[GreenLanternCorps]

"They had no choice but to attack us. Roosevelt baited them into it."

No, he didn't. Japan chose to launch an unwinnable war in China. Japan chose to occupy French Indo-China and pose a direct threat to the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Forcing the imposition of the embargo. Japan decided, on it's own, to invade and Occupy Thailand and to launch the attack on the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies (aka the Southern Resource Area). Japan decided, on it's own to launch an attack on US forces in Hawaii to slow down the US response to the conquest of the Southern Resource Area. FDR goaded no one. The Japanese marched into war with the US, British, and Dutch with their eyes open and of their own volition.

[freefdny]

Great post and right on the money. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere didn’t need to be goaded into anything. A good argument can be made that like Hitler, for any political solution to work it had to have occurred much earlier. Japan invaded China in 1937. They were on a roll by 1941 and no embargo or sanction was going to slow them down.

[dfwgator]

The Japs were also assuming that Hitler would take care of Russia, and thus the Japanese didn’t need to worry about committing troops against the Soviet Union.

[nonliberal]

Even Stimson's diary says they were trying to figure out how to get the Japanese to fire the first shot. The embargo had choked off their oil and scrap iron supply and the only thing between oil and scrap iron in Indonesia was the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.

We had a chance to avoid the whole thing but Hull killed the deal.