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Interesting. But I wonder how much of this was deliberate on FDR’s part. There was no doubt that FDR was fixated by the threat from Hitler’s Germany. Also, there was a strong “China Lobby” within the US State Department. Perhaps it was a case of US policy toward Japan “being on autopilot”.

Remember also, Japan was targeting Britain’s Asian colonies, as well.

I think they figured, Hitler was so mired with Russia, he couldn’t help Japan, and therefore, Japan wasn’t as much of a threat.

Interesting. But I wonder how much of this was deliberate on FDR’s part. There was no doubt that FDR was fixated by the threat from Hitler’s Germany. Also, there was a strong “China Lobby” within the US State Department. Perhaps it was a case of US policy toward Japan “being on autopilot”.

FDR was seriously hampered by the isolationists, by treaties we tried to abide by, and by the situation in England.

We were going to have it out with Japan. There was just no way we weren't going to butt heads with them. I had an uncle who was a China Marine, thank God he was out of China by late 1941, and they knew that war with Japan was brewing. He was pretty sharp, as are all of the Marines I've been fortunate enough to be related to, and I'm not just saying that because my son is a Marine, heh, and he said a lot of the Americans in China knew, and the Japanese they talked to knew, that war was coming. Yes, the Marines in China talked to Japanese troops - there was an odd period of time before the war where both US Marines and Japanese troops were in very close proximity to one another.

People also forget that the US was trying to stick to its treaties, which left us in a bad naval situation. Read up on the USS Wasp to get a better grasp of what sticking to treaties got us.

USS Wasp CV-7

Wasp was a product of the Washington Naval Treaty. With the construction of Yorktown and Enterprise, the U.S. still had 15,000 long tons (15,000 t) available to flesh out its carrier fleet.

The Navy sought to squeeze a large air group onto a ship with nearly 25% less displacement than the Yorktown-class. In order to save weight and space, Wasp was constructed with low-power machinery (compare Wasp's 75,000 shp (56,000 kW) machinery with Yorktown's 120,000 shp (89,000 kW), Essex's 150,000 shp (110,000 kW), and the Independence-class' 100,000 shp (75,000 kW)). Additionally, Wasp was launched with almost no armor, although this may have been upgraded after completion. More significantly, Wasp had an almost complete lack of protection from torpedoes. The end result was a ship with major inherent design flaws. These flaws, combined with a relative lack of damage control experience in the early days of the war, were to prove fatal.

For a personal snapshot of FDR’s first term and his first appt. of an ambassador to Germany, a good read is

“In the Garden of Beasts” Erik Larson. Is available online for free, I think through Glenn Beck.

FDR and many fascist/commie/anti-semites in his State Dept. didn’t give a damn about Hitler (this was prior to Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, but russian agents were throughout his admin and it was fashionable in the depression era to be a commie), or about jews.

The book is non-fiction written from the personal recollections of the ambassador and his family (his daughter was sleeping with the head of the gestapo—slut that she was, and later became a commie agent- imagine that).
Could not put it down, for this and the reason of the many parallels to the nationalist socialist we have in the WH now. Like Reagan said, freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. Deo Vindice.