[OESY]

The attack was needed to change US antiwar opinions. Read "Day of Deceit" by Stinnett, particularly on the McCollum 8-point memo. Ollie North recently did a show on this too.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Killing Americans in the Commonwealth of the Philippines would have done it just as well as killing Americans in the Territory of Hawaii. Both were US soil, both had significant Army and Navy forces.

Roosevelt withdrew all US Forces from China (4th Marine Rgmt., Sub Force China, and the river gunboats) in November and early December of 1941. War was coming, it was only a matter of time. FDR wanted to let the Japanese strike first, as the American public would not support an declaration of war as it did against Germany in 1917, but he and everyone else thought the attack would come against the Philippines as part of an attack on Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies.