Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
Franklin Roosevelt was
the 32nd American President who served in office from March 4, 1933 to April 12, 1945. One of the important events during his presidency was the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Discover the history between Japan and the
United States and why the Japanese, with a smaller land area than
California and half the population of the US, attack the United
States at Pearl Harbor.
Events Leading to the Japanese Attack of Pearl Harbor in
Hawaii
This
article provides comprehensive details of events leading to the
Japanese Attack of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii including the background
history of the relationship between Japan and America with important
dates and events that led to the surprise bombing of the US Pacific
Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Refer
to the
Pearl Harbor
Timeline and
Pearl Harbor Facts.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
The following fact
sheet contains interesting history, facts and information to
answer the question of "Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? "
Why did Japan attack Pearl
Harbor?
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 1:
History: Before
the 1850s Japan had historically operated under a policy
of isolationism which prohibited contact with most
outside countries. The military force of America and
their "Gunboat Diplomacy" put pressure on Japan to open
itself to foreign trade. Refer to the
Kanagawa Treaty
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
2: Following WW1 the
relationship between the United States and Japan was
marked by increasing tension due to territorial claims
in the Pacific and U.S. treatment of Japanese
immigrants.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
3: The
1924 Immigration Act prohibited Japanese immigration
into the US. Many Japanese were deeply offended by the
new law and saw these actions as highly provocative
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
4: The history of
tensions between Japan and the west continued. Japan
believed that Western culture, European and American,
was harmful to the culture, traditions and values of the
Japanese people.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
5: Japan adopted an Asia-centric
position emphasizing Asian culture and traditions and rejecting
western influence. The ‘ABCD Powers’
(America-British-Chinese-Dutch) were portrayed as a threat to the
Japanese Empire.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
6:
The government system of
Totalitarianism
was introduced
that asserted absolute and total control over the public and private
lives of its citizens.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
7: Due to the lack of natural
resources in Japan, raw materials such as iron, oil, and coal
largely had to be imported. Japan's economy was largely reliant on
silk exports.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
8: The Japanese did not want to rely on
foreign imports. They wanted to create a colonial empire
by conquering countries rich in natural resources
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
9: The Great
Depression of the 1930s, worsened Japan's already poor
economic state as the price of silk dropped
dramatically.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 10:
Japanese military officers
blamed the country's economic problems on corrupt
politicians and believed that the only way to get the
natural resources they needed was to take them by
seizing other territories.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 11:
In 1931 the Japanese military
control began to take control from the civilian government and
establish a military government beginning the rise of
Japanese Militarism.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 12:
Japanese Militarism combined a
form of fascism with the ideologies of nationalism and imperialism.
Emperor Hirohito remained the symbol of the state and the nation's
ruler.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 13:
The Japanese army acted
independently from the government and in September 1931, led
by General Tojo, invaded the resource-rich province of Manchuria in
Northern China. The United States and Britain supported China
against the actions of the Japanese.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
14: To increase their power in
Asia, and reduce their dependence on the west to obtain resources,
the Japanese military looked towards Manchuria's iron and coal,
Indochina's rubber, and China's vast range of natural resources.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 15:
July 1937 marked the beginning
of total war between China, under Chiang Kai-shek, and Japan in the
Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese defeated Chinese forces at
Shanghai and seized Nanking in which an estimated 300,000 civilians
were killed.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 16:
The ‘Rape of Nanking’
strengthened Anti-Japanese feeling in the United States which
increased still further when the USS Panay, a U.S. gunboat, was sunk
by Japanese aircraft in the Yangtze River outside Nanking on 12
December 1937.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 17:
The Japanese government made
an apology which the US accepted as they did not want the sinking of
the Panay to propel them into war - but the writing was on the wall
and anti-Japanese feeling grew in the United States.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 18:
In response to the Japanese invasion of China, the
sinking of the Panay and the German annexation of Austria Congress
passed the Naval Act of 1938, known as the Second Vinson Act on May
17, 1938. The legislation "mandated a 20% increase in strength of
the United States Navy". The purpose of the law was to triple the
size of the US naval fleet by 1944.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact 19:
On July 26, 1939, the US
suddenly and dramatically took further action as Secretary of State
Cordell Hull gave formal notice for termination of the 1911 Treaty
of Commerce and Navigation with Japan in retaliation for its
colonization of China. This action paved the way for the later trade
embargoes which contributed to the Japanese decision to bomb Pearl
Harbor
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
Fact 20: On September 3, 1939 WW2 broke
out as Britain and France declared war on Germany.
On September 5, 1939 the United States declared its neutrality in
the war
Why did Japan attack Pearl
Harbor?
