Evaluating Attacks that Appear to Justify Starting or Staying in Wars

"Washington knew in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but that it deliberately withheld its foreknowledge from our commanders in Hawaii"

Yesterday a friend sent me the following essay, presenting an array of evidence that the Roosevelt administration knew that a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was about to happen, but chose not to tell the commanders in Oahu about it. Roosevelt believed that the purported “surprise” attack would galvanize the American people to support another terrible world war, fought thousands of miles from the American homeland.

Given that the U.S. government had spies all over the Pacific, I have long thought it astonishing that the Japanese Navy managed to get no less than six aircraft carriers two hundred miles north of Oahu without being detected.

For a while my younger brother was a commercial pilot in the Hawaiian Islands. At 15,000 feet on a clear day in the Hawaiian Islands, horizontal visibility is about 150 miles. I’ve long wondered why the Navy didn’t have guys running regular reconnaissance flights north of the island in the days leading up to the attack.

Further, I’ve long found it notable that all three of the U.S. Pacific fleet aircraft carriers were NOT in port on the day of the attack. The Saratoga had been assigned to cruise the western Pacific. The Enterprise departed Pearl Harbor on November 28, 1941, under Admiral William Halsey to deliver Marine aircraft to Wake Island. The Lexington left Pearl Harbor on December 5, 1941, to ferry Marine scout bombers to Midway Island. By 1940, it had become clear that naval commanders all over the world that the aircraft carrier had supplanted the battleship in naval warfare.

I’ve been fascinated by the attack on Pearl Harbor since I was a boy, when my grandfather, John Sears, told me the story of his brother, Harold, who was serving as a junior officer on one of the battleships in port that day—which one, I can no longer remember.

The ship’s commanding officer had heard that Harold was an ace at quail shooting, so on the morning of Dec. 7, he asked Harold to go shoot a mess of quail in the hills above Pearl Harbor. California quail were introduced to Oahu in the mid 19th century as a game bird.

While performing his fun assignment, Harold heard approaching aircraft and looked up to see a bunch of Mitsubishi A6M Zeros fly right over him and commence their attack on the harbor below. He ran down to the port and did everything he could to help his shipmates under attack, including jumping into the harbor to pull wounded men out of the water. His ship’s commanding officer was so impressed that he nominated Harold for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

My grandfather and his two brothers in the Navy (Harold and Robert) went to their graves believing that the men who run the U.S. government genuinely care about the citizenry and tell the truth when it comes to matters of life and death.

I expect Harold would have a hard time believing the evidence that is presented in the following report (click on photo below to read it).

“Pearl Harbor: Hawaii Was Surprised; FDR Was Not”