714 Chapter 27 War and Peace, 1941–1945
The Road to Pearl Harbor
Neither the United States nor Japan wanted war.
Roosevelt considered Germany by far the more
dangerous enemy and was alarmed by the possibil-
ity of simultaneously fighting German armies in
Europe and Japanese forces in the Pacific. In the
spring of 1941 Secretary of State Cordell Hull con-
ferred in Washington with the Japanese ambas-
sador, Kichisaburo Nomura, in an effort to resolve
their differences. Hull showed little appreciation of
the political and military situation in East Asia. He
demanded that Japan withdraw from China.
Japan might well have accepted limited annexa-
tions in the area in return for the removal of
American trade restrictions, but Hull seemed bent on
converting the Japanese to pacifism by exhortation.
He insisted on total withdrawal, to which even the
moderates in Japan would not agree. When Hitler
invaded the Soviet Union, thereby removing the
threat of Russian intervention in East Asia, Japan
decided to complete its conquest of China and
occupy French Indochina even at the risk of war with
the United States. Roosevelt retaliated (July 1941)
by freezing Japanese assets in the United States and
clamping an embargo on oil. He hoped that the
Japanese war machine, deprived of American oil,
would grind to a halt.
Now the ultranationalist war party in Japan
assumed control. Nomura was instructed to tell Hull
that Japan would refrain from further expansion if the
United States and Great Britain would cut off all aid
to China and lift the economic blockade. Japan
promised to pull out of Indochina once “a just peace”
had been established with China. When the United
States rejected these demands, the Japanese prepared
to assault the Dutch East Indies, British Malaya, and
the Philippines. To immobilize the U.S. Pacific fleet,
they planned a surprise air attack on the Hawaiian
naval base at Pearl Harbor.
An American cryptanalyst, Colonel William F.
Friedman, had cracked the Japanese diplomatic code:
The Japanese were making plans to attack in early
December. But in the hectic rush of events, both mili-
tary and civilian authorities failed to make effective use
of the information collected. They expected the blow
to fall somewhere in East Asia, possibly the Philippines.
The garrison at Pearl Harbor was alerted against
“a surprise aggressive move in any direction.” The
commanders there, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and
General Walter C. Short, believing an attack impossi-
ble, took precautions only against Japanese sabotage.Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, killed more than 2,400 American sailers and soldiers and thrust the United States
into World War II. President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war the next day, calling the attack “a date that will live in infamy.”