Remember Pearl Harbor and the Philippines and Malaysia

Pearl Harbor anniversary is coming up (Here in the Philippines, the attack was December 8),

The usual conspiracy theories are again being rumored that Roosevelt "knew" about Pearl Harbor but did nothing.

Austin Bay, a military analyst, reminds the paranoid that "intelligence" isn't always clear, but resembles a puzzle: And that the "knowledge" of a plot might be misinterpreted because the source is suspicious or unclear, but especially because those analyzing the big picture might lack imagination.

FDR’s security agencies had cracked the Japanese diplomatic communications code. America knew Japan was mulling an attack to the south, perhaps on the Dutch East Indies. Seizing the Indies’ oilfields to ensure energy supplies for Japan’s industry and armed forces made eminent strategic sense.

An “attack to the south” became a powerful interpretive pattern...

In the midst of events, the significance of an intercepted coded Imperial Japanese Navy radio transmission indicating a fleet can be missed, especially if it didn’t fit a logically convincing (though preconceived) pattern. American strategists knew an attack on Pearl Harbor by carrier aircraft was possible, and they believed Japan might well expand its war. Their imaginative insight, however, was incomplete. They underestimated Japanese imagination and audacity.

so the New Mexico National Guard, became the 200th Coast Artillery, was sent to Manila to protect Clark in August, anticipating an attack to the south. They also had an advantage, since many of them spoke Spanish.
Back then, most of the elites here still spoke and learned Spanish; that is not true nowadays...most of the old Spanish customs seem to be dying out...