Why did Japan attack the US?

K

KeithG

Active member
Be careful of your answer. The common answer, "Japan needed access to resources after the US embargo," so completely and obviously misses the point it's shocking to think it ever became the standard go-to answer at all.

As we all know, the US was far from itching for a fight at the start of the war. Non-interventionism ruled the day. The resources the Japanese needed so desperately weren't to be found in the US Philippine protectorate and certainly not on Guam or Wake Island, for God's sake. The resources were located in Dutch and British colonies to the south.

Even setting aside the obvious best-guess, which would be that the Japanese thought we would intervene to protect our allies' interests (and ignoring the outright absurdity of the assumption that the American people were willing to spill blood to protect British and Dutch COLONIAL interests--an institution we were strongly preaching against at the time), if the US was not ready to intervene militarily to protect our allies when their HOMELANDS were being overrun by the Nazis, why in heaven and earth would we suddenly say, okay, now is the time to go to war?

The only answer I've gotten when asking that question was that the Japanese made a mistake. Well, what a mistake! This answer presumes such a level of ignorance by the Japanese of US interests, culture and current circumstance that it can almost immediately be eliminated on the basis of ridiculously unlikely.

Of course, then again, people have accepted the common answer from day one. An unbelievable absurdity in and of itself.
 
I think you have a rather insulated view on this.

I think it is an absurdity to believe war between Japan and the USA was anything but inevitable, it is clear that the US was trying to avoid a direct confrontation with Japan by investing in the defenses of China and the Philippines but as that was failing war with Japan was a foregone conclusion.

There is no doubt that the resources Japan needed were in the British and Dutch territories to have left the strategically important areas such as the Philippines in hostile hands would have been militarily irresponsible at the very least.

So why did Japan attack the USA my guess is that Japan realised that it was going to end up at war with the USA and decided to do it at a time that suited it and gave it the best chance of naval success.

As for the US not itching for war, I tend to think that only applied to another European war I am not certain there was the same level of isolationism when it came to the Pacific, the war with Japan was the result of some serious miscalculations by both sides but in threatening Japan's economic destruction, the United States placed the Japanese in a position in which the only choices open to them were war or subservience.
 
Last edited:
A little befuddled.

Let's take a look at what you said paragraph by paragraph.

Insulated? That would mean that I have been protected from the truth. Very curious on that one.

The next paragraph you say war was not inevitable (not sure what that has to do with what I asked) but that because the US strategy was to fight in proxy through the Chinese and Philippinos. I think you meant the Chinese. The Philippines was garrisoned by thousands of US soldiers with no intention (that I am aware of) of pulling out any time soon. Yes, we were committed to the handover of full Philippine autonomy by 1945 (or 1946?) with one big proviso: that we continue to have use of the Subic Bay naval base and Clark air field.

The third paragraph you say that, geographically, the Philippines would leave an open a flank for the US to attack Japanese shipping. That presupposes the the Japanese believed the US would go to war to defend British or Dutch interests. But anybody should have know at the time that was completely anathema to US policy and public opinion.

So you are saying we were preparing for the eventuality of a Japanese attack but failed in doing so soon enough to create a viable deterrent making war with Japan a foregone conclusion? Again, not sure where you're going with this. Under the same conditions, would you--or anybody in their right mind--attack the US if you were Tojo or the Emperor? It doesn't address the question.

The next paragraph you say Japan needed the resources the US had excluded it from in order to survive. I may or may not have an argument with the exact thought, but I think I stated fairly close to the same thing when posing my question.

Next paragraph states the Japanese thought it was inevitable that we would be in a military conflict in the future and they wanted to strike at the time of their choosing. Isn't this kind of like answering the question of why did the Japanese feel like they had to attack America with "because they felt like they had to attack America"?

Would like to know where you read the US was looking for war in the Pacific. We certainly trained for it, thought about--as we did even against Britain's navy well into the 20th century. Huge difference between that and pulling the trigger. If everyone thought war games were the equivalent of war, we'd all be dead.

As I'm reading it, the last sentence presupposes the conclusion by again stating that they did it to protect their access to resources. Which is just a restatement of the conventional answer and doesn't address why they thought that to do so, they must attack the US.

