The Path to Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, Nippon staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, decimating the US Pacific Fleet. When Germany and Italian republic declared war on the The states days later, America constitute itself in a global state of war.

Top Paradigm: Propaganda poster developed by the Role of State of war Data post-obit the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Epitome: Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-1663.)

On December 7, 1941, Japan staged a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, decimating the US Pacific Fleet. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United States days afterwards, America plant itself in a global state of war.

The Roots of the Conflict

While Japan'south deadly assail on Pearl Harbor stunned Americans, its roots stretched dorsum more than 4 decades. Every bit Japan industrialized during the belatedly 19th century, information technology sought to imitate Western countries such as the United states of america, which had established colonies in Asia and the Pacific to secure natural resources and markets for their goods. Japan'southward process of imperial expansion, yet, put information technology on a standoff course with the Us, especially in relation to China.

To a certain extent, the conflict between the United States and Japan stemmed from their competing interests in Chinese markets and Asian natural resources. While the United states of america and Japan jockeyed peaceably for influence in east asia for many years, the state of affairs inverse in 1931. That yr Japan took its first step toward edifice a Japanese empire in eastern Asia by invading Manchuria, a fertile, resource-rich province in northern China. Japan installed a puppet government in Manchuria, renaming it Manchukuo. But the Us refused to recognize the new regime or any other forced upon China under the Stimson Doctrine, named after Secretary of State and time to come Secretary of War Henry Fifty. Stimson.

The ineffectual Stimson Doctrine guided Us policy in Asia for the next decade. On the one paw, the doctrine took a principled stand in support of Chinese sovereignty and against an increasingly militaristic Japanese regime. On the other hand, withal, it failed to bolster that stand up with either material consequences for Japan or meaningful support for China. In fact, U.s. companies connected to supply Nihon with the steel and petroleum it needed for its fight against China long after the conflict between the countries escalated into a full-scale war in 1937. But a powerful isolationist movement in the Us countered that the nation had no business concern at all in the international conflicts developing effectually the earth. Even the Japanese military'southward murder of betwixt 100,000 and 200,000 helpless Chinese military machine prisoners and civilians and the rape of tens of thousands of Chinese women during the 1937 Rape of Nanking failed to immediately shift U.s.a. policy.

The strong isolationist move also influenced the initial US approach to the war in Europe, where past the end of 1940 Nazi Germany controlled about of France, Central Europe, Scandinavia, and North Africa, and severely threatened Great Britain. Prioritizing the war in Europe over Japan's invasion of China, the United states allowed the sale of military supplies to Nifty Britain beginning in 1939. Simply neutrality laws and isolationist sentiment severely express the extent of that aid prior to 1941.

"Each [nation] stepped through a series of escalating moves that provoked merely failed to restrain the other, all the while lifting the level of confrontation to ever-riskier heights."

David Thou. Kennedy, PhD

The war in Europe had another significant impact on the state of war in the Pacific because Germany's war machine successes unsettled the other European nations' Asian colonies. As Nihon seized the opportunity to get the dominant imperial power in Asia, United states of america-Japan relations soured. As historian David One thousand. Kennedy, PhD, explained, "Each [nation] stepped through a series of escalating moves that provoked merely failed to restrain the other, all the while lifting the level of confrontation to ever-riskier heights."

The Impending Crisis

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made one of those escalating moves in July 1940 when he cut off shipments of chip iron, steel, and aviation fuel to Japan fifty-fifty equally he immune American oil to continue flowing to the empire. Japan responded by entering resource-rich French Indochina, with permission from the regime of Nazi-occupied France, and by cementing its alliance with Federal republic of germany and Italy as a member of the Axis. In July 1941, Japan then moved into southern Indochina in preparation for an attack against both British Malaya, a source for rice, rubber, and tin, and the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. This prompted Roosevelt to freeze all Japanese assets in the United States on July 26, 1941, which effectively cut off Japan's access to US oil.

That move pushed Japan to secretly ready its "Southern Operation," a massive military attack that would target Uk'due south big naval facility in Singapore and American installations in the Philippines and at Pearl Harbor, thus immigration a path for the conquest of the Dutch East Indies. While diplomatic talks continued between the U.s. and Japan, neither side budged. Japan refused to sacrifice any of its newly acquired territory, and the United States insisted that Japan immediately withdraw its troops from China and Indochina.

The Attack

On November 26, 1941, equally US officials presented the Japanese with a 10-bespeak argument reiterating their long-standing position, the Japanese Imperial Navy ordered an armada that included 414 planes aboard six aircraft carriers to set up to sea. Following a plan devised by Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, who had earlier studied at Harvard and served as Nihon's naval attaché in Washington, DC, the flotilla aimed to destroy the The states Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor.

To catch the Americans by surprise, the ships maintained strict radio silence throughout their iii,500- mile trek from Hitokappu Bay to a predetermined launch sector 230 miles north of the Hawaiian isle of Oahu. At 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, Dec 7, a showtime wave of Japanese planes lifted off from the carriers, followed by a second wave an hour later. Led by Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilots spotted country and causeless their assault positions around 7:xxx a.m. Twenty-three minutes later on, with his bomber perched to a higher place the unsuspecting American ships moored in pairs forth Pearl Harbor'south "Battleship Row," Fuchida broke radio silence to shout, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!)—the coded message informing the Japanese fleet that they had caught the Americans by surprise.

USS Arizona

The USS Arizona in flames post-obit the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Paradigm: Library of Congress: LC-USZ62-104778.

For nearly two hours, Japanese firepower rained down upon American ships and servicemen. While the set on inflicted significant destruction, the fact that Japan failed to destroy American repair shops and fuel-oil tanks mitigated the harm. Even more significantly, no American shipping carriers were at Pearl Harbor that mean solar day. The Japanese, however, immediately followed their Pearl Harbor assault with attacks against US and British bases in the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island, Wake Isle, Malaya, and Hong Kong. Within days, the Japanese were masters of the Pacific.

In Washington, a decrypted message had alerted officials that an attack was imminent moments before Fuchida's planes took to the skies. But a communications delay prevented a warning from reaching Pearl Harbor in time. The Americans missed another opportunity when an officeholder discounted a report from an Oahu-based radar operator that a large number of planes were headed their way.

Thumbnail

Like this article? Read more in our online classroom.

From the Collection to the Classroom: Instruction History with The National WWII Museum

Explore

At the White House, Roosevelt learned of the assault as he was finishing tiffin and preparing to tend to his postage stamp collection. He spent the rest of the afternoon receiving updates and writing the address he intended to evangelize to Congress the following twenty-four hour period asking for a declaration of war against Japan. As he drafted and redrafted the speech, Roosevelt focused on rallying the nation behind a war many had hoped to avoid.

The Assault On Pearl Harbor December seven, 1941

The National WWII Museum will commemorate the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor with 80 days of articles, oral histories, artifacts, and more than.

LEARN More than