[DiogenesLamp]

Between the Imperial Japanese Navy and it's submarines off the West Coast and German U-Boats ranging south from the St. Lawrence Seaway , along the entire US eastern seaboard to the Gulf of Mexico these two countries damned near did it to us.

We had synthesized rubber, so we no longer needed the rubber plantations on the pacific side. What exactly were the Japanese keeping us from importing?

Likewise on the other side, what were the Germans stopping us from Importing? Were we getting food, or steel, or coal, or anything useful to a war effort from Europe? Or China?

It seems to me it was the British that needed the Supplies, and that we were the ones supplying them.

On the other side, the Japanese were attacking us because we were interfering with *THEIR* necessary trade. Once again necessary because Japan is also an Island(s).

[jmacusa]

The Japanese were sinking US oil tankers and shelling American oil refineries with their five inch deck guns. The Germans were sinking shipping up and down the east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The hunting was so good here the Germans submariners called the months before and after Pearl Harbor as ‘’The Happy Time’’. The fact that these two belligerents had submarines operating inside US territorial waters was a damnable failure of the US Navy and Coast Guards ability to protect United States shores.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "What exactly were the Japanese keeping us from importing?"

This is not the place to debate WWII.
The key point to remember, for this discussion, is that WWII began for US when Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, just as Civil War began when Confederates attacked Fort Sumter.

Very similar situations.