The Science of Conspiracy Theories

The Pearl Harbor conspiracy

The Pearl Harbor conspiracy

I dedicate this to all of the brave service people who lost their lives in one of the most devastating attacks on the U.S. May they never be forgotten.

I thought that I would include this well discussed conspiracy theory because I wrote a paper on it in college. Back then, I only had a library as a source of information, and that included periodicals, books and journals. No Internet or computers were available in those days, and I had to type it up on a typewriter. It was the dark ages!

By the way, my paper was a lot longer than this because I had to include all of the references.

The conspiracy about the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941 is that President Roosevelt knew that it was going to happen and simply allowed it so that the U.S. could be drawn into the war. Remember that before this attack, the U.S. had not declared war on anyone, but was helping the British, Free France and China with the Lend-Lease Act.

All my research back then could not reveal any plot by Roosevelt or any of his aides. There are two main reasons that I don't believe there was a conspiracy. First, Roosevelt loved the navy and there is no way that he would have knowingly allowed it to be destroyed. Remember that all of the battleships at Pearl Harbor were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Three cruisers were damaged as well as three destroyers. Fortunately, the three aircraft carriers were not there, other wise it would have been a much worse situation.

The other reason I don't accept the conspiracy idea is the fact that the U.S. military, including the navy was in a poor state of preparedness. This is the result of the generals and admirals fighting the previous war, not the new one. They assumed that the Japanese would never risk an attack that far away, and they didn't believe that aircraft carriers were going to be the main battle weapon. In those days they thought that battleships were the desired weapons of choice in sea battles. Of course, that was true in WW I, but not this new war.

Even worse, radar was available, but it was so new the military leaders didn't place much faith in it. The commander at Pearl at the time though that the radar was detecting a B17 bomber group returning to Pearl, not a full-scale Japanese attack. Besides it was Sunday morning. Who would attack then?

It's always easy to come up with what should have been done after the fact. The reality is that the military was not expecting a war to start with a major attack, so they were complacent. This is typical. Americans don't like war and only go to war when attacked. Pacifists rule the politics and affect the attitude of most people in peacetime. That's how it was and still is.

The fact is that the Japanese made a serous blunder by attacking Pearl Harbor the way they did. They had planned to do most of the damage with torpedoes dropped from planes, but torpedoes normally don't work well in a shallow harbor. The Japanese came up with wooden fins on their torpedoes to make them stable in a shallow water. They worked perfectly. However, they never bombed the reserve fuel tanks or the submarines. They went after the battleships because, like our military leaders, they figured that the loss of battleships would make the U.S. pull back and be afraid to attack Japan. That was a big mistake. All it did was make the U.S determined to defeat them.

They also made the mistake of sending midget submarines equipped to destroy ships in a suicide mission. The destroyer Ward attacked one of the subs and sunk it. This was the first military action of WW II by the United States. This should have alerted the brass at Pearl, but they ignored it. The Japanese got lucky in this case.

To make matters worse, the attack came before Japan declared war on the United States. This occurred because of a screw up in sending a declaration of war notification to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, and it took too long to translate to English and the Ambassadors were late in delivering it to the White House. Thus, this event was considered a sneak attack, making all Americans angry.

Also, the Japanese sent six carriers, containing many of their crack pilots and latest planes. If they had been sighted and attacked by United States naval forces, the war would have been over early.

The Japanese also attacked British military locations in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, forcing England to declare war on Japan before the U.S. did.

One of the more egregious results of this attack on the U.S. was the completely unfair internment of Japanese American citizens in camps. This ridiculous action was a serious injustice. A similar action was not taken against German Americans. I know this because the barber I went to was a German. He just kept a low profile during the war.

The funny thing about Pearl Harbor is that the two commanders in charge there were sacked for not being alert to the attack. On the other hand, the Japanese took out the U.S. fleet and planes in the Philippines. In this case General Douglass McArthur was in charge, knew about the Pearl Harbor attack and did nothing to defend his resources, yet he was never reprimanded. In a way, I wonder if he actually wanted a war and this is his way of guaranteeing it.

Thanks for reading.