re: Interesting tweet from Newt regarding Pearl Harbor

FDR and Marshall knew something was up for sure. Tojo had threatened war as late as the end of November. But the US commanders at Pearl were convinced that Japan was never going to attack Pearl flat out. There were reasons to believe that. 1) Japan needed the raw materials that could only be found in the Dutch East Indies , like oil and rubber. 2)There was a fair amount of agreement that an attack on the Phillipines was imminent and maybe Guam but Pearl presented challenges.3) Mainly the depth of the harbor which is actually pretty shallow. Torpedos needed a certain minimum depth in which to operate correctly and Pearl was only 35 feet deep which was considered too shallow.

Despite the revisionism, it was Kimmel the Naval commander who made the determination that Japan would not attack Pearl. He had solid reasoning that involved the fact that Russia was not yet defeated and the Japanese feared a Russian attack by way of Vladivostok and Sakhalin Island from the north.