Sometimes stupid loses

"Savageduck" wrote in message
news:2011050222361944303-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom...
On 2011-05-02 22:02:35 -0700, "Bill Graham" said:

Savageduck wrote:
The reason the West Coast was not in their sights was the fact
Manchuria, Indo-China, Malaya, and Indonesia would provide what they
needed.

Then why did they attack Pearl Harbor?

You don't read much on history do you?

the short version is probably not what you want to hear, so try this:

The attack on Pearl Harbor was intended as a preventative action by the
Japanese, in order to neutralize and keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from
interfering with military action the Empire was planning in Southeast
Asia, against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, The Netherlands,
and the U.S.A..

After Japan had taken control of French Indo-China in 1940, the U.S.A.
stopped shipment of aircraft, parts, machine tools, and aviation fuel to
Japan. Japan thought this was particularly unfriendly of the U.S.A..

In July of 1941 The U.S.A. stopped oil exports to Japan, this was mainly
due to the introduction of domestic gasoline rationing and oil
consumption, because we were sending much of our production across the
Atlantic to support the little island nation with the very loud prime
minister.
Now the Japanese needed to make sure the U.S. Pacific Fleet was not a
factor in an invasion of the Dutch East Indies & Borneo which was their
easiest source of oil. That was what they planned for, and that was part
of the Japanese ultimatum demanding that the U.S. turn the oil flow back
on.

Somehow we didn't manage to read that ultimatum until later on Sunday
December 7, 1941, long after the attack was complete.

I believe that was because it was transmitted in 14 parts or something like
that, in code of course, and the people in the Japanese embassy here were
not particularly expert in decoding and translating it, getting it all typed
out etc. Our people had broken almost all of the Japanese codes some time
before, including the diplomatic codes I believe, and we probably had the
message long before the Japanese got it typed out in Washington.

So Roosevelt got to make his outraged speech about Japan's "unprovoked and
dastardly attack," which in fact FDR himself had been provoking deliberately
and by any means available to him for some time. And he finally got his war.