What You Should Know About Pearl Harbor

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

December 20, 2025

In his speech to Congress on December 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt called the preceding day, December 7, “a date that will live in infamy.” In the same speech, he called the Japanese attack “dastardly.” Roosevelt’s actions in provoking the Japanese attack should live in infamy and were themselves evil and dastardly. Roosevelt knowingly sacrificed the lives of American sailors in order to get us into war. He set up the Pacific Fleet as a sitting duck and then provoked the Japanese into attacking by freezing their assets and cutting off their oil supply.

Even if this is true, though, why should we care about this today? The Pearl Harbor attack took place eighty-four years ago. What does it have to do with us now? But in fact, it is vitally relevant. The great Murray Rothbard explains: “Some readers might ask: why?  What’s the point? Isn’t this just a raking up of old coals?  Aren’t we merely pursuing an antiquarian interest when we examine in such detail what happened over a quarter-century ago?  The answer is that this subject, far from being antiquarian, is crucial to the understanding of where we are now and how we got that way.  For America’s entry into World War II was the crucial act in expanding the United States from a republic into an Empire, and in spreading that Empire throughout the world, replacing the sagging British Empire in the process.  Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent system of conscription.  It was the crucial act in creating a Mixed Economy run by Big Government, a system of State-Monopoly-Capitalism run by the central government in collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism.  It was the crucial act in elevating Presidential power, particularly in foreign affairs, to the role of single most despotic person in the history of the world.  And, finally, World War II is the last war-myth left, the myth that the Old Left clings to in pure desperation: the myth that here, at least, was a good war, here was a war in which America was in the right.  World War II is the war thrown into our faces by the war-making Establishment, as it tries, in each war that we face, to wrap itself in the mantle of good and righteous World War II.” 

I said that Roosevelt set up the Pacific Fleet as a sitting duck. This sounds extreme, but it is solidly based on evidence. The Admiral who had been in command of the Pacific Fleet, James O. Richardson, was cashiered by Roosevelt for telling him that the fleet could not withstand a Japanese attack. Here is what a biography of him says: “From January 6, 1940, until his detachment from CinCUS on February 1, 1941, Richardson had steadfastly told all who would listen or read his messages that the Navy could not stand up to a war mode in one ocean, much less in two. After Richardson realized that the April 1940 docking of the fleet at Pearl Harbor was becoming permanent, a steady stream of conversation and messages went from his office to Washington, DC. Remaining at Pearl Harbor, to him, was an enticement to force the Japanese hand. To FDR, at least outwardly, it simply told Japan that the United States was not only determined to hold what it owned but was willing to move westward if necessary. Richardson had an Oriental mind-set, having served a dozen assignments in the Pacific. He studied what Japan did to Russia in early years of the twentieth century, and he knew well what was happening at the moment as the Land of the Rising Sun expanded its horizon. He had only informal intelligence lines, but he knew just from his associations that the Japanese were capable of capturing all the lands they desired in the Pacific Rim. However, his pleadings for awareness and action were ignored.”

Robert B. Stinnett unearthed the document that proves that a conspiracy to get us into war existed. According to a review of his book Day of Deceit, “As Stinnett shows, the plan that eventuated in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was set in motion in early October 1940 based on an ‘eight-action memo, dated October 7, 1940 … by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Navy Intelligence.’ Of course, it is unlikely that McCollum drafted it on his own initiative, but this is where Stinnett’s paper trail starts. ‘Its eight actions call for virtually inciting a Japanese attack on American ground, air, and naval forces in Hawaii, as well as on British and Dutch colonial outposts in the Pacific region….’:

A. Make an arrangement with Britain for use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.
B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies [now Indonesia].
C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek.
D. Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore.
E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.
F. Keep the main strength of the US Fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian islands.
G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.
H. Complete embargo all trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

As the plan unfolded its development was closely monitored through decoded intercepts of Japanese diplomatic and naval radio communications. ‘McCollum oversaw the routing of communications intelligence to FDR from early 1940 to December 7, 1941, and provided the President with intelligence reports on Japanese military and diplomatic strategy. Every intercepted and decoded Japanese military and diplomatic report destined for the White House went through the Far East Asia section of ONI, which he oversaw.

The section served as a clearinghouse for all categories of intelligence reports…. Each report prepared by McCollum for the President was based on radio intercepts gathered and decoded by a worldwide network of American military cryptographers and radio intercept operators…. Few people in America’s government or military knew as much about Japan’s activities and intentions as McCollum.’ Knowledge of the plan was closely held, limited ‘to 13 Roosevelt administration members and chief military officers and 21 members of Naval Intelligence and related operations.’ Item C was already US policy when McCollum wrote his memo. Item F was set in motion on October 8, Items A, B and G on October 16, 1940, Item D and E by November 12, 1940.

Although he had no access to this document, America’s leading historian, Charles A. Beard, suspected what was going on. Gore Vidal tells us that “ When Charles A. Beard, our leading historian in those far-off days, wrote President Roosevelt and the Coming of War, 1941 (1948), in which he made the case that the Japanese attack was the result of a series of deliberate provocations by FDR, he promptly underwent erasure at the hands of the court historians in place, as always, to demonstrate that what ought not to be true is not true.”

Vidal summarizes Roosevelt’s provocations: “On July 16, 1941, Prince Konoye, a would-be peacemaker, became prime minister. On July 26 (as a vote of confidence?) the US froze all Japanese funds in the US and stopped the export of oil. When Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles was asked by the Japanese if some compromise might be worked out, Welles said there was not the ‘slightest ground for any compromise solution.’

“Our first provocation against Japan began with FDR’s famous Chicago address (October 5, 1937), asking for a quarantine against aggressor nations. Certainly, Japan in Manchuria and north China qualified as an aggressor just as we had been one when we conquered the Philippines and moved into the Japanese neighborhood at the start of the twentieth century. In December 1937, the Japanese sank the Panay, an American gunboat in Chinese waters, on duty so far from home as the Monroe Doctrine sternly requires. Japan promptly, humbly paid for the damage mistakenly done our ship. Meanwhile, FDR—something of a Sinophile—was aiding and abetting the Chinese warlord Chiang Kai-shek.

“Three years later the Western world changed dramatically. France fell to Hitler, an ally of Japan. FDR was looking for some way to help Britain avoid the same fate. Although most bien pensant Americans were eager to stop Hitler, not many fretted about Japan. Also, more to the point—the point—a clear majority of American voters were against going to war a second time in Europe in a single generation. Nevertheless, instead of meeting Konoye, FDR met Winston Churchill aboard a warship off Newfoundland. FDR said that he would do what he could to help England, but he was limited by an isolationist Congress, press, and electorate. Later, Churchill, in a speech to Parliament, let part of the cat out of the bag: ‘The possibility since the Atlantic Conference…that the United States, even if not herself attacked, would come into a war in the Far East, and thus make final victory sure, seemed to allay some of those anxieties….’ (The anxieties were FDR’s inability to come to the full aid of England in the war with the Axis.) ‘As time went on, one had great assurance that if Japan ran amok in the Pacific, we should not fight alone.’”

Let’s do everything we can to get the truth out about Pearl Harbor!