Sorry to disagree about FDR, but when it comes to Pearl Harbor, I’m a ‘grassy knoll’ kind of guy.
First, you can’t treat the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the events immediately leadinbg up to it in a vacuum. FDR spent almost all of 1940 trying to get into a war with Hitler. He split the North Atlantic into two defense zonea, and covered British convoys in the Western Atlantic before handing them off to the Brits. He had the Navy shadow, and report to the Brits, positions of German U-boats. Toward the end of that year, and before the Germans responded, the U.S Navy was depth charging U-boats. He enacted lend lease. All of those would make the U.S a co-belligerent under international law. But Hitler didn’t bite.
So he turns his attention from Germany to Japan. From their point of view moving the Pacific fleet was a provocation. And coupled with FDR’s aggressive ‘diplomacy’, it wasn’t a move the Japanese could ignore. Using the Japaneswe two stage occupation of French Indochina as a justification, Rooevelt cut off Japanese accesion to U.S steel, iron, andoil. We supplied something like 90-95% of Japan’s oil. And his price for turning on the tap was not merely Japanese withdrawal from Indochina, but China, where the Japanese had been at war since 1937 [1931 if you include Manchuria].
That left the Japanese with two choices. Cave. Or find another source of oil. That source was Indonesia, which meant war with the Dutch, and their current allies, the Brits. It also meant war with the U.S.
When the Japanese sailed for Pearl, they had a 90 day oil reserve. Period. So I believe FDR forced a war.
Do I think he knew Pearl was the target? Probably. There was plenty of info out there. But the way that info was not passed to Kimmel and Short, or was passed in , shall we say, imprecise language, leads me to that conclusion. But I also think FDR believed his Hawaiian commanders would spot the Japanese in time to sortie out to battle [no one really knew how effective the Japanese doctrine of carrier warfare would be at the time], and not suffer the losses that occurred.
I have really enjoyed following this discussion of the ongoing Pearl Harbor debate. Every few months we have another round. In case anyone missed it there is a follow up article about the Japanese reaction to the move in today’s (5/9) thread. Image #9, I believe. It is interesting that, with all the anticipation of the coming events in Europe, the most heated back-and-forth centers on the Pacific. This story about the Pacific fleet almost didn’t make it into the thread. I was following a front page story to page 5 or something and noticed the Pacific article off to the side. It looked provocative so I moved the view finder over a little and pressed print.