Background edit
Japan and the United States had competed for control of the Pacific Ocean since the late 19th century. Both powers experienced rapid economic growth after political changes mid-century, and in the 1890s each consciously developed its naval strength to gain leverage on the world stage. Both nations had also acquired colonies in the Pacific.
By the outbreak of World War I, Japan had acquired a territory on and around the Asian mainland through a series of successful wars. In 1894, Japan gained Taiwan as a result of theFirst Sino-Japanese War with China; as a result of the Russo-Japanese War with Russia in 1904, Japan gained territory in and around China, including the Korean peninsula. The modern and well-equipped Japanese navy played a decisive role against outclassed Russian and Chinese fleets in these wars.
By the same stage, the USA had acquired a range a of island territories in the Pacific. Hawaii voluntarily became a US Territory in the 1890s; the small but strategically significant atoll atMidway was colonised; and the USA acquired the Spanish colony in the Phillipines as a result of the victories of the newly-built US Navy in the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Japan entered World War I at the beginning of the conflict as an ally of Britain and captured German possessions in the Pacific and China. After the war, the League of Nations awarded Japan custody of most of Imperial Germany's possessions and colonies in East Asia and the Pacific.
After World War I and the scuttling of the German fleet, it was clear that Japan and the USA ahd joined Britain as the leading naval powers. In the uncertain situation after the war, it seemed possible that the next war might be between Japan and the USA, and that Britain might side with the Japanese. All three nations planned major building programs of battleships and battlecruisers. Afraid of the crippling cost of a naval arms race, the powers concluded the Washington Naval Treaty which limited warship building. As a consequence of the Treaty, the Anglo-Japanese alliance was broken.
The stability which resulted was broken as Japan sought to further its hold on mainland Asia in the 1930s. In 1931, Japan imposed the puppet state of Manchukuo on eastern Manchuria by force. And starting in 1937, Japan escalated its long-simmering conflict with mainland China by the allegedly staged incident at the Marco Polo Bridge, starting the Second Sino-Japanese War. In response to diplomatic pressures, Japan resigned from the League of Nations, placing itself formally outside the post-World War I settlement.
With the aggressive behaviour of Germany, Britain was forced to devote material and diplomatic resources to Europe, rather than the Pacific. The security of the British Pacific colonies, as well as Australia and India, now essentially relied on the USA.
In July 1939, the U.S. terminated the 1911 U.S.-Japan commercial treaty, an action which allowed the U.S. to impose trade restrictions to try to influence Japan to end the continuing war in China. Nevertheless, Japan continued the war in China and signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany, which formally ended World War I hostilities between the two countries and declared common interests. In 1940, Japan also signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy forming the Axis Powers.
These actions led the U.S. to embargo scrap metal and gasoline shipments to Japan, and to close the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping. In 1941, with the acquiescence of Vichy France,[citation needed] Japan moved into northern Indochina. The U.S. responded by freezing Japan's assets in the U.S., and beginning a complete oil embargo.[1] Oil was Japan's most crucial lack in resources; her own supplies were very limited -- 80+% of Japan's imports came from the U.S. and the Imperial Navy relied entirely on imported bunker oil stocks.[2] To secure its oil supplies, and other resources, Japanese planners had long been looking to the South, especially the Dutch East Indies. The Navy was certain any attempt to seize this region would bring the U.S. into the war, but with the oil embargo, determination to seize the necessary resources increased. Planning (espionage, logistics, etc) continued.
War edit
On September 6, 1941, at the second of two Imperial Conferences concerning an attack on Pearl Harbor, just one day after a tense meeting between Hirohito, Konoe, Hajime Sugiyama and Osami Nagano, during which the emperor had scolded Sugiyama for the lack of success of the Imperial Army in China, the Cabinet met in the presence of the Emperor to consider the attack plans prepared by Imperial General Headquarters. [3]
It was decided:
| “ | Our Empire, for the purpose of self-defense and self-preservation, will complete preparations for war ... [and is] ... resolved to go to war with the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands if necessary. Our Empire will concurrently take all possible diplomatic measures vis-à-vis the United States and United Kingdom, and thereby endeavor to obtain our objectives ... In the event that there is no prospect of our demands being met by the first ten days of October through the diplomatic negotiations mentioned above, we will immediately decide to commence hostilities against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. | ” |
On November 3, after many meetings with the emperor about the military strategy, Nagano explained to him in detail the final version of the attack plan of Pearl Harbor [4] On 5 November, Hirohito approved in imperial conference the operation plan for a war against Occident.
With the Hull note of November 26, 1941, Japan's leaders decided not to cancel the Pearl Harbor attack, in planning for 10 months and in serious training for most of the year. The fleet had been assembling in the Kuriles, and indeed sailed the day the Hull note was sent.
U.S. and UK demands to back down from its actions in China, at the exclusion of Manchukuo and French Indochina, were seen as meaning a loss of international prestige for Japan, "losing face", losing everything gained in the Second Sino-Japanese War (repeating the humiliation after the Sino-Japanese War), and most of all, losing access to oil, despite the heavy investments in the military.
On 1 December, another imperial conference finally sanctionned the "War against United states, Great Britain and Holland" [5]
- ^ Roland H. Worth, Jr., No Choice But War: the United States Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1995). ISBN 0-7864-0141-9
- ^ Yuichi Arima, The Way to Pearl Harbor: U.S. vs Japan, ICE Case Studies Number 118, December, 2003 (accessed April 10, 2006).
- ^ H. Bix, Hirohito and the making of modern Japan, 2000, pp.411, 745.
- ^ P. Wetzler, Hirohito and war, 1998, pp.29, 35
- ^ P. Wetzler, ibid., p.39