2,454 words

Robert B. Stinnett
Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor
Free Press, 1999

You know how Copernicus began his study of the heavenly bodies not to refute Ptolemy’s geocentric paradigm, but to restore it? The reference might seem like it’s from left field, but it perfectly suits what Robert Stinnett was trying to do with his 1999 work, Day of Deceit.

The book’s subtitle says it all: “The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor.” Stinnett, who was a Second World War veteran himself, doesn’t merely expose how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deliberately goaded Japan into war in order to facilitate hostilities against Nazi Germany. He also demonstrates that FDR knew ahead of time where and approximately when Japan was going to attack, thereby putting much of the Pacific fleet and thousands of Hawaiian citizens in mortal danger. Ruthless and dishonest, yes—but for the greater good, according to Stinnett, since the Pearl Harbor attacks unified America and enabled its truculent elite to sell a bloody world war to its citizenry. All to beat those bad evil Nazis. But by focusing so much of Day of Deceit on the jaw-dropping skullduggery of FDR and his top brass, one begins to wonder if their efforts hadn’t been for the greater good. Perhaps the Nazis weren’t the evil ones after all?

Of course, the advanced knowledge theory of Pearl Harbor is nothing new. As early as 1944 Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey was questioning how the Pacific fleet could have been surprised if American codebreakers had broken Japanese codes months before the attack. After the war, US lawmakers were asking similar questions when they spearheaded investigations into Pearl Harbor. As early September 1945, a LIFE magazine article charged FDR with foreknowledge of the attack. Harry Elmer Barnes repeated this claim throughout his career, as did many revisionist historians and conspiracy theorists. After all, the advance-knowledge claim makes a lot of sense. FDR, not being an autocrat, could not simply declare war on Germany without the backing of the notoriously isolationist American people. He needed a casus belli. And what better way to achieve this than by goading the notoriously militaristic Japanese—a key German ally—into striking the first blow? There is much circumstantial evidence supporting this theory. It also makes for one heck of a plot twist in a war already brimming with plot twists. But is it true?

Well, yes. Stinnett makes it nearly impossible to read Day of Deceit and not come to that conclusion. As he ends his book quite definitively, “We knew.”

Day of Deceit tells the familiar story about the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, but with a heavy emphasis on cryptoanalysis and information flow. Most importantly, after over a decade of research, Stinnett introduces a great many heretofore uncovered primary sources which shed light on how much the Americans knew of Japanese movements and intentions—as well how much key players in the saga were prevented from knowing. Admiral Husband Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, is the prime example. On practically every fifth page Stinnett reveals evidence of Kimmel being given faulty or incomplete information, or no information at all—information which would have enabled him to protect his fleet from the sneak attack that FDR and his inner circle knew was coming.

The prize among prizes in Day of Deceit however is the Eight-Point McCollum Memorandum, which Stinnett uncovered himself in 1995. This game-changing document, written in October 1940 by Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum, outlines the general strategy the United States ended up employing vis-à-vis Japan during the 14-month lead up to the Pearl Harbor attack. Whether or not FDR actually saw the document remains an open question, but the similarity between plan and practice in this case is quite remarkable:

1. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.


2. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies [now Indonesia].


3. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek.


4. Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.


5. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.


6. Keep the main strength of the US fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.


7. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.


8. Completely embargo all trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

The document’s paper trail goes from McCollum to FDR advisors Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox, who commented on it approvingly. It ends there, however. Despite this, Stinnett demonstrates how likely it was that this document fell into FDR’s hands, given how he followed each of the points above, starting in October 1940:

Roosevelt’s “fingerprints” can be found on each of McCollum’s proposals. One of the most shocking was Action D, the deliberate deployment of American warships within or adjacent to the territorial waters of Japan. During secret White House meetings, Roosevelt personally took charge of Action D. he called the provocations “pop-up” cruises: “I just want them to keep popping up here and there and keep the Japs guessing. I don’t mind losing one or two cruisers, but do not take a chance on losing five or six.”

