DID CHURCHILL GIVE A HINT TO FDR ABOUT JAPANESE ATTACK

I have just taken out on loan a book called Roosevelt and Churchill : Their Secret Wartime Correspondence. The last correspondence in the book before Pearl Harbor is this:

Churchill to Roosevelt
November 30, 1941

It seems to me that one important method remains unused in averting war between Japan and our two countries, namely a plain declaration, secret or public as may be thought best, that any further act of aggression by Japan will lead immediately to the gravest consequences. I realise your constitutional difficulties but it would be tragic if Japan drifted into war by encroachment without having before her fairly and squarely the dire character of a further aggressive step. I beg you to consider whether, at the moment which you judge right which may be very near, you should not say that "any further Japanese aggression would compel you to place the gravest issues before Congress", or words to that effect. We would, of course, make a similar declaration or share in a joint declaration, and in any case arrangements are being made to synchronise our action with yours. Forgive me, my dear friend, for presuming to press such a course upon you, but I am convinced that it might make all the difference and prevent a melancholy extension of the war.

The briefings that Churchill received from British intelligence regarding Japan in the month or two before Pearl Harbor are still secret. They were locked up for 75 years, the only briefings to have been so.

We have to ask: why?

Why are Churchill's intel briefings on Japan still secret?

This is why next year could be very, very, very interesting, because those briefings should be released to the general public next year. I suspect that Churchill knew what was happening. And that this communication above, this request, where Churchill is almost down on his knees begging FDR to make a strong statement towards Japan, was an effort to avoid Pearl Harbor. If FDR had heeded Churchill and made a statement, unilateral or joint, to deter Japan then Japan may have been deterred. It was still a week before Pearl Harbor. The Japanese fleet set off either 29th or 30th November. Great Britain had cracked the Japanese military code while the USA hadn't, but Great Britain was not giving FDR the intelligence!

Look at the language that Churchill uses: I beg you to consider...at the moment which you judge right which may be very near...my dear friend.

But this is Churchill, who we know was happy that Great Britain was going to fight in WW1 and was so confident of this that he went to the beach as the crisis developed!

It is also of interest that this is apparently the last communication from Churchill to FDR...on the 30th November.