Perhaps, in the end, the Japanese weren't merely looking for self preservation but were instead looking to conquer half the world. Whether correct or not as an answer, it at least could explain the reason for attacking the US.
 
KeithG said:
A little befuddled.
Click to expand...

I can understand that as the response was rather messy due to writing it in about 5 steps.
I am not sure this one is any better either.

I think you may be over analysing what I said but I am not too worried by that.

If you are to believe that the US was not intending to fight a war with Japan then surely you would have to ask yourself what they expected the Japanese to do given that the only option for a resumption of trade was to withdraw from Indochina and China.
Oddly enough I have just been reading: No Choice But War: The United States Embargo against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific. by Roland Worth, Jr., where he writes:
Never inflict upon another major military power a policy which would cause you yourself to go to war unless you are fully prepared to engage that power militarily and don't be surprised that if they do decide to retaliate, that they seek out a time and a place that inflicts maximum harm and humiliation upon your cause." Roosevelt called the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor "unprovoked." Was it?
Click to expand...
I have no doubt that the Japanese had embarked on a war of conquest in Indochina and China, I am not so certain they wanted a war with America but were really left with no choice.
America on the other hand did not want a head to head war with Japan instead preferring a proxy war through China but had pushed Japan into a position where they had no option.

You can look at it as a rehash of conventional answers if you like however those may just be the right responses and I believe I have answered the "Why they attacked America" question as well basically because they were given no other option.
 
Last edited:
The Japanese knew that war with the US was inevitable once they decided to invade the Dutch and British resource rich colonies to the south. By stricking 1st they thought they could essentially cripple the US to the point we would not get involved. They did not count on the US carriers being out to sea and resolve of the American people. As Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said you are awaking a sleeping giant.
 
@JOC

Once again, why did the Japanese feel that war was inevitable with the US? (Please refer to above.)

However it does bare repeating how absolutely absurd it was to attack the US.
Why bother when the Brits, Dutch and French (for that matter) were so knocked out of the picture for the foreseeable future the Japanese could have waltzed right in and grabbed their colonies.

Instead they decide to attack the one country that was not yet involved in a war and could dedicate all its resources to that war (the Japanese could not know that the Germans would jump in--after all, the Japanese certainly weren't reciprocating in Siberia). That one country that could so outproduce them as to make it ludicrous to think they had a chance to win. US GDP numbers weren't any secret.

Knowing this and understanding the situation in the US at the time, vis-a-vis a national consensus not to get involved in war coupled with the unlikely concept of the US intervening in order to protect the anathema institution of colonialism, what were they thinking?

If the US were Zanzabar, I could see the Japanese just throwing the country into the pot, but the US? That had to require enormous amounts of deliberation. And ATTACK is what they came up with???!!!!

It just doesn't make sense.
 
@MontyB

Sorry Monty, I think I was a little long-winded in my last post to you. To put it more succinctly, why did the Japanese think the US would go to war to protect European colonial interests? That might be more to the point.
 
Last edited:
KeithG said:
@MontyB

Sorry Monty, I think I was a little long-winded in my last post to you. To put it more succinctly, why did the Japanese think the US would go to war to protect European colonial interests? That might be more to the point.
Click to expand...

Because they were already tacitly at war through the restrictions on Japanese trade and in many respects it was the freezing of Japanese assets in US banks, cutting Japan off from American scrap iron, petroleum, and technology in the summer of 1941 that force Japan to look elsewhere and made British and European Asia the prime target.

So it was very much a tail chasing exercise that had no option but lead to war.

So militarily if they had to go into Asia then they had to protect their rear which meant the Philippines had to go and if the Philippines needed to be taken war with America meant they had to push out into the Pacific as far as possible.

Politically the embargo left them with no choice but capitulate and accept US economic dominance or fight and they chose what most countries still do today and resist.

As I have said the Japanese war was one of major miscalculations by both sides, it did not need to be fought but neither side was prepared to avoid it.
 
@MontyB

In what you've written, you would seem to agree with the premise that the Japanese had no choice but to attack the US. I'm saying the Japanese didn't need to attack America, they could have just stolen the resources from somewhere else.

