JOE MACKEY wrote to MIKE POWELL <=-
There were revisionist "academics" a few years ago who said WWII was all America's fault, that we imposed sanction of scrap iron, oil, etc
on Japan and "forced" them into the war.
That's either a skewed view of what was written or a poor
interpretation of the events.
Yes, FDR provoked Japan through sanctions and other economic means.
Yes, Japan thought that they needed to act decisively to control raw
materiel in the Pacific.
Yes, they probably thought that the USA would back off, hoping that
isolationist tendancies would prevail. But, I'm sure that FDR knew
that Great Britain would fall, even with lend-lease. The only way to
jar the USA into action would be an attack on the country. Japan
arguably played right into that.
I've always wondered about some of those coincidences that lend
weight to conspiracy theories - like the fact that the carriers left
Pearl Harbor a day or two before the attack. Did FDR and the Navy
sacrifice the battleships at Pearl, knowing that battleships were the
instruments that won the last war, and that the next war would be won by
carriers?
Apparently they neglected to learn about Japan's invasion of China
(1931), Manchuria (1937), SE Asia, etc which we were trying to contain while remaining neutral.
Not to mention the fact that WWII started in 1939. Americans tend to
have a US-centric view of the war.
If Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbour it might of been another year
or two before we finally did enter the war, on England's side, if it hadn't been conquered by the Axis first.
Makes for interesting alternative fiction, where a more isolationist
president delays entry into the war and the US moves to a stalemate
with an Axis Europe.
... Always the first steps
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