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

Epilogue 865
Moreover, FDR was especially anxious to keep the world from
learning that, all the time he had been assuring voters that he had
no intention of sending their sons to fi ght in a foreign war—
unless we were attacked—he had been planning a pre-emptive
strike to send U.S. armed forces to defend the British and Dutch
from the Japanese thousands of miles from our shores. And that
Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor had been under orders to prepare
the Fleet to take off ensive action against the Japanese in the
southeast Pacifi c.
After the war’s end, Congress commissioned the year-long
Joint [Congressional] Committee on the Investigation of the
Pearl Harbor Attack. Many of the facts presented in this book
were revealed in its hearings (November 15, 1945–May 31,
1946).
* * * * *
Conclusion
It must be said also that the evidence revealed in the course of the
several investigations leads to the conclusion that the ultimate responsibility
for the catastrophe infl icted on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor
on December 7, 1941, must rest on the shoulders of President Roosevelt,
to whom the Constitution assigns authority as Commander in Chief
of the Army and Navy and the responsibility to preserve, protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States. It is now evident that
the stage was set for a Japanese attack on U.S. territory by President
Roosevelt’s decisions and actions. He was responsible for squeezing the
Japanese economically until they were forced to try to use force to seize
the resources they needed and to prevent the U.S. Fleet from trying to
stop them. It was thanks to Roosevelt’s decisions and actions that an
unwarned, ill-equipped, and poorly prepared Fleet remained stationed
far from the shores of continental United States, at a base recognized
by his military advisers as indefensible and vulnerable to attack. Given