PEARL HARBOR: HENRY STIMSON'S VIEW

In its fifth month of prospecting, the Pearl Harbor Committee at last unearthed a rich find--a broad, deep vein of comment and discussion of the 1941 tragedy by ex-War Secretary Henry L. Stimson, studded with pure history in the form of notes from his diary. Significant excerpts:

Nov. 5. Matters are crystallizing . . . Japan is sending to us someone who, I think, will bring us a proposal impossible of acceptance. . . .

Nov. 6. I left for the White House and had about an hour's talk with the President--on the whole a good talk. . . . We talked about the Far Eastern situation and the approaching conference with the messenger who is coming from Japan. The President outlined what he thought he might say. He was trying to think of something which would give us further time. He suggested he might propose a truce in which there would be no movement or armament for six months. . . .

I told him I frankly saw two great objections: first, that it tied up our hands just at a time when it was vitally important that we should go on completing our reenforcement of the Philippines; and, second, that the Chinese would feel that any such arrangement was a desertion of them.

Nov. 7. Cabinet meeting this afternoon. The President opened with telling the story of Lincoln and his Cabinet--how he polled the Cabinet and found them all polling NO and then he said, "The Ayes have it."

With that he started to have what he said was the first general poll of his Cabinet and it was on the question of the Far East--whether the people would back us up in case we struck at Japan down there and what the tactics should be.

He went around the table--first Hull and then myself, and then around through the whole number and it was unanimous in feeling the country would support us. He said that this time the vote IS unanimous, he feeling the same way. . . .

Nov. 25. General Marshall and I went to the White House, where we were until nearly half past one. At the meeting were Hull, Knox, Marshall, Stark, and myself.

The President brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked, perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. . . .

When I got back to the Department I found news from G-2 that a Japanese expedition had started. Five divisions had come down from Shantung and Shansi to Shanghai and there they had embarked on ships--thirty, forty or fifty ships--and have been sighted south of Formosa. I at once called up Hull and told him about it and sent copies to him and to the President. . . .

Nov. 27. The main question has been over the message that we shall send to MacArthur. . . . On talking with the President this morning over the telephone, I suggested and he approved the idea that we should send the final alert; namely, that he should be on the qui vive for any attack. . . .

Nov. 28. G-2 had sent me a summary of the information in regard to the movements of the Japanese in the Far East and it amounted to such a formidable statement of dangerous possibilities that I decided to take it to the President before he got up.

He branched into an analysis of the situation himself as he sat there on his bed, saying there were three alternatives and only three that he could see before us--first, to do nothing; second, to make something in the nature of an ultimatum again, stating a point beyond which we would fight; third, to fight at once.

I told him . . . . I did not think anyone would do nothing in this situation, and he agreed with me. I said of the other two my choice was the latter one. . . .

[At a War Cabinet meeting at noon] it was now the opinion of everyone that if this [Japanese] expedition was allowed to get around the southern point of Indo-China and to go off and land in the Gulf of Siam . . . it would be a terrific blow at all of the three Powers, Britain at Singapore, The Netherlands, and ourselves in the Philippines.

It was the consensus of everybody that this must not be allowed. Then we discussed how to prevent it. It was agreed that if the Japanese got into the Isthmus of Kra, the British would fight. It was also agreed that if the British fought, we would have to fight. . . . If this expedition was allowed to round the southern point of Indo-China, this whole chain of disastrous events would be set on foot. . . .

It became a consensus of views that rather than strike at the Force as it went by without any warning on the one hand, which we didn't think we could do, or sitting still and allowing it to go on, on the other, which we didn't think we could do--that the only thing for us to do was to address it a warning that if it reached a certain place, or a certain line, or a certain point, we should have to fight.*

The President's mind evidently was running towards a special telegram from himself to the Emperor . . . I said there ought to be a message by the President to the people of the United States . . . reporting what we would have to do if the danger happened. I pointed out that he had better send his letter to the Emperor separate as one thing and a secret thing, and then make his speech to Congress as a separate and more understandable thing to the people of the United States. . . .

The President asked Hull and Knox and myself to try to draft such papers. . . .

Dec. 2. The President is still deliberating the possibility of a message to the Emperor, although all the rest of us are rather against it, but in addition to that he is quite settled, I think, that he will make a message to the Congress and will perhaps back that up with a speech to the country. He said that he was going to take the matters right up when he left us.

Dec. 7. Just about 2 o'clock, while I was sitting at lunch, the President called me up on the telephone and in a rather excited voice asked me, "Have you heard the news? . . . They have attacked Hawaii. They are now bombing Hawaii. . . ."

My first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.

Re-reading his diary, Henry Stimson summarized:

With the aid of "hindsight," I [have] reached the opinion that the War Plans Division of the General Staff would have placed itself and the safety of the country in a sounder position if it had transmitted to General Short more information than it did. . . .

[Yet] General Short had been told the two essential facts: 1) a war with Japan is threatening, 2) hostile action by Japan is possible at any moment. Given these two facts, both of which were stated without equivocation in the message of Nov. 27, the outpost commander should be on the alert to make his fight. . . .

To cluster his airplanes in such groups and positions that in an emergency they could not take the air for several hours, and to keep his antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use his best reconnaissance system, the radar, only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief. . . .

I have tried to review these various responsibilities with fairness to both the outpost commander and the Staff officers at home. I am particularly led to do so because of the difficulty of reproducing now the background and atmosphere under which the entire Army was then working.

Our General Staff officers were working under a terrific pressure in the face of global war which they felt was probably imminent. Yet they were surrounded, outside their offices and almost throughout the country, by a spirit of isolationism and disbelief in danger which now seems incredible. . . .

* The War Cabinet agreed that the U.S. must fight if Japan 1) attacked U.S., British or Dutch territory, or 2) moved her forces in Indo-China west of 100DEG longitude or south of 10DEG latitude.

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