but I think he was in the minority to see the extreme dangers posed by Germany and Japan.
Below are two paragraphs taken from, Daniel Yergin’s “The Prize”.
All that day, the reports flowed into Washington from Pearl Harbor disjointed, fragmentary, and finally, dismal. “The news coming from Haawaii is very bad.” Stimson noted in his diary at the end of that long Sunday. “It has been staggering to see our people there, who have been warned long ago and were standing at alert, should have been so caught by surprise.” How could such a disaster have occurred.
Senior American officials had fully expected a Japanese attack, and imminently. But they expected it to be in Southeast Asia. Virtually no one, whether in Washington or Hawaii, seriously considered, or even comprehended, that Japan could - or would- launch a surprise assault against the American fleet in its home base. They believed, as General Marshall had told President Roosevelt in May of 1941, that the island of Oahu, where Pearl Harbor was located, was “the strongest fortress in the world.” Most of the American officials seemed to have forgotten-or never knew-that Japan’s great victory in the Russo-Japanese War have begun with a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur.
The Japanese we’re more forward thinking than people give them credit for. They realized that industry was changing and mineral resources, not just oil, were required to be a major power. They have no resources. They made an expected attempt to gain them. No different, imho, than when Europe conquered the Americas. It was an attempt at a land/resource grab and they lost. It’s been done countless times. This time it was done to us. We still won. Convincingly.