O attack on pearl harbor, organized by the Japanese Navy, took place on December 7, 1941. In this military operation, the Japanese attacked the American naval base that was located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This attack resulted in more than two thousand deaths for the US Navy and marked the entry of the United States into the Second World War.
background
Japan's attack on the United States in December 1941 was the result of growing hostility between the two nations during the first half of the 20th century. The growth of nationalism and Japan's imperialist ambitions throughout the 19th and 20th centuries also contributed to intensifying tensions between the two countries.
With the Meiji Restoration, Japan promoted numerous transformations, which led to the modernization and industrialization of that country. One of the steps in this process was the reform of national education, which contributed to the development of a strong nationalism and religious exaltation of the figure of the Emperor. This nationalism turned into an imperialist ambition aimed at conquering territories in China.
Japan started some wars with the aim of guaranteeing the possession and exploitation of Chinese territories. First, it occurred to First Sino-Japanese War, between 1894 and 1895, in which the Japanese disputed control of Korea. Afterwards, the Russian-Japanese War it was fought against Russia in 1904 and 1905 for control of part of Manchuria.
Japan's victories in these wars strengthened nationalist and imperialist ideals, and as a consequence, in the 20th century, there was a strong growth of the militarist extreme right. Some figures from this extreme right, as early as the 1920s, affirmed the “necessity” of a war against the United States.
The existing tension between the United States and Japan started in the 1910s, when there were diplomatic conflicts between these two countries because of Japanese imperialism over China. Also, in the United States, the Japanese American population suffered intense discrimination social, which members of the Japanese government disliked.
Second Sino-Japanese War and Preparation for the Great War
In the 1930s, Japan's imperialist ambitions for China intensified, which provoked open conflict between these two nations after two major events. First, there was the Mukden incident, in which a forged attack by the Japanese army against a Japanese-controlled railway in China was used as a pretext for the invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
Then there was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in which a disagreement between Japanese and Chinese soldiers stationed in Beijing sparked the conflict in 1937, which became known as Second Sino-Japanese War. With this war, China's resistance troops, led by Chiang Kai-shek, began to receive aid in supplies and weapons from the American army from a route through Indochina.
Japan, aiming to close this route to weaken its enemies, carried out the invasion of French Indochina in 1940. This invasion caused the United States to impose a embargo on the import of Japanese oil. This worried the Japanese authorities, as the chances of victory in this war depended on these imports.
The American embargo on the import of oil reinforced the intention, in most of the Japanese military leadership, that the war against the United States was vital to guarantee the existence of Japan. At that time, few members of the Japanese army saw the war against the United States as unnecessary.
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Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was one of those who claimed that a war against the United States would be a big mistake. Yamamoto had lived for some years in the United States and claimed that the industrial and military capacity of the Americans was very large and that Japan was unable to withstand a long war against that country.
This data is further reinforced by Max Hastings, who points out that Japan, in 1941, had only 10% of the industrial capacity of the United States|1|. Even so, the Japanese authorities opted for war, and Yamamoto was appointed to organize the plan against the American naval fleet in the Pacific.
For fear of the risks that a long-lasting war would bring to Japan, Admiral Yamamoto outlined the strategy of, from Pearl Harbor, perform high-intensity attacks with the objective of promoting the defeat of opponents in a fulminant way. The attack on this American naval base was planned by Yamamoto and carried out by Chuichu Nagumo.
Attack on Pearl Harbor
In the weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American intelligence had enough information to confirm Japanese intentions to carry out an attack against the United States. This caused alerts to be issued for the garrisons installed along the Pacific Ocean.
Nevertheless, on the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (morning of December 7, 1941, Hawaii time), American defenses were not prepared, and the Japanese had little resistance. The element of surprise in this offensive was essential to increase the destruction and the large number of deaths.
The balance of the Japanese attack, according to Antony Beevor, was as follows:
In addition to the Oklahoma and Arizona battleships, the US Navy at Pearl Harbor lost two destroyers. Another three battleships were sunk or ran aground and were later recovered and repaired, and three more were damaged. The Army and Navy Air Corps lost 188 planes destroyed and 159 damaged. In total, 2,335 American soldiers were killed and 1,143 wounded.|2|.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was celebrated by the Japanese and members of the Axle (Germans and Italians) as a great victory and a strategic success, but experts in military strategy point to the Japanese operation as a big failure tactical. That's because this attack did not destroy any US aircraft carriers, and Japanese attack payloads did not reach US fuel stockpiles.
This offensive ended up mobilizing an enemy that, until then, did not see the war with much sympathy. The American mobilization for the war made that, six months later, the United States already started to conquer important victories against Japan. Throughout the war, the Japanese were being cornered, and the conflict against the Americans ended with the atomic attack against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
|1| HASTINGS, Max. Hell: the world at war 1939-1945. Rio de Janeiro: Intrinsic, 2012, p. 209.
|2| BEEVOR, Antony. The Second World War. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2015, p. 286.
by Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
