Ah, Little Hawk, but why the trade embargo? The US had been selling scrap metal, oil, and various raw materials to Japan for years, which they were converting into weapons for their aggression against other Asian countries. They were determined to bring all of Asia under the Japanese Empire. The level of disapproval of Japan's aggression was one of the major reasons for the embargo, and not just by the US, but by other countries as well. We knew that the Japanese would be mightily pissed, but it wasn't all that sure that they would want to get involved in a war with the US because that would slow down their Imperial ambitions in Asia. There was also a question as to whether they even could attack the US. In addition, we were in the middle of peace talks with the Japanese when the attack on Pearl Harbor came (there were several Japanese diplomats in Washington, DC on the morning of the attack).

Also, according to several books I've read on the period (and I was a kid during that time and I remember a lot of it), the Pacific fleet was in pretty bad shape. We were damned lucky that the aircraft carriers were out cruising at the time, otherwise the war might have taken an entirely different direction. We were simply not prepared for war and it was bloody miraculous how quickly everybody pitched in and factories started converting for war production. It was some time after the war was over that it came out that the Japanese didn't fully realize how much damage they had actually done, and that had they known, we would have very likely been fighting Japanese on the beaches of California, Oregon, and Washington. This, of course, was not something we wanted to be common knowledge.

Don Firth