Stinnett follows this up in his footnotes with historical examples of FDR following the McCollum Memorandum almost to a tee. Yes, in a court of law, Stinnett cannot prove that FDR ever read the Memorandum himself. On the other hand, with a document this radical and subversive, of course FDR would have left no record of his ever having read it. It would have been profoundly stupid of him to do otherwise. This basically is the nut of all conspiratorial thinking: drawing conclusions about the hermetically sealed inner workings of a process by looking only at its outer workings. We should remember, however, that all members of government are conspirators by definition. This then leads us to ask which is more believable: FDR following these points by coincidence or design? For example, exactly one day after the McCollum Memorandum was circulated, FDR decided to initiate Action F: place the Pacific fleet in Hawaii. When fleet commander Admiral James Richardson objected since this would unnecessarily provoke the Japanese as well as endanger thousands of lives, FDR fired him and replaced with the much less qualified Anderson, who happened to be his crony.

Stinnett dedicates many pages to the ins and outs of cryptoanalysis, and reveals how the US codebreakers at the time were the best in the world. They had broken the secret Japanese codes and were well aware of what they were doing at all times. But much of this intelligence was hidden from Kimmel in order to not jeopardize McCollum’s action plans. America had to goad Japan into striking first.

Lieutenant Commanders Joseph Rochefort and Edwin Layton were top intelligence officers during the war and were also lifelong friends with McCollum. Stinnett shows time and time again how these three deliberately kept Kimmel in the dark when it came to the Japanese. Could there have been collusion between them?

When Japanese emperor Hirohito sent a radio message to his fleet saying, “NITAKA YAMA NOBORE” (“CLIMB MOUNT NITAKA”) as a signal to commence the war, it was decoded along with other messages about the aircraft carrier Kasuga Maru and Japan’s Carrier Division Four. They were then sent to Rochefort’s office.

Rochefort and his staff distilled the bundle into the Daily Communication Intelligence Summary and delivered it to Admiral Kimmel for his scheduled 8:00 A.M. briefing by Edwin Layton on December 3. The summary’s contents had nothing to say about the NITAKA dispatch or [Joseph] Howard’s intercepts of the carrier Kasuga Maru and Carrier Division Four, whose mission was to attack American bases in the Philippines.

Other examples of Japanese intercepts being kept from Kimmel include Admiral Yamamoto’s message commencing the Japanese air fleet departure from Hitokappu Bay, the Maxon Alert, which contained dispatches from Japanese spies directing the preparation of bomb plots against Pearl Harbor, as well as Japanese fleet radio transmissions as they crossed the Pacific towards the Western Hemisphere.

Another one of Stinnett’s accomplishments was to explode the myth of radio silence. It has long been part of Pearl Harbor lore that the Japanese fleet had been able to catch the Americans by surprise simply because they kept mum as they raced across the Pacific. Cryptographers cannot decode what does not get broadcast. Yet, in the Afterword of the paperback edition Stinnett reveals that in May 2000, months after the hardcover publication, thousands of documents were released due to the Freedom of Information Act. These documents provide conclusive evidence that American cryptographers knew where and when the Japanese were going to strike—because the Japanese had not maintained radio silence after all. The very idea had been a fiction, one foisted upon Congress during the investigations of 1945 and 1946. And the American public bought it. Even such a distinguished historian as Stephen Ambrose was propagating this myth as late as 1999.

Stinnett also brings up repeatedly how important information somehow never found its way into any official Pearl Harbor investigations. This includes the testimony of chief radioman Homer Kisner, who worked closely with Rochefort, as well as that of cryptographer Joseph Howard, who intercepted Hirohito’s NITAKA message, and cryptographer Harry Hood, who intercepted Japanese messages during the period of supposed radio silence. Also omitted were the TESTM dispatches from American cryptographers to Rochefort’s Station HYPO in Pearl Harbor, which ultimately went to FDR and reveal how much Admiral Kimmel had been kept out of the loop.

Another recurring motif which deserves mention is all the secrecy surrounding Pearl Harbor. It’s as if the US government still has something to hide after all these years. In response to Congressional scrutiny following the attack, “all records involving the Japanese radio intercept program—including the White House route logs and their secret contents—were locked asway in vaults controlled by Navy communication officials,” according to Stinnett. Censorship of public documents was widely practiced.

