Military Officers and Code Breakers Speak Out … On Camera
Preface: We don’t contest that World War II was — in many ways — a “good war”.
The Nazis, imperial Japanese and fascist Italians were nasty folks trying to take over the world, who brutalized millions within their own borders and in the nations they occupied.
And — as shown below — we probably knew about the coming Pearl Harbor attack, but let it happen to justify America’s entry into World War II.
The White House apparently had — a year before Pearl Harbor — launched an 8-point plan to provoke Japan into war against the U.S. (including, for example, an oil embargo). The rationale for this provocation is that the U.S. wanted to aid its allies in fighting the Nazis and other axis powers, and decided that an attack by Japan would be the most advantageous justification for the U.S. to enter WWII.
Moreover, Honolulu newspapers warned of a possible attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor:
Indeed, as the following must-watch BBC documentary — with interviews with many of the main players, including military officers and code-breakers — shows, the American and British knew of the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor — down to the exact date of the attack — and allowed it to happen to justify America’s entry into World War II:
And see this short essay by a highly-praised historian summarizing some of the key points. (The historian, Robert B. Stinnett, a World War II veteran, actually agreed with this strategy for getting America into the war, and so does not have any axe to grind).
Active Interference with Military’s Ability to Defend
It has also recently been discovered that the FDR administration took numerous affirmative steps to ensure that the Japanese attack would be successful. These steps included taking extraordinary measures to hide information from the commanders in Hawaii about the location of Japanese war ships (information of which they would normally be informed), denying their requests to allow them to scout for Japanese ships, and other actions to blind the commanders in Hawaii so that the attacks would succeed. See, for example, this book (page 186).
Key Military Players Incommunicado
In addition, the heads of the Army and Navy suddenly disappeared and remained unreachable on the night before Pearl Harbor. And they would later testify over and over that they “couldn’t remember” where they were (pages 320 and 335).
George Washington blogs at Washington’s Blog.