Facts
about the Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Facts for kids
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sheet continues with facts on Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
Why did Japan attack Pearl
Harbor? Facts Sheet
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
21:
With the outbreak of the war Germany began attacking
British merchant ships as they transported goods from America to
Britain. The British were forced to send warships from Southeast
Asia to the Atlantic leaving the Pacific area vulnerable to attack.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
22: In early 1940, the Japanese
began to fortify the Marshall Islands located in the central Pacific
between Hawaii and the Philippines posing a significant threat to
American, British and Dutch colonial possessions in East Asia.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
23: In June 1940 President
Roosevelt ordered the US Pacific Fleet to move its main Pacific base
from California to Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands as a
deterrent to Japanese aggression. This action was not without
significant risk because it placed the American Pacific fleet within
striking distance of Japan's powerful navy.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
24: The Japanese were a
considerable military power. In 1940 the Japanese had 10
Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific compared to the US who had 3. The Japanese
had 145 modern destroyers and cruisers compared to the US
who had 74.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
25:
President Roosevelt began to enforce economic policies
to prevent further Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia introducing
embargoes of steel and iron against Japan and restricting the sale
of war materials. What is an embargo? An embargo is a government
order to stop shipping goods into or out of a country.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
26: In July 1940 Congress passed
the Export Control Act to limit the exportation of material to
Imperial Japan. The embargo halted the shipment of items including
airplanes, machine tools and parts and aviation gasoline.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
27: The Japanese were furious at
the embargo. In September 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed
forming the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan, in which the
three countries agreed to help each other if they were attacked by
any additional power not yet at war with them. The intended target
was the United States.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
28: FDR believed that US entry
into WW2 against Germany was inevitable but he hoped to avoid a war
with Japan. The last thing he wanted was to be forced to fight on
two fronts.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
29: In April 1941, FDR extended
lend-lease aid to China for their war against the Japanese (refer to
the Lend-Lease Act ) hoping the
Chinese would be able to distract the Japanese and prevent them from
attacking elsewhere.
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
Fact 30: The US strategy failed and in
July 1941 the Japanese military invaded and occupied Vietnam in southern Indochina.
Southern Indochina derives from a combination of the names of
"India" and "China", referring to the location of the territory
between these two countries and included places such as Cambodia,
Laos, Thailand and Malaysia and Vietnam.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
31: Japanese occupation of Vietnam included the Cam Ranh
naval base and eight airfields, just 800 miles from the Philippines,
where Americans had troops. It also put Japanese airplanes in
striking distance of the Dutch East Indies and also Malaysia, Hong
Kong and Singapore which posed a direct threat to the British Empire
and American interests in the area.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
32: In July 1941 General Douglas
MacArthur was recalled to active duty and named commander of U.S.
Army forces in the Far East and was sent to the Philippines to build
up American defenses in the Philippines.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
33: The United States
reacted to the occupation of southern Indochina by following up its renouncement
of the 1911 Treaty
of Commerce with Japan and froze all Japanese assets in America, closed
US ports
to Japanese trade and placed an embargo on oil and gas
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
34: By freezing Japanese assets
and Japanese bank accounts in America on July 26, 1941, Japanese
citizens or businesses were unable to sell property they owned in
the US or to withdraw money held in US banks.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
35: The embargo on oil shipments
to Japan was put into place on August 1, 1941. Oil was Japan's most
crucial import, and more than 80% of Japan's oil at the time came
from the US.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
36: The Japanese ambassador to
Washington held numerous meetings to resolve Japanese-American
relations but FDR insisted that assets would only be released and
the oil embargo would be lifted if Japan withdrew from Indochina and
made peace with China.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
37: A solution could not be found
and the Japanese adopted a sense of urgency in its plans to dominate
Eastern Asia and the Pacific. America’s 1938 Naval Act and
additional plans to extend the US navy and air force meant the
Japanese advantage would only last a couple of years until new US
warships and warplanes came on line.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
38: On November 3, 1941, the
Japanese military presented a complete plan for the attack on Pearl
Harbor to Emperor Hirohito. Emperor Hirohito approved the plan for a
war against the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands at
the Imperial Conference on November 5, 1941. The war plan was
scheduled to start at the beginning of December if an diplomatic
settlement had not been achieved. All negotiations failed.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
39: General Hideki Tojo, a
hard-line militarist, was eager for war with America. The US Pacific
Fleet based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii posed the only significant
threat to the aggressive territorial ambitions of the Japanese.
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
Fact 40: The Japanese government made the decision to
launch a surprise air attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at
its Pearl Harbor base on Sunday morning, 7 December 1941.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
41: The attack on Pearl Harbor was
timed to coincide with Japanese attacks on the Philippines, British
Malaya, Hong Kong and Thailand. Most of General MacArthur's aircraft
in the Phillipines were destroyed on the same day.
Why did
Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Fact
42: On December 8, 1941 Britain
and the United States declared war on Japan and America began its fight in WW2
Why did Japan attack Pearl
Harbor? Facts Sheet
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Facts for kids - President Franklin Roosevelt Video
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Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
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