Did FDR know something was about to happen in late 1941?

[Mushroom]

It is no attack on anyone nor any endorsement of any ideology to observe that Japan had the most powerful navy in the world and had only as a very distantly possible challenger concentrated in one place.

Actually, that is mostly correct.

Both the US and UK Navies were more "powerful", but they were also spread among multiple oceans and not concentrated in as small of an area as that of Japan was. The US in 1941 had 7 carriers itself at the time, and an additional 3 Fleet Carriers already under construction. And that is in addition to all the escort carriers they were already building. If the US fleet was all concentrated in the Pacific alone instead of being split between two oceans it would have vastly overpowered the Japanese fleet.

That is a key reason why so much effort was employed to defend the Panama Canal Zone. And through most of the war Japan tried to think of ways to take it out. They knew if they were ever able to manage that it would have largely hamstrung the ability of the US to send additional ships to the Pacific. And while the US did build a staggering 23 Fleet Carriers during the war, even more staggering they built over 120 escort carriers.

And it was expected that by 1941 at least two of those escort carriers would have been in the Philippines. However it was decided to sent the first of those ships to the UK under Lend-Lease, and the ones that were supposed to go to the Philippines were still under construction when the war broke out. But the Navy and Army both knew what was coming, and 1942 was to see a massive expansion of US forces in the area.

In December Subic Bay was still in the midst of a huge upgrade. Specifically their Coastal Artillery and Air Defense Artillery. Two of the units that were sent there were the 200th Coast Artillery and the 515th Coast Artillery of the New Mexico National Guard. I was trained by the NM National Guard, and they still maintain that lineage and consider themselves the "Battling Bastards" to this day. And this is why the annual Bataan Memorial Death March is held every year in New Mexico.

But this continued belief by some that the US did not understand the power of the Japanese military is absolute nonsense. The US had advisors and observers on the ground since 1937 when the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, and knew damned well how powerful their fleet was when they exited the League of Nations in 1936, then pulled out of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1936. Japan was already in the process of constructing new ships which violated that treaty when they pulled out, which gave them a jump on the US doing the same thing.

The Yamato class Battleships were already designed at that point, so when they pulled out of both the Washington Naval Treaty and the Second London Naval Treaty they were very quickly able to start construction on entirely new ships that did not comply with that treaty (the biggest delay in construction was actually finishing construction in the drydocks already underway and upgrading them for the new ships). The Yamato class Battleships were already well under construction (November 1937) before the US could start on their own equivalent modern Battleships (June 1940).

 

[eagle7-31]

You can be sure that 99.99999 percent of anything you read on American "Thinker" (oh, the irony!) is complete bullshit.

Gospel according to the looney left. The McCollum memo is fact. Whether FDR read the memo is one of the questions.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Uh, wrong. I already stated quite clearly where each of the carriers were. And they were nowhere near the Japanese fleet.

Our oldest "carrier" which was not even a carrier anymore was anchored at the Phillipnes.

Another was on the way to Hawaii after delivering fighters to Wake.

Next we had one enroute to Midway to deliver fighters.

The final carrier was off the coast of San Diego, having finished a 9 month upgrade in Washington and was conducting sea trials before being put back into service.

What you said was in no way true, as we had not a single carrier even close to that area of the Pacific.

Deceptive Indifference

That was the deployment on December 7. The War Department believed it had plenty of time to get to Southeast Asia and provoke an attack on its shadowing fleet.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Not really possible. However, that was actually what their end war goal was.

Japan had a lot going for it, but what it mostly lacked was raw resources. Primarily wood, coal, iron, rubber, and oil. That is why it was trying to gobble up an empire, so it could exploit those areas for the raw materials to aid in their industrialization.

1941 Began in 1898

Also, Japan had seen the Whites, including Americans, gobble up most of Asia through military force and feared they would be next if they didn't go imperialist.

An embargo is an act of war. The real cause of Nixon's fall is that he let OPEC get away with that, leading to a recession and complete loss of his popularity.