1070 Ch. 26 • World War II

Japans Attack on the United States

Four years of aggression in Asia brought Japan to the point of confrontation

with the United States. Since invading Manchuria in 1931 and proclaiming

it the puppet state of Manchukuo a year later, Japan had sought to expand

its influence and territory in the Pacific region. Southeast Asian oil was one

Japanese target, particularly after the United States, Great Britain, and the

Netherlands imposed an economic boycott following the Manchurian inva­

sion. The Japanese quest for rubber, tin, and other raw materials threatened

British economic interests in Burma and Malaya, as well as those of the

Dutch in Java and of the United States in the Philippine Islands.

In 1937, Japan had joined the Anti-Comintern Pact that Germany and

Italy had signed the previous year. Also in 1937, the Japanese army moved

further into China and occupied the main ports, moves that the American

government viewed with alarm. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression

Pact, signed between the Soviet Union and Germany in August 1939, had

voided the Anti-Comintern Pact, as the Soviet Union was a Communist state.

After Japanese troops entered Indochina, in September 1940, Japan con­

cluded the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, thus becoming part of the

Axis. In an effort to stop the flow of Allied supplies to Chinese forces over the

railway from Hanoi and a long dirt road from Burma, Japan had assumed a

“protective” occupation of French Indochina in July 1941. A nonaggression

Japanese dive bombers preparing to take off from an aircraft carrier before attack­

ing Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.