Monographs prepared for FDR in the weeks preceding the attack have inexplicably gone missing. As early as December 11, cryptographers were ordered to destroy notes and personal memoranda. Stinnett himself had been refused many requests for classified documents.

Then there is the curious case of the Fourteenth Naval District routing slip in the National Archives. Apparently, Rochefort had received a request from Lieutenant General Walter Short to decode certain Japanese intercepts, but ignored it. Rochefort initialed a routing slip and kept the original letter, dated November 27. But in the Archives there was an additional slip with the same serial number dated January 1, 1942, weeks after Short had been relieved of his duties. Could this have been an attempt to make it seem as if Short had asked for Rochefort’s assistance after the attack. Of course, we have no way of knowing because the US military still refuse to release the letters. Yes, national security may have been a good reason for suppression and secrecy back then. But 55 years on?

Stinnett states it all quite adroitly:

The author contends that this extraordinary secrecy, which still remains in effect in 1999, is intended to distance the American government and particularly FDR from foreknowledge of Japanese attack plans.

Perhaps this is why Day of Deceit received such pushback from mainstream historians shortly after it was published: They were protecting the reputation of FDR. This is why I think that much of it was politically motivated. Take the Day of Deceit Wikipedia article for example. In it, we have a brief synopsis and then nine paragraphs debunking Stinnett’s claims. That’s it. It has nothing positive to offer, as if its purpose is to discourage people from reading the book rather than offering an evenhanded review. Having read Day of Deceit, I know it deserves at least that. Perhaps not all of Stinnett’s inferences are correct, and perhaps some of his conclusions are a bit of a stretch, and perhaps his book contains errors (what work of history doesn’t?), but Stinnett deserves a mountain of praise for uncovering all the evidence that he did. This includes, among many other things:

1. The McCollum Memorandum.


2. The testimony of Homer Kisner.


3. The testimony of Harry Hood.


4. The Fourteenth Naval District routing slips in the National Archives.


5. The Maxon Alert, which was among the deceased Rochefort’s effects, held by his daughter.


6. Proof that ten of Admiral Yamamoto’s intercepted messages are now missing from the National Archives.


7. Proof that the log of the US ocean liner Lurliner, which captured Japanese radio chatter just days before Pearl Harbor, had mysteriously disappeared from the National Archives.

The Second World War remains quite the sacred cow in today’s politics. To question the righteousness of the Allied cause is tantamount to giving breathing room for Hitler and the Nazis, which our current leftist elite simply cannot allow. This is so because within the fascism, ethnonationalism, and race realism found in Nazism awaits the antidote to their power. Thus, focusing on the Roosevelt Administration’s deceitful provocations of Japan becomes dangerous. Yes, Stinnett brandishes his “so what if he did,” attitude regarding FDR, and pays suitable obeisance to political correctness. But if it is proven that the United States made an enemy out of Japan when it didn’t really need to, and then went to war when it didn’t really need to, and then lied about it for decades, then the seed of moral equivalency begins to sprout and one paradigm begins to bleed into another. If FDR was willing to sacrifice thousands of his own people under false premises and then initiate a war which killed millions and ended with atomic hellfire and the utter destruction of nations, how is he any better than Hitler? How is America’s so-called liberal democracy any better than fascism or Nazism?

Not only this, but if the door is pushed ajar with Pearl Harbor, imagine how far it can burst open with the Gulf of Tonkin or 9/11 or the October 7 attacks which launched the Gaza War in 2023. Any time you have an all-too-scintillating casus belli for a country, Day of Deceit now makes it fair play to wonder if behind the scenes there weren’t a number of hardened men desperate to secretly manufacture a reason for their warlike ambitions. And if thousands of their own people have to die to accomplish this, so be it.

America lost 2,476 soldiers, sailors, and civilians on December 7, 1941. 1,951 were taken prisoner, with most dying while in Japanese custody. But these are just numbers. As Joseph Rochefort stated after the war, Pearl Harbor “was a pretty cheap price to pay for unifying the country.” Yes, it was, but only for cold-blooded warmongers like FDR.