been watching an intersting four part series on NHK TV about why japan went to war. very intersting, the show cites these reasons:
-the army in china was not easily controllable by the weak civilian government, as the army continued to advance, the US cut off oil
-country had only 2 years oil on hand and so had only two options: get a new source of oil in SE Asia, or pull out of China and get US to end embargo
-the Army was culturally incapable of pulling out becasue they had lost over 200,000 men by then in china. this “debt to the dead” became a real issue.
-the navy in private, and this is documented, was clear that they could at best hold the US off for two years, but would lose in the end. however they would not say this in the cabinet meetings
-around august, and into november, the cabinet wrestled with the option of going to war. at this point a now famous analysis was presented which showed that enough shipping was available to supply Japan from SE Asia in the event of war. since then, the anlaysis has been shown to be totally flawed, but armed with this analysis, the cabinet began to consider that war with the US was maybe an option that could be managed
-eventually the cabinet weighed the choice of world humiliation by pulling out of China vs. going to war with the US. Many of the ministers, and certainly the Navy knew the war plan was probably doomed, but chose a doomed plan with consequences later instead of humiliation in the present. this fatalistic honorable death view permeated the culture and manifested itself in many ways in the war itself.
-at the final hour, the japanese PM reached out to Roosevelt for a face to face meeting, and tried to signal him that if in the meeting if he could get concessions on the embargo he would go to the Emperor and get the Emperor to intervene and control the Army, but the US missed the signals of this subtle strategy and refused the meeting unless the Army first would agree to withdraw.
-the show has a lot of other intersting stuff about how the japanese diplomatic corp totally incompetent and misread and screwed up international relations all thru the 1930’s ending with a disastrous and much debated alliance with Hitler.
You misunderstand President Roosevelt if you think him too stupid to comprehend "subtle" Japanese diplomacy.
In fact, FDR understood the Japanese perfectly well -- he knew just what it would take to force them to make a "mistake" and commit the first overt act of war.
And that is precisely what Roosevelt was depending on, to overcome Americans' overwhelming opposition to being suckered into another "foreign" war.
So there was no misunderstanding.
The Japanese were just being played by a master at the game.