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

Joint Congressional Committee, Pearl Harbor Attack: Part 3 823
the morning and wrote the letter that he had delivered to Barkley
on May 27. 305
Counsel Richardson asked Stark:
Admiral, if the president had told you in his talk with you that
night . . . that this thirteenth-part message meant war, thereby
impressed you with his very serious estimate of it, what would
have been, in accordance with your custom, the action for you
to have then taken, with that information?
Stark thought that he “should have gotten in touch with
Ingersoll [assistant CNO] and with Turner [chief, Navy War
Plans]. We had had a conference a few days previously,” Stark
said,
going over the seriousness of the situation, if there was anything
more we could have sent, and, as I say, we practically
repeated this fourteenth point . . . some days earlier we had
sent the same thing. We thought, and the president knew every
move that we had made, that we had sent everything possible,
on that premise, that war was in the immediate offi ng. I don’t
know that I would have done anything. I couldn’t say.
Richardson then took advantage of the opportunity to ask
Stark “another odd question” about a possible late-night December
6-7 meeting at the White House.
I never heard of such a conference. I know of nothing now
regarding such a conference, was not present at it, I had never
even heard anyone suggest such a thing until it was mentioned
here in previous hearings. My honest opinion is that nothing
of the sort took place. It was a complete surprise to Marshall
that even the question came up. It was to me. I am certain that
I didn’t leave the house after the Kricks left. I just can’t think of
any such thing as happening. Certainly I was not present, and
305 Ibid., p. 5548.