- Jump to our timeline of Japan\u2019s preparation for the attack<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
![\""Chinese\"]( "\\"\"Chinese\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Chinese prisoners are held captive by Japanese soldiers during the war over Manchuria in 1931. (Photo by Fox Photos\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n The Japanese army\u2019s Manchurian ruse fooled nobody. On 22 September 1931, the US secretary of state, Henry Stimson, cabled the League of Nations: \u201cIt is apparent that\u00a0the Japanese military have\u00a0initiated a widely extended movement of aggression only after careful preparation\u2026\u201d Unbeknown to the world, what would come to be called the \u2018Mukden Incident<\/a>\u2019 would lead inexorably towards Pearl Harbor<\/a>. The Stimson Doctrine that followed \u2013 the US government\u2019s policy of refusing to recognise states created by force \u2013 was essentially a letter to the Japanese government telling it to keep its hands off China \u2013 a country that had, until the 1820s, been Asia\u2019s greatest power, but was now riven by civil war and threatened by Japanese and Soviet plans to dismember it.<\/p>\n
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Japan\u2019s grievances<\/h3>\n
In January 1919, when the great powers met for the Paris Peace Conference<\/a> that marked the settlement of the First World War<\/a>, Japan joined the top table alongside the United States, Britain, France and Italy. Nevertheless, the Asian country still felt like an outsider.<\/p>\n
Japan entered the negotiations with two principle aims. Firstly, it wanted a\u00a0clause on racial equality inserted into the Treaty of Versailles. This demand stemmed from the passage of a series of\u00a0anti-Japanese race laws in the US, culminating in the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which banned immigrant farmers from owning land. Racist treatment of Japanese businessmen was also seen as endemic in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and other western imperial outposts. So\u00a0strong was the feeling of racial conspiracy that Duke Aritomo Yamagata, the statesman who\u00a0had modernised the Japanese army after the overthrow of the shogunate in 1868, warned that it was \u201cextremely important\u2026 to\u00a0take steps to prevent the establishment of a white alliance against the yellow people\u201d. However, the western powers quashed the demand for a racial clause in the Versailles treaty \u2013 a decision that would feed into Japan\u2019s ultra\u00adnationalist narrative in years to come.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s second demand \u2013 for the permanent transfer of Germany\u2019s imperial assets in Asia \u2013 was only slightly more successful. Having seized Germany\u2019s Kiautschou Bay concession, a valuable 213-square-mile territory on China\u2019s eastern seaboard, Japan was forced to hand it back to China. As for Germany\u2019s southern Pacific empire, Japan was strongarmed into sharing the spoils with\u00a0Britain and Australia.<\/p>\n
Greater insults to Japan\u2019s national dignity soon followed at the Washington Naval Conference, which began in November 1921. The aim was to create a\u00a0multilateral arms\u00a0limitation treaty by restricting the building of battleships \u2013 the weapons of\u00a0mass destruction of their day. The outcome, which limited the US and Britain to 525,000 tons each while Japan was restricted to 315,000 tons (a ratio of\u00a05:5:3), did little to convince Japanese ultranationalists that the Anglo-Saxon countries were playing fair. In response to\u00a0the Washington Naval Treaty, Kametaro Mitsukawa, an influential nationalist intellectual, claimed the western powers were \u201cplotting to subjugate Asia completely by\u00a0the end of\u00a0the 20th century\u201d.<\/p>\n
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A democracy in retreat<\/h3>\n
In spite of these setbacks, Japanese mainstream politicians continued to support the global postwar settlement, whose twin pillars were the League of Nations and the Washington Naval Treaty. However, Japan\u2019s democratic institutions, which had worked well since the overthrow of the Tokugawa feudal dictatorship in 1868, and its later replacement by the Meiji Constitution \u2013 an ill-defined mix of constitutional and\u00a0absolute monarchy \u2013 were ultimately undone in the early 1930s. The Great Depression<\/a> undermined Japan\u2019s democratic constitution. Factions in the armed forces and the press took advantage of popular discontent to push their nationalist and anti-capitalist agendas. Moreover, the young Emperor Hirohito refrained from using the supreme powers given to him by the Meiji Constitution to push back against the military.<\/p>\n
