(1) Joachim von Ribbentrop sent this telegram to Molotov about the proposed German-Japanese Pact on 25th September, 1940.

This alliance is directed exclusively against American warmongers. To be sure that is, as usual, not expressly stated in the treaty, but can be unmistakably inferred from its terms. Its exclusive purpose is to bring the elements pressing for America's entry into the war to their senses by conclusively demonstrating to them if they enter the present struggle they will automatically have to deal with the three great powers as adversaries.

 

(2) In his memoirs Cordell Hull wrote about negotiations that took place between the United States and Japan just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

The President now had before him two draft messages, which I had sent him during his absence. One was a message to Congress, which Secretaries Stimson and Knox had helped me prepare, advising it of the imminent dangers in the situation. The other was a message to Emperor Hirohito of Japan, appealing for peace.

This second message had been under discussion since October among those of us concerned with the Far East. In my memorandum to the President accompanying these drafts, I suggested: "If you should send this message to the Emperor it would be advisable to defer your message to Congress until we see whether the message to the Emperor effects any improvement in the situation. I think we agree that you will not send the message to Congress until the last stage of our relations, relating to actual hostility, has been reached."

I had two reasons for this last comment. One was that the message to Congress could contain very little that was new without giving the Japanese leaders material with which to arouse their people against us all the more. The other was that the powerful isolationist groups still existing in Congress and in the United States might use it to renew their oft repeated charges of "warmongering" and "dragging the nation into foreign wars." The Japanese military could then have played up the situation as evidencing disunity in the United States, thus encouraging the Japanese to support their plans for plunging ahead into war.

I also was not in favor of the message to the Emperor, except as a last-minute resort, and I so informed the President. I felt that the Emperor, in any event, was a figurehead under the control of the military Cabinet. A message direct to him would cause Tojo's Cabinet to feel that they were being short-circuited and would anger them. Besides, I knew that the Japanese themselves did not make use of such means as a direct Presidential message. Normally they did not shift from a bold front to one of pleading until the situation with them was desperate. They would therefore regard the message as our last recourse and a sign of weakness.

 

(3) In his prison diary Hideki Tojo explained why Japan decided to attack Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941.

The main American naval forces were shifted to the Pacific region and an American admiral made a strong declaration to the effect that if war were to break out between Japan and the United States, the Japanese navy could be sunk in a matter of weeks. Further, the British Prime Minister (Churchill) strongly declared his nation's intention to join the fight on the side of the United States within 24 hours should war break out between Japan and the United States. Japan therefore faced considerable military threats as well.

Japan attempted to circumvent these dangerous circumstances by diplomatic negotiation, and though Japan heaped concession upon concession, in the hope of finding a solution through mutual compromise, there was no progress because the United States would not retreat from its original position. Finally, in the end, the United States repeated demands that, under the circumstances, Japan could not accept: complete withdrawal of troops from China, repudiation of the Nanking government, withdrawal from the Tripartite Pact (signed by Germany, Italy and Japan on September 27, 1940). At this point, Japan lost all hope of reaching a resolution through diplomatic negotiation.

Since events had progressed as they had, it became clear that to continue in this manner was to lead the nation to disaster. With options thus foreclosed, in order to protect and defend the nation and clear the obstacles that stood in its path, a decisive appeal to arms was made.

War was decided upon at the Imperial Conference on December 1, 1941, and the shift to real operations was made at this point. However, even during the preparations for action, we laid our plans in such a manner that should there be progress through diplomatic negotiation, we would be well prepared to cancel operations at the latest moment that communication technology would have permitted.

(4) While he was at a Mansion House luncheon Winston Churchill heard a rumour that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. He immediately telephoned President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. "Mr. President, what's this about Japan? "It's quite true," he replied. "They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now."

No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!

Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war - the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's-breath; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress. We had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live.

How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.

 

 

(5) The Manchester Guardian (8th December, 1941)

The Japanese, without any warning, yesterday afternoon began war on the United States with air attacks on the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the adjacent city of Honolulu. Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo later announced that Japan had entered into a state of war with Britain and the United States in the Western Pacific from 6 a.m. today.

President Roosevelt has mobilized the Army and ordered all the armed forces to take up their war stations and imposed a censorship.

As more than 150 planes took part in the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Honolulu, it is thought that there must be at least three Japanese aircraft-carriers, and probably more, engaged. Several planes were shot down.

Considerable damage was done at Pearl Harbour and there were numerous casualties. It is officially announced that the Army casualties were 104 killed and 300 wounded. It is thought that these occurred when the airfield was hit. The civilian casualties are unknown.

 

(6) Zenji Abe, was a Japanese pilot who managed to score a direct hit on the Arizona. He was interviewed about his experiences in August 2001.

When we took off from our carrier, the planes looked so beautiful, like fireflies in the dark before dawn. When I was diving on the Arizona, I felt as if I was drowning with the pressure of gravity. All I could see was that target through my scope.

I remember our mixed feelings when we pilots landed back on our aircraft carrier, Akagi, from Pearl Harbor. Okay, a few of the men were shouting "banzai" but some were very subdued. I doubted I'd done my best. we'd lost a few planes. Some of the pilots were very subdued.

 

(7) William Leahy, ambassador to Vichy government, wrote about Pearl Harbor in his autobiography, I Was There (1950)

At 6.30 p.m. (Vichy time) of December 8, the National Broadcasting Company short-wave station reported President Roosevelt's request that the Congress declare war on Japan. The voice and words of the President formed a dramatic picture of the most powerful nation of the world embarking on an all-out war to destroy the bandit nation of the Orient.

