Pearl Harbor: Did FDR Know?
I have a blatant dislike of conspiracy theories. I get downright abusive on social media of people who espouse them.
And yet, conspiracies do exist. Most conspiracy theories are bunk, but human nature being what it is, it's almost certain that out of all the noise, there are probably one or two that are real. The only question is: which one or two?
There are two that I find credible. The first is the "International Communist Conspiracy." There really was an international organization of various countries' Communist Parties, known internally as ComIntern (Communist International, sometimes further abbreviated to "ComInt"), that met regularly in conferences to plan how best to bring the world under Communist rule. There were seven of these conferences before Comrade Stalin shut them down in the 1940s, referred to by insiders by the shorthand of "Second International," "Third International," and so forth.
So, yes. It might not be an actual conspiracy, since they operated in the open until the 1940's, but there are people today who will accuse you of wearing a tinfoil hat if you speak of it.
The other conspiracy theory that I find credible is vastly more interesting: the rumors that Franklin D. Roosevelt knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on this day in 1941, and allowed it to happen.
First, a bit of background. By 1941, Britain and Germany had been at war against each other for over two years. We know from Winston Churchill's memoir The Gathering Storm that Roosevelt communicated to Churchill his desire to help the British, but the American people were were not having any of it, and were dead set against getting involved.
That all changed when the Japanese attacked American soil. Americans changed their minds en masse and Roosevelt got his wish: we entered The War the next day.
---------------
Thompson Falls, Montana is a little logging, mining and ranching burg with a weekly newspaper known as The Sanders County Ledger. For thirty years its owner, publisher, and editor-in-chief was a self-described "big fish in a small pond, " an old news-hound that, if I remember correctly, had once worked for the major dailies (or maybe the Wires), gave it all up, and bought a small-town paper in Montana to live out his years quietly. His name was K. A. "Doc" Eggensperger. I knew him. Everyone in town knew him. And every newspaper editor in Montana, including the big-city Dailies, knew him.
One day a story appeared that intrigued and shocked me: he'd been to some convention of Press people and wound up in a bar with some other old News Hounds, one of whom had been in the White House Press Corps when Roosevelt was in office. This old reporter claimed that Roosevelt had told them confidentially, "Boys, we're going to war against the Japanese." That there would be an attack on Pearl Harbor, which would rile up the American people and give FDR the political backing that he needed to take the US into World War Two, which had already been raging for a couple of years.
I tried to put the story out of my mind. "Well, national press corps reporters are all a bunch of drunks, and this guy was in a bar drinking," I told myself. Still, I couldn't get it out of my mind.
------------
My dad was a World War II Navy veteran. He turned eighteen about a year before Pearl Harbor. In the National Guard at the time, he saw what was going on in Europe and correctly deduced that he was eventually going to end up in the Army somewhere slogging through the mud. That prospect didn't suit him very well, so he went down to the Navy recruiter's office to talk about serving his country where he'd be sleeping in a warm bunk every night and have nice hot meals from a ship's galley.
The recruiter needed a signature from Dad's National Guard commanding officer. "What do you want to join the Navy for, boy?" the man roared.
"Well, I think we're going to get involved in that war over in Europe," Dad replied.
"Oh, no, we'll NEVER get called in to that," the CO snorted. But he signed the paper.
According to Dad, his Guard unit was called up into the Army two weeks after he'd sworn in to the Navy. He claimed that most of them ended up in the Bataan death march.
Dad was apparently a pretty good trombone player in high school (I never heard him play) and signed up to be in the Navy band. "He can play anything I put in front of him," his instructor exasperatedly explained to his superior, "but he has no tone." So Dad flunked out of Navy music school and went on to be just an ordinary swab. The trombone player sitting next to him ended up on the Battleship Missouri. The man is still there.
So one day I asked my dad if he'd heard that story about Pearl Harbor. He said that he hadn't, and then said something that I've never forgotten: "It always seemed strange to me that the only ship at that base that was worth anything just happened to be out on maneuvers that day. Everything that was destroyed in the Harbor was basically junk."
Hmmm...
-----------
Decades later -- indeed, only a few years ago, I was in Colorado conversing with an Old Prospector who owned a gold mine that was open to the public for tours. Unlike most gold mines, which the old joke goes are a hole in the ground with liars standing around it, this mine really did have a vein: I saw it with my own eyes. But I think he made most of his money giving tours. And like every owner of a gold mine, that old geezer loved to talk. In fact, that's all he did: his employees did all the work.
I love to talk too, so he and I had a great time. I don't remember how it came up, but he'd been a Navy man in signals intelligence during the Korean war. I asked him if he had an opinion on the "FDR knew" story, and he related a story that his superior had told him back in his Navy days.
The superior had been a very young Navy man who was somewhere in the Pacific intercepting and decoding (we had cracked their encryption) Japanese radio signals. He began to see a lot of traffic relating to an attack on a Navy base.
He alerted his commander, and the alert went nowhere. Alarmed, he began escalating up the chain, and got ignored at every step of the way. Finally, in a total breach of protocol he sent a desperate letter to someone at the top in Washington, DC. I think it was Secretary of the Navy or somebody.
A day or two later, his commanding officer called him into his office and delivered a sealed telegram. "I don't know what you've done, boy, but this came all the way from the top." With quaking hands, he opened the message and read: "You will not question the decisions of the United States Navy."
