Pearl Harbor after a Quarter of a Century
Harry Elmer Barnes
Eulogizing his friend in an editorial (posted
elsewhere on this site),
Murray Rothbard wrote:
“. . .
Left and Right is privileged to present what tragically turned
out to be Harry Barnes’ last work . . .: the true story of Pearl Harbor. . . . We have been delighted and honored that Harry
chose the pages of Left and Right to present what he proposed to
be his final word on the subject, the culminating synthesis of a quarter
century of revisionist inquiry.”
And
more than six years after the “new Pearl Harbor,” no less accompanied by a bodyguard of lies than was
the old, we are happy to help give this masterwork of revisionism a
wider reading on the 40th anniversary of its publication as well as of
the passing of its inspiring author. Its continuing relevance should be
obvious.
Anthony
Flood
Posted
March 28, 2008
From
Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, IV, 1968, 9-132.
We have merely formatted (and, where necessary, corrected) the text that
The Memory Hole provides
here. Every issue of Left and
Right may be read in facsimile on
Mises.org, including
this essay.
Table of Contents
I: The
Lessons of Pearl Harbor
More Relevant Than Ever Before [Scroll down]
II:
Roosevelt’s
Policies Prior to Pearl Harbor
III:
Washington Should Not Have Been Surprised When The Japanese
Attacked Pearl
Harbor
IV:
Keeping Short and Kimmel in Ignorance of a Surprise Japanese Attack
V: The
So-Called Warnings to Short and Kimmel
VI: The
Blackout of
Hawaii on the Eve of Pearl Harbor
VII:
The Overall Responsibility of Roosevelt for the Surprise Attack
VIII:
How We Entered War with Japan Four Days before Pearl Harbor
IX:
Roosevelt
Luck!
X: The
Final Question
“As the military episode that brought the United States
into the second World War, the results of Pearl Harbor already indicate
that this produced drastic and possibly ominous changes in the pattern
of American relations to the rest of the world. We voluntarily and
arbitrarily assumed unprecedented burdens in feeding and financing a
world badly disrupted by war. The international policy of George
Washington and the 'fathers' of the
United
States, based on non-intervention but not embracing isolation, was
terminated for any predictable period. 
President
Truman continued the doctrine of the interventionist liberals of the
latter part of the 1930’s, to the effect that the United States must be
prepared to do battle with foreign countries whose basic ideology does
not conform with that of the United States. . . . The
United States
sought to police the world and extend the rule of law on a planetary
basis, which actually meant imposing the ideology of our eastern
seaboard Establishment throughout the world, by force, if necessary, as
in Vietnam. By the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the United
States was being informed by both official policy and influential
editorials that we must get adjusted to the fact that we face permanent
war . . . .”
—Harry Elmer Barnes
I: The Lessons of
Pearl Harbor More Relevant Than Ever Before
The
surprise Japanese attack at
Pearl Harbor
on December 7, 1941, is regarded by most persons who recall it at all as an
isolated dramatic episode, now consigned to political and military
archeology. Quite to the contrary, on account of our entry into the
war, it became one of the most decisive battles in the history of the
human race. It has already proved far more so than any of the “fifteen
decisive battles” immortalized by Sir Edward Creasy.
The
complex and cumulative aftermath of Pearl Harbor has played the dominant role in producing the menacing
military pattern and political impasse of our time, and the
military-industrial-political Establishment that controls this country
and has sought to determine world policy. It created the four most
likely focal points for the outbreak of a thermonuclear war which may
lead to the extermination of the human race—Berlin, Formosa, Southeast
Asia and the Middle East—unless future sudden flare-ups like that in
Cuba in 1962 may turn the lethal trick. Hence, while Creasy’s battles
may have decided the fate of important political entities and alignments
in the past,
Pearl
Harbor may well have deeply affected the fate of mankind. American
entry into the war produced atomic and nuclear warfare as well as
Russian domination of Central Europe and the triumph of Communist
China in
Asia.
