Why did Japan Attack Pearl Harbor?
On 7 December 1941, a Japanese naval attack force launched a surprise air attack on U.S. military installations on the island of Oahu, in the U.S. Territory of Hawaii. Two waves of aircraft, totaling 253 aircraft in all, attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor, the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Hickam, Wheeler and Bellows Army airfields, Schofield Barracks, Kaneohe Naval Air Station, and Ewa Marine Corps Air Station. The attack of Pearl Harbor was the greatest military defeat in U.S. history. When the attack was over 2,388 U.S. sailors, soldiers and civilians were dead while another 1,178 were wounded. The Japanese had sunk or damaged 21 ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, including eight front line battleships. The attack thrust the United Stated into World War II against Japan and her Axis allies, Germany and Italy. While the Japanese achieved a temporary victory against the United States, the attack on Pearl Harbor set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately lead to the d
Japan became a rising world power with its victory in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, but the country felt increasingly at a disadvantage economically and politically as European powers and the United States raced into China and other parts of Asia to establish colonies and trade relationships. Japanese society turned more and more militaristic and nationalistic, culminating in an invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and brutal incursions into other parts of China in 1937. Franklin Roosevelt’s administration responded in 1940 by placing a scrap metal embargo against Japan followed by a supposed limited oil embargo a year later. Strong evidence suggests that Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson single-handedly implemented a de facto total oil embargo while President Roosevelt was out of the country. And by the time Roosevelt found out, it was too late to reverse the action without losing credibility. Japan could have escaped the embargoes simply by pulling out of China. But the country’s mil
Japanese expansionism in the Pacific and Asia. The economic sanctions and embargo’s placed on Japan by the U.S. and others threatened to dry up oil and other raw materials needed to power the Japanese Military machine. The movement of the U.S. Fleet to Pearl Harbor from San Diego California was viewed as a threat by the Japanese Government. The attack on Pearl Harbor was an effort by the Japanese Govt. to deal a decisive blow to the U.S. in order that the Japanese could invade Southern Pacific Islands and Australia, to capture and have access to the raw materials they needed to continue to power their war efforts. With our fleet destroyed in that region it would have cleared the way for them to do the invading unhampered. However Admiral Yamamoto who was in command of the Japanese navy stated during the attack that he felt that all they had done was “awaken a sleeping giant”. He had also thought before the attack that all Japan’s Navy could do was create havoc for the U.S. navy for a c