You were saying that we were in a de facto state of war from the moment the embargo went into effect. I'm saying the "they had no choice" argument is false. If somebody cuts you off from water and you go steal it from someone else, that does not necessarily put you in a fight with the person that originally cut you off. The one doesn't have to lead to the next.

Unless, you are referring to a war of honor. A war based on the premise of "how dare you cut us off from your resources." A street thug would refer to America's move as "disrespecting." But even a thug understands that you don't fight the Mafia with a gang of one and that among the Japanese hierarchy the process of cool deliberation would surely point that out.
 
@MontyB

While I've been trying to avoid one suggestion you've made repeatedly during our commentary--wanting to clear up the first before moving on--where in the world did the socialist commentary come from regarding the US enforcement of its ECONOMIC HEGEMONY?

"Politically the embargo left them with no choice but capitulate and accept US economic dominance or fight and they chose what most countries still do today and resist."

That one is straight from the People's Bureau. The argument assumes that the US wanted to quash the Japanese for no other reason than to "keep the man down." You don't think that the Japanese treatment of the Chinese had anything to do with it, do you? That US newspapers were filled with stories of Japanese atrocities on the mainland? That the old days of hard fisted imperialism were over but the Japanese hadn't yet gotten the memo?

Which is not to say that imperialism didn't exist. And not to defend European imperialism, but its darkest days never included mass rape and annihilation.

And spare me the "oh, well the dark forces in the US government obligated their free press to make hay over what the Japanese were doing." (Which happened to all be true.) Not a shred of evidence has ever been produced to suggest its validity.
 
Last edited:
KeithG said:
@MontyB

While I've been trying to avoid one suggestion you've made repeatedly during our commentary--wanting to clear up the first before moving on--where in the world did the socialist commentary come from regarding the US enforcement of its ECONOMIC HEGEMONY?

"Politically the embargo left them with no choice but capitulate and accept US economic dominance or fight and they chose what most countries still do today and resist."

That one is straight from the People's Bureau. The argument assumes that the US wanted to quash the Japanese for no other reason than to "keep the man down." You don't think that the Japanese treatment of the Chinese had anything to do with it, do you? That US newspapers were filled with stories of Japanese atrocities on the mainland? That the old days of hard fisted imperialism were over but the Japanese hadn't yet gotten the memo?

Which is not to say that imperialism didn't exist. And not to defend European imperialism, but its darkest days never included mass rape and annihilation.

And spare me the "oh, well the dark forces in the US government obligated their free press to make hay over what the Japanese were doing." (Which happened to all be true.) Not a shred of evidence has ever been produced to suggest its validity.
Click to expand...

I am not sure why you would refer to that response as a communist viewpoint as the comment itself was taken directly from a paper written for the US Army War College in 2009 but hey if you want to class it as socialism then take it up with them as they published it I didn't.

As for the bit about "And not to defend European imperialism, but its darkest days never included mass rape and annihilation.", I would suggest some reading on the Belgian Congo and Spanish/Portuguese actions in South America before you try and make light of European imperialism.

Nothing excuses Japanese or German actions during the war but your question is "why did the Japanese think the US would go to war to protect European colonial interests" as such those actions have no place in the discussion.

As I have said before I believe the question is answered a series of miscalculations by both sides led the Japanese to attack the USA because it believed there was no other way.

Whether you like the answer or not is somewhat irrelevant as it is my answer and it may differ from other peoples, if you want to refute it then refute it with fact rather than just dismissing it as not fitting into the answer you want to hear.
 
@MontyB

Okay, you got me on Spain, albeit from 500 years ago. Belgium Congo? Not Nanking. Have no idea of the paper you're quoted that has something to do with the war college. You'll have to give me a link to get context and source.

As for sticking with the subject at hand, I kept getting messages from you that seemed off-subject and was merely pursuing those after first ignoring them. But in the end, who cares? Anyway thanks for your input.
 
I hope others add their opinions as we don't get a lot of discussion on the Pacific war here as the focus is usually on Europe and the Eastern Front.