The war formally declared that day would in my certain opinion result in the destruction of Japan as a first-class sea power, regardless of how much time and treasure might be required to accomplish that end. I knew that the President was thoroughly familiar with the Navy's plans to defeat Japan.

Later in the evening of December 8, the radio reported that casualties at Pearl Harbor probably numbered 3,000. This created anxiety for our relatives and friends stationed there, but we later learned that most of them came out of it all right. Later, when the details were available, I found that there were four ships seriously damaged upon which I had served. They were the Nevada (executive officer, 1917), the ancient Oglala (flagship when I commanded Mine Squadron One, 1921), the cruiser Raleigh (flagship when I was Commander of Destroyers, U.S. Fleet, 1931), and the battleship California.

I think now, in retrospect, that we overestimated the power of the Japanese Navy and Air forces. We had pretty good information while I was Chief of Naval Operations (1937-39) that the Japanese were comparatively inefficient in gunnery However they had good ships, good guns and a lot of air. The whole world in those days was afraid of the air. There was a fear that if we sent our ships near enough to Japan to be attacked by land-based air, it would be very bad for us. It turned out that when we did go there, we took our excellent Naval Air Force with us, and that was bad for the Japs.

The wrecking of our fleet in this unanticipated attack gave the Japanese a terrific advantage they did not have before, but their campaign developed pretty much along expected lines. We thought they would strike down the coast of China and the Dutch East Indies to get oil and rubber, which they had to have to win the war. When we were able to stop that, Japan started to lose the war.

 

(8) Studs Terkel interviewed Admiral Gene Larocque about his experiences during the Second World War for his book, The Good War (1985)

In the summer of 1941 I asked to be sent to Pearl Harbor. The Pacific fleet was there and it sounded romantic. I was attached to the U.S.S. MacDonough when the Japanese attacked. We got under way about ten o'clock looking for the Japanese fleet. It's lucky we didn't find them; they would probably have sunk us. I spent the whole war in the Pacific, four years.

At first I thought the U.S. Army Air Corps was accidentally bombing us. We were so proud, so vain, and so ignorant of Japanese capability. It never entered our consciousness that they'd have the temerity to attack us. We knew the Japanese didn't see well, especially at night - we knew this as a matter of fact. We knew they couldn't build good weapons, they made junky equipment, they just imitated us. All we had to do was get out there and sink them. It turns out they could see better than we could and their torpedoes, unlike ours, worked.

 

(9) Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1980)

It was not Hitler's attacks on the Jews that brought the United States into World War II, any more than the enslavement of 4 million blacks brought Civil War in 1861. Italy's attack on Ethiopia, Hitler's invasion of Austria, his takeover of Czechoslovakia, his attack on Poland - none of those events caused the United States to enter the war, although Roosevelt did begin to give important aid to England. What brought the United States fully into the war was the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Surely it was not the humane concern for Japan's bombing of civilians that led to Roosevelt's outraged call for war - Japan's attack on China in 1937, her bombing of civilians at Nanking, had not provoked the United States to war. It was the Japanese attack on a link in the American Pacific Empire that did it.

In one of its policies, the United States came close to direct duplication of Fascism. This was in its treatment of the Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. After the Pearl Harbor attack, anti-Japanese hysteria spread in the government. One Congressman said: "I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps. Damn them! Let's get rid of them!"

Franklin D. Roosevelt did not share this frenzy, but he calmly signed Executive Order 9066, in February 1942, giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast - 110,000 men, women, and children - to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions. Three-fourths of these were Nisei - children born in the United States of Japanese parents and therefore American citizens. The other fourth - the Issei, born in Japan - were barred by law from becoming citizens. In 1944 the Supreme Court upheld the forced evacuation on the grounds of military necessity. The Japanese remained in those camps for over three years.

 

(10) Jeff Dawson, The Sunday Times, review of the film Pearl Harbor (27th May, 2001)

In an age of political correctness, President Roosevelt is a wheel-chair-bound saint who strides, Forest Gump-like, on his calipers to triumph over adversity. And, most tellingly, the Japanese warlords, butchers of Nanking, are portrayed as reluctant warriors; Admiral Yamamoto, architect of the naval attack, is a sort of Dr No turned peacenik. But this isn't so surprising. These days, an average 30% of a Hollywood studio's box-office gross comes from Japan.

As you look at this picture-perfect palm tree paradise, it is hard to imagine how death just dropped out of the blue that December morning. In the attack, 2,403 people died, 188 planes were destroyed and the US Pacific Fleet had 12 large ships sunk or beached, including the battleships Arizona, West Virginia and California. FDR convinced the isolationists war was the only war, Churchill breathed a sigh of relief, and within days, under the terms of the tripartite pact, Germany declared war on America, Britain was no longer alone - a watershed moment in modern history.

Standing at the Arizona memorial is a truly moving experience. The ship, at rest in the shallows, is now preserved as a war grave. More than 1,102 souls are still at rest in its rusting hull, killed when the ship's magazine blew, an explosion so huge that the jolt lifted the entire battleship 10 feet out of the water and knocked people on the ground two miles away. The woman at the admissions desk does not think much of this Hollywood invasion: "It's a shame you guys couldn't show more interest in the reason behind it all rather than some movie," she snaps.

 

(11) Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, review of the film Pearl Harbor (1st June, 2001)

Never at any time does director Michael Bay give any hint of the real human cost of war. At least Saving Private Ryan made an honourable attempt to show the ugliness of violence; the sweat, the pain - and the fear and hatred of the enemy.

As for the Japanese themselves, the film smoothes away both America's "yellow peril" racist invective and the realities of Japanese nationalist aggression: a kind of bogus two-way political correctness, somehow as insidiously offensive as anything else.