A Response to Richard Morrock

My article made no mention of John Toland; nonetheless, in objecting to what I wrote, Morrock attacked Toland more than me. Morrock discredited the data in Toland’s book Infamy (1982) by dismissing him as a “dubious expert” and a “self-trained historian.” His main impeachment of Toland was that he “has endorsed the Holocaust-denying publication, The Barnes Review.” Without saying Toland denied the Holocaust, Morrock smeared him by alleging that he supported Nazis. If it were true that Toland endorsed The Barnes Review, the relevance of that to the lively historical question of Roosevelt’s advance knowledge about the Pearl Harbor attack escapes me. Knowing and admiring Toland, and without seeing Morrock’s evidence, I reserve comment on the surprising statement that Toland endorsed The Barnes Review. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Toland probably needs no defense from me. Nonetheless, continuing attacks on him illuminate the rancor in defenses of Roosevelt — defenses often made in the absence of attacks. For, unlike Toland, I am a strong admirer of Roosevelt (and Churchill), and had no criticism of his leadership in my article.

Government officials have tried to suppress intelligence and documents on whether Roosevelt

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knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In testifying before the Joint Congressional Committee and other tribunals investigating Pearl Harbor, top officials said that not a single piece of intelligence had identified Pearl Harbor as a target of Japan’s coming attack. But the Committee rejected their statements and published a dozen intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages that identified Pearl Harbor as a likely target — messages known to have been brought to Roosevelt’s attention. The most dramatic one contained, “…there is considerable opportunity left to take advantage for a surprise attack against…” and listed Pearl Harbor and other military installations — all in Hawaii. Those messages have been discounted in defending Roosevelt, but they speak for themselves. In 1945 and 1946 — while the Congressional investigation was in progress — the Truman administration suppressed other intelligence of the coming attack — evidence in the files of Naval Intelligence, Army Intelligence, the State Department, and the FBI — which has been slowly released since. To sketch it, a coming attack on Pearl Harbor was reported to Washington by a secret agent of the Army, by a Soviet agent via Moscow, by a British agent, by various offices of Naval intelligence, and by General Frederick Thorpe who said his source was Dutch intelligence.

The most recent and sensational evidence came from the partial breaking of Japan’s naval codes. Many messages involving the Japanese fleet moving to attack Pearl Harbor were intercepted during the 10 days preceding the attack. The Roosevelt administration and its successors hid the existence of the messages until 1979, when Jimmy Carter ordered their release. Since then, the government position has been that the codes were not broken until the spring of 1942 — that none of the intercepted naval messages were decrypted before the Pearl Harbor attack. That position is demonstrably false; government records contain messages decrypted before the attack. Robert Stinnett reported much of that evidence in his 1999 book, Day of Deceit. More than a million documents — the great majority unrelated to Pearl Harbor, but bearing on the breaking of Japan’s naval codes in 1941 — had been hidden. With censorship and delays, their release is still incomplete, but more have become available since Stinnett completed his research. As of today, the bearing of the most recently released documents on Roosevelt’s advance knowledge remains to be determined. Whatever the intercepted Japanese naval messages eventually may show, without them there is still much evidence that officials, including Roosevelt, had advance warning of the Pearl Harbor attack.

George Victor
West Orange, New Jersey

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