Section A: Identification and Evaluation of Sources
Research Question: Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?
In 1941, December seventh, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service dropped a bomb on the United States Navy Air Service at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory. This directly causes the United States’ entry into the World War II. The main two sources that have been used in this paper are Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy by Eri Hotta, and The Pacific War by Saburo Ienaga. Eri Hotta, the author of Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, was born in Tokyo, educated in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She has taught at Oxford and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, specializing in international relations. She is also the author of Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931-1945. In Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy Eri Hotta analyses the reasons why Japan started a war with its best leaders knowing that it had no chance of victory. According to Eri Hotta the attack on Pearl Harbor was based on revenge, because of the United States’ embargo on steel and scrap metal on Japan set in 1941. The main economic reasons were that Japan needed rubber, oil, and steel and the United States was the biggest exporter to Japan, but refused to help Japan out. During the China-Japan war, the United States took the Japanese part and threatened Japan to not take actions. The sense of entourage and humiliation that united a deeply divided Japanese government, led to Pearl Harbor. Eri Hotta also argues that the Japanese felt strong about their historical past, as they won the Russians in the Russo – Japanese war in 1904 to 1905.
Saburo Ienaga, the author of The Pacific War, is a Japanese historian, born in Nagoya in 1913, graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1937. After his graduation, he served as a professor at Tokyo University of Education. He is mostly known for the campaign against censorship on Japanese war crimes. Saburo Ienaga died at the age of 89 on November 29th in 2002. The Pacific War is an English translation of the original Japanese version. Saburo Ienaga in The Pacific War, argues that the root of why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 was their own aggression and fascism in the 1930s, after taking over some parts of China, invading territories claimed by the Soviet Union, and fighting across the Pacific during the World War II. According to Saburo Ienaga, the main reason for the attack was Japan trying to expand over Asia in the 1930s. He argues that the inability to develop critical thinking and the spirit of democracy led to the unquestioning acceptance of aggressive imperialism in Korea, Manchuria, and China.
Section B: Investigation
More than seven decades have passed since the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, but there are still a lot of mysteries and unanswered questions. Scientists have been arguing for several years about how did it happened, and how the attack was unexpected for the American politicians. The attack on Pearl Harbor unfolded America's public opinion and accelerated its entry into the World War II.
Japan wanted to enter the war because its resources were insufficient. The seizure by Japan of Northeast China aggravated Soviet-Japanese relations. The Soviet government, striving to strengthen peace in the far East, appealed to Japan in late 1931 with a proposal to conclude a non-aggression pact. However, Japan rejected the proposal. The Soviet Union did not recognize the seizure by Japan of the Northeast of China. In December 1932, diplomatic relations between the USSR and China were restored after being broken in 1929 through the fault of the Guomindang government (Hotta 46 – 49).
By the 1920s and 1930s, Japan had an increased need for natural resources like oil, minerals, and steel, so the needs for expansion in Asia and the Pacific increased. The Japanese political leaders needed the natural sources the Dutch, French and British colonies across Southeast Asia and the Pacific had (Hotta 83 – 85). So the Japanese leaders made huge plans to use the markets nearby, in countries like Korea and China for their own products. Japan always had the plan to expand to China to solve its economic and some other demographic problems. Japan wanted to expand to areas that would provide important natural resources such as oil and rubber, because the United States, the biggest exporter Japan had, put an embargo on the sources Japan needed the most (Wohlstetter 130 – 134). In the 1930s, since the war was inevitable, the only chance was to destroy the American naval forces as fast as possible. According to Emperor Hirohito, mainly the oil embargo cornered Japan and led to the idea for the attack. “If we ask ‘Did they want war?’ the answer is yes: and if we ask, ‘Did they want to avoid war? The answer is still yes” (Hotta 19). The Japanese wanted war, but wanted to avoid starting it at the same time, so they chose the path that led to the war. Destroying much of the United States’ naval forces, the Japanese hoped to expand: conquer Philippines, Manchuria, and Malaya (Hotta 41 – 42) . The attack was a preventive measure against the United States aimed at eliminating the American navy, gaining air supremacy in the Pacific region and the subsequent conduct of military operations against Burma, Thailand, and the Western United States possessions in the Pacific Ocean. “What an incredible paradox: the admirals agreed to a war they had no confidence of winning” (Ienaga 135). Ienaga shows how paradoxically Japan dared to leave the boards of Pearl Harbor. Later, American concerns and economic sanctions rose to Japan in 1941. Two unpleasant choices: the humiliating way out of China or the war with the West.
