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104 THE WIDENING WAR 1942

JUL 1940 DEC

PATH TO WAR

JAPANESE OFFENSIVE

AMERICAN FIGHT BACK

Jul 16, 1940 New

army-dominated Japanese

government of Prince

Konoye in power

Sep 27, 1940 Japan signs

Tripartite Pact with

Germany and Italy

Jul 19, 1940

American naval

expansion agreed

by Congress

JAPAN’S WAVE OF

CONQUEST

For six months after the attack

on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces

advanced victoriously through

Southeast Asia and across the

Pacific. Malaysia and Singapore,

the Philippines, the Dutch East

Indies, and Burma all fell to Japan,

while landings in New Guinea

threatened Australia. However,

by the end of 1942 the battle of

Midway and the extensive fighting

at Guadalcanal, both in the Pacific,

showed that the Americans were

capable of defeating the Japanese

both on land and at sea.

AMERICA AND JAPAN

GO TO WAR

In December 1941, Japan embarked on war with the US, which was blocking its

imperial ambitions in Asia. Initial military victories left the Japanese in control of

a wide area of Asia and the Pacific, but it faced a fierce US fight back.

Throughout the 1930s, the US did not openly confront

Japan about its increasing militarism in Asia, such as its

invasion of China in 1937. However, following the rapid

victory of Hitler’s forces in Europe in 1940, Japan stepped

up its aggression, recognizing the opportunity to seize

Southeast Asia from the European colonial powers—the

defeated French and Dutch, and the weakened British.

Hostilities on the rise

Increasingly committed to backing Britain against Nazi

Germany, US President Roosevelt accepted responsibility

for resisting Japan’s expansion in Southeast Asia—a task

the British could no longer perform. Japanese encroachment

on French Indochina in

1940–1941 met an aggressive

response from the US, which

placed Japan under economic

blockade and demanded that

it abandon its ambitions to

establish an empire in Asia.

Japan’s response was

to push ahead with a plan

for the conquest of Southeast

Asia. They believed a surprise

attack on the US fleet at

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, would

remove the US temporarily

from the equation, allowing

◁ Promoting war production

A US propaganda poster links the Nazi swastika

to the Japanese national flag, showing Germany

and Japan as a common enemy.

△ Man of influence

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

masterminded the surprise Japanese

aircraft carrier attack on Pearl Harbor.

However, he personally doubted that

Japan could win a war against the US.

Japan sufficient time to establish a far-flung defensive

perimeter in the Pacific. The Japanese hoped their position

would then be strong enough to deter the US from

retaliation, leaving Japan securely in control of an Asian

empire. However, this was a disastrous miscalculation. In

reality, their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,

1941, so outraged American popular opinion that the US

was implacably committed to go to war against Japan and

fight to the bitter end, regardless of cost or casualties. The

following day, the US declared war against Japan.

Racial hatred of the Japanese was a feature of American

attitudes to the Pacific War from the outset, and the

mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war by the Japanese

provided further fuel for anti-

Japanese sentiment.

Germany declares war

Four days after the attack on

Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared

war on the US, bringing the US

into the European conflict. Since

Roosevelt saw US interests as

more vitally threatened by the

power of Nazi Germany than

Mar 27, 1941 Japanese

spy Takeo Yoshikawa

begins studying US fleet

at Pearl Harbor

US_104-105_N_America_and_Japan_go_to_war.indd 104 04/03/19 11:55 AM