Kernan writes, “Last year, with the aid of his youngest son Peter, 27, a recent graduate of William and Mary Law School who is devoting full time to the cause, Schuler made a telling discovery: In the [National] Archives at Suitland, Maryland, the nearly 100 volumes of State Department records covering 1936-40 and the loose material for 1941 had been chopped up so badly that when one held a book by the binding, bits of paper rained out like confetti. The Schulers were so excited they had a picture taken of the sight. They also found evidence that other papers had been rewritten and revised.”

Schuler had been told by a colleague (Bill Turner) (about five years after Pearl Harbor) that the documents exchanged between State and the Embassy in Tokyo re pre-Pearl Harbor negotiations and relations with Japan had been ‘amended, rewritten, destroyed, etc.’ Frank and Olive Schuler’s effort to set the record straight was an uphill battle. As Frank recalled in his memoirs, “I began my research in 1970 after which my wife joined to help me, she having worked in the Division of Far Eastern Affairs of the Department of State as well. I am convinced that the cause of the worst military disaster in our history remains unresolved because of the highly successful cover-up by the diplomats involved. What happened can only be reconstructed by someone who was ‘on the scene’ at this time. My wife and I were.” In a telegram that reached Schuler on June 30, the chief of the Division of Foreign Service Personnel directed him to remain at his post, but when the Secretary of State did not reply to the resignation message by July 4, Schuler left Noumea. He was terminated for “abandoning his post.”

Required Cookies & Technologies

So wrote Frank A. Schuler, Jr., a former U.S. foreign service officer in pre-World War II Japan, in his unpublished 1980 memoir, Pearl Harbor Myths and Realities. Former Foreign Service officer Frank Schuler, Jr., uncovered evidence that pointed to a cover-up of State Department bungling in assessing the Japanese threat, then was demoted. Although Schuler was defeated in the courts, he hit pay dirt at the National Archives, where he discovered altered documents. The January 26, 1977, Washington Postarticle by Michael Kernan, “The Schuler Files: Life Under a Cloud,” described finding these documents. The alteration of the U.S.-Japan documents after Pearl Harbor became something of a legend among the old Far Eastern hands. Diplomats who had knowledge of the scheme to varying degrees are no longer alive. I was told about the ‘project,’ as it was referred to, by an old friend and senior colleague from my Japan days, William Turner. Bill, both taciturn and cautious, would never have disclosed unsubstantial information.” If ever there was a time in the history of this nation when Americans need and should be made aware that the Office of the Presidency can, and should be, the ultimate repository of historical truth, it is now! Bishop: “Oh, yes, there was somebody there all the time, but nothing was well-protected. And I don’t think that anybody particularly cared. Classified material was protected—it wasn’t left out in the open, or anything of that sort. I don’t know whether we had Communist agents in the Department at the time. As you know from the ‘Pumpkin Papers….’”

Conlon: “Well, then you returned to the Japan Desk, and, as I recall you saying, you were involved in taking notes or otherwise assisting Secretary Hull in the negotiations with Admiral [Kichisaburo] Nomura [ambassador to the U.S. in 1941] and, later, Ambassador [Saburo] Kurusu, in 1941? Pearl: [shakes her head] I've never spoken about it out loud to anyone. I'm so afraid of what people might think. Shaffer: “Yes, I did. I got so tired of retyping those damned, long documents on those clumsy typewriters. Not only that, but they revised parts of the Foreign Relations Series. I finally asked for a transfer out of the Division.”These men were duped by the Japanese into thinking that they could secure a secret, negotiated détente with the Japanese. On the other hand, the Japanese were trying to bluff the United States into thinking they were prepared to limit their demands in Asia.…” In the third place, and possibly most important of all is the obligation owed to the American people that the true story of why and how Pearl Harbor happened be recorded for posterity. But when he arrived in Noumea on June 27, 1944, he discovered that OWI had never maintained any operations in Noumea and that he was in fact expected to replace the resident American consul there. Disgusted with his treatment by the State Department, Schuler decided to resign from the Foreign Service that day, and on the following day he sent a telegram to the Secretary of State with that message.

Thomas: “Olive told me you had said that they rewrote documents from hindsight, that, in fact, you did the retyping.” This bombshell statement was a long time in coming. It was 1946 when Schuler first learned of the sleight-of-hand activities going on behind closed doors. “After Pearl Harbor,” he wrote, “the officials in the Division had secretly removed from official documents any and all incriminating evidence which would place blame on those responsible for the misguided advice given to the Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt which led to the disaster at Pearl Harbor.”These diplomats “dodged the bullet” on blame and allowed for a grave miscarriage of justice that wrongly accused Kimmel and Short of “dereliction of duty,” a charge that would have been rightly served on them, i.e., the diplomats. The six who signed the memo were Cabot Coville, John R. Davies, Herbert Fales, Joseph M. Jones, Frank A. Schuler, and E. Paul Tenney. Although the memo did eventually reach Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the five were reprimanded for their insubordination by Maxwell Hamilton, the chief of their department. Of the six signers, only Schuler would not apologize. In 1976, Schuler brought a suit against the Department of State seeking “both correction of his State Department personnel file and an award of monetary benefits lost due to the government’s allegedly improper treatment of him between 1944 and 1953.” Although these accounts from Helen Shaffer are documented in several affidavits, Shaffer herself would not go on record. In this same affidavit, Olive Schuler recalled that when she asked Shaffer about this, “She advised me that under no circumstances did she want to become involved. The reason, she stated, was that she was presently employed by the State Department and she did not ‘want what happened to Frank [Schuler] to happen to me.’”