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The Japanese had been given an ultimatum by the U.S. to cease their activities in China and other parts of Asia or we would set up a naval block aide. Japan is an island and did not and does not have many natural resources of any kind. The ultimatum put the Japanese in a position with only two options to choose from. Cease their ativities immediately or attack the U.S. We suspected the later option would be their choce or at the least we had to prepare for the later option...thus the Philippines and Perl Harbor were ordered to go onto a wartime footing. We expected they would attack the Philippines first but they hit Perl Harbor first and the Philippines the following day. By the way the commander of Hawaii was punished for the piss poor job he did of putting Hawaii on a wartime footing.
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