Book review: Pearl Harbor Attack: Roosevelt Knew it –15 proofs that overturn the “Surprise Attack” theory written by Shiramatsu Shigeru (Tokyo: Minerva Shobo, 2025)
Reviewed by Sugihara Seishiro
President
International Research Institute of Controversial Histories
(1) Regarding the Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which triggered the war between Japan and the United States in 1941, it is an important issue in the U.S. postwar history to clarify whether the United States President Roosevelt knew about it in advance.
At the time when the President spoke in the U.S. Congress on the next day of the surprise attack, no lawmakers could have imagined any knowledge but in due time, considering the scale and damages inflicted by the attack, suspicion naturally rose that Roosevelt knew it but did not tell the base in Pearl Harbor, which led to larger casualties.
Anyhow, how the United States failed to perceive in advance an attack of that size and scale, which inflicted such tragic casualties was the great concern of the American people and unravelling it became a historically important task. To probe the issue, eight official investigations were conducted during wartime and immediately after the war ended, a joint Senate and House investigation committee was held, amounting to the total of nine official investigations.
Among these, the committee most suspicious of Roosevelt’s foreknowledge of the Japanese Navy’s surprise attack, which investigated the issue most thoroughly was certainly the one held from November 15, 1945 through May 31, 1946 by the Joint Senate and House Investigation Committee. However, despite the grand-scale investigation, they could not obtain any testimony that Roosevelt knew beforehand about the attack or any source to verify it.
Thus, for a time being, documents related to the Pearl Harbor remained classified, and the issue of Roosevelt’s foreknowledge has been kept frozen.
(2) However, about forty years after the Pearl Harbor attack, two books using the sources from the above-mentioned official investigations were published and became popular in the United States.
One is At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, written by Gordon W. Prange and published in 1981 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1981). And the other is Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath written by John Toland and published in 1982 (New York: Doubleday, 1982).
The two books are based on the same sources, but their conclusions are the opposite.
Prange concluded at the end of his book with the words, “...But in a thorough search of more than thirty years, including all publications released up to May 1, 1981, we have not discovered one document or one word of sworn testimony that substantiates the revisionist position on Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor.”
On the other hand, the book by Toland concluded quite oppositely that Roosevelt knew about the attack. One piece of compelling evidence which did not emerge in the nine official investigations was testimony from a wireless operator Z at the 12th Naval District in San Francisco intercepted signals transmitted from the Japanese Task Force, and pinpointed the Task Force’s location, and this had been reported to Washington. If this is true, it can hardly be denied that Roosevelt knew. However, at that time, according to the Japanese history study, it was believed that the Task Force that attacked Pearl Harbor maintained strict radio silence. Affected by this theory, the wireless operator’s testimony was not fully trusted and although Toland’s theory was widely discussed in the United States, most people regarded it as unacceptable.
Essentially, it is believed that the United States fought the war with Japan as a just war and under such psychology, Americans did not want to believe that Roosevelt knew about the attack in advance and had to take the blame for the Pearl Harbor victims and it was thought that although Toland’s book was an interesting read, it did not provide concrete evidence to support the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory, which kept readers from supporting Roosevelt’s foreknowledge theory.
(3) However, nearly ten years afterwards, in 1991, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States National Security Agency (NSA), with a view to terminating the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory once for all, investigated documents declassified before the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack and concluded that the United States Navy could not foresee the surprise attack by the Japanese Navy. However, the book published in Japan in that year The Surprise Attack on Pearl Harbor: Did Roosevelt Know? written by Konno Tsutomu (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbun-sha, 1991) presented a thesis that clearly refuted the U.S. conclusion. Konno investigated each of the seven testimonies which are not direct but supportive evidence of the theory widely spread across the world that Roosevelt knew about the attack in advance and the historical value of which cannot be denied. Konno proved that although those seven testimonies describe separate situations, on close examination of each of them, they fit into one pattern and align with each other beyond time and space. Although they are not based on direct evidence, they clearly indicate that the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory is substantiated.
