yeah, I think they didn't expect such a large scale attack, and the Japanese wanted to show they meant business.. again, the bigger the attack, the larger the outburst of retaliation.

Often times in history (indeed in everyday life) there are more than one convergent events and decisions that don't necessarily attribute cause and effect to only one line of reasoning.

It may be true that Roosevelt was both aware that some sort of attack was imminent and that it could be the way around the problem of getting public opinion behind a war but that does not mean either that he deliberately let PH happen.

Life is funny like that.

It seems more likely to me that they weren't expecting an attack of that magnitude given they had no idea about the clever mods the Japanese did to their torpedos for shallow water attacks, employing mini-subs, and the ability of their carrier groups to get all the way to Hawaii unnoticed.

Drawing the conclusion that Roosevelt deliberately let it happen is as logically absurd as any other conclusion although I do see it makes for more dramatic storytelling than the mundane version that he didn't really see it coming.

It could have happened that way though, who knows, I'm also not saying it didn't.

I think the whole conspiracy theory phenomenon has taken off over the last 20 odd years because society is so bombarded with movies and television that always find a way to make the impossible and unlikely scenario into a reasonable one, that when we are faced with any circumstantial evidence for the highly unlikely, we would much rather choose the more dramatic option. Perhaps subconsciously.

I think it's a similar scenario to the way rumours spread in a social circle. One person hears something and tells it with just a little extra flair and by the time it gets back around the original situation is always distorted.

Sry but US didn't need to be involved in a war to feed their economy.

The war was alrdy raging in EU and China and all the allies fighting were dependent of US materials. Moreover in 1939 teh US economy had alrdy recovered from the great depression.

http://www.usstuckonstupid.com/sos_charts.php

US were more concerned with the War in the Atlantic and the way to protect their marchand fleet and their neutrality.

The last thing they wanted was a war in the Pacific that proved way more costly than profitable.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/pe...acific/numbers

You'll see easily (bottom page) that despite suffering for nearly no destruction in its continental soil, the War did cost much more to the US than any other nations.

The huge cost of furious destruction all over France is also easy readable.

wait wait wait, we're not talking about Elvis getting anally probed by aliens here, that's why I think the term "conspiracy theory" is a bit abused.

We're talking about a vast amount of intelligence and witnessing gathered over the years, together with the financial/political situation of the time, which depicts a scenario that is light years away from the image of astonishment and righteousness of the infamy speech by Roosevelt.

I mean, if you look at the infamy speech itself, sentences like this are quite frankly the not so hidden sign of a hidden agenda
"Now [war] has come and we must meet it as united Americans regardless of our attitude in the past toward the policy our Government has followed. ... Our country has been attacked by force of arms, and by force of arms we must retaliate. We must now turn every effort to building the greatest and most efficient Army, Navy and Air Force in the world."

Well said.

Sorry man, but it is a known fact that the US are the only country that did actually gain unmatched economic and industrial supremacy from WW2, have a look at this

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII

and in particular at the conclusion:
"The U.S.'s Position at the End of the War

At a macroeconomic scale, the war not only decisively ended the Great Depression, but created the conditions for productive postwar collaboration between the federal government, private enterprise, and organized labor, the parties whose tripartite collaboration helped engender continued economic growth after the war. The U.S. emerged from the war not physically unscathed, but economically strengthened by wartime industrial expansion, which placed the United States at absolute and relative advantage over both its allies and its enemies.

Possessed of an economy which was larger and richer than any other in the world, American leaders determined to make the United States the center of the postwar world economy. American aid to Europe ($13 billion via the Economic Recovery Program (ERP) or "Marshall Plan," 1947-1951) and Japan ($1.8 billion, 1946-1952) furthered this goal by tying the economic reconstruction of West Germany, France, Great Britain, and Japan to American import and export needs, among other factors. Even before the war ended, the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 determined key aspects of international economic affairs by establishing standards for currency convertibility and creating institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the precursor of the World Bank.

In brief, as economic historian Alan Milward writes, "the United States emerged in 1945 in an incomparably stronger position economically than in 1941"... By 1945 the foundations of the United States' economic domination over the next quarter of a century had been secured"... [This] may have been the most influential consequence of the Second World War for the post-war world" (Milward, 63)."

you are absolutely right saying that post war US did benefit from the fall down of the war. But my point was that US didn't need to commit itself into a war only to fight the great depression.

In 1939 that was alrdy nearly a thing of the past.

Guys, am I wrong to believe that the naval base did receive a message from Washington that there was a probability they could become target of a Japanese attack but, this message arrived that morning so too late as the Japanese attack was already on the way?

~S~

mmmmh I don't know, the impression you get by the war effort is that industries were striving to start such an unprecedented mass production, so much that a lot of the new stuff produced went straight into surplus storage and in many cases was axed without having even being used. Let's not even go into the issues regarding occupation and the clever idea of the Marshall plan.

In a nutshell, I reckon that the influential industry giants pressed hard on the Congress and ultimately on FDR for an entry to war, which turned out to be the best choice the US made since their birth.

I may be confusing this with world war I, but if the allies had lost the war then the US would have lost the huge loans it made to the other powers. Weapons, ammunition, money, etc.
Yes, I haven't studied it properly, but iirc they were re-development loans which could only be used to pay for material from the US.