“By late November 1941 events were moving at a rapid pace. Even before Stimson dictated his controversial entry for November 25, Secretary Hull had learned, from a “Magic” intercept, that the foreign minister in Tokyo had informed Japan’s representatives in Washington that diplomatic efforts to reach what he called “the solution we desire” must be concluded by November 29. They were told: “[This] deadline absolutely cannot be changed.” The wording of the very next sentence echoed ominously: “After that, things are automatically going to happened.” 22

What things and where? This was the unanswerable question in Washington.

In a message to Winston Churchill, the President revealed that he was aware of the danger from Japan: “We must all be prepared for real trouble, possibly soon.” 23

Intelligence derived from sources other than “Magic” reinforced the idea that war was near. The Japanese were sending a large expedition to sea from Shanghai in occupied China. This armada was heading toward Indochina, but American policymakers were in the dark concerning its ultimate destination. 24 This was the atmosphere in which Hull handed his now famous note of November 26 to Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura and Special Envoy Saburō Kurusu. 25

Why did Japan’s leaders reject the American offer? Did they do so because the note was an “ultimatum” (as the revisionists claim) or for other reasons? The evidence suggests that the terms outlined by Hull were unacceptable to the decision makers in Tokyo because they wanted a diplomatic capitulation by the United States. If Washington did not oblige, they were prepared to resort to force. The commander in chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet had already issued top secret operational orders for the attack on Pearl Harbor. He had done this three weeks before the American note reached the Foreign Office. 26 The ships composing the strike force had sailed for Oahu before the Japanese government examined Hull’s proposal. 27 In effect, Japan’s decision for war had already been made.

Even before the fighting started, Tokyo sought to undermine the Hull note, dismissing it as a “humiliating proposal” that the government could not possibly accept. 28 The facts fly in the face of this assertion, but the Pearl Harbor revisionists have glibly repeated it for years.

The note was tendered on a “Tentative and Without Commitment” basis; it outlined reciprocal undertakings and offered room to maneuver. On the critical issue of Japanese troops on the continent of Asia, for instance, Hull stipulated a withdrawal of “all military, naval, air and police forces from China and Indochina.” He did not say when this had to be done; this was negotiable. 29 There was no mention whatsoever of Manchuria””the Japanese presence there was also negotiable. 30 Hull did not call for a concrete response within a specified deadline; therefore, his note was not an “ultimatum.”

On November 27, the President told Nomura and Kurusu: “We are prepared . . . to be patient if Japan’s courses of action permit . . . such an attitude on our part. We still have hope . . . [but] . . . [the United States] cannot bring about any substantial relaxation in its economic restrictions unless Japan gives this country some clear manifestation of peaceful intent. If that occurs, we can also take some steps of a concrete character designed to improve the general situation.” 31“

At the White House on Wednesday, December 3, 1941, FDR was alert to what was happening in East Asia, but he was not entirely correct in his assessment of the situation. He erroneously thought “he had the Japanese running around like a lot of wet hens” because he had asked them why they were pouring military forces into Indochina. He came much closer to the truth when he said: “I think the Japanese are doing everything they can to stall until they are ready.” 34

The next day, Roosevelt’s naval aide called his attention to a “Magic” intercept that ordered the Japanese embassy to burn most of its “telegraphic codes,” to destroy one of the two machines it used to encrypt and decrypt messages, and to dispose of all secret documents. This meant that Japan was on the point of kicking over the traces””of opting for war. FDR wondered aloud when this would occur. No one knew, but the President’s naval aide offered a wide-open guess: “Most any time,” he said. 35

Secretary of War Stimson remembered Saturday, December 6, as a day of foreboding. As the morning wore on (his diary reads), “the news got worse and worse and the atmosphere indicated that something was going to happen.” 36

The Japanese expedition that had departed from Shanghai was now reported to be steaming in the direction of the Kra Isthmus in the north-central portion of the Malay Peninsula. A week earlier, during a meeting with his most important civil and military advisers, FDR himself had pointed to the isthmus as the place where the Japanese might begin an offensive. 37

No one had forgotten about the potential threat to Pearl Harbor, the Panama Canal, or any other base close to home, but the indications were that the Imperial Army and Navy were going to break out somewhere in the distant western Pacific, an area rich in the resources they were eager to obtain.

This was the context in which the President reacted to the first thirteen parts of a fourteen-part message from the foreign minister in Tokyo to Ambassador Nomura in Washington; it arrived in the form of a “Memorandum” that would soon prove to be Japan’s final note to the United States. The incomplete intercept was brought to FDR around 9:30 Saturday evening, December 6, as he was sitting in the oval room that served as his study on the second floor of the White House, talking with his friend and adviser Harry Hopkins. The text of Japan’s “Memorandum,” Telegram No. 902, had been sent from Tokyo in English, encrypted in “Purple.” The very lengthy note was largely an attempt to justify Japan’s Far Eastern policy by vigorously denouncing the attitude of the United States. Only one sentence in Part 13 hinted at what might be said in the still-missing final segment of the telegram. The Japanese government, this sentence declared, “cannot accept the [Hull] proposal [of November 26] as a basis of negotiation.” 38

This announcement, together with the negative tenor of the “Memorandum” as a whole, allowed FDR to put two and two together. After reading through the document, the President turned to Hopkins and said, in substance: This . . . means . . . war.

President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary Cordell Hull. (208-PU-175T-7A)

The exact words Roosevelt used will never be known, because the naval officer who had brought the message to the oval study, and who was the only surviving witness after the war to what had transpired there, could not remember, later, precisely what had been said. He had been in the room the entire time FDR and Hopkins discussed the intercept, but he was not asked, until 1946, to relate what he had seen and heard that evening. The President may well have had war on his mind””not an attack on Pearl Harbor, but a Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia. 39

Around ten o’clock the next morning, December 7, the intercepted text of the missing segment of Telegram No. 902 was delivered to FDR. Part 14 accused the American government of having used Nomura’s negotiations with Hull “to obstruct Japan’s efforts toward the establishment of peace through the creation of a New Order in East Asia.” As a consequence, the Japanese government had come to the conclusion that an agreement could not be reached with the United States “through further negotiations.” 40

This was all that Part 14 said. It did not declare war. It did not sever diplomatic relations or reserve freedom of action. On the surface, it amounted to nothing more than a suspension of the Hull-Nomura conversations. 41 A few hours after Roosevelt read the intercept, the hidden meaning of Part 14 was unveiled at Pearl Harbor.

Source: Butow, RJC. “How Roosevelt Attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor: Myth Masquerading as History.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, 1996, www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/fall/butow.html#nt23.