ABSTRACT
American policy toward Japan on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack was not the product of a rational, value-maximizing decisional process. The State Department officials involved in this process were a heterogeneous group, whose leading members frequently clashed with each other on questions of basic strategy. Henry L. Stimson, a highly respected Republican senior statesman, was persuaded by Eleanor Roosevelt to join the administration in an attempt to broaden the margin of public support for its increasingly interventionist posture in Europe. The secretary of the treasury ultimately managed to gain the full support of Roosevelt, who was initially skeptical of his hard-line posture toward Japan notes, in November 1941, the Treasury Department played "an increasingly formative role in the development of American Far Eastern policy." Separated from one another in terms of their respective perceptions, resolve, and bargaining skill, various members of the Roosevelt entourage engaged in fierce competition for power and influence.
