The attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. Naval Base on the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian archipelago, the heart of the Pacific Ocean, was launched by surprise on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941 by Air Service the Imperial Japanese Navy against the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the port and other forces stationed nearby. The attack follows the policy of imperial expansion. The destruction of the main fleet of the United States Navy would allow the Empire of the Rising Sun to establish the Co-Prosperity Sphere Greater East Asia. The Imperial General Headquarters, also wanted to meet economic sanctions by Washington in July 1941 after the invasion of China and French Indochina by the Japanese Imperial Army.
After the attack, carried out in two waves overhead, American losses were significant: 2 403 deaths and 1 178 injured. Four battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers and 188 aircraft were destroyed. However, many ships could be repaired in the months that followed, and the three U.S. aircraft carriers in the Pacific escaped the attack.
The Japanese lost 64 men, 29 aircraft and five submarines pocket sailor was captured.
In less than twenty-four hours, the Empire of Japan also attacked the United States and the Philippines opened hostilities with the United Kingdom, Hong Kong invasive and landed in Malaysia.
The attack on Pearl Harbor caused the entry of the United States in the Second World War alongside the Allies. In the United States, is commemorated each year by half-masting the flag. Historians have highlighted the bold plan of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the lack of preparedness and American negligence. The role of President Roosevelt remains a subject of controversy.
During the Meiji era (1868-1912), the Empire of Japan began a period of economic growth, political and military to catch up with Western powers. This goal also relied on a strategy of territorial expansion in East Asia that Japan had to guarantee its supply of raw materials essential to its development.
Expansionism nippon appeared from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with the annexation of the island of Formosa (1895), southern Sakhalin Island (1905) and Korea (1910) . During World War I, Japan seized the German possessions in the Far East and Pacific and gained market share at the expense of Europeans and Americans in the region. After 1920, the Nippon economic growth slows and unemployment rose, the industry suffered from lack of raw materials and markets.
Between the two world wars, the archipelago is endowed with a modern navy. The Great Depression of the 1930s did not spare the Japanese economy. The effects of the economic crisis was added a rise in nationalist and military during the Showa era. The Imperial Japanese Army invaded Manchuria in 1931 and that territory became the puppet state of Manchukuo. Japan then gradually took control of other parts of China. In 1937, Japan invaded the rest of China from Shanghai without formally declaring war.
The breakdown in relations between Tokyo and Washington
Nippon conquests in East Asia threatened U.S. interests and Washington intervened against Japan without going to the armed confrontation. Thus, in 1921-1922, the Washington Treaty of 1922 limited the tonnage of the Japanese war fleet the third largest. Responding to international diplomatic pressure following the invasion of Manchuria, Tokyo decided to leave the League of Nations in 1933. Between 1935 and 1937, the United States chose the non-intervention by enacting a series of neutrality laws.
Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. In 1937, the President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt delivered the speech in Chicago in the forties in which he condemned dictatorships, including that of Japan. The following year, his speech on the state of the Union proposes to increase military spending. In December 1937, at the time of the massacre of Nanking, the Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on the Yangtze-Kiang. Washington got an apology but the tension rose rapidly between the two countries. In 1939, the U.S. government ended the commercial treaty signed in 1911, a prelude to the trade embargo.
In 1940, the Empire joined the Axis forces by signing the Tripartite Pact. The same year the Imperial General Headquarters, taking advantage of the defeat of France and the weakening of the United Kingdom, authorizes the establishment of military bases in French Indochina. This settlement occurred after an agreement September 22 with the Hanoi government, followed by heavy fighting in Lang Son and the bombing of Haiphong, which the Quartermaster-General Imperial finally put an end on 26.
1941 was the year of escalation between the two countries in May, Washington gave its support to China by granting a loan-lease. Following the refusal of Japan to withdraw from Indochina and China, excluding Manchukuo, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands decreed from July 26, 1941 the complete embargo on oil and steel as well as the freezing of Japanese assets on U.S. soil.
The imperial conference held September 6, 1941 decided that a war would be undertaken against the United States and the United Kingdom, unless an agreement could be reached soon with Washington. On 16 October, Prime Minister Konoe of Japan, who feel they have lost the confidence of Emperor Showa and the military, resigned from his position in offering the Prince Prince Higashikuni, an uncle of the emperor to replace him. Hirohito declined the nomination, also proposed by the military and chose instead the General Tojo, a strong supporter of the war but also a man renowned for his loyalty to the imperial institution.
Without even waiting for the end of the talks that they no longer believed, the Japanese began to prepare the attack. On November 3, Admiral Osami Nagano explained in detail Hirohito the final plan of attack against Pearl Harbor. On November 5, 1941, the Emperor in Imperial Conference approved the operation plan for a war against the United States, Great Britain and Holland scheduled for early December. The same day, the Imperial General Headquarters placed under the decision adopted at the conference and ordered the commander of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, setting in motion the mission on Pearl Harbor. Negotiations with the United States remains at an impasse, Hirohito finally approved on 1 December in the Imperial War Conference of the Greater East Asia, after Nagano and the Minister of Marine Shigetaro Shimada, had reassured the day before the the chances of business success in refuting the argument of Prince Nobuhito Takamatsu to the effect that the Navy could take more than two years against the United States.