Pearl Harbor: Lloyd's Cancelled Insurance Policies in August 1941
Prepare to be gaslit about threats from 'sabotage' however
Court Historians consider it a ‘fringe theory’ that anyone, certainly not FDR, had advance knowledge about the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
What follows can be a little confusing: I show the excerpt of both Lloyd’s of London selling ‘bombing insurance’ to Hawaii on August 17, and cancelling the sale of ‘bombing insurance’ a week later by August 24.
Clearly, the insurance agents had some idea something was wrong on Pearl Harbor specifically, because they were busy cancelling the sale of ‘bombing insurance’ in Pearl Harbor 2 1/2 months before the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese.
I went to verify this claim, to see if I could find it in the AP archives or on newspapers.com. The story gets even better.
They weren’t selling the policies based on the fear of ‘sabotage’ - do saboteurs typically drop bombs?
An advertisement from August 17, 1941 in the Honolulu Advertiser, page 6, via newspapers.com:
Note the left column to connect all the dots:
“…the only safe thing to do is to plan for the worst - an attack on these islands.”
Here’s the excerpt from newspapers.com from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from August 24, 1941, page 3:
My great uncle was captured when the Japanese overran Clark Air Base. The first wave of the attack was nine hours after Pearl Harbor and destroyed most of the aircraft. The base didn’t fall until the following month, by which point my uncle would say the Japanese had to climb over their own dead stacked three high.
So he was taken prisoner and survived the Bataan Death March. When he returned he weighed 88 pounds. The military told him if he ever spoke about what happened to him he’d be imprisoned and fined $10,000.
Fast forward to the 90’s. Uncle Joe saw some infobabe type presentation on the death march (20/20 I think). He got angry and went to the local paper and sat for an extended interview. I still have it somewhere.
One of the things he always told us was that the government knew Japan was about to attack Pearl Harbor and his base in the Philippines but wouldn’t send reinforcements. Years later Day of Deceit and other books came out and seemed to confirm this.
I think your find here settles the question once and for all.