Pearl Harbor
U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted a war with
Germany to stop Hitler, but despite several provocations in the Atlantic, the
American people, still struggling with that troublesome economy, were opposed
to any wars. (As long as Hitler contented himself with controlled Europe,
Roosevelt did not bother, but when the Führer decided in June, 1941 to invade Communist
Russia, Roosevelt became very upset, for he was very sympathetic to Stalin and
the Communist cause, and said that the U.S.A. had to intervene to “save our
Russian ally”.)
Roosevelt had ordered the sinking of several German ships in
the Atlantic, but Hitler refused to be
provoked. Roosevelt needed an enemy, and if America
would not willingly attack that enemy, then one would have to be maneuvered
into attacking America.
The way open to war was created when Japan signed the Tripartite Agreement with Italy and Germany, with all parties pledging
mutual defense to each other. Whereas Hitler would never declare war on the United States no matter the provocation, the
means to force Japan
to do so were readily at hand. 
The first step was to place oil and steel embargoes on Japan, using Japan's wars on the Asian mainland
as a reason. This forced Japan
to consider seizing the oil and mineral-rich regions in Indonesia. With
the European powers militarily exhausted by the war in Europe, the United
States was the only power in the Pacific able to stop Japan from invading the
Dutch East Indies, and by moving the Pacific fleet from San Diego to Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii, Roosevelt made a pre-emptive strike on that fleet the mandatory
first step in any Japanese plan to extend its empire into the “southern
resource area”. Japan
needed oil. They had to invade Indonesia
to get it, and to do that, they first had to remove the threat of the American
fleet at Pearl Harbor. There never really was
any other course open to them.
To enrage the American people as much as possible, Roosevelt
needed the first overt attack by Japan to be as bloody as possible,
appearing as a sneak attack, much as the Japanese had done to the Russians.
From that moment up until the attack on Pearl Harbor itself, Roosevelt and his
associates made sure that the commanders in Hawaii, General Short and Admiral Kimmel,
were kept in the dark as much as possible about the location of the Japanese
fleet and it's intentions, then later scapegoated for the attack.
But as the Army Board had concluded at the time, and
subsequent de-classified documents confirmed, Washington D.C. knew the attack
was coming, knew exactly where the Japanese fleet was, and knew where it was
headed. On November 29, 1941, Secretary of State Hull showed United Press
reporter Joe Leib a message with the time and place of the attack, and the New
York Times in its special 12/8/41 Pearl Harbor
edition, on page 13, reported that the time and place of the attack had been
known in advance!
The much repeated claim that the Japanese fleet maintained
radio silence on it's way to Hawaii
was a lie. Among other intercepts still held in the Archives of the National
Security Agency is the uncoded message sent by the Japanese tanker Shirya stating,
“proceeding to a position 30.00 N, 154.20 E. Expect to arrive at that point on
3 December.” (near Hawaii.)
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