The U.S. Entering World War II
The U.S. Entering World War II"A date that will live in infamy," (Snyder 33) was what President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt called December 7, 1941.
It was a calm Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor on the island of
Oahu. Then two U.S. soldiers saw an oscilloscope signal on their
mobile radars. They immediately called this in to their commanding
officer but he told them to ignore it because the base was expecting a
squadron of friendly B-17's to be coming from the mainland. Thirty
minutes later the first bomb fell and almost killed a courier boy who
was trying to deliver a message to Pearl Harbor Naval Base that the
Japanese Imperial Navy was going to attack them. The Japanese bombers
caught the base by surprise due to the Americans' tradition of not
working on Sunday's. As the bombs fell, so did all the chances of the
United States not joining the Allies in the second world war that was
raging in Europe and the western Pacific. Up to that point the U.S.
had just been supporting the Allies but they weren't technically at
war with the Axis powers.
All throughout the first two years of the war, President
Roosevelt focused on making life difficult for the Japanese. One way
he did this was by creating various policies that would deter the Axis
powers from being able to maintain the needs necessary to wage war on
the Allies. One of these policies was the American financial and
economic embargo, which supported China in its fight against Japan. It
also, somewhat, forced neutral countries to side with the U.S. because
it threatened that if any country would aid one of the Axis countries
then that country would no longer be given aid packages from the
United States. A second policy imposed by Roosevelt was the "moral
embargo" of July 1938. This banned neutral countries from exporting
planes and equipment to countries who engaged in the bombing of
civilians. This made the U.S. look like the good guys because they
were protecting the innocent people who were being killed just because
the lived in a different country. By imposing these policies, the U.S.
was disallowing the economic growth of the Axis countries and forcing
them to support themselves, as long as they were against the Allies.
These policies were a type of weapon that Roosevelt used in order to
attack the enemy without formally declare war. This would be one of
the primary reasons why Roosevelt would allow Pearl Harbor to occur.
Before the betrayal at Pearl Harbor occurred, a poll was taken
of the U.S. citizen's opinion about Roosevelt taking them into the
war. Ninety-four percent were against the United States getting
involved. If Roosevelt would have just attacked Japan first, he would
have lost a great majority of the support he was receiving from the
general population of the United...
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