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Did Franklin Roosevelt know Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked? Did President Franklin Roosevelt know Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked? On December 7, 1941 the United States of America was attacked at the naval base in Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan. It was a day considered by President Roosevelt to live in infamy. Pearl Harbor was the home to a large part of the United States aircraft carrier fleet. It was definitely an intriguing attack site for Japan to hit.
The attack was an obvious surprise to everyone living in the area of Pearl Harbor and the United States. Journalist Clarke Beach of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin said this 3 months before the attack, A Japanese attack on Hawaii is regarded as the most unlikely thing in the world, with one chance in a million of being successful (Lord 33) Beach and everyone else in the country would have no idea that they would lose thousands of lives in what was an incident that was thought to never happen. The United States was now united in a obvious decision to enter World War II. The question about this day that still remains is did our own President have information that this attack was going to happen.
Did he let the attack happen because he believed from the start of World War II that the United States should have entered it then? This paper will explore the possibilities that President Franklin Roosevelt had knowledge before hand that Japan was planning an attack on Pearl Harbor or that he had no involvement what so ever in the sneak attack. When considering whether or not President Roosevelt knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, you have to consider his viewpoint on entering World War II. Many people that criticized Roosevelt believed that there was a large burden put on the should of the President of whether or not to enter the war. People believe that he knew far more about Japanese intentions then he let on. The main reason for the speculation of Franklin Roosevelt knowing about the attack was that this would create such crisis that the United States would have no choice but to enter the war.
The people that have the strongest belief of conspiracy by President Roosevelt are the people that are considered isolationists. Isolationists are people that dont believe in going into war unless absolutely necessary. People like this including two isolationist senators, like Homer Ferguson and Owen Brewster believed that Roosevelt knew about the attack. One of their main points for believing so was that Roosevelt ordered part of the fleet from Pearl Harbor to the Atlantic right before the attack (Bachrach 34). They said that Japan had now the chance to look at Pearl Harbor as a very weak naval base that could be easily attacked. Roosevelt should have expected the attack because he had just broken off peace talks with Japan and should have realized they might try something.
Another man that agreed with the isolationist senators was writer John T. Flynn. He wrote a pamphlet called The Truth About Pearl Harbor, that charged President Roosevelt with holding back evidence and being ignorant (Flynn 71) He believed that Roosevelt knew well before hand that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked and that he misjudged just how bad the American ability to fight back that day would be. Flynn claimed to have secret information that would implicate President Roosevelt in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The information was never allowed by the government to be publicly released. Instead the U.
S Government critiqued and changed around the information to their advantage and was finally released. President Roosevelt was never once incriminated by these reports in a so-called coverup. Possibly the man that gave Roosevelt the hardest criticism was historian Harry Elmer Barnes. He believed that President Roosevelt was reading secret messages sent by the Japanese and that he had an idea the United States might be attacked at anytime at Pearl Harbor. Barnes believes he withheld the information so that the attack would shut the isolationists up and also give the U. S.
a reason for entering World War II. Barnes remembers when Roosevelt once said, I fell like I am almost literally walking on eggs (Barnes 81). Secretary of State Cordell Hull said in reply to this statement, the question was how we should maneuver the Japanese into firing the first shot without allowing too much damage to ourselves (Barnes 82). This posses the question was President Roosevelt making a plan that would somehow include Pearl Harbor as a means of getting the U. S. into the war.
One of the most highly believed reasons for the questions of President Roosevelt knew about the attack was his whether relationship with British prime minister, Winston Churchill. The two leaders shared similar beliefs in the issues of the war, making them perfect allies. Churchill nearly begged Roosevelt for his intervention into World War II on the side of the British. 4 The theory made by most skeptics of Roosevelt is that he and Churchill made a separate agreement at one point in time. The agreement was that the United States would enter the war on the side of the British if the Japanese attacked the United States. Roosevelt once made this comment to Churchill, I may never declare war; I may make war.
If I went to Congress to declare war, they might argue about it for three months (Bachrach 34). The brought up the question did Roosevelt make the war by letting an attack on Pearl Harbor happen so that the U. S. might enter the war. There are obviously many ways for people to point a finger at the President of the United States for the reason that Pearl Harbor was allowed to be taken so easily by surprise. Yet the question still remains; How could any man that ran his own country let such a slaughter be done to the people that helped defend him and the country he believed in?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was considered one of the greatest Presidents in the history of the United States. At points he was on top of the world and at others he was the most hated man ever to walk the earth. Many people believe that a man such as this could have absolutely no involvement what so ever in a cover-up that would cripple his own country like Pearl Harbor did. He loved his country and the people that lived in it too much to ever let their lives be endangered for any reason. A historian by the name of Roberta Wohlstetter believed that the President was totally truthful in his acts involving Pearl Harbor. She believes that Roosevelt was to concerned with things 5 happening in Europe and that he left Far Eastern matters in the hands of his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull (Wohlstetter 21).
She felt that Roosevelt was telling the truth when he said that he and the rest of his staff had no idea what had happened to a certain Japanese fleet which had been picked up by U. S. intelligence and then was later a part of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Journalist Clare Boot Luce also went against the notion that President Roosevelt was involved in a conspiracy to enter the war. She believes that Roosevelt was an honest politician that would never knowingly go against the opinion of most Americans that we should stay out of World War II unless absolutely.
Luce writes, Certainly he would never withhold necessary information that could lead to war when so many in America were dead set against it (Melosi 136). A third person by the name of Gordon Prange believed that the president was not guilty of treason. Prange writes, Roosevelt loved the navy; even his enemies conceded that he loved the sea service and felt a personal affinity with it (Bachrach 37). Prange felt that Roosevelt was also too good of a man to ever keep such vital information from the United States and the people that were defending it.
He thinks that Roosevelt had too much to lose with being a part of a conspiracy and would never make the decision to join in one. There were also talks that during the months before the attack there were several military meetings in Washington concerning a possible agreement that the United States would go to war against Japan or Germany. 6 Prange says that the President made an obvious attempt to keep himself away from commitment of war because no officer higher than a captain attended the military meetings. Prange thinks that Roosevelt knew exactly what he was doing and knew that the President had boundaries that he would not cross for any reason. Another reason that it looked President Roosevelt had no involvement with a conspiracy to get the United States into t
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Research essay sample on World War Ii Attack On Pearl Harbor
