Why Did Japan Attack Pearl Harbor

According to an article in the website History, the causes of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are far from few. The country clearly had imperial objectives. In 1937 for example, the country invaded China beginning a war that did nothing but help the United States begin to consider Japan a threat in Asia. In 1941, Japan occupied French Indochina and controlled the Philippines. The United States imposed an oil embargo to Japan with the objective to weaken its economic strength. The embargo itself can be considered one of the reasons why Japan surprised the entire defense of the United States bombarding the Hawaiian Harbor (Pearl). The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning, the seventh of December of 1941. It was one of the biggest
According to Patrick Buchanan, Konoye, Japan’s prime minister at the time, sent Franklin D. Roosevelt a letter begging him to meet so that they could talk things out. This was before Japan had attacked the United States. Konoye then had a meeting with U.S. ambassador Joseph Grew saying that Japan agreed with the policies that the United States had “as a basis for peace”. That offer was declined. He also stated that Japan offered the United States two more ideas: one that planned on ending the Japan China war, and a second plan stating that if the first idea didn’t work, both countries would agree to not make any moves to start a war. Both of these ideas were discarded by Roosevelt. At a meeting with Roosevelt about the war, Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War’s notes stated “The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves”. Frank Knox, a Navy Secretary wrote, “We can wipe the Japanese off the map in three months”. This shows that the U.S. did in fact provoke the Pearl Harbor attack so that they could officially start a war with Japan, as well as beat