We did let Japan just bomb us. The U.S. government knew Japan was going to attack us, and knew it was at Pearl Harbor. They let it happen to give us casus beli to enter the war, against the wishes of the American public that overwhelmingly had zero interest in participating in another world war. This was the reason why most of our naval forces were outside of Pearl at the time of the attack.

We did let Japan just bomb us. The U.S. government knew Japan was going to attack us, and knew it was at Pearl Harbor. They let it happen to give us casus beli to enter the war, against the wishes of the American public that overwhelmingly had zero interest in participating in another world war. This was the reason why most of our naval forces were outside of Pearl at the time of the attack.