[colorado tanker]

Hiya, Joe. Still fighting the good fight, I see.

I try putting myself in the shoes of the Washington brain trust in late 1941. I would have thought a Japanese attack likely, but against the Philippines, not Pearl. It was the Philippines that lay athwart the routes to the mineral rich areas of SE Asian.

Attacking Pearl was a huge risk, as Yamamoto knew full well. He warned the leadership that to defeat America, the Japanese would have to invade the West Coast and march to and take Washington. He didn't mean they actually could do that - he and his audience knew damn well they couldn't.

But it was their only chance, however slim, to try to win the war. Knock the US out for a while and hope there will be enough time to conquer their empire and secure it before the US could muster its full power. There wasn't.

[BroJoeK]

"I try putting myself in the shoes of the Washington brain trust in late 1941.
I would have thought a Japanese attack likely, but against the Philippines, not Pearl.
It was the Philippines that lay athwart the routes to the mineral rich areas of SE Asian."

Exactly right, and so Washington warned all the Pacific area commanders to be ready for war.
And, except for the US west coast itself, those warnings all proved true -- for the Philippines, Australia, Guam, Wake, & Hawaii.

The problem was that nobody could quite visualize what the Japanese intended, and none were ready for it.

Not for the first or last time, we were caught by surprise.