Brad De Long:
> The story's around. But it makes no sense. A surprise attack is a
> surprise attack whether it sinks seven battleships or is driven off
> with heavy losses to the attacking air squadrons: the political
> effect is the same.
>
> It is true that the U.S. military and the White House thought a
> Japanese attack was not unlikely in December 1941. But if I recall
> correctly they were much more worried about large-scale
> sabotage--hence Clark Field in the Philippines, where the B-17s were
> parked wingtip-to-wingtip so that saboteurs could not get at them,
> making a perfect target for air attack...
In a schoolbook I found discarded in the 'hood -- _Rise_to_ _Globalism_ by Steven E. Ambrose, sixth revised edition -- I find the following: "One of the most persistent myths in American History is that FDR knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming but refused to give the commanders in Hawaii advance notice. In fact, Washington gave the military in Hawaii plenty of warning about the imminent outbreak of hostilities. There was no specific warning about an attack on Pearl Harbor because no one imagined the Japanese were capable of such a daring raid. MAGIC was no help because the Japanese fleet maintained radio silence." (MAGIC was a system for intercepting and decoding Japanese military and diplomatic communications.)
War was considered more or less inevitable because of the Anglo-American embargo of petroleum, which gave the Japanese government the choice of fighting or surrendering their imperial ambitions in Asia.