In Toland’s book mentioned above, for example, it is pointed out that a wireless operator detected the transmission from the Japanese Task Force, pinpointed the location and reported it to Washington. Regarding this information, a theory was introduced that a task force was moving in the North Pacific Ocean in a range as large as the size of the Japanese Awaji Island, and radio waves transmitted from the Funabashi communication facility to the task force were reflected like a mirror by the task force, which produced an effect as if a new radio wave was transmitted. If this theory stands valid, it proves the validity of both testimonies that the Task Force was strictly observing radio silence and the U.S. Navy analyzed the radio wave transmitted from the Japanese Task Force, pinpointed the location of the Task Force and reported it to Washington.
(4) Nearly ten years afterwards, in 2000, a scholarly book titled Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, written by Robert B. Stinnett was published (New York: Free Press, 2000). Navy documents around the start of the U.S.-Japanese War were declassified as historical sources and became accessible, which prompted the new development in the study of the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory.
Stinnet got access to the record of the wave reception from the Japanese Navy related to the Pearl Harbor attack, which clarified to considerable extent the movement of the Japanese Navy and with the vital information that the Washinton leaders did not inform the base in Pearl Harbor of these pieces of information, the crucial failure can be asserted based on historical facts. Incidentally, the unidentified wireless operator Z mentioned by Toland was identified as Robert Ogg and Toland put the photograph of Ogg holding the original source indicating that he caught the wireless transmission from the Japanese Task Force as Toland had pointed out. Thus, Toland’s assertion was decisively proven to be correct.
(5) Twenty-five years later, in 2025, the Japanese scholar Shiramatsu Shigeru got access to historical sources, including those Stinnett could not get access to, and clearly proved that the United States decoded the D Code which the Japanese Navy used, being fully confident that it was impossible to decipher. Then, he extensively read books published on the study of the Pearl Harbor issue in the world and published the book Pearl Harbor Attack: Roosevelt knew it—15 proofs that overturn the “Sneak Attack” theory (Tokyo: Minerva Shobo, 2025), the object of this book review.
Prior to the publication of this book, Shiramatsu published the book There was no aircraft carrier then—examining Pearl Harbor (Tokyo: Bungei-shunju-sha, 2013). He had read extensively books published across the world related to the Pearl Harbor issue, examined them and added the following historical facts of great significance.
On December 4, three days prior to the Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7 (U.S. calendar), The Chicago Daily Tribune reported a war plan to mobilize an army of 10,000,000 strong, which put Roosevelt in an utter predicament. In fact, this was an intended leak that Churchill plotted, and Roosevelt approved. In 1940, Roosevelt was successfully elected for his third term as President with his promise not to go to war. It could be tantamount to betrayal to the American people for him to make such a war plan. And if this fact had been known to the people, Roosevelt would have faced an extraordinary predicament. In the above-mentioned book, Toland describes how dismayed Roosevelt was over this leaking incident. However, in his book, Shiramatsu made it clear that this was an intentional leak plotted by Churchill and Roosevelt.
Why did they plot such a thing? Their aim was, with the knowledge of the Japanese Navy’s attempt to attack Pearl Harbor and on this premise, to manipulate Germany, which had no obligation to join the war after it broke out, into unfailingly entering war with the United States. If Hitler was to know about the war plan of this scale, Hitler would have judged a war with the United States unavoidable and there would be no alternative but to declare war at this point even though the preparation for war has not yet been completed. In fact, after Hitler went through agony after agony, he declared war against the United States on December 11.
This is the first book in Japan to introduce the mechanism of the leaking incident. Thus, the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory has been perfectly proven. It is an epoch-making fact to both Japan and the United States in postwar history studies to substantiate that a Japanese has perfectly proven the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory.