Moreover,
a detailed study of how Pearl Harbor came about provides ominous lessons
as to the uncertainties of human judgment and the eccentricities in
personal conduct that control the outbreak of wars, an ever more crucial
consideration in determining the destinies of the human race as we move
on in the nuclear era. The damage done to our Pacific Fleet, although
its significance was exaggerated at the time, was impressive and
devastating. But it was a trivial matter compared to the fact that the
Japanese attack put the
United States actively into the second World War. The personal and
political ambitions, professional stereotypes, public deceit and
mendacity (the credibility gap), ruts and grooves of thinking and
action, and the martial passions that brought on Pearl Harbor would, if
repeated in such a crisis as that raised by the Cuban incident of 1962,
or a future one in Berlin, Formosa, Vietnam, or the Middle East might
very well destroy civilization.
As the
military episode that brought the
United States into the second World War, the results of
Pearl Harbor
already indicate that this produced drastic and possibly ominous changes
in the pattern of American relations to the rest of the world. We
voluntarily and arbitrarily assumed unprecedented burdens in feeding and
financing a world badly disrupted by war. The international policy of
George Washington and the “fathers” of the
United States, based on non-intervention but not embracing isolation,
was terminated for any predictable period.
President
Truman continued the doctrine of the interventionist liberals of the
latter part of the 1930’s, to the effect that the United States must be
prepared to do battle with foreign countries whose basic ideology does
not conform with that of the United States. He further elected to
create and perpetuate a cold war until actual hot warfare breaks out, as
it did in
Korea in 1950 and in southeast Asia a decade later. The
United States sought to police the world and extend the rule of law on a
planetary basis, which actually meant imposing the ideology of our
eastern seaboard Establishment throughout the world, by force, if
necessary, as in
Vietnam. By the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the
United States was being informed by both official policy and influential
editorials that we must get adjusted to the fact that we face permanent
war, an especially alarming outlook in a nuclear era in which the two
major powers are already amply prepared to “overkill” their enemies.
“Perpetual war for perpetual peace” has become the American formula in
relation to world affairs.
Drastic
changes in the domestic realm can also be attributed to the impact of
our entry into the second World War. The old rural society that had
dominated humanity for millennia was already disintegrating rapidly as
the result of urbanization and technological advances, but the latter
failed to supply adequate new institutions and agencies to control and
direct an urban civilization. This situation faced the American public
before 1941 but the momentous transformation was given intensified
rapidity and scope as a result of the extensive dislocations produced by
years of warfare and recovery. These gave rise to increasing economic
problems, temporarily fended off by a military-industrial-political
complex that provided no permanent solution. The social problems of an
urban age were enlarged and intensified, crime increased and took on new
forms that became ever more difficult to combat, juvenile
disorganization became rampant, racial problems increased beyond
precedent, and the difficulties of dealing with this unprecedented and
complicated mass of domestic issues were both parried and intensified by
giving primary but evasive consideration to foreign affairs in our
national policy and operations. Hence, a discussion of the lessons of
Pearl Harbor
for today reveals a situation which is more than a matter of idle
curiosity for military antiquarians.
Moreover,
as will be pointed out during our treatment of the Pearl Harbor problem,
we had by 1941 entered into a system of diplomatic secrecy and
international intrigue and deception which had already committed this
country to world war several days before the Japanese struck Pearl
Harbor, and without the slightest knowledge of this on the part of the
American public. The implications of such a contingency in a nuclear
age are as obvious as they are astounding and ominous.
Despite
the crucial importance of the Pearl Harbor story for American citizens,
it is certainly true that, although the twenty-seventh anniversary of
the surprise Japanese attack has now arrived, only a small fraction of
the American people are any better acquainted with the realities of the
responsibility for the attack than they were when President Roosevelt
delivered his “Day of Infamy” oration on December 8, 1941. The legends
and rhetoric of that day still dominate the American mind.
Interestingly enough, the American people narrowly missed having an
opportunity to learn the essential truths about Pearl Harbor in a
sensational and fully publicized manner less than three years after the
event. As a result of research by his staff, and possibly some “leaks”
from Intelligence officers of 1941, Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican
candidate for the presidency, had learned during the campaign of 1944
that President Roosevelt had been reading the intercepted Japanese
diplomatic messages in the Purple and other codes and was aware of the
threat of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at any time after November
26, 1941, but had failed to warn the commanders there, General Walter C.
