Did Roosevelt provoke the Pearl Harbor attack?

Answer 1

1. In the summer of 1940 Roosevelt ordered the Pacific to relocate from the West Coast to Hawaii. When its commander, Admiral Richardson, protested that Pearl Harbor offered inadequate protection from air and torpedo attack he was replaced.

2. On October 7 1940 Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an eight-point memo for Roosevelt on how to force Japan into war with U.S., including an American oil embargo against Japan. All of them were eventually accomplished.

3. On 23 June 1941 - one day after Hitler's attack on Russia - Secretary of the Interior and FDR's Advisor Harold Ickes wrote a memo for the President in which he pointed out that "there might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia."

4. On 18 October Ickes noted in his diary: "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan."

5. The U.S. had cracked key Japanese codes before the attack. FDR received "raw" translations of all key messages. On 24 September 1941 Washington deciphered a message from the Naval Intelligence HQ in Tokyo to Japan's consul-general in Honolulu, requesting grid of exact locations of U.S. Navy ships in the harbor. Commanders in Hawaii were not warned.

6. Sixty years later the U.S. Government still refuses to identify or declassify many pre-attack decrypts on the grounds of "national security"!

7. On November 25 Secretary of War Stimson wrote in his diary that FDR said an attack was likely within days, and asked "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."

8. On November 25 FDR received a "positive war warning" from Churchill that the Japanese would strike against America at the end of the first week in December. This warning caused the President to do an abrupt about-face on plans for a time-buying modus vivendi with Japan and it resulted in Secretary of State Hull's deliberately provocative ultimatum of 26 November 1941 that guaranteed war.

9. On November 26 Washington ordered both US aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and the Lexington, out of Pearl Harbor "as soon as possible". This order included stripping Pearl of 50 planes or 40 percent of its already inadequate fighter protection. On the same day Cordell Hull issued his ultimatum demanding full Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and all China. U.S. Ambassador to Japan called this "The document that touched the button that started the war."

10. On November 29 Hull told United Press reporter Joe Leib that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7. The New York Times reported on December 8 ("Attack Was Expected," p. 13) that the U.S. knew of the attack a week earlier.

11. On December 1 Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, 12th Naval District in San Francisco found the missing Japanese fleet by correlating reports from the four wireless news services and several shipping companies that they were getting signals west of Hawaii.

12. On 5 December FDR wrote to the Australian Prime Minister, "There is always the Japanese to consider. Perhaps the next four or five days will decide the matters."

More information and evidence: http://rationalrevolution.net/war/fdr_provoked_the_japanese_attack.htm

Answer 2

President Roosevelt, nor any other American, ever did a thing to provoke an attack by the Empire of Japan upon the U.S. military bases anywhere in the Pacific. Japan wanted to spread its "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" forcibly into nations that did not want to be a part of it. These nations asked the U.S. to intervene on thear behalf, so the U.S. & Gr. Britain placed an oil embargo upon Japan. As a militaristic culture, Japan's answer to the embargo was military intervention, not negotiation. This is not a "Yes" or "No" answer. You may have heard that there are two sides to every story, and this is true for your question.

From the American viewpoint the answer is No. Roosevelt did not want a war with Japan. He recognized that the real danger to the world was Hitler, not Japan. He DID try to provoke a war with Germany. This was necessary because the American public was against getting into a foreign war. We felt we had been "used" in WW I, and did not want to repeat the mistake again.

There was great sentiment for the Chinese as a result of reports coming from there from American missionaries, and other sources. Especially after the "Rape of Nanking."

Typically American (we used the same method with Lybia and Iraq) was to shut off trade with a nation in an effort to get them to behave properly. (It worked with Lybia, but not with Iraq.) We used the same tactic with Japan. We wanted them to get out of China, so one by one we stopped sending important material to them. One such was Scrap Iron and Steel, but the Japanese continued taking over China. Finally we "froze" their assets. (Meaning we would not give them credit, or allow them to buy or sell anything in America.)

"Yes" from the Japanese viewpoint. Without being able to use money in the U.S. it meant they could not buy oil. (What would happen in the U.S. if we ran out of oil? No trucks, cars, planes, trains, no military, etc.) The Japanese faced the same problem. They determine how long they could last without oil, and felt they could survive until about October, perhaps a bit longer. If they could not make a deal with the U.S. by that time they had to attack.

Why? The Japanese could get oil from the "Dutch East Indies," now called "Indonesia." They intended to take over that area, but if America objected to their taking over China, we would surly try to stop them from taking the "East Indies." The American Colony of the Philippines was located between Japan and the "East Indies." From there our bombers, submarines, fighters, and surface ships could attack Japanese shipping to and from Japan to the "East Indies." The Japanese felt they HAD to remove the threat from the Philippines. If they attacked the Philippines surely America would send their navy out to fight the Japanese. The only way to prevent this was to remove the threat by sinking the main strength of the American Navy in Hawaii. As a result the Japanese felt THEY HAD to attack Pearl Harbor.

Hope this helps, John Yes, There are numerous facts that support that FDR not only wanted and provoked the attack on Pearl but had prior knowledge of it. Warned by his top military advisors about the poor strategic placement of the fleet (in port is just not safe for a ship) and given confirmed reports by intercepted messages by the Japanese Navy, FDR needed the attack to gain American support to enter into a war with Japan.

Answer 3

Obtain the book titled: "Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor." (2000) by Robert B. Stinnett.

Answer 4

The Japanese were NOT pleased with the OIL and STEEL embargos.

Answer 5

yes it was World War 2 that the attack took place

Answer 6

No they did not, However it was in the economic interest of their industrial and political leadership not to try too hard to stop it from happening in the first place.