Oil!

This is coolbert:

"Well, what were we expecting. After all, we cut off the Jap's oil supply. They [Japan] felt they had to react. We [U.S.] brought this war upon ourselves."

This is the usual response many persons give when the Pearl Harbor attack is mentioned.

This response was even given by Tom Hagen the oh-so-wise "consigliari" in the movie the "Godfather". The popular conception is that when the U.S. "cut-off" the oil supply to Japan in the years just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese, having only four months supply of oil left, felt compelled to respond for the survival of their society. Persons referred to as "revisionist" historians are quick to point this out.

Does this concept stand up under examination.

NO!! Emphatically NO!

The Japanese oil supply was never cut off.

What was cut off by the Roosevelt administration, and justifiably so, was the shipment from the U.S. to Japan of refined aviation gasoline. The type of aviation gasoline that was being shipped to Japan and being used by Japanese military aviation in their aggressive war against China.

And this was ONLY DONE after Japanese military aviation had been conducting a most cruel and even sadistic aerial bombing campaign against the more or less defenseless Chinese population, and doing so for three years prior to the "cut-off".

In the months leading up to Pearl Harbor, crude oil shipments from the U.S. to Japan continued unabated, the Japanese always being able to buy whatever crude oil that they needed.

And, in addition, the Japanese had just negotiated, gotten and signed a contract for an abundance of oil to be sent from wells in what was at the time the Dutch East Indies . [even though Holland had already fallen to the German Nazi armies, the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies was a government still in power Indies and could and did negotiate contracts on it's own].

As an afterthought, I feel it is important to fully understand what is meant by, for instance, "four months of oil supply left".

Now, this does not mean that the consumer has four months of oil stored in depots somewhere. What it does mean is four months supply of oil in the entire process of pumping oil from a well, to it's actual distribution to the consumer.

Oil is being pumped from a well under contract. Being piped to a holding area where it is then pumped onto tanker ship for the voyage to the nation of the consumer. Then is being taken off tankers and sent to refineries for processing. From the refinery it is then piped to depots where it is then sent off to the consumer for them to pump and use, say in an automobile.

Four months would be normal consumption of what is not only on hand, but what is in the pipeline, the pipeline consisting of the entire process from start to finish. Emphasis on normal here.

coolbert.