Based on Hiroshi Hasegawa’s analysis, this article examines when and how the Roosevelt administration decided to provoke Japan. Focusing on the 1941 Atlantic Conference, Roosevelt’s remarks to Churchill, economic sanctions, and the Hull Note, it reveals the structure leading toward war.

There may be various theories as to when the Roosevelt administration planned to make Japan the full-fledged target of its provocations, but.
2016-12-15
The following is a continuation of the all-out essay by Hasegawa Hiroshi.
All emphasis in the text is mine.
Declaration of Provocation against Japan.
There may be various theories as to when the Roosevelt administration planned to make Japan the full-fledged target of its provocations, but I believe that the U.S. administration made its firm decision after the outbreak of the German–Soviet War, specifically at the time when Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill held the Atlantic Conference aboard a British warship in the Atlantic off the coast of Canada from August 9 to 12, 1941.
The records of that meeting have not yet been disclosed, but even vaguely, its substance is symbolized by the following words that Churchill later confided to his old friend, Prime Minister Jan Smuts of the Union of South Africa, a British dominion at the time.
“At the Atlantic Conference, Roosevelt went so far as to tell me, ‘I may never declare war, but I may cause a war.’”
It would not be unnatural to regard this shipboard remark by Roosevelt to Churchill as Roosevelt’s declaration of provocation against Japan.
Earlier, on July 25, the Roosevelt administration announced the freezing of Japanese assets in the United States, and on August 1, a total ban on oil exports—measures that would eventually paralyze Japan’s economy and daily life—but these, while bearing a provocative character, were regarded as retaliation for the advance of Japanese forces into southern French Indochina, which could be considered a base for the advance into Southeast Asia.
However, the Konoe–Roosevelt meeting, which was hinted at by the president himself yet ultimately flatly rejected, is a typical example, and various Japanese compromise proposals were likewise rejected outright without any detailed exchanges, creating a rainy-season-like situation that continued through August, September, October, and November, until finally, on November 26, that Hull Note was handed over.
This essay continues.