Pearl Harbor attack

Pretext theory

The often repeated theory about the Pearl Harbor attack suggests that high officials of American government (including president Franklin D. Roosevelt) knew about the Japanese plans and decided not to warn the staff in Hawaii and use this attack as pretext to enter the war.

Facts that are supporting the theory:

• American intelligence was suspecting that Japan is preparing the war and even without the last part of the note it was rather obvious that their plans will be hostile,
  
• Americans did noticed that large Japanese naval task force (including aircraft carriers) have left the ports,
  
• Pearl Harbor was a shallow harbor unsuitable for torpedo attack, so Americans could have assume that potential damage done by Japanese would be much smaller,
  
• soon before attack Americans have withdrawn their aircraft carriers from Pearl Harbor, so they were not present in the port on December 7th.
  

Facts that oppose the theory:

• risking lives of thousands of American soldiers and equipment worth millions of dollars would be high price just to convince American public to join the war (it isn’t impossible, just unlikely),
  
• the same effect of the outrage in US would be achieved by simply detecting the Japanese task force near Pearl Harbor and fighting their planes over Hawaii, which Americans did not do,
  
• withdrawing aircraft carriers from the Pearl Harbor could have been accident, but anyway carriers were not considered as important for navy as they proved to be later in the war,
  
• if they did withdrawn aircraft carriers to save them why didn’t they send more warships on exercise somewhere, so they would not risk any damages, after all the fact of the attack was outraging enough to start the war (even single battleship lost would be shock to the American people, so why would they risk all of them?),
  
• if Americans needed the excuse to start the war they could have used another pretext, on smaller scale, that would not put the whole Pacific Fleet in risk (like they did later in Vietnam or Iraq).
  

mystery games mystery books najtańsze recepty unsolved mysteries kolej