A Japanese Nerve-Pinch?

According to historian, Burton Folsom (and buttressed by the diaries of the parties involved), FDR told multiple aids that he strongly favored "war with Japan now rather than later" and that he had felt this way as early as 1933. Wow, huh?........................................................................................Needles to say, this was a humongous jolt to fellows like Tugwell and Moley, whose goal it was to manage the economy, address the Depression, etc.. But, while this view may have seemed counter-intuitive at the time, it actually did make sense in that a) Roosevelt's Secretary of State at that juncture, Henry Stimson, was a staunch interventionist and b) Roosevelt's family had had a long (and, yes, prosperous, too) association with China and so it was not surprising at all that FDR would have developed an enmity for Japan (the fact that they had invaded Manchuria, etc.)...........................................................................................As to why the war did not take place earlier, you can probably "blame" that on the isolationist mood which had permeated not just Congress but the whole country; a mood that only changed when the Germans invaded the Sudetenland and the Japanese bludgeoned Pearl Harbor (the latter obviously much more so).