor, and did he deliberately allow the attack that took more than 2,000 American lives?

There are two basic views about America’s entry into the war. The first say that FDR was preoccupied with the war in Europe and didn’t want war with Japan. American strategic thinking, perhaps reflecting Anglo-Saxon racism about Japanese abilities, dismissed the Japanese military threat.

The other says that FDR view Japan, allied to the German-Italian Axis, as his entrée into the European war. This stand holds that FDR made a series of calculation provocations that pushed Japan into war with America. The ultimate conclusion to this view is that FDR knew of the imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and not only failed to prevent it, but welcomed it as the turning point that would end isolationist obstruction of his war plans.

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2Neither view is seamless, and the reality may lie in a combination of two, with such factors as human frailty, overconfidence on both sides, and the tensions of a world already at war thrown in. You might also cast a vote for historical inevitability. A clash between Japan and the United States and other Western nations over control of the economy and resources of the Far East and Pacific was bound to happen. A small island with limited resources but great ambitions, Japan had to reach out to control its destiny. That put it on a collision course with the Western nations that had established a colonial presence in the Pacific and Asia, and had their own plans for exploiting that part of the world.

2Neither view is seamless, and the reality may lie in a combination of two, with such factors as human frailty, overconfidence on both sides, and the tensions of a world already at war thrown in. You might also cast a vote for historical inevitability. A clash between Japan and the United States and other Western nations over control of the economy and resources of the Far East and Pacific was bound to happen. A small island with limited resources but great ambitions, Japan had to reach out to control its destiny. That put it on a collision course with the Western nations that had established a colonial presence in the Pacific and Asia, and had their own plans for exploiting that part of the world.

With that in mind, there are certain facts that remain. Japanese-American relations were bad in the 1930s, and worsened when the Japanese sank an American warship, the Panay, on the Yangtze River late in 1937, a clear violation of all treaties and an outright act of war. But America was not ready to go to war over a single ship. Attempting to influence the outcome of China’s struggle against Japan, Roosevelt loaned money to the Nationalists in China and began to ban exports to Japan of certain goods that eventually included gasoline, scrap iron, and oil.

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Loans money

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3Were these provocations to force Japan into war, or sensible reactions to Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere in Asia? Historical opinion divides on this point. It is clear that moderation on either side might have prevailed. But in the United States, the Secretary of State was demanding complete Japanese withdrawal from their territorial conquests. At the same time in Japan, hawkish militants led by General Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) had gained power. Moderation was tossed aside and the two speeding engines continued on a runaway collision course.

Historical Opinion

3Were these provocations to force Japan into war, or sensible reactions to Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere in Asia? Historical opinion divides on this point. It is clear that moderation on either side might have prevailed. But in the United States, the Secretary of State was demanding complete Japanese withdrawal from their territorial conquests. At the same time in Japan, hawkish militants led by General Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) had gained power. Moderation was tossed aside and the two speeding engines continued on a runaway collision course.

By late in 1941, it was more than apparent that war was coming from Japan. American and foreign diplomats in Japan dispatched frequent warnings about the Japanese mood. And more significantly, the Japanese diplomatic coder had been broken by American intelligence. Almost all messages between Tokyo and its embassy in Washington were being intercepted and understood by Washington.

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Embassy in WashingtonJapan

Intelligence Agencies

Japan sends/ receives messages

Embassy sends/ receives messages

Agencies intercept messages, translates and reads them. Then sends them to their recipients.

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4There is no longer any doubt that some Americans knew that “Zero Hour,” as the Japanese ambassador to Washington called the planned attack, was scheduled to December 7. They even knew it would come at Pearl Harbor. According to John Toland’s account of Pearl Harbor, Infamy, Americans had not only broken the Japanese code, but the Dutch had done so as well, and their warnings had been passed on to Washington. A British double agent code-named Tricycle had also sent explicit warnings to the United States.

4There is no longer any doubt that some Americans knew that “Zero Hour,” as the Japanese ambassador to Washington called the planned attack, was scheduled to December 7. They even knew it would come at Pearl Harbor. According to John Toland’s account of Pearl Harbor, Infamy, Americans had not only broken the Japanese code, but the Dutch had done so as well, and their warnings had been passed on to Washington. A British double agent code-named Tricycle had also sent explicit warnings to the United States.

Here is where human frailty and overconfidence, and even American racism take over. Most American military minds expected a Japanese attack to come in the Philippines, America’s major base in the Pacific; the American naval fortifications at Pearl Harbor on Oahu were believed to be too strong to attack, as well as too far away for the Japanese. The commanders there prepared for an attack by saboteurs, which explains why the battleships were packed together in the harbor, surrounded defensively by smaller vessels, and why planes were parked in neat rows in the middle of the airstrip at Hickam Field, ready to be blasted by Japanese bombing runs.

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5Many Americans, including Roosevelt, dismissed the Japanese as combat pilots because they were all presumed to be “nearsighted.” The excellence of their eyes and flying abilities came as an expensive surprise to the American military. There was also a sense that any attack on Pearl Harbor would be easily repulsed. The Japanese would get a bad spanking, and America would still get the war it wanted in Europe.Whether or not the attack was invited and specific warnings were ignored, the complete devastation of the American forces at Pearl Harbor was totally unexpected. Even today, the tally of that attack is astonishing. Eighteen ships were sunk or seriously damaged, including eight battleships. Of these eight, six were later salvaged. Nearly two hundred airplanes were destroyed on the ground, and 2,403 people died that morning, nearly half of them aboard the battleship Arizona, which took a bomb down its smokestack and went to the bottom in minutes.

5Many Americans, including Roosevelt, dismissed the Japanese as combat pilots because they were all presumed to be “nearsighted.” The excellence of their eyes and flying abilities came as an expensive surprise to the American military. There was also a sense that any attack on Pearl Harbor would be easily repulsed. The Japanese would get a bad spanking, and America would still get the war it wanted in Europe.Whether or not the attack was invited and specific warnings were ignored, the complete devastation of the American forces at Pearl Harbor was totally unexpected. Even today, the tally of that attack is astonishing. Eighteen ships were sunk or seriously damaged, including eight battleships. Of these eight, six were later salvaged. Nearly two hundred airplanes were destroyed on the ground, and 2,403 people died that morning, nearly half of them aboard the battleship Arizona, which took a bomb down its smokestack and went to the bottom in minutes.

A day after the attack, Roosevelt delivered his war message to Congress. The long-running battle between isolationists and interventionists was over.

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