I don't disagree that Japan was a hostile, aggressive, expansionist country, and those characteristics provided a moral grounds to go to war with Japan. But don't think the U.S. was reluctant to enter that war.
<<< On that day, Japanese industry was doing a great deal of business with American firms. There was a thriving trade in the export of scrap iron, for Japan had little iron ore and needed steel for its war in China. For the same purpose its government needed oil, and Japan has no oil resource; on July 26th 1941 it was importing 70% of its oil from the United States and was holding a large majority of its cash in United States banks.
Don't know about you, but I regard those facts alone as conclusive proof that there was no resolve in Tokyo to invade the US of A. You absolutely do not bank with someone on whom you mean to wage war; nor do you buy from him nearly all of your most vital raw materials. Not unless you expect to be able to invade and conquer him quickly; and the idea of a Japanese army landing in Oregon and sweeping across the country within a few months is ludicrous on its face.
But on July 26th 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced that thence forward, it was illegal for any US company to sell oil or scrap metal to any Japanese buyer, and ordered all Japanese assets in the US to be frozen. In the words of Samuel E Morison, a noted naval historian who was acquainted with FDR and who wrote his 13-volume history of the Navy in WW-II with FDR's full approval, "war was then inevitable." Morison supported the war, mind; he saw nothing wrong in that fact. But fact it was, and he so recorded it. From July 26th 1941, the REAL "day of infamy", there was no possibility that the Japanese government would not very soon attack; for in that one stroke FDR had cut off its most vital supplies AND prevented it buying them anywhere else. THAT was the provocation that preceded Pearl Harbor. >>>
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