I cant give you a link for the report as I don't have one (my version is a hard copy) however I can give you the name of the report and its author...

JAPAN’S DECISION FOR WAR IN 1941:SOME ENDURING LESSONS by Jeffrey Record
 
Last edited:
KeithG said:
Be careful of your answer. The common answer, "Japan needed access to resources after the US embargo," so completely and obviously misses the point it's shocking to think it ever became the standard go-to answer at all.

As we all know, the US was far from itching for a fight at the start of the war. Non-interventionism ruled the day. The resources the Japanese needed so desperately weren't to be found in the US Philippine protectorate and certainly not on Guam or Wake Island, for God's sake. The resources were located in Dutch and British colonies to the south.

Even setting aside the obvious best-guess, which would be that the Japanese thought we would intervene to protect our allies' interests (and ignoring the outright absurdity of the assumption that the American people were willing to spill blood to protect British and Dutch COLONIAL interests--an institution we were strongly preaching against at the time), if the US was not ready to intervene militarily to protect our allies when their HOMELANDS were being overrun by the Nazis, why in heaven and earth would we suddenly say, okay, now is the time to go to war?

The only answer I've gotten when asking that question was that the Japanese made a mistake. Well, what a mistake! This answer presumes such a level of ignorance by the Japanese of US interests, culture and current circumstance that it can almost immediately be eliminated on the basis of ridiculously unlikely.

Of course, then again, people have accepted the common answer from day one. An unbelievable absurdity in and of itself.
Click to expand...

NO :

In 1941 US proclamed an embargo against Japan,followed by the DEI,which meant that Japan would be without oil very soon (its domestic production
was insufficient).

As Japan could not capture the oil resources of the US, it decided to capture the oil of the DEI;as it was convinced that this would result in war with the US,the decision was that it was better to start the war than to wait on the US build-up .
 
I guess this is a harder concept to grasp than I thought it would be. You might want to reread the prior posts, but the question more succinctly is:

Why would Japan think the US would go to war to protect a European colony? The US certainly wasn't prepared to step in to help these same Europeans defend their homelands that were being invaded by the Nazis, why would they possibly spill blood to defend an imperial system they abhorred?
 
The point is that Japan could not take the risk : if they first invaded the DEI,and let the US unhurt,and if afterwards US declared war on Japan,it was over for Japan,and very quickly : the invasion of the DEI was not possible without the elimination of the Philippines,which meant : war with the US .
 
lljadw said:
NO :

In 1941 US proclamed an embargo against Japan,followed by the DEI,which meant that Japan would be without oil very soon (its domestic production
was insufficient).

As Japan could not capture the oil resources of the US, it decided to capture the oil of the DEI;as it was convinced that this would result in war with the US,the decision was that it was better to start the war than to wait on the US build-up .
Click to expand...

More or less this is what I was getting at in post #5. I agree with this statement.
 
It took the US submarines and aircraft two years to seriously hinder the oil transports from the DEI to Japan,because they had to start from Hawaii.But,if they could start from the Philippines ,it would take them less than a year .

Besides,the Japanese aim was not limited to the oil of the DEI : the US had to disappear from the Pacific :as long as the US army,navy and air force were able to operate in the Pacific,Japan would not be safe .The US was potentially stronger,much stronger than Japan and had to be pushed back to the west coast.
 
In 1940,Japan imported some 6 million ton of oil:
4 million from the US
1.6 million from the DEI
0.4 million from elsewhere (150000 ton from the SU)

The Japanese home production was : 600000 ton .

Due to the US embargo,Japan lost not only 4 million ton from the US and 1.6 million from the DEI,but the embargo was followed by the freezing of all Japanese assets in the US (including the Japanese amount of $) which would it make impossible for Japan to buy oil in Latin America (Mexico,Venezuela) .

Only the home production and the stocks remained ,and while this was probably insufficient for the survival of the Japanese economy,it would certainly prevent Japan to continue the war in China and it would block the IJN and make Japan defenceless against a visite of a new commodore Perry .
The Japanese perception was that if Japan was defenceless ,Halsey would steam to the bay of Tokyo ..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top