The Pearl Harbor Conspiracy Theory must be examined with the politics and events that led to America’s entry into the war in Europe. Once again, my comments are my interpretation of a theory.
1. The American public wanted no part of the war in Europe. FDR, spurred on by Churchill, was determined to get the U.S. into that war which began in 1939. Churchill’s agenda was to keep Germany from becoming a world power; thereby, threatening the British Empire and its interests. The Empire was already in serious trouble at the time; especially in India where the Raj was under attack by independence-minded Indians like Gandhi (1869 - 1948). There was also a strong faction inside India who wanted to enter the war on Germany’s side.
2. Japan was Germany’s ally. The biggest single mistake Hitler made was in declaring war on the United States not long after Pearl Harbor. I believe that both Germany and Japan were operating under the delusion that the U.S. could not fight a two ocean war.
3. Japan attacked the United States, yet 90% of this country’s war effort was directed towards the European War and saving Communism in the Soviet Union. Suspicious at the very least. One would think that FDR would have wanted to squash Japan out of existence as quickly as possible by putting all available resources into the Pacific War. Instead, he chose to concentrate on Europe. The Pacific War dragged on for four years as a result when it could have been brought to successful conclusion in one year.
4. Had Hitler not declared war on the U.S., FDR would have been forced to concentrate the war effort on Japan. Hitler’s miscalculation was compounded here. After Japan had been beaten, the American public would still have been against helping Communism survive in the Soviet Union.
Americans could see no good reason for entering the war in Europe. Polls taken in the pre-WWII era showed that 80 percent of the American people wanted no part of a European war. As late as June 23, 1941, then-Senator Truman remarked:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible. Harry Truman
Senator Harry S. Truman was a vehement opponent of America getting involved in a second European War. The man who would later become president understood the American people because he was one of them. To hear today’s liberals talk about WWII, young Americans have been conned into believing that Americans could not wait to go to war in Europe.
NOTE: Fascism and Communism are equally abhorrent political systems to most Americans. Before the world learned of the Holocaust, it would not have mattered one iota which side won in Europe. Had the Holocaust never happened it would be easier today to show Fascism and Communism as both sides of the same coin. Because the Holocaust did happen, Fascism is the more evil of the two, but not by much. American Socialists/Communists claim sainthood under false pretenses to this day because of the Holocaust.
5. The British had broken the Japanese Naval Code before Dec. 1941. FDR’s defenders claim that he was not told that the Japanese Naval Code had been broken prior to Dec. 7, 1941. For anyone to believe that FDR did not know the attack was imminent ignores the kind of president FDR was. Nothing went on in his Administrations that he didn’t know about. That man was the most manipulative, devious, president who ever lived in the White House. Can anyone realistically believe that breaking the Japanese Naval Code was kept from him? Defending such a position boggles the mind considering the political environment of the time.
6. There were no aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. The warships that were there were obsolete for the most part. FDR did not want to give the Japanese Navy that big of an edge by putting this country’s aircraft carriers in harm’s way.
7. The Japanese ambassador to Washington was kept waiting until after the attack began. Hence, Dec. 7 became a day of infamy rather than a declaration of war before the attack started.
The one component of the Pearl Harbor Conspiracy Theory that is never, or seldom, speculated about is the suicide of James V. Forrestal.
Forrestal’s brief biography, taken from an encyclopedia, is interesting in relation to the attack on Pearl Harbor:
“Forrestal, James Vincent (1892-1949), American banker and government official, born in Beacon, New York, and educated at Dartmouth College and Princeton University. In 1916 he joined the New York City investment firm of Dillon, Reed, and Company. He became president of the firm in 1938. Two years later Forrestal was appointed undersecretary of the navy and served in that post until 1944, when he became secretary of the navy. He was one of the chief planners of the unification of the three armed services in a single executive department of the federal government. In 1947, when unification was effected by congressional enactment, Forrestal became the first secretary of defense of the U.S. He resigned the post because of ill health early in 1949.”
The next quote was taken from a chronology of events in 1949 and is not connected to Forrestal’s biography.
“The U.S. Defense Department is created August 10 by a retitling of the War Department under terms of the National Security Act of 1947. The first secretary of defense James V. Forrestal resigned in March with symptoms of nervous exhaustion and depression, entered Bethesda Naval Hospital, and jumped from a window there May 22, dying at age 57.”
Note that Forrestal’s promotion to secretary of the navy in 1944 shows that he was one of FDR’s fair-haired boys. FDR did not move anyone up the ladder he did not trust completely. If there is any truth to the Pearl Harbor Conspiracy Theory, Forrestal, as under secretary of the navy at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, must have known about it even if he disagreed with FDR’s ultimate decision. If he didn’t know about it in 1941, he may have acquired top secret information after he became secretary of the navy in ‘44, or after he became secretary of defense in 1947, that allowed him to put it all together.
Here are two purely speculative questions, if ever answered, would either prove that FDR knew, or the answers could clear up the Forrestal suicide in relation to Pearl Harbor.
1. In light of his loyalty to FDR, and subsequently FDR’s Pearl Harbor decision, was Forrestal’s depression brought on when he finally came to understand where FDR’s Socialists/Communists intended to take the country?
(The U.N. was a fact of life in 1949.)
2. Was Forrestal a man of such conscience he had to commit suicide because he could no longer live with the secret of Pearl Harbor?
Nor could Forrestal blow the whistle and harm the country. An internal conflict of that magnitude would break the strongest man of conscience.
One other possibility is that New Deal Socialists/Communists murdered Forrestal because he was on the verge of telling all. Anything that would destroy FDR’s ongoing deification process would also tarnish Eleanor Roosevelt, and from there question the then-infant United Nations. Socialists would not let that happen then or now.
The Wall Nobody Talks About