(6) In the first place, however, why are both Japan and the United States obsessed with the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory as a historical issue? Thinking about it, we learn that there is a big difference between Japan and the United States as to the significance of the obsession. In the United States, to put it in extreme terms, it goes that even though Roosevelt knew about the Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in advance, he did not appropriately alert the Pear Harbor base, which led to many American casualties without cause. On the other hand, considering Japan was accused of being a despicable country for the “sneak attack” and forced into waging a devastating war, it is of much more significance to prove the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory.
Incidentally, though there remains a question of whether it was regarded as a form of declaration of war, thirty minutes prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan was to hand an “ultimatum” to the U.S. Secretary of State. However, due to the clerical blunder on the part of the Japanese Embassy in Washington, it was handed to the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor started. In terms of formality, it turned out to be a “sneak attack,” without a notice in advance. As a result, the American people got far more furious than in the case if the event followed the scheduled course.
On the ground of the American people’s utter fury, on January 24, 1943, at Casablanca, Roosevelt declared the demand for unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany. Regarding Japan, on February 8, 1945, at Yalta, Roosevelt concluded a secret pact with Stalin that in two to three months after Germany surrendered unconditionally, the Soviet Union would enter war with Japan, abandoning the Russo-Japanese neutrality treaty. On the following day, Churchill learned about the pact and advised Roosevelt to the effect that if Japan was informed that the Soviet Union decided to enter war with Japan, Japan would certainly surrender and then war casualties would be terminated at that earlier point. However, Roosevelt turned a deaf ear to this advice. After all, war casualties on both parts of Japan and the United States after that time onward were victims whose lives were lost for no cause, because if the U.S. consolidated its victory at that time, they could have ended the war then but did not do so. On the part of Japan, clearly victims of the atomic bombing and Tokyo air-raids had nothing to do with the victory or loss of the war. Let alone, the result of the Soviet entering the war enticed by Roosevelt was that Roosevelt led Japan to the national division and total destruction as Roosevelt intended.
The Joint Senate-House Investigation Committee proved that Roosevelt provoked Japan into war by presenting the Hull Note to Japan. It was also found out that the United States decoded and read every Japanese diplomatic telegram and knew that Japan initially tried to hand the “ultimatum” to the U.S. 30 minutes prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and it was substantiated that Japan did not intend to attack Pearl Harbor without any advance notice.
However, relying on the theory that it was not clear whether Roosevelt knew it before the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, the fact has been ignored that Roosevelt inflicted unnecessary hardship on the Japanese people and forced Japan to follow a bitter fate of a divided nation. And in the United States, all has been left unquestioned, including not only the fact that knowing in advance about the Japanese Navy’s Pearl Harbor attack, they did not tell the local Pearl Harbor base of the attack and American soldiers at Pearl Harbor fell a victim to the attack unreasonably but also that the war was expanded beyond the scope of victory or defeat and many American soldiers’ lives were lost in vain. We must have the American people clearly recognize all these facts.
Roosevelt intended to force such cruel destiny on Japan, well knowing that he himself provoked Japan into entering the war between Japan and the United States and that the Pearl Harbor attack without advance notice was not a planned “surprise attack,” and expanding the American casualties to such an unnecessary extent. According to statistics, more than half of the American casualties during the U.S.-Japanese War were caused after the surrender of Saipan in July 1944, when the victory of the United States over Japan was practically decided. That is, in the U.S.-Japanese War, more than half of the American casualties were caused after the winner was decided. This fact should equally be shared by both the American and the Japanese peoples.
For this purpose, in whatever way, we must prove completely the Roosevelt foreknowledge theory. This book, through the thorough investigation of historical sources and the examination of all scholarly books, proves perfectly the theory that Roosevelt knew about the Japanese Navy’s Pearl Harbor attack in advance and is a shining beacon as a book on history from now on.
Lastly, let me add that the author Shiramatsu plans to publish the English version of this book.