Originally Posted by
Dr. Conrad Crane, Research Professor of Military Strategy, US Army War College
Americans have always been fascinated by conspiracy theories. At the top of our pantheon of paranoia are the myriad hypotheses surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Close behind are the continuing arguments that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deliberately provoked and allowed the destruction of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, in order to galvanize a reluctant American public into supporting national participation in World War II. This lingering suspicion is partly responsible for the recent drive to exonerate the commanders at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, for their responsibility in the disaster on 7 December 1941.
The latest book expounding this well-worn theory is Robert B. Stinnett's Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. The author is a World War II Navy veteran who became a photographer and journalist for the Oakland Tribune. He has done some admirable and dogged primary research, filing innumerable requests under the Freedom of Information Act and spending many long hours searching in archives, and he demonstrates a journalist's knack for presenting a sensational story. The end result is an apparently damning indictment of FDR and his Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, many naval officers above and below Admiral Kimmel, and the military intelligence community. Unfortunately the author failed to do much basic secondary historical research and has a tendency to leap to conclusions based on questionable or erroneous interpretations of evidence. This is a dangerous book that will dupe unsuspecting readers who misinterpret the author's earnestness and technical explanations as signs of balance and accuracy, and it will perpetuate myths that should have long been forgotten.
At the core of Stinnett's case is a memorandum written by Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence, in October 1940. Stinnett interprets it as outlining eight actions designed to provoke Japan into war, and while he cannot prove FDR ever saw the document, Stinnett accepts it as the blueprint for the American actions in the Pacific leading to Pearl Harbor. Once he allegedly decided to sacrifice the Pacific Fleet, FDR carefully placed fellow conspirators in key positions, such as when he sent the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Walter Anderson, to command the fleet battleships. Stinnett continues to weave his web of conspiracy by arguing that for decades naval and intelligence organizations have covered up the fact that key information from radio intercepts and code-breaking revealing exact Japanese intentions was withheld from Kimmel and Short to ensure their unpreparedness.
Stinnett does provide some provocative new information about the interception of radio transmissions from Japanese ships and has uncovered a number of misstatements by witnesses in the many official hearings that have been conducted to investigate the disaster. However, this is not enough to prove the existence of a conspiracy so widespread that it included eminent senior leaders like George Marshall and Ernest King of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, distinguished intelligence officers like Edwin Layton and Joseph Rochefort, and a myriad of other naval officers including Commander Vincent Murphy, who just happened to be fleet duty officer at Pearl Harbor on the morning of the Japanese attack. Many of Stinnett's arguments are based on hindsight; for him any mistake or oversight that contributed to the surprise attack becomes part of the plot that victimized Kimmel and Short.
A look at the McCollum memorandum in Appendix A of the book reveals more flaws in Stinnett's analysis. The author admits that he can link FDR's actions to only six of the eight items on the list, and fails to explain that those that were actually executed occurred because of Japanese provocations or from understandable diplomatic or military motivations. Stinnett would have benefited greatly from secondary research in the standard works on FDR's foreign policy. Moreover, the McCollum proposal itself was designed to prevent war, not provoke it. A close reading shows that its recommendations were supposed to deter and contain Japan, while better preparing the United States for a future conflict in the Pacific. There is an offhand remark that an overt Japanese act of war would make it easier to garner public support for actions against Japan, but the document's intent was not to ensure that event happened.
Stinnett's technical explanations of the intricacies and revelations from code-breaking appear persuasive to those of us unfamiliar with the field, but he has not fooled the experts. Edward Drea, one of the most notable authorities on codes and code-breaking in the Pacific, recently savaged this book in the April 2000 Journal of Military History. In a detailed critique, Drea points out that Stinnett misrepresented messages decoded in 1945 as being available in 1941, erroneously assumed that just because a message was intercepted it could be and was deciphered, erred in his explanation about when the Americans broke key Japanese codes, and misquoted or distorted many messages.
Historians should be judges and not lawyers. When the public picks up a history book, they expect thorough research, truthfulness, and a balanced assessment of the facts. That is why so many readers can be misled or fooled by flawed works like Day of Deceit. Ultimately books like this threaten the integrity of the whole historical profession, as well as the credibility of the journals and reviewers who have praised it. They should know better. Since he was also a newspaper reporter, Stinnett's many inaccuracies don't do much for the reputation of that profession, either. This is a bad book that is best ignored, but because of American fascination with the theory it propounds, it will end up getting much more attention than it deserves.
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