Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

Air Raid, Pearl Harbor! This is No Drill! 333
encoded and transmitted December 7, at 11:00 p.m. Washington
time. 72
Stark agreed with Hart that the Japanese would be able to
take the initiative in a war starting at that time, and he agreed
also that the most important thing was “to prevent any Japanese
movement through the Malay barrier.” Stark approved of the
defensive strategy suggested by Hart and Phillips, but reminded
them of the “possibility that the major Japanese attack against
Philippines may come from the eastward,” that the Japanese
might strike from the bases they had been constructing on their
mid-Pacifi c mandated islands, the Marianas and the Carolines.
As a matter of fact, Stark said,
a Japanese concentration may be established in Halmahera
[an island of the Dutch East Indies between the Philippines
and New Guinea] or Mindanao [the southernmost island
of the Philippines itself ] approximately in accord with ideas
expressed in WPL44.
Stark approved of the Hart-Phillips proposals for coordinating
U.S. army and navy operations and for U.S.-British cooperation.
He said Marshall approved as well. Washington also okayed
the idea of permitting the British Battle Fleet to use the naval
base in Manila and asked “what additional personnel material
and minor forces” were required “for the projected fl eet base in
Manila or alternatively in Mindanao.”
Th is reply was sent for action to Hart, for information to
the secretary of navy, and to Kimmel. Copies went also to the
British Admiralty Delegation and to the U.S. Army’s War
Plans Division. Hart was to inform the British and Dutch. Th e
U.S.-British plans for cooperation, conceived months before in
London, Washington, and Singapore, when the United States
was still offi cially neutral, were now being put into operation.
72 Ibid., pp. 1935–36.