Short and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, in time to avert the attack or to
meet it effectively. Dewey considered presenting these vital facts in a
major campaign speech.
Roosevelt
learned of this through the Democratic grapevine planted at Republican
headquarters and, in understandable alarm, pressured Mr. Dewey through
General George C. Marshall to abandon his plan, on the ground that it
would endanger the war effort by revealing that we had broken Japanese
codes. Marshall twice sent Colonel Carter W. Clarke to urge Dewey not to
refer to
Pearl
Harbor during the campaign. To cover up for
Roosevelt,
Marshall has contended that he operated on his own initiative in
sending Clarke to importune Dewey. As Clarke knew by this time, the
basis of his plea was spurious, namely, that such a speech by Dewey
would first reveal to the Japanese that we had broken their Purple
diplomatic code. Actually, the Japanese had learned of this from the
Germans by the end of April, 1941, over three years before the 1944
campaign. Dewey did not know this at the time and, as a supposedly
patriotic duty, he suppressed the speech and the publicity which might
have won the election for him. In
a column written for the King Features Syndicate and widely published on
the eve of the 1964 election, the famed journalist, John Chamberlain,
described Dewey’s lugubrious retrospective observations on his deception
by Roosevelt and Marshall in 1944:
Nixon’s 1960 agony recalls that of Thomas Dewey in 1944,
when the Republicans knew practically all the details about the surprise
at Pearl Harbor yet were loath to put the issue into the campaign lest
they reveal to the Japanese that the United States had broken a critical
code.
This
columnist vividly recalls riding in a car from
Elmira to
Geneva,
New York,
in August of 1945 with Dewey and listening to his rueful account of the
decision to say nothing about Pearl Harbor. The worst of it, from Dewey’s standpoint, is that he had
a suspicion that the Japanese had changed their codes long before 1944,
which would have made campaign revelations about
Pearl
Harbor harmless to the
U. S. from a military standpoint.
When
I talked to Tom Dewey in 1945, he thought he might have been cheated out
of a winning issue in 1944.
Chamberlain
made similar revelations in an article in Life while the
Congressional Pearl Harbor investigation was still in progress, yet Mr.
Dewey was never called to testify. John T. Flynn gave me much more
detail about Pearl Harbor and the Dewey campaign by personal correspondence and
conversation in the autumn and early winter of 1944. Flynn had been
active at Republican headquarters during the campaign. My
suggestion to Mr. Dewey in 1966 that he publicize the facts of the 1944
situation in connection with the twenty-fifth anniversary of
Pearl
Harbor proved fruitless. This is entirely understandable. In 1966, Mr.
Dewey was not a candidate for the presidency. He was the responsible
head of a great legal firm, and publicity so damaging to
Roosevelt’s
public reputation might have alienated important clients not only among
Democrats but also Republicans who were interventionist-minded relative
to World War II. It might, however, also have done more to give the
American public some idea of the realities of
Pearl Harbor
than the combined writings of revisionist historians in a whole
generation since 1944.
An
intriguing and not fully resolved point stems from the fact that the
Japanese learned from the Germans at the end of April, 1941, that the
United States had broken their Purple code in which they sent top secret
diplomatic messages. Why, then, did they continue to use the code?
Some authorities believe that, despite the reliability of their
informants, the top level Japanese officials could not bring themselves
to believe that their code had actually been cracked, and that this
vanity was abetted by the officials who had been responsible and wished
to cover up the leak. Other authorities assert that the Japanese went
ahead with the Purple code because they did not care if we did read it,
since reading it would make it all the more clear to the American
officials that Japanese peace efforts were sincere and that the Japanese
would go to war if the peace negotiations should fail. This
explanation, which I find more convincing, is also confirmed by Tojo’s
repeated deadlines set for the end of negotiations during November,
1941.
During
the nearly quarter of a century since 1944, and despite a series of
official investigations, the defenders of Roosevelt among historians,
journalists and politicians have been able to keep the vital information
about the responsibility for war with Japan and the surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor from the American people. In this article the attempt will
be made to set forth as much of this withheld information as can be put
down within the space available.
Forward to Chapter II
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