On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Empire struck a historic coup against the United States on its own territory with the aim of neutralizing the entire American maritime fleet. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a historic military coup that caught the world’s leading power by surprise, but it was not final. This episode made Washington enter fully into World War II, something that radically changed the course of the war.
December 7, 1941 is a difficult date for the United States to forget. On the morning of that Sunday, the North American country suffered what by then was the largest attack in its territory in history.
The Japanese Empire dealt a severe blow to the US Navy at the Pearl Harbor base that precipitated Washington’s entry into World War II. But what motivated this Asian country to attack the United States in this way despite its military inferiority?
To understand it, you have to go back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. With initial Western help, this Asian country undertook a profound reform of its military and industrial structures that made it the great regional power in just a few decades.
Its enormous superiority motivated a desire for expansion towards the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese region of Manchuria during the 1930s that soon generated Western condemnation due to the massacres and atrocities committed against various Asian populations, whom the Japanese army considered inferior.
His campaign in China made Japan win many enemies in the West. While European countries and the United States financed the Chinese nationalist army, a deep anti-Western sentiment began to emerge in Japan, especially among the military.
Although political representatives of the Japanese nation, such as Emperor Hirohito and former Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe tried to establish diplomatic ties with the United States, the power of the Army was growing, as were its colonial aspirations throughout the Asia-Pacific region. . This was evidenced more clearly with the arrival at the head of the Government of the military Hideki Tojo in October 1941.
Washington began by embargoing exports of military materials to Japan and ended up cutting off, by mid-1941, the supply of oil. This last movement forced the Japanese to try to find new sources of this basic fuel to continue the war with China. US intelligence reports by then pointed out that war against Japan was almost inevitable. But it was not known when and where it would begin.
The chosen moment was the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941. 353 Japanese aircraft approached the Pearl Harbor military base, located in the Hawaiian archipelago, with the aim of destroying the US Pacific fleet. The attack was a surprise to the United States, since, although there were warnings, the Japanese Empire never made a declaration of war.
This fact deeply outraged Washington, since it flagrantly broke with the basic international statuses that claimed that to attack a nation, war must be declared first. In fact, the United States Secretary of State received the war notification three hours after the attack. An offense that the American nation would not forgive long after.
An attack that nobody expected
Although the United States was forewarned of a possible conflict with the Japanese Empire, it never imagined that it could break out on its own territory. For Washington, it was highly unlikely that Tokyo would decide to take its entire fleet over 6,500 kilometers of the Pacific Ocean due to the high risk involved in being detected. But against all odds, they did it and struck first.
The main objective was to eliminate the 8 battleships that were docked in the port. The pride of the American navy. Four of them were sunk and the rest seriously damaged. Along with them, up to ten other smaller boats were attacked and almost 350 planes were totally or partially damaged.
In addition, the human losses were very numerous: in just one hour and a quarter, more than 2,400 US servicemen died and almost 1,250 were injured.
The mastermind of this entire high-risk operation was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a renowned Japanese military man who was aware that the only way his country had to defeat the United States was to attack by surprise and destroy the entire Pacific fleet, docked mostly in Pearl Harbor. But, although the blow was very hard, it was not definitive. And that would cost Japan dearly.
During the heavy bombardment, the Japanese were so focused on sinking the battleships that they forgot to attack Pearl Harbor’s workshops, shipyards, and fuel depots. Must-haves that helped America repair damage faster. Japan had the opportunity to have razed these facilities, which would have hindered a quick American reaction, but they feared losing too many troops.
To this, we must add that the three Pacific aircraft carriers had left to maneuver during the previous days. These three boats would be a fundamental piece of later victories.
Pearl Harbor, a part of the Japanese plan
Pearl Harbor was only a necessary part to execute the Japanese plan. With the US navy practically neutralized, they invaded Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia in a matter of weeks. This last fundamental place to obtain oil with the aim of continuing to conquer China.
The vast majority of these places in the Asia Pacific region were, at that time, colonies of Western countries such as the United Kingdom, France, the United States or the Netherlands.
This premeditated aggression caused the United States to break with its non-intervention in World War II. Something that, without a doubt, would change the course of the war.
Under the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the American nation had remained in profile to the war. Although there had been strategic support for the United Kingdom, the pressures to avoid interventionism were very strong within the United States, which maintained an isolationist policy. But the attack on Pearl Harbor came as a shock to American society and plunged the country into war.
The following day, the American president delivered his famous “speech of infamy” in which, before the United States Congress, he declared war on the Asian nation.
The declaration of war on the Japanese Empire the next day precipitated Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy declaring war on the United States in response to their alliance with Japan. This issue opened the front for the United States in Europe as well, something that would ultimately be essential for the Allied side’s victory over Germany in 1945.
The war with Japan in the Pacific would be just as cruel as the one fought on the European continent. After the first Japanese victories, the United States would begin to have the initiative against a retreating Japanese Empire that defended itself with everything.
Battles such as the Midway, the Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima or Okinawa were surrounding the Japanese troops. Until the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, dropped already during Harry Truman’s presidency, precipitated his surrender on September 2, 1945.
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