And yet, conspiracies do exist. Most conspiracy theories are bunk, but human nature being what it is, it's almost certain that out of all the noise, there are probably one or two that are real. The only question is: which one or two?
There are two that I find credible. The first is the "International Communist Conspiracy." There really was an international organization of various countries' Communist Parties, known internally as ComIntern (Communist International, sometimes further abbreviated to "ComInt"), that met regularly in conferences to plan how best to bring the world under Communist rule. There were seven of these conferences before Comrade Stalin shut them down in the 1940s, referred to by insiders by the shorthand of "Second International," "Third International," and so forth.
So, yes. It might not be an actual conspiracy, since they operated in the open until the 1940's, but there are people today who will accuse you of wearing a tinfoil hat if you speak of it.
The other conspiracy theory that I find credible is vastly more interesting: the rumors that Franklin D. Roosevelt knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on this day in 1941, and allowed it to happen.
First, a bit of background. By 1941, Britain and Germany had been at war against each other for over two years. We know from Winston Churchill's memoir The Gathering Storm that Roosevelt communicated to Churchill his desire to help the British, but the American people were were not having any of it, and were dead set against getting involved.
That all changed when the Japanese attacked American soil. Americans changed their minds en masse and Roosevelt got his wish: we entered The War the next day.
---------------
Thompson Falls, Montana is a little logging, mining and ranching burg with a weekly newspaper known as The Sanders County Ledger. For thirty years its owner, publisher, and editor-in-chief was a self-described "big fish in a small pond, " an old news-hound that, if I remember correctly, had once worked for the major dailies (or maybe the Wires), gave it all up, and bought a small-town paper in Montana to live out his years quietly. His name was K. A. "Doc" Eggensperger. I knew him. Everyone in town knew him. And every newspaper editor in Montana, including the big-city Dailies, knew him.
One day a story appeared that intrigued and shocked me: he'd been to some convention of Press people and wound up in a bar with some other old News Hounds, one of whom had been in the White House Press Corps when Roosevelt was in office. This old reporter claimed that Roosevelt had told them confidentially, "Boys, we're going to war against the Japanese." That there would be an attack on Pearl Harbor, which would rile up the American people and give FDR the political backing that he needed to take the US into World War Two, which had already been raging for a couple of years.
I tried to put the story out of my mind. "Well, national press corps reporters are all a bunch of drunks, and this guy was in a bar drinking," I told myself. Still, I couldn't get it out of my mind.
------------
My dad was a World War II Navy veteran. He turned eighteen about a year before Pearl Harbor. In the National Guard at the time, he saw what was going on in Europe and correctly deduced that he was eventually going to end up in the Army somewhere slogging through the mud. That prospect didn't suit him very well, so he went down to the Navy recruiter's office to talk about serving his country where he'd be sleeping in a warm bunk every night and have nice hot meals from a ship's galley.
The recruiter needed a signature from Dad's National Guard commanding officer. "What do you want to join the Navy for, boy?" the man roared.
"Well, I think we're going to get involved in that war over in Europe," Dad replied.
"Oh, no, we'll NEVER get called in to that," the CO snorted. But he signed the paper.
According to Dad, his Guard unit was called up into the Army two weeks after he'd sworn in to the Navy. He claimed that most of them ended up in the Bataan death march.
Dad was apparently a pretty good trombone player in high school (I never heard him play) and signed up to be in the Navy band. "He can play anything I put in front of him," his instructor exasperatedly explained to his superior, "but he has no tone." So Dad flunked out of Navy music school and went on to be just an ordinary swab. The trombone player sitting next to him ended up on the Battleship Missouri. The man is still there.
So one day I asked my dad if he'd heard that story about Pearl Harbor. He said that he hadn't, and then said something that I've never forgotten: "It always seemed strange to me that the only ship at that base that was worth anything just happened to be out on maneuvers that day. Everything that was destroyed in the Harbor was basically junk."
Hmmm...
-----------
Decades later -- indeed, only a few years ago, I was in Colorado conversing with an Old Prospector who owned a gold mine that was open to the public for tours. Unlike most gold mines, which the old joke goes are a hole in the ground with liars standing around it, this mine really did have a vein: I saw it with my own eyes. But I think he made most of his money giving tours. And like every owner of a gold mine, that old geezer loved to talk. In fact, that's all he did: his employees did all the work.
I love to talk too, so he and I had a great time. I don't remember how it came up, but he'd been a Navy man in signals intelligence during the Korean war. I asked him if he had an opinion on the "FDR knew" story, and he related a story that his superior had told him back in his Navy days.
The superior had been a very young Navy man who was somewhere in the Pacific intercepting and decoding (we had cracked their encryption) Japanese radio signals. He began to see a lot of traffic relating to an attack on a Navy base.
He alerted his commander, and the alert went nowhere. Alarmed, he began escalating up the chain, and got ignored at every step of the way. Finally, in a total breach of protocol he sent a desperate letter to someone at the top in Washington, DC. I think it was Secretary of the Navy or somebody.
A day or two later, his commanding officer called him into his office and delivered a sealed telegram. "I don't know what you've done, boy, but this came all the way from the top." With quaking hands, he opened the message and read: "You will not question the decisions of the United States Navy."
posted by Ken | 11:27 PM
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