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The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. Two days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Suddenly, the domestic opposition to American participation in WW2 all but disappeared. But to some critics of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it seemed all too convenient.

Prior to December 7, the president had been frustrated by the popular opposition to American involvement in the war then raging in Europe. Disillusioned by the results of WW1, which had been billed as a mission to "save the world for democracy," but which had left Europe worse off than it had ever been, the majority of Americans generally held to the doctrine of "no foreign entanglements." Even the possibility of containing the scope of war to the Japanese evaporated when, a few days after Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler committed his second great folly of 1941 (the first had been his invasion of the Soviet Union) by declaring war on the United States.

During the war years, criticism relating to Pearl Harbor was muted as Americans rallied behind the president, but after the war journalists and historians, such as Charles Beard, raised questions about the failure of American military intelligence to anticipate the attack, given the fact that the United States had already broken the Japanese code. The official version laid much of the blame on the army and naval commanders at Pearl Harbor, General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel, for having taken insufficient precautions when ordered to put their troops on alert the week before the attack. The commanders had interpreted their orders to refer to the possibility of sabotage, not to an air attack. But the critics called attention to the failure of headquarters in Washington to relay intercepted messages to Japanese agents, asking for specific information about the deployment of ships at Pearl Harbor. For most Americans, the notion that the president would put his entire fleet in mortal jeopardy seems to be incredible, particularly since the attack would have resulted in war in any case.

A lesser and, for many, more credible version of the allegation argues that Roosevelt set out to provoke the Japanese into the attack by creating an oil embargo, prohibiting the sale of iron, steel, scrap metal, and other materials to Japan, freezing Japanese funds in the United States, and insisting that Japan withdraw from the territory it had conquered in China. Those rebutting this charge maintain that Japan's aggressive, militaristic government had become a major threat to the entire Pacific area, in addition to being an ally of Hitler. The economic measures Roosevelt had taken against this government were thus entirely justified. Apologists admit that there were serious mistakes made before and during December 7, such as a junior officer's ignoring a critical radar warning. In any case, it does not now appear that either allegation will ever be satisfactorily proven or disproven.

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