Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
https://archive.org/details/PerpetualWarForPerpetualPeace1953/page/n321/mode/2up
From what I have read FDR etal did not have the actionable intelligence—but it is likely Winston Churchill did—and refused to share since he needed the US in the war.
The British had impressive code-breaking capability (far better than the US)—but it is hard to prove they broke the relevant Japanese codes at that time.
This is not a part of their history the Brits want us to know about...
There is nothing new on the conspiracy front and they existed then just as they do today.
I am a bit of a history buff and WWII is a fascinating topic beginning many years prior to actual combat. It is clear that our leaders in the West knew that Japan was going to expand and that had already begun. Britain knew this even better than we did and when the war in Europe broke out it was clear that the British could not capably defend their far East holdings.
It is easy to see in hindsight that war was going to break out in the region. What was NOT easy to see based on what I have read was that Japan would launch a sneak attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor. How could we have known? Sure, there were War College studies of “what if?” but nobody knew that Warplan Orange would happen or if it did it would involve a sneak Japanese attack on our main naval base.
Japan, like Germany, went whole hog in one decisive action while most of our intel types believed they would focus on one or two objectives at once. In hindsight, Japan was convinced we would declare war on them so they went for broke. In reality, they likely could have taken many of their goals piecemeal and lessened the chance of provoking us into war.
Pearl Harbor was a military victory but a strategic blunder of massive consequence. It guaranteed that we would enter the conflict on a massive scale.
That alone is enough to point out how much FDR was trying to avoid going to war.
Leaves me to believe that the US Navy and the Magic codebreakers had the intelligence, but that it was stirred up in a Mixmaster of internal bickering between various cliques. Did Roosevelt know? Probably.
Some historians with recent access to Soviet records make a pretty convincing case that Stalinists within the US State Department had been instructed to get FDR to annoy Japan enough to get a war started with the USA, thus eliminating them as a threat on his Far Eastern front.
Whatever the truth may be, both the Navy and the Army were woefully unprepared on The Day, and we know the results.
Are we equally unprepared today? I'd say YES.
In December of 1941 the US, British, and Dutch knew something was up. The British had reenforced Malaya, the US was reenforcing the Philippines. The US had withdrawn the 4th Marine Regiment from China to the Philippines, along with the Gunboats of the Yangtze River Patrol.
What the US did not expect was the IJN to send its most powerful striking force to the very edge of its range to raid Hawaii.
Everything was focused on Japanese intentions for the “Southern Resource Area.”
About Pearl and men who were trapped
If the US would only have flown a SR71 over Japan prior.
We could have known what was to happen.
Or send the Nimitz back in time to attack the Japanese carriers....