On 14 November 1930, Prime Minister Osachi Hamaguchi was shot and seriously wounded as he entered Tokyo\u2019s main railway station. His health would never recover, and he died eight months later. His attacker was a member of the ultranationalist Aikokusha (\u2018Society of Patriots\u2019) party, one of a rash of such groups that sprung up in 1920s Japan. The prospect of an economy sliding into depression, combined with widespread hostility to the London Naval Treaty of 1930 \u2013 which renewed Japan\u2019s disparity with the west \u2013 meant that the attack elicited little public opprobrium.<\/p>\n
Eighteen months later, on 9 February 1932, a former finance minister was gunned down by a student member of the ultranationalist Ketsumeidan (\u2018League of\u00a0Blood\u2019). Next Baron Takuma Dan, a\u00a0western-sympathising graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was murdered outside the offices of Mitsui Bank, where he was an executive. It was no coincidence that Baron Dan had just hosted the visit of the Earl of Lytton, chairman of a League of Nations committee investigating the Mukden Incident. Worse was to follow. On 15 May 1932 another anti-capitalist group, this time made up of junior naval officers, organised hit squads on eminent liberal figures. Prime Minister Inukai was murdered at home; his house guest, Charlie Chaplin, the legendary Holly\u00adwood comic star, was also targeted, as a\u00a0famous westerner. Chaplin was lucky to\u00a0be out watching Sumo wrestling with\u00a0Inukai\u2019s son. In a sign of Japan\u2019s increas\u00adingly nationalist mood, instead of\u00a0being condemned, the assassins were popularly cel\u00adebrated and given short prison sentences.<\/p>\n
![\""Prime\"]( "\\"\"Prime\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe poses with Hitler Youth members in Karuizawa, Japan, 1938. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n The political consequences of the assassination were far-reaching. Rather than choosing Inukai\u2019s successor from the majority Seiy\u016bkai party, the emperor appointed a navy stalwart, Admiral Viscount Sait\u014d Makoto, as head of a unity government. From this point on, the political parties withered into insig\u00adnificance, before they were abolished in 1940 when Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe accepted their \u2018voluntary\u2019 liquidation and absorption into his Imperial Rule Assistance Association \u2013 an\u00a0attempt to create a one-party state on\u00a0the model of Germany\u2019s Nazi party.<\/p>\n
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Tipping point<\/h3>\n
Increasing opposition to liberals, capitalists and internationalists reached its apogee on 26 February 1936, when 19\u00a0young army officers launched a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat aimed at protecting the emperor and preserving Japan\u2019s kokutai (\u2018national essence\u2019). Their views reflected a military education based on the Imperial Rescript for Seamen and Soldiers, an 1882 code of ethics that all personnel were required to memorise, which promoted their mission as guardians of a \u2018sacred nation\u2019 and their absolute personal loyalty to the emperor. This 2,700-kanji [character] document was a potent example of brainwashing, marrying bastardised samurai values based on bushido (\u2018the way of the warrior\u2019) with modern weaponry and training.<\/p>\n
Many of the Japanese army\u2019s senior generals, also infused with the mythical cult of the god-emperor, gave tacit support to the young officers. The emperor himself, however, was furious. Unlike in\u00a01932, the rebel officers had sought to overthrow the government itself. Hirohito ordered them to be tried, found guilty and executed. So much for the Japanese postwar myth that he was a powerless constitutional monarch.<\/p>\n
However, instead of moving to contain the power of the army after the coup attempt, Hirohito allowed it to entrench its political position. In May 1936, the law was changed to allow only active generals and admirals to fill the post of minister of war. This seemingly minor constitutional tweak in effect gave the army and navy a veto over the formation of any Japanese government. It was a tipping point that led Japan inexorably towards a\u00a0military dictatorship.<\/p>\n
