Quote:
Originally Posted by sodacat
I knew I should have continued to ignore this topic. Do you have any more evidence to back up this ludicrous claim than 911 Truthers have to back up their's? 'It would have been a good idea' is not evidence, BTW.
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If you're looking for a memo from FDR to his secretary to "Tell Henry [Wallace] that the Japs fell for it. We're going to war. Pop the champagne." then no. What we do have are the McCollum memo acknowledging the political difficulty in going to war and advocating strategies to provoke the Japanese as well as things like a diary entries by Sec of War Stimson on discussions with FDR about how to maneuver the Japanese into taking the first shot. It's also clear that the US had cracked at least some Japanese cryptographic codes and obtained Japanese war plans by this time. The "Hull note" was an agreement plainly designed to incite the Japanese to attack and war warnings were sent out the next day (Nov 27).
The point is conceded. I overstated it saying that FDR definitely knew that Pearl Harbor would be attacked. Given that the US had cracked Japanese codes, it's possible that they did. There is no direct evidence that they did. It's evident that the US was deliberately provoking Japan and did know that an attack was imminent, one with a highly beneficial political result.