ABSTRACT
T ension between the United States and Japan had been building.While members of the America First Committee and others thun-dered against participating in a foreign war, the U.S. government was selling arms to the Allies in Europe, the Navy had orders to shoot back if fired on, and the tiny U.S. Army was priming itself with the draft and extensive maneuvers in Louisiana. Overseas, Hitler neared Moscow after his midsummer invasion of Russia; and General Douglas MacArthur, an American officer technically working for the government of the Philippines, said that he had what it took to resist a Japanese invasion of “up to five million men.” At home, war-related industries were humming as the country geared for the war that seemed to be coming.