- Read more | The 11 most significant battles of the Second World War<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Barely a year later, Japan was at war again with China \u2013 this time for control of the whole country. The Mukden Incident, through which Japan had conquered Manchuria, had ended with\u00a0the Tanggu Truce of 1933. The humiliating terms for China ceded not only Manchuria to Japan, but also control of the Great Wall and a 100-mile exclusion zone to its south. By 1937, gradual encroach\u00adments by Japan\u2019s Kwantung (Manchurian) army had left\u00a0Beijing all\u00a0but surrounded.<\/p>\n
On the 7 July 1937, an unplanned skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge to the\u00a0south of Beijing initiated all-out war between Japan and China. Major battles at Taiyuan and Shanghai were followed by the infamous Nanjing massacre, when as many as 300,000 men, women and children were murdered \u2013 a prelude to a decade of war and occupation that would cost more than 20 million Chinese lives. Aggressive international alliances were being forged. In November 1936, Japan had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany as the pair sought to contain Stalin\u2019s burgeoning Soviet Union. The other eventual Axis power, Italy, would join a year later.<\/p>\n
After 1936, the command economic model developed by the Kwantung army in Manchuria was increasingly deployed in Japan. Through the Industrial Bank of Japan, the government directed loans to the producers of war material. Further command-economy steps were taken via\u00a0the National Mobilization Law of 1938, which downgraded domestic consumption: the focus was on guns not butter. It was an economic model that followed in lockstep with the policies of National Socialism in Germany. Japan\u2019s ultranationalists, who dominated the army and navy, were now ready to embark on the creation of an economically self-sufficient \u2018Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere\u2019, aimed at curtailing western influence in the area. For Japan\u2019s\u00a0leaders, its imperial project was existential, driven by a Darwinian faith in the survival of the fittest. \u201cIt is clear as day,\u201d the philosopher Kazunobu Kanokogi observed, \u201cthat if\u00a0Japan fails to build an empire on the Asian continent, [as a nation] we are all\u00a0doomed to destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
A move to a total war footing was\u00a0the natural next step. In addition to war with China, Japan\u2019s fear of the Soviet Union led to the eruption of a full-scale border conflict, culminating in a heavy\u00a0defeat for Japan at the battles of\u00a0Khalkhin Gol,\u00a0on the Mongolian-Manchurian border. But with\u00a0the northern border neutralised by\u00a0the signing of a pact with the Soviets in\u00a0April 1941, Japan turned its attention southwards to\u00a0complete the encirclement of forces loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, nationalist leader of the Republic of China, who were holed up in the remote western city of Chongqing. Looking to cut off Chiang\u2019s sources of supply, Japanese troops occupied the north of French Indochina in September 1940.<\/p>\n
The US: from isolation to intervention<\/h3>\n
By 1941, in a breathless decade of military conquest, Japan\u2019s empire had expanded from an area of 245,000 square miles, including Korea and Taiwan, to 1.6 million square miles, covering Indochina (today\u2019s Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) and eastern China. The number of people living under Japanese rule had tripled from 100 million to 300 million.<\/p>\n
While Japan was tearing up the geopolitical landscape of Asia, where was America? The United States had sent a naval expedition to open up trade with Japan in the 19th century, had fought a pitched battle on Chinese soil to defend its trading rights, had conquered the Hawaiian kingdom and seized the Philippines. But in the 1930s, the world\u2019s undisputed economic superpower had gone missing.<\/p>\n
