Historical Documents - Office of the Historian

The date does not appear on the papers themselves but appears on a covering “Memorandum for Record” which reads as follows:

“The two attached papers, A and B, were taken under consideration by The Joint Board, at the called meeting on Dec. 21, 1941, at which time the Board approved them. The papers constitute the approved view by The Joint Board on general strategy, and served as the basis for presentation by the Chief of Staff and Chief of Naval Operations of the War and Navy Departments’ recommendations to the President on December 21, 1941. W. P. Scobey, Colonel, General Staff, Secretary.”

For the preparation of these papers, see Cline, pp. 88–89.
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The paper is undated but was attached to the entry in Stimson’s diary for December 21, 1941. At this point in his diary Stimson added the following in longhand: “For purposes of precaution I have not recorded the decisions made in the above matters which we discussed but they are far-reaching.” A further notation by his secretary indicates that the record of decisions (which had been kept in Stimson’s safe) was attached to the diary in April 1946.↩

Foreign Relations of the United States, The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943