In his article, Briggeman captured the loneliness and isolation that Rankin must have felt when she cast her solitary vote, one against 470 other members of Congress, a vote which set her in opposition to public opinion throughout the United States, including the people of Montana and her local constituency in Missoula. Her lonely vote took far more guts (I use the term advisedly) than it took for those men who “swamped” the recruitment offices in Missoula the day after the declaration of war.
Many of the men who flocked to “join up” over the next weeks and months of course volunteered for service out of feelings of patriotism, but many more as time went on enlisted for the adventure, to escape the draft, to break a routine, to escape the Depression and to find a job. Others joined one of the services because everyone else was doing it n I was one of those n but most young men waited to be drafted.
But the attack was not “unprovoked and dastardly.” Japan had been dependent upon the U.S. for years for raw materials, especially oil. However, in July 1940, the United States began restricting export to Japan of aviation fuel, oil and scrap metal. The restrictions soon became tighter and tighter.
Later in 1940, Roosevelt extended the ban to include all scrap steel and iron. In July 1941, the noose was tightened again by freezing Japanese funds in the U.S. and by even tighter restrictions on gasoline and heavy oil. Roosevelt was careful to make clear to Japan that he did not intend a total freeze on oil. Nevertheless, all this was interpreted by Japan as a total embargo and led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Nor was the attack a surprise or unexpected. The bombing was a surprise to the American people and to those who underwent it, and in 2001, the supposed surprise led to the widespread comparison in the media of the attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon to the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, in 1941 an attack by Japan somewhere was not unexpected at all by Roosevelt and his administration. As early as Jan. 21, 1941, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox wrote Secretary of War Henry Stimson that if a war did develop with Japan, it might very well begin with “a surprise attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor.” And Joseph Grew, ambassador to Japan, passed on to Washington, D.C., rumors circulating in the diplomatic corps in Tokyo that Japan was preparing for an attack on Pearl Harbor. Also, Roosevelt has been quoted in various history books as saying that the U.S. wanted Japan to “commit the first act,” that the problem was how to “maneuver” the Japanese “into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” The Japanese diplomatic code had already been broken, but the administration did not know where or when an attack would take place. However, both Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short, the commanders on Oahu, had been specifically warned that negotiations with the Japanese had broken down, the dispatch to Kimmel beginning “THIS DISPATCH IS TO BE CONSIDERED A WAR WARNING,” and the one to Short including the statement “HOSTILE ACTION POSSIBLE AT ANY MOMENT.” Gen. MacArthur in the Philippines was also notified by a similar dispatch.
Briggeman in his Missoulian article reported that a 2005 biography of Rankin pointed out “Rankin’s animosity toward Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, whom she claimed duped the United States into war.” There is some truth to what Rankin believed because Roosevelt had wanted for a long time to take the American people into the European war, but had not done so, according to a relatively recent book by Steven Casey (“Cautious Crusade,” 2001), because he did not feel that the American people would be behind him. Also, Roosevelt had agreed privately with Churchill to come to Britain’s aid if Japan attacked Singapore n an agreement that was, in effect, an illegal treaty. Even after the Pearl Harbor bombing, Roosevelt was reluctant to declare war on Germany until he knew he had the full support of Congress and the American people and continued to wait for Germany’s first move, which came Dec. 11 when Hitler declared war on the United States.
The war in the Pacific was certainly not a “necessary, obligatory” one as a Missoulian editorial said Dec. 11, 1941. The war was little more than an act of revenge, as President Truman himself implied in his announcement on Aug. 6, 1945, that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima: “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold.” But one might ask, was the death of close to 52,000 more American young men in the Pacific war worth avenging the deaths of 2,403 killed at Pearl Harbor? Rankin had said, “No.”
Merrel Clubb is a professor of English at the University of Montana and the author of “A Life Disturbed,” published in 2005.
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