While I personally do believe the US embargo on oil was the major factor in provoking Pearl Harbor, at the same time I've never seen credible evidence that this was US policy at the highest levels. Not that it cannot be true, but without evidence it is merely an ex-post-facto extrapolation.

However, conspiracy theory says that this policy was true, and furthermore points to the McCollum memo as proof.

However, the '8 points' which McCollum wrote about as well as the text of the memo which is used to support this assertion.

The 8 points:



Most of these are frankly irrelevant - irrelevant then as well as irrelevant now, though in the context of the time may well have seemed important.

The embargo, however, is the key. There is a clear trail which leads from Dean Acheson to the effective embargo of US oil to Japan.

Dean Acheson himself is interesting: Under Secretary of the Treasury in 1933, Under Secretary of State in 1941, attended Bretton Woods as the US delegate, Under Secretary of State in 1947, then full Secretary of State in 1949.

Does this look like the profile of a rogue element?