Explain this:
“At a Nov. 25 meeting of FDR’s war council, Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes speak of the prevailing consensus: “The question was how we should maneuver them (the Japanese) into ... firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.””
lol. The Japanese had been planning and practicing the attack on Pearl Harbor for a decade. They trained naval pilots with a mock-up of Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese were going to attack sooner or later whether the US did anything or not. The Japanese were planning to conquer the entire Pacific. Or did Borneo, Philippines, Singapore and all those other places also “maneuver” the Japanese into attacking them?
This quote is taken out of context. The people at that meeting were discussing what their standing orders to various commanders at American installations around the Pacific theater based on the intelligence that indicated that their was a very strong likelihood that the Japanese might stage an attack. They therefore instructed that the posts should be put on high alert (I’m not sure if that’s the technical term), but to avoid firing the first shot in the case of aggressive action by the Japs so that America could claim the moral high ground. Having a clear-cut case to take to the American people was very important in those days.