Standing. Leaning on the lectern to maintain his balance, as he was paralyzed, on December 8, 1941, President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed not only the representatives of the country, but the entire nation, in the Capitol in a vibrant speech. .
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date that will live in infamy – the United States of America was repeatedly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…” he announced.
As expected, the president ended the request for a declaration of war, which was supported by everyone present, except for the pacifist congresswoman Jeannette Rankin. After having helped during the previous two years, always surreptitiously, the nations facing the Axis, weighed down by the powerful isolationist current that dominated the country, Roosevelt had his hands free to intervene in the conflict, and, in the end, to change his sign, supported by the immense North American industrial power.
However, even before hostilities ended, journalist John T. Flynn published a pamphlet in which he accused the presidential entourage of being behind the Pearl Harbor disaster. Other writings would follow, and, despite numerous investigative commissions, the issue would never be fully resolved.
The absence of aircraft carriers on the day of the attack only strengthened the conspiratorial arguments. Not even scholar Roberta Wohlstetter, in her compelling 1962 book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, would be conclusive.
Since then, the question of whether the Americans knew about the Japanese attack plan and allowed it to have a casus belli has been and continues to be. There is no space here to elucidate it. Let’s look at the facts, and let everyone judge.
After the Meiji Restoration and the transformation of Japan into a great power, the Japanese elites saw China as their natural field of expansion. The victories over the Chinese (1894-1895) and Russian (1904-1905) armies, as well as the annexation of Korea in 1910, supported this.
Later, its participation in the Great War alongside the allies allowed Japan to annex the few Germanic territories in the East, but the arrogant twenty-one demands, presented on January 18, 1915 to the newborn Republic of China, alarmed its British ally. and, therefore, to the still neutral United States.
Tokyo sent a special mission to Washington to reach an agreement. Although it would be repealed in 1923, its preamble was taken in Tokyo as a kind of carte blanche that recognized its right to expand throughout the continent.
“The governments of the United States and Japan recognize that territorial proximity creates special relations between the two countries and, therefore, the United States government recognizes that Japan has special interests in China, especially in the areas contiguous to its possessions,” the text read.
On September 18, 1931, a dynamite charge exploded at a coupling on the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway, outside Mukden. Almost immediately, without permission from Tokyo, the semi-autonomous Japanese Kwantung Army, under the command of General Shigeru Honjo, invaded Manchuria, causing the resignation of Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijiro’s cabinet, opening the door to control of Japanese politics by of the Armed Forces.
And not only did his troops land in Shanghai, but on February 19, 1932, Manchukuo (Manchuria) proclaimed itself an independent state under the regency of the last emperor of China, Puyi. In reality, it was nothing more than a puppet state run at will by Tokyo. The truth is that the League of Nations could do little to stop Japanese expansionism. The condemnation of its intervention in China, on December 6, 1932, only served to exacerbate the spirit of the Empire, which on the following March 27 abandoned that precursor organization of the UN.
Meanwhile, the United States was struggling to leave behind the effects of the Great Depression. Its new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had proposed a great pact to the nation, the so-called New Deal, to get out of the economic morass, while viewing Japanese expansion with suspicion. Not in vain, the president had been Undersecretary of the Navy between 1913 and 1920.
An incident on the Marco Polo Bridge (Wanping), on the outskirts of Beijing, on July 7, 1937, was the excuse for Japanese troops to invade northern China, without prior declaration of war. Thus began the Greater East Asia War (Dai Toa Senso), the name by which the Japanese call the Second World War.
The overwhelming Japanese advance and the fall of Beijing caused Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek to look to Washington for help. For its part, the fall of Nanjing and the atrocities committed there by Japanese troops turned the sympathies of North American public opinion in favor of the Chinese.
The situation reached a point of no return when, taking advantage of French weakness, on September 22, 1940, Japan imposed on the Vichy government the granting of footholds in Indochina – in reality, a protectorate – to curtail Chinese resistance. Four days later, Roosevelt ordered the embargo of steel and iron scrap, which Japanese industry so desperately needed to maintain the production rate that the war demanded.
Despite the growing tension, Fumimaro Konoe’s government did not want war, and sent Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, a conciliatory sailor who knew Roosevelt personally, as ambassador. However, the diplomat was treated with disdain by Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
This one, moreover, was always one step ahead: the Americans had broken the Japanese diplomatic code (Purple code) thanks to the Magic system, and, although the transcriptions were slow, they gave them an advantage in any negotiation. Later, they would also manage to decipher the Japanese naval code (JN-25).
Anticipating a hostile act, on April 27, 1941, militaries from the United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand began to coordinate their actions in the event of a possible attack.
The final blow to peace came three months later, on July 26, 1941, when President Roosevelt ordered the freezing of Japanese assets and a complete trade embargo, a measure also followed by the governments of Great Britain and Holland, the latter in exile. This meant the isolation of Japan and its economic ruin in the medium term, which favored the harshest sector of the Japanese government that called for war.
Still, Prime Minister Konoe made a last-ditch effort, offering withdrawal from Indochina in exchange for ending the embargo. He even suggested a personal interview with Roosevelt, which he refused. His last action to avoid war was to send to Washington Saburo Kurusu, a skilled diplomat, although too close to Berlin’s interests.
