Franklin D. Roosevelt, Day of Infamy

The date was December 7, 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor had begun when a Japanese fleet of 6 aircraft carriers and 353 airplanes
attacked Hawaii. Around 2,402 people were killed and another 1,282 wounded. The attack was swift and took only three hours. Could this attack have been stopped? The answer is yes.

The United States knew well in advance that the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. The government had information about an impending attack about nine months before the attack even happened. Five different people were responsible for the attack. The person who knew about this was an intelligence officer. The Intelligence Agency was told by President Roosevelt to not give the people in Pearl Harbor a heads-up. The Intelligence Agency knew about this because they had broken the Japanese code before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The government had told people a lie, according to Roger A. Stolley. He was the person who knew about this because he had received a letter from his radio operator that read, “The Japanese will attack at (the approximate time). Do not prepare retaliatory forces. We need the full support of the American nation in a wartime effort by an unprovoked attack upon the nation in order to obtain a declaration of war.”

Should people be surprised that Japan would attempt a “surprise” attack on the United States? You should not because in 1904, The Japanese attacked the Russian’s navy in a surprise attack to wipe their navy out. There is proof that Japan’s attack was known because…
 July, 1941: United States Military in Mexico received a report that Japan was creating small boats to attack Pearl Harbor.
 August 10, 1941: The British’s top agent told the FBI about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but he was ignored.
 September 24, 1941: The U.S intercepts a message from the Japanese asking for the exact locations of American ships. This information was used to attack Pearl Harbor.
 December 7, 1941, 9:30 AM: Two marines ask to send a report to Hawaii to warn about the attack. Their request was denied.
There are many more examples and things that happened in the web site given above.

The reason for the United States to allow the attack to happen was because President Roosevelt wanted to go to war. Congress did not want to go to war and so Pres. Roosevelt actually wanted the Pearl Harbor Attack to happen. This way he could have a reason to go to war with Germany. His main goal was not to go to war with Japan directly, he just wanted to fight Japan’s ally, Germany. He knew about the attack and did not care to do anything about it. If anything, he would have been happy to finally have a reason to go to war with Germany.

Even people who didn’t believe that President Roosevelt knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor agree that the U.S. did get a warning, but the U.S. just wasn’t certain about where the attack was going to occur. The United States should have easily predicted that one of their most important harbors was going to be attacked instead of one of the smaller islands. Even if the United States couldn’t have figured out the most likely harbor (Pearl Harbor), the President would have at least added more defenses for the attack. Since he didn’t do this, he demonstrated that he actually wanted the attack to happen so the people would support the U.S. involvement in World War II.
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