--- title: Henry L. Stimson url: https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/henry-l-stimson/ description: 4 verified quotes from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War (1940-1945), with sources. section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a Second World War naval-intelligence collage of a Pacific theatre map, aerial reconnaissance photographs and radar plots.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwii-pacific.jpg) [Quotes](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/) · United States # Henry L. Stimson ![Henry L. Stimson at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Lend-Lease, February 1943](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roosevelt-administration/henry-l-stimson.jpg) [Photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Stimson_describes_value_of_lend-lease_program_before_House_Foreign_Affairs_Committee,_1943_(34716908756).jpg): U.S. Office of War Information photographer (National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Lot-1952-5), Public domain (U.S. federal government work) Secretary of War (1940-1945) · United States On the regime page: [Roosevelt administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roosevelt-administration/#henry-l-stimson) 4 quotes, oldest first. [Filter with other speakers](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/#speaker=henry-l-stimson). 1. > “There the President, instead of bringing up the Victory Parade, brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.” — November 25, 1941 · Diary · Washington, White House meeting — Stimson's diary entry for a White House meeting of the President, Hull, Knox, Marshall, Stark and Stimson twelve days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Congressional investigators read the entry to witnesses in 1945-46 and asked what it meant. — Stimson diary, 25 November 1941, as read into the record in Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings before the Joint Committee, 79th Cong., Part 11, p. 5226 (testimony of Admiral Stark; the same entry is read at p. 5188 in General Marshall's testimony) [Source](https://archive.org/details/pearlharborattac11unit) 2. **Content note:** Racial generalisation about US citizens The words are shown as they were said or written. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) — > “The view that second generation Japanese [Nisei] can only be evacuated either as part of a total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese. This latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system to apply it.” — February 10, 1942 · Diary Verified (secondary source) — Written nine days before Executive Order 9066, while the War and Justice Departments were arguing over whether American-born people of Japanese descent could be excluded from the West Coast. Stimson was the cabinet officer to whom the Order gave authority. — Stimson diary, 10 February 1942, as quoted in Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied (Washington, 1982), ch. 2, "Executive Order 9066" (fn. 166) [Source](https://www.archives.gov/files/research/japanese-americans/justice-denied/chapter-2.pdf) 3. > “Biddle, McCloy and Gullion had done a good piece of work in breaking down the issues between the Departments the night before, and a draft of a presidential executive order had been drawn by Biddle based upon that conference and the preceding conference I had had yesterday. We went over them. I made a few suggestions and then approved it. This marks a long step forward towards a solution of a very dangerous and vexing problem. But I have no illusions as to the magnitude of the task that lies before us and the wails which will go up in relation to some of the actions which will be taken under it.” — February 18, 1942 · Diary Verified (secondary source) — Stimson recorded a meeting of War and Justice Department officials to settle the text of the presidential order that became Executive Order 9066. President Roosevelt signed it the following day. — Stimson diary, 18 February 1942, as quoted in Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied (Washington, 1982), ch. 2, "Executive Order 9066" (fn. 168) [Source](https://www.archives.gov/files/research/japanese-americans/justice-denied/chapter-2.pdf) 4. > “The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives. The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss over it. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice.” — February 1947 · Article — Stimson, who had left office in September 1945, wrote the article, with McGeorge Bundy, in answer to public criticism of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had been Secretary of War throughout the Roosevelt presidency and into the Truman presidency. — Henry L. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," Harper's Magazine, February 1947 (closing section) [Source](https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/stimson_harpers.pdf)