A little over two decades later, America’s entry into WWII came when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, killing over 2,400 American servicemen and civilians. https://twitter.com/Nimron6/status/1246911609903165444

But far from an unprovoked sneak attack, as the official government-approved history would have you believe, Pearl Harbor is best understood as a conspiracy to motivate the American public for war by first provoking and then allowing a Japanese strike on American targets.

This is not even a controversial idea; it was commonly understood and discussed by many in the Roosevelt administration at the time. Henry Stimson, the US Secretary of War, noted in his diary that just the week before the attack President Roosevelt had told him

“we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday” and then solicited Stimson’s advice on “how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”

Around the same time, Roosevelt sent a message to all military commanders stating that “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.”

So how did FDR and his administration provoke the Japanese into attacking?

In late 1940, Roosevelt ordered the United States Fleet to be relocated from San Pedro to Pearl Harbor. The order incensed Admiral James Richardson, Commander-in-Chief of the US Fleet, who complained bitterly to FDR about the nonsensical decision: It left the fleet open to attack

from every direction, it created a 2,000-mile-long supply chain that was vulnerable to disruption, and it packed the ships in together at Pearl Harbor, where they would be sitting ducks in the event of a bombing or torpedo raid.

FDR, unable to counter these objections, went ahead with the plan and relieved Richardson of his command.

Then in June 1941, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes wrote a memo advising FDR to embargo Japanese oil in order to goad them into war:

“There might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it, not only possible but easy, to get into this war in an effective way.” Roosevelt followed through weeks later with an order seizing Japanese assets in America and effectively preventing

Japan from purchasing much-needed American oil, which at that time accounted for four-fifths of Japanese oil imports.

The provocations had their intended effect, and the Americans listened in on Japanese war preparations via radio.

They received warnings of an imminent attack from diplomatic officials and military attachés. The attack was even predicted by the Honolulu Advertiser days before it happened. But all of these warnings were ignored.

Even today, nearly 80 years after the events, new documents and memos continue to be found showing more warnings that Roosevelt and his administration deliberately ignored in the run-up to the attack.

FDR got his wish. The Japanese attack was successful: 2,400 Americans died, and the nation, outraged, responded by rallying around the flag and jumping enthusiastically into war.

But the Japanese themselves were no innocents when it came to lying their way into war.

Ten years before Pearl Harbor, in 1931, Japan was looking for a pretext to invade Manchuria. On September 18th of that year, a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army detonated a small amount of TNT along a Japanese-owned railway in the Manchurian city of Mukden

The act was blamed on Chinese dissidents and used to justify the invasion and occupation of Manchuria. When the lie was later exposed, Japan was diplomatically shunned and forced to withdraw from the League of Nations.