After the First World War, the US had\u00a0turned isolationist. The dominant narrative was that the Great War was a\u00a0product of Europe\u2019s corrupt, undem\u00adocratic monarchies. War profiteering was\u00a0also blamed. Merchants of\u00a0Death, a bestseller in 1934, was one of\u00a0the many polemic publications that turned the American public towards neutrality in international affairs. The Great Dep\u00adression following the 1929 Wall Street Crash<\/a> only height\u00adened the mood of introspection. The protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act (1930), which raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods, confirmed the\u00a0US\u2019s isolationist stance. Legen\u00addary columnist Walter Lippmann was expressing the majority view when he wrote in 1936: \u201cThe policy of the United States is to remain free and untangled.\u201d In both 1932 and 1936, President Franklin D Roosevelt<\/a> (FDR) ran on an isolationist ticket. Indeed Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, presided over an armed force that was only the 18th largest in the world, with fewer soldiers than Belgium, Portugal and\u00a0Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Yet just a year after his second election victory, Roosevelt signalled a change of course. During a speech in Chicago on 5\u00a0October 1937, with Shanghai under siege and the most important US trade concession under threat, he warned: \u201cThe\u00a0peace of the world is today being threatened\u2026 We are determined to keep\u00a0out of the war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the dangers of involvement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where Roosevelt led, popular opinion followed. Every new Japanese action weakened America\u2019s isolationist resolve: the \u2018rape of Nanjing\u2019, the invasion of Indochina, the strafing of the\u00a0USS Panay on the Yangtse river. For\u00a0the US\u00a0public, however, it was\u00a0probably the Tripartite Pact, signed\u00a0by Germany, Japan and Italy in\u00a0September 1940, that did most to alarm the court of public opinion. The\u00a0American people, like Roosevelt, began to\u00a0fear isolation in a totalitarian world. Increasingly, FDR initiated a covert defence of the free world. The Lend-Lease\u00a0Act of March 1941, though primarily designed to offer military aid to\u00a0Britain, also started to fund Chiang Kai-shek\u2019s nationalist Kuomintang army\u2019s\u00a0resistance to Japan.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, the hawks in Roosevelt\u2019s administration finally managed to overcome his dovish secretary of state, Cordell Hull, who had hitherto resisted the call for meaningful sanctions against Japan. On 25 July 1941, Roosevelt froze all Japanese monetary assets held in the US, which immediately threatened Tokyo\u2019s ability to supply its war machine. Japan\u2019s cabinet board reported that \u201cthe empire will shortly be impoverished and unable to hold its own\u201d. It predicted that the stocks of 8 out of 11 vital commodities would be depleted 50 per cent or more by\u00a01942. Most significantly, Japan was unable to buy oil from Standard Oil of California, which had previously supplied some 80 per\u00a0cent of its requirements.<\/p>\n
The decision to attack<\/h3>\n
With a dwindling supply of petroleum, Japan faced the appalling prospect of having to give up its ambitions for a \u2018Co-Prosperity Sphere\u2019. In reaction to the\u00a0US\u2019s financial freeze and de facto oil embargo, on 3 September 1941, Prime Minister Konoe\u2019s cabinet convened to\u00a0discuss the \u2018Outline Plan for the Execution of the Empire\u2019s National Policy\u2019, produced by Imperial General Headquarters, a council of top-ranking army and navy officers. Unless the western powers backed down, the cabinet resolved \u201c\u2026 to go to war with the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands if necessary\u201d.<\/p>\n
The accepted strategy for combating the west was for Japan to move rapidly to\u00a0secure the oil-rich Dutch East Indies and the Philippines, a US colonial depen\u00add\u00adency. The supposedly formidable British military and naval garrison at Singapore would be taken, along with commodity-rich Malaya and Burma. Meanwhile, the main body of the Japanese navy would wait for the approach of the US fleet as it sailed to relieve the Philippines \u2013 which was indeed the proposal of \u2018War Plan Orange\u2019, as con\u00adc\u00adeived by the joint US Army and Navy Board in the 1920s. Here, at the\u00a0Marshall Islands, in\u00a0the western approaches of the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese navy would annihilate the US navy, just\u00a0as the legendary Admiral T\u014dg\u014d had decimated the Russian navy at\u00a0the battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.<\/p>\n
- Read more | The 11 most significant battles of the Second World War<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\""Prime\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/11\/GettyImages-463262584-0a5bbb2.jpg?quality=90&resize=581%2C413"\" "\\"\"Prime\\"\/")
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