Third and fourth terms of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor with a surprise attack, knocking out the main American battleship fleet and killing 2,403 American servicemen and civilians. The great majority of scholars have rejected the conspiracy thesis that Roosevelt, or any other high government officials, knew in advance about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had kept their secrets closely guarded, and while senior American officials were aware that war was imminent, they did not expect an attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt had anticipated that the first attack would take place in the Dutch East Indies, Thailand, or the Philippines.
Japanese-American life before World War II
However, on December 7, 1941, the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese Zero crashed on Niihau, the smallest of the inhabited Hawaiian Islands. Three of the island's inhabitants assisted the downed plane's pilot. [] This help rendered by persons of Japanese descent to the Japanese pilot may have been one of the incidents leading Roosevelt to issuing Executive order for internment.