World war two again :)?

No one knows that for sure. Some historians claim Roosevelt did it so we would become involved in the war, others say no. Personally I'm inclined to believe he did but I don't count.

However, if you want to know if Roosevelt was "absolutely" expecting an attack, I don't think so, but he was sure hoping for one.

The US was responding in an economic fashion against the invasion of mainland china. It hoped to slow down the war machine by cutting its oil supply. The only option that Japan had was to pull back to Japan and stop the war, or to take the dutch and british holdings in south east asia full of oil reserves. They chose to keep the war going, and to forcefully take these western colonies rich in rubber and oil. Before they did this though, they knew the US would go to war over such action so they took matters into their own hands and hoped to strike a crippling attack against a future aggressor in the pacific theater at pearl harbor.

Well - I don't think the US took Japan very seriously - we have always been pretty racist against them and we did some really high-handed things to limit their military. But the Japanese were murdering their way across China at the time, and we thought we could control them. I'd have to bet that we imagined that the Japanese would NEVER DARE to attack us.

All this is in John Toland's fantastic book - "The Rising Sun" - it's the 2nd War from the Japanese standpoint - and it's one interesting read. You can get it really cheap used off of Amazon.

The U.S and Japan were engaged in a trade war. Japan was threatening to retaliate against smaller countries in the South Pacific buying from American companies. Japan had no or very little natural resources, oil, steel, rubber, raw material needed to manufacture goods. The U.S. prohibited American companies from selling raw materials or other goods to Japan, as well as quarantined the island so others could not supply them.

I don't believe when they passed the embargo they expected it to lead to war, they knew it was harsh but they underestimated how threatening it would be to the Japanese. They on purposely backed the Japanese into a corner thinking they would back down and leave China but instead they attacked.

No they were trying to stop the Japanese in China and south asia, they thought they were being aganist Japan because they did not know about how policey the us was and how if a Dayimo ever did this it was a insult of great measure so they attacked bad choice, should just beat china with infantry