148 e lusive v ictories
occupation of southern Indochina in July 1941, Roosevelt ordered a
freeze on all Japanese assets in the United States, with a committee to
decide selectively to release assets to pay for exports. He intended the
move to increase pressure incrementally on Tokyo. But hard-liners at
the lower levels of the federal bureaucracy again pushed economic
pressure beyond the president’s design. When these aggressive offi cials
refused to release any Japanese assets to permit purchases, the provi-
sional freeze on Japanese assets in the United States became a total
embargo. ^
Nor were American military preparations in the Pacifi c or Far East
properly calculated to delay a Japanese attack. Roosevelt still believed
that the Pacifi c Fleet at Pearl Harbor would inhibit any Japanese naval
move against the Philippines and other targets in the Far East. But he
ignored the military corollary: were they to strike the British in Malaya/
Singapore and the Dutch in Netherlands East Indies, the Japanese
could not aff ord to ignore a major hostile fl eet in the Central Pacifi c.
Much the same could be said for belated American eff orts to bolster
the defenses of the Philippines. At the urging of General Douglas
MacArthur, who had come out of retirement to command there, Roos-
evelt agreed in mid-1941 to send major reinforcements. Th ese included
most of the new B-17 long-range bombers in the inventory of the U.S.
Army Air Force, on the assumption that Japan would be terrifi ed by
what bombing might do to its fi re-prone cities. Th e president over-
looked the possibility that the B-17 threat would force Japan to strike
preemptively at the bomber bases before their defenses were ready. His
decision to recall MacArthur and rush him troops and equipment went
against the recommendation of senior American military leaders.
Th e day of reckoning arrived a good six months sooner than Roosevelt
intended. Despite his determination to dictate whether, where, and
when the United States would enter the war, it found America at a time
and place not of his choosing.
Some of his decisions did buy him time and protected American
strategic interests. Operating within what he took to be narrow political
constraints, he stood with Great Britain in its hour of need and with
the Soviet Union as it bent under the Nazi onslaught. Th e president
and his key civilian and military aides also identifi ed Germany as the
principal threat to American national security.