“If Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor we still would have gone to war when they attacked and invaded the Philippines, Guam, and Wake.”
I was reading somewhere, and can’t find it again, that DC was ready to give up the Philippines to avoid war with Japan. Maybe just one of the “maybe we can...” conversations going on at the time.
But Japan attacked Pearl and that was it.
Traditional theory was that the US could not hold the Philippines for long in a war with Japan, due to Japan controlling the islands between Hawaii and the Philippines.
In 1941 after the Japanese moved into French Indochina, the US began a belated reinforcement of the Philippines. FDR ordered the Philippine Army into Federal service and the War Department sent a series of convoys with what ever could be scraped up. P-40’s, B-17s, several National Guard units with M-3 tanks, etc.
It was too little too late due to problems finding enough shipping.
However the last convoy sent got diverted to Australia and formed the nucleus of the US forces in the Southwest Pacific.
The six months USAFFE held out did really mess up the Japanese timetable however.
We were never going hold them but we kept faith with the Filipinos by trying.