Pearl Harbor: Could It Have Been Avoided?

Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? If you were threatened by an individual, would you throw the first punch or wait for the attack. This is how Japan felt when they were trying to dominate Asia. On Sunday December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked the United State’s biggest naval base, Pearl Harbor. This attack was a turning point for the United States because this was one factor that brought them into World War II to fight against the Axis Powers.

As the United States were planning on how to invade Japan, there had been a lot of controversy between Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff Admiral William Leahy, Secretary of War Henry Stimson as to how to attack Japan until Secretary of State James Byrnes brought up the idea of bombing Japan without any warning, shocking Japan into surrendering. According to document A, “Truman believed that it was his duty as president to use every weapon available to save American lives.” The quote from document A shows that Truman had to use anything available in order to save American

entered the war for personal gain and national power. On the other hand, Schweikart and Allen attribute it to the Pearl Harbor attack. Zinn reports, “Japan’s strike against the American naval base climaxed a long series of mutually antagonistic acts,” such as the threat against U.S. markets by Japan’s invasion of China, and the U.S.’s embargo on certain products (Zinn 410-411). He also says the U.S. declared war on Japan not because of the threat to American citizens, but because of “the Japanese attack on a link in the American Pacific Empire” (Zinn 410). Schweikart and Allen agree hostilities started long before the attack and led to it.

Nanjing Massacre is one of the most representable incidents in the history of the Japanese militarist invading China during the World War II. December 13, 1937, Japanese army captured the capital of the republic China Nanjing over six weeks. During this period, Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants numbering an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000 people. After World War I, Japan 's expansion in China by the Anglo-American powers curbed. China 's northern Expedition weakened the Japanese economic in China, and urge the Japanese government to adjust its China policy , the annexation of Northeast China to speed up the pace.

Once they had overthrown any remaining Chinese forces, they set up a Manchuko, a puppet government, in 1932. The civilian government condemened the military’s action and demanded it to move

Even with the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and their laws that prohibited westerners. No countries wanted to take control over Japan. Rumours of coal being found in Japan sparked an interest in trade for the US. They did their naval superiority to force Japan to sign treaties which gave their people certain diplomatic privileges in Japan. (affairs)

The alternative for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisors was doing nothing and letting Nazi Germany develop atomic power and going on to use it to conquer the world. The United States of America wanted to end World War II on both the Atlantic and Pacific fronts and needed the quickest possible method to do so. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisors concluded that hundreds of thousands of American lives would be lost on an assault on the island of Japan. The U.S. Armed Forces was over 16,000,000 strong and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s main motive for dropping the atom bombs was to save American lives.5

In the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt did everything he could to upset the Japanese, showing them as an aggressor (he stopped all oil exports to Japan, frozen all Japanese assets, gave loans to Chinese nationalists and supported the English - both nations were enemies of Japan). Pacific fleets long before December 7 informed Washington about the various anticipated threats. On September 4, Roosevelt received a 26-page document from the Naval Intelligence Bureau, containing a "confidential" clause describing in detail the spy actions of the Japanese. Before the attack, an Australian secret services told Roosevelt about the Japanese fleet sailing towards Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt ignored it.

In 1853, four United States Navy warships, led by Matthew Perry threatened to use force to open Japan to trade. The

The nation had been part of the Japanese empire since 1910, and when Japanese resistance suddenly collapsed in the summer of 1945, the Red Army, which had been planning to invade Manchuria, found the way open into northern Korea as well. The way was also open, in southern Korea, for some of the American troops whose original mission had been to invade the Japanese home islands (Gaddis, 2005). The peninsula was occupied, therefore, more by accident than by design: that probably accounts for the fact that Moscow and Washington were able to agree without difficulty that the 38th parallel (John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (The Penguin Press, 2005), pp. 40-46), which split the peninsula in half, would serve as a line of demarcation pending the creation of a single Korean government

The Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek and Communists led by Mao Zedong both aspired to central authority. A renewal of the Chinese civil war followed. Washington sought to apply its standard solution to such civil conflict, but had failed through time (Kissinger 89). In 1949, defeated by the Communists on the mainland, Nationalists troops fall back to the island Taiwan. Through the Chinese Civil war, the United States had been supporting Chiang by transporting the Nationalists troops to northern Chinese cities to preempt the Communist armies from taking the victory of Japanese surrender in World War II (Kissinger 98).

Although the attack was a complete surprise, the United States had had tension with Japan for decades. The United States hated how the Japanese had been treating the people in China. Japan declared war on China because they thought the only way to help their economy was to gain territory from China their neighbor. Next the U.S stopped selling oil to Japan. Although the U.S. was not close with Japan, no one expected Japan to bomb the U.S. After the attacking Roosevelt asked congress to declare war on Japan.

Enraged that the Japanese immigrants were shut out from other countries, like the United States and Canada, they tried to obtain raw materials and markets for Japanese products, Japan then invaded Manchuria in 1931. Ultranationalists worked to rid Japan of democracy and to make the country a one-party state ruled the by the military. The military controlled the Japanese government and Japan was at war with

America did not want to be a target for enemy countries. President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy. " Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in order to destroy the Pacific fleet so the U.S. would not be able to fight back as they spread across the South Pacific. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor America joined the war.

“The Battle of Midway is considered the turning point for the Japanese-American conflict in World War II. It was an important win for America and resulted in numerous Japanese loses” (“Battle of Midway”). On January 14, 1942, the Japanese decided to destroy the American naval fleet, a feat which had not been achieved during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Midway was recommended by the Japanese generals. This battle, if won, could open the opportunity of invading Hawaii and forcing America to surrender.