ABSTRACT
The attack which was to release President Roosevelt from his numerous commitments to neutrality and peace for the United States and to meet "the challenge of critics", came on December 1941. It came not from German ships of war in the Atlantic, which the President's supporters and advocates of war had been watching with expectancy, but from Japanese bombers in the Pacific, on the strategic American outpost in Hawaii. After the Report of the Commission on Pearl Harbor was completed President Roosevelt went over it with Justice Roberts, the chairman, and decided that it should be made public. Judging by the appearances reflected in official communications to the public the record was clear. General Short and Admiral Kimmel had been derelict in the discharge of their duties at Pearl Harbor and incompetent besides. In 1942, the thesis which cleared the Roosevelt Administration of all responsibility for Pearl Harbor was confirmed by two eminent journalists at the White House.