On October 16, 1941, Konoe was replaced by General Hideki Tojo. Japan had embarked on the path of war, and would not turn back. In this regard, the message that the ambassador in Tokyo, Joseph Growe, sent to Washington on November 3, 1941, is interesting.
“The political events taking place in Europe are bringing Japan to the point of trying to reach a conciliation agreement with the United States, and if this fails they could lead the Japanese to not give in to foreign pressure and risk harakiri.” national through a desperate attack,” the letter read.
His warning was not taken into account, and the demands of the United States – abandonment of the Tripartite Pact and withdrawal from China and Indochina – turned out to be a price that Tokyo neither wanted nor could pay.
Cordell Hull knew that this could mean war, and he communicated this to Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War. A few days later, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox would comment to the Australian ambassador: “The sooner the breakup comes, the better.” By then, Magic was translating the “code of the winds” that Tokyo had sent to its diplomats in Washington, with the steps to follow until the outbreak of hostilities.
In May 1940, in order to put pressure on Japan, Roosevelt had ordered the transfer of the Pacific Fleet from its base in San Diego (California) to Hawaii, which in Tokyo was interpreted as a dagger aimed at the heart of the Empire.
Militarily speaking, it was not a good measure. The Pearl Harbor base was too far from the United States, about 5,500 km, it lacked sufficient draft for the rapid maneuverability of large ships and its exit to the open sea was very narrow. Furthermore, the warehouses and warehouses were very close to each other. All this favored an air attack. The head of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral James O. Richardson, objected for such reasons, which cost him his position, being replaced by Husband E. Kimmel.
The British success over the Italian fleet based at the Taranto base predicted its vulnerability, as well as the tactical test that the Americans themselves had carried out with two of their aircraft carriers some time ago.
On January 16, 1941, a report by Rear Admiral Patrick N. L. Bellinger, later endorsed by General Frederick L. Martin (chief of the Hawaii Air Force) indicated that a Japanese attack with aircraft carriers, without a prior declaration of war, had a high probability. of success. But it was ignored.
Shortly after, the Peruvian ambassador in Tokyo, Ricardo Rivera Scheiber, delivered a report to his American counterpart in which he warned him that the Japanese were planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This report was sent to US Naval Intelligence, an organization that did not believe the information. The British MI-5 also sent a report to the effect that the Japanese Navy had great interest in said base.
On September 24, 1941, a message from the Japanese Foreign Minister, Teijiro Toyoda, to the consul in Honolulu was intercepted, in which he indicated that, from that day on, he should indicate the position of the American warships in Pearl Harbor. It was not considered either.
However, in mid-November, a message was sent to Kimmel: “This telegram must be considered a war warning. “The negotiations with Japan that were intended to stabilize the situation in the Pacific have been interrupted, and we must expect aggression from the Japanese in a few days.” Next, the possible Japanese objectives were mentioned, among which Pearl Harbor was not found.
On November 25, Henry L. Stimson wrote in his diary: “He [possibly Roosevelt, without citing him] has brought to light the fact that we were likely to be attacked on Monday.” Four days later, while the Japanese ships were heading towards their objective almost silently, so as not to be discovered, the radio operator of the ocean liner Lurline, en route from San Francisco to Honolulu, picked up Japanese signals for several days. Upon reaching port, he reported, but the naval authorities disregarded the warning.
On December 2, General Georges C. Marshall, chief of staff of the Army, sent a message to Pacific commanders warning them of an imminent attack. However, General Walter Short, head of the ground forces in Hawaii, was not notified by telephone, but was instead sent a non-urgent telegram, sent by ordinary means, which arrived when the bombing was already taking place.
On the 4th, the Japanese message confirming the imminent attack was intercepted. Marshall and Roosevelt were informed, but not the Pearl Harbor base. That same day, the USS Enterprise headed to Wake Island to transport aircraft for its defense. The next day, she would make the USS Lexington bound for Midway.
At 6:30 p.m. on the 6th, the day before the attack, the FBI picked up a suspicious call from Tokyo. General Short was warned, but decided to postpone his analysis. Admiral Kimmel was also informed that the Japanese consulate was burning papers. Before the end of the day, Roosevelt sent a message to Emperor Hirohito for Japan to withdraw its forces from Indochina as a gesture of good will, which received no response.
At 03:42 on the 7th, the minesweeper USS Condor sighted a periscope in the channel leading to the port. At first, she ignored him. But the reiteration of the tug Antares alerted the destroyer USS Ward, which, after launching some depth charges, sank a Japanese midget submarine.
At 07:02, the Army radar station at Point Kahuku, Oahu, detected the approach of the first wave of Japanese aircraft. The duty officer at Wheeler Field ignored him.
In any case, it was too late. At 07:40, the Japanese ace Mitsuo Fuchida, aboard a Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bomber, launched the flares to begin the attack. The surprise had been total.
At 1:00 p.m. U.S. time, General Marshall and Admiral Harold R. Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, sent warning to their bases of the impending attack, but by the time they reached Pearl Harbor, it was already over. was producing.
The offensive had been expected in Washington for days. But did you know where? In none of the radio warnings did Pearl Harbor appear as a target. But, as we have already seen, there were enough signs to include the base among them. Why wasn’t it done like this? Improvidence? Incompetence? Lack of coordination between agencies? Bad faith?
