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

Joint Congressional Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack: Part 2 683
Th e Pacifi c Fleet was based in an area containing over 130,000
Japanese, any one of whom could watch its movements. You
can appreciate the psychological handicaps orders of this kind
placed upon us. In eff ect, I was told:
Do take precautions.
Do not alarm civilians.
Do take a preparatory deployment.
Do not disclose intent.
Do take a defensive deployment.
Do not commit the fi rst overt act.
One last feature of the so-called “war warning” dispatch remains
to be noted. Th is is the directive with which it closed:
Execute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to
carry[ing] out the tasks assigned in WPL-46.
Under WPL-46, the fi rst task of the Pacifi c Fleet was to support
the forces of the Associated Powers (Britain, the Netherlands,
and the United States) in the Far East by diverting enemy
strength away from the Malay barrier. 32
Th e “Malay Barrier” was defi ned in WPL-46 as “the Malay
Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and the chain of islands extending in
an easterly direction from Java to Bathurst Island, Australia;” 33 it
encompassed Borneo, New Guinea, the Kra Peninsula, the Kra
Isthmus, which was a Malay State, and also British Singapore. 34
According to Kimmel,
Th e Navy Department emphasized this instruction [to divert
enemy strength away from the Malay Barrier] by repeating it
on November 29. Th e dispatch of that date directed:
32Ibid., part 6, p. 2525.
33Ibid., part 18, pp. 2877–941, Exhibit No. 129, Navy Basic War Plan—
Rainbow No. 5 (WPL-46). See especially ibid., p. 2909.
34Ibid., part 6, p. 2864.