Day of Infamy: causes

By Brenda Pedreschi 

It was December 7th 1941 when the day of infamy occur, on an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning on a beautiful Hawaiian island, the first wave of Japanese airplanes left 6 aircraft carriers and struck Pearl Harbor a few minutes before 8 AM local time.

In two waves of terror lasting two long hours, they killed or wounded over 3,500 Americans and sank or badly damaged 18 ships - including all 8 battleships of the Pacific Fleet - and over 350 destroyed or damaged aircraft.  At least 1,177 lives were lost when the Battleship U.S.S. Arizona exploded and subsequently sank. However, they did not sink any of American Pacific aircraft carriers and they left most of the fuel that was needed to win the war in the Pacific.

The Japanese attack brought the U.S. into the war on December 8 and brought it in the war determined to fight to the finish.

Pearl Harbor attack was the cause of USA get involved in the war, but which were the reasons of Japan to attack Pearl Harbor?

To understand why Japan lashed out, we must go back to World War I, with a long-term cause. Japan had been American ally. But when Japan tried to collect the share of the booty at Versailles, they ran into an obdurate Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson rejected Japan's claim to German concessions in Shantung, home of Confucius, which Japan had captured at a price in blood. Tokyo threatened a walkout if denied what she had been promised by the British. "They are not bluffing," warned Wilson, as he capitulated. "We gave them what they should not have."

But the short-term reasons that cause the outbreak of Pearl Harbor attack was the prevention against the United States from interfering in Japanese plans to conquer the Dutch East Indies, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, and the rest of South Asia. This was part of Japan's overall strategic goal of conquering China. The resources of South Asia (primarily oil & rubber) had to be seized so that Japan's war machine could be kept functioning. The United States had stopped selling oil to Japan because of Japan's aggressions in China and Japan's recent seizure of French Indo-China.

Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise attack that only ensures the inevitable involving of USA in the Second World War. But the reasons why Japan attacked are only the example of the crisis around the world, the desire of power, territory and resources. War was seen as the only way to get what wanted and as a way of taking revenge of the past over other countries.

Japan underestimated the Americans and they had might seen the day of infamy as victory, were Americans truly defeated? Japanese will understand later that they had awakened a monster.