The United States, along with other countries, criticized Japanese aggression but shied away from any economic or military punishments. Relations between the U. Responding to this threat, the United States placed an embargo on scrap metal, oil and aviation fuel heading to Japan and froze Japanese assets in the U.
Furthermore, the U. Japan, sensing conflict was inevitable, began planning for an attack on Pearl Harbor by April, The alliance systems of Japan, Germany and Italy were put into action by this time, but Russo-Japanese relations were cordial. In the surprise attack, Japan sunk several ships, destroyed hundreds of planes and ended thousands of lives.
The Japanese goal was to cripple the U. Pacific fleet, and they nearly succeeded. There were a number of British concessions in the treaty ports, the main ones being Hong Kong, Tientsin and Shanghai. During the s Japan posed a serious threat to British interests in China. In September the Japanese invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria and established Manchukuo as a puppet state.
Full-scale war broke out after a Japanese attack on the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, which only ended in July Britain had little capacity to defend her interests in the treaty ports.
This is a more complicated question. Japan knew the United States was economically and military powerful, but it was not afraid of any American attack on its islands. Japan did worry however, that the Americans might help the Chinese resist the Japanese invasion of their country. When President Roosevelt stopped U. Without imports of steel and oil, the Japanese military could not fight for long.
Without oil, the navy would not be able to move after it had exhausted its six-month reserve. Roosevelt hoped that this economic pressure would force Japan to end its military expansion in East Asia.
The Japanese military saw another solution to the problem: if it could quickly conquer the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia and gain complete control of the oil, rubber, and other raw materials it needed, then it could defend its interests in China and Indochina against those Europeans who were now busy fighting a major war in Europe against the Germans and Italians.
The only force that could stop the Japanese was the American Pacific fleet — which was conveniently gathered close to Japan at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. Knowing that many Americans did not want to fight a war against Japan, the military thought that if it suddenly destroyed the U. Japan was not militarily or economically powerful enough to fight a long war against the United States, and the Japanese military knew this.
Its attack on Pearl Harbor was a tremendous gamble — and though the short-run gamble was successful, the long-run gamble was lost because the Japanese were wrong about the American reaction. But behind this mistake was another, earlier miscalculation. Ever since Commodore Perry's fleet opened Japan in , in an era of great colonial expansion, the Japanese had watched the European powers dominate East Asia and establish colonies and trading privileges.
China, Japan's neighbor, was carved up like a melon as Western powers established their spheres of influence on Chinese territory. After an amazingly short time, Japan was able to develop the economic and military strength to join this competition for dominance of the Asian mainland. Japan defeated China in and Russia in , in battles over who should dominate Korea.
Japan joined the allies against Germany in in a struggle to control a portion of China and then conquered Manchuria in in an effort to secure a land area rich in raw materials.
The Japanese nation and its military, which controlled the government by the s, felt that it then could, and should, control all of East Asia by military force. Japan's military invasions of other Asian countries, however, brought resistance from not only the European colonial powers, but also the Asian people themselves, and finally, the United States. The Japanese military tried to convince the Japanese people that complete loyalty and obedience would make Japan invincible.
Japan's early victories seemed to prove this, but the U. The Japanese navy was destroyed. When this was followed by massive bombardment from the air and the final blow of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese invincibility was proven to be a myth. At the end of the war, the Japanese nation was not only starving and devastated by the bombing, but bewildered and shocked by the defeat.
Pearl Harbor: Discussion Questions. Clandestine support of Britain for example the Neutrality Patrol was replaced by active alliance.
Subsequent operations by the U. One of the most controversial consequences of the attack was the creation of internment camps for Japanese American residents and citizens. Within hours of the attack, hundreds of Japanese American leaders were rounded up and brought to high-security camps such as Sand Island at the mouth of Honolulu Harbor and Kilauea Military Camp on the island of Hawaii. Roosevelt authorized the deportation and incarceration with Executive Order , issued February 19, Many historians see the decision as one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the Roosevelt administration.
The U. On May 3—4, Japanese forces successfully invaded and occupied Tulagi, although several of their supporting warships were surprised and sunk or damaged by aircraft from the U. Now aware of the presence of U. Beginning on May 7, the carrier forces from the two sides exchanged airstrikes over two consecutive days. With both sides having suffered heavy losses in aircraft and carriers damaged or sunk, the two fleets disengaged and retired from the battle area. Although a tactical victory for the Japanese in terms of ships sunk, the battle would prove to be a strategic victory for the Allies for several reasons.
Japanese expansion, seemingly unstoppable until then, was turned back for the first time. The severe losses in carriers at Midway prevented the Japanese from reattempting to invade Port Moresby from the ocean. Top right: The Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu burning and sinking the morning after being bombed by U. Bottom left: U. The operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The Japanese hoped another demoralizing defeat would force the U. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii. The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions.
Most significantly, American code-breakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four Japanese aircraft carriers— Akagi , Kaga , Soryu, and Hiryu , all part of the six-carrier force to launch the attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier—were sunk for a cost of one American aircraft carrier and a destroyer. Although the Japanese continued to try to secure more territory, and the U. It was the first major offensive by Allied forces against the empire of Japan.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor crippled much of the U. Joining the U. Further attempts by the Japanese to continue their strategic initiative and offensively extend their outer defensive perimeter in the south and central Pacific were thwarted at the naval battles of the Coral Sea May and Midway June respectively. Up to this point, the Allies had been on the defensive in the Pacific, but these strategic victories provided them an opportunity to seize the initiative from Japan.
The Imperial Japanese Navy had occupied Tulagi in May , and had constructed a seaplane base nearby. Allied concern grew when, in early July , the IJN began constructing a large airfield at Lunga Point on nearby Guadalcanal—from such a base, Japanese long-range bombers would threaten the sea lines of communication from the West Coast of the Americas to the populous East Coast of Australia.
By August , the Japanese had about naval troops on Tulagi and nearby islands and 2, personnel on Guadalcanal. On August 7, , Allied forces, predominantly American, landed on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomon Islands, with the objective of denying their use by the Japanese to threaten the supply and communication routes between the U.
The Allies also intended to use Guadalcanal and Tulagi as bases to support a campaign to eventually capture or neutralize the major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. The Allies overwhelmed the outnumbered Japanese defenders, who had occupied the islands since May , and captured Tulagi and Florida as well as an airfield later named Henderson Field that was under construction on Guadalcanal.
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