On the same day, the US declared war on Japan and entered the war. Because of the attack, especially because of its nature, public opinion in America changed dramatically from the isolationist position in the mid-1930s to direct participation in hostilities. On December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke at a joint session of both chambers of Congress. The President said that “December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan” (Hotta 8). In early 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt transferred the Pacific Fleet to Hawaii from San Diego and ordered the buildup of military power in the Philippines in the hope of hindering the Japanese aggression in the Far East (Twomey 185 – 189). Since the Japanese command believed that any attack on British colonies in South-East Asia would lead to the US joining the war, a devastating preemptive strike seemed the only way to avoid interference by the US Navy. Japanese strategists also considered it necessary to invade the Philippines. The American plan of action presupposed the defense of the Philippines by elite troops of 40,000 people (Wohlstetter 241 – 243). Douglas MacArthur believed that he needed ten times more troops, but this was not realized. By 1941, American strategists assumed evacuation from the Philippines at the beginning of the war, and orders for this were given in late 1941 to Admiral Thomas Hart, commander of the Asian Navy (340 – 342).
On November 26, 1941, the strike joint of the Japanese Imperial Navy under the command of Vice Admiral Tuichi Nagumo, on the orders of Navy Commander Isoroku Yamamoto, left the base at Hitokappu Bay on Iturup Island and headed for Pearl Harbor (Hotta 256 – 258).
The purpose of the attack on Pearl Harbor was to neutralize the US Pacific fleet in order to ensure the freedom of action of the Japanese army and navy in southeast Asia. This goal could not be achieved since modern types of vessels of the Pacific Fleet, aircraft carriers and submarines, did not suffer.
In 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina to control supplies to China. The United States stopped shipments to Japan of any kind of metalworking machines and gasoline, which was perceived as an unfriendly act in Japan. The US did not stop oil exports to Japan, believing that this would be an extreme measure, given the Japanese dependence on American oil, and would be perceived in Japan as a provocation. In July 1941, after the Japanese expansion into French Indochina after the fall of France, the US stopped exporting oil to Japan. This, in turn, prompted the Japanese to begin seizing the Dutch East India, rich in oil. The Japanese faced a choice: either to withdraw from China and lose face or to seize sources of raw materials in the European colonies of Southeast Asia (Hotta 209 – 211).
In October 1931, the League of Nations Council considered the complaint of the Chinese government on the aggression of Japan. Most of the members of the Council supported the resolution, which obliged Japan to withdraw its troops from China within three weeks. Japan voted against this resolution and thereby thwarted the adoption of a decision on the issue under discussion: since the decisions of the Council of the League of Nations could only be taken unanimously. In December 1931, the Council of the League of Nations appointed a commission chaired by the Englishman Lytton to examine the Sino-Japanese conflict on the spot and provide recommendations to the League of Nations (Ienaga 265 – 268). In January 1932, United States Secretary of State Stimson sent a note to the governments of Japan and China, in which he declared that the US government did not recognize the position created by unilateral actions of Japan. The "Stimson Doctrine" did not provide for any effective measures to protect China's territorial integrity (Twomey 30).
In early October, two months before the surprise attack, the Soviet intelligence officer Richard Sorge informed Moscow that Pearl Harbor would be attacked for 60 days; these data, according to US sources, were brought to the attention of Washington by the Kremlin (Twomey 120). Although the Japanese want to capitalize on the conflict in Europe and start playing in European colonies in Southeast Asia, the program is not yet clear who the real Japanese enemies are.
Southeast Asia's military invasion of Japan led to the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to impose sanctions. The United States froze the Japanese assets. Speaking to the Japanese, saying that the United States had decided to find a diplomatic solution, Japan's reaction to the United States was proud and hostile. Moreover, while moving from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor, the United States encouraged Japan's idea that the United States predicted a full-fledged war with Japan (Hotta 266 – 269).
On the morning of December seventh, aircraft from the Japanese aircraft carriers attacked airfields on the island of Oahu and on ships anchored in the boards of Pearl Harbor. This goal was achieved only partially since modern United States surface ships were in another place and were not affected at this time. However, if the reason for the attack on Pearl Harbor is more or less clear, one important point remains unclear: if Hawaii was such an important point on the map, why did the Japanese not capture the islands? This will sound a bit strange, but the attack on Pearl Harbor itself was conceived only as an auxiliary operation, to provide Japan with oil resources. Hawaii was seen as an important goal, but secondary – given the scale with which Japan fought at this stage, it simply did not have the military resources to hold the islands.
Section C: Reflection
Historians face many obstacles while stating what they find is true according to their research and investigation. Historians are people who are passionate about history and the truth about the past and/or the present. In order to have convincing explanations for one’s opinion the historian needs to do a lot of research, and try to find the best source that supports his idea. A good historian compares and contrasts opposite viewpoints of the topic, to help the reader understand why is his idea closer to the reality than the opposing viewpoint. Stating that a historian is biased or opinionated is a huge accusation. If someone favors towards an idea more than something else, it does not necessarily mean they are wrong. All the four sources used for this paper had their own ideas, viewpoints, and focus points. Even though the main two sources oppose each other, they both have clear explanations and evidence to support their views. Both authors of the two main sources used are Japanese, but one of them blames Japan, the other one talks about general economic issues Japan had at that time. People are more likely to believe and rely on sources written by an author who in a way blames their own country for the particular issue. For example, Saburo Ienaga in The Pacific War, clearly states that the root of why the attack happened was the Japanese aggression and fascism in the 1930s.