We all know that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, gave rise to U.S. involvement in World War II. But how many people ask an important question: Why did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor in the first place?
After all, Japanese officials obviously knew that bombing Pearl Harbor would mean war with the United States, a country that had been instrumental in winning World War I.
The U.S. was also a country whose industrial capacity was unmatched anywhere in the world. Japan knew that American industrial centers could be converted into the production of war materiel. Japan knew that there was no reasonable possibility of bombing those industrial centers.
And it wasn’t like the attack on Pearl Harbor was the first stage in a Japanese military invasion of the United States. Immediately after wreaking the destruction at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bombers and their fighter escorts returned to their aircraft carriers. There was never even the remotest possibility that Japan was going to invade the western coast of the United States. They knew that they didn’t have the military capability to pull off such an enormous endeavor.
Moreover, let’s not forget that Japan was embroiled in a foreign war in China. Why attack the United States, which would then require Japanese forces to fight on two fronts — one in China and one against the United States?
Why then did Japan do it? Why attack the United States, knowing that the attack would mean war with the most powerful nation in the world? On the surface, the attack makes no sense whatsoever.
World War I
Going against America’s founding system of avoiding foreign wars, President Woodrow Wilson had sought and received a congressional declaration of war against Germany, which authorized Wilson to embroil the United States in the European conflict.
Wilson’s war aim was to make this particular war the last war and to make the world “safe for democracy.” That’s what all those American soldiers died for and got injured for. It’s what Americans sacrificed their civil liberties for.
It was all for naught. Rather than making the world safe for democracy, U.S. interventionism actually produced the conditions that gave rise to Adolf Hitler in Germany, who later made it clear that World War I had not been the war to end all wars.
Thus, given the deadly and destructive fiasco of U.S. interventionism in World War I, Americans were overwhelmingly opposed to getting involved in World War II.
FDR’s cunning scheme
But their president, FDR, was just as steadfastly committed to involving the United States in the war. He wasn’t about to let public opinion stop him from achieving his goal. Although he had campaigned for president in the 1940 election by telling American voters that he was as opposed to foreign wars as they were, it was a lie. In actuality, Roosevelt was doing everything he could to embroil the United States in the war, especially since his New Deal socialist-fascist program had failed to pull the United States out of the Depression.
This was a time when presidents were still complying with the declaration-of-war requirement in the Constitution. It prohibited the president from initiating war with a foreign nation without first securing a declaration of war from Congress.
Roosevelt knew, however, that if he could get Germany to attack the United States first, then he would have the American people and their elected representatives in Congress boxed in. In the event of such a German attack on U.S. forces, Congress would have to give him the declaration of war he sought, notwithstanding public opinion.
Initially, Roosevelt embarked on a plan to provoke Germany into attacking the United States. It didn’t work. Germany refused to take the bait. The last thing that Germany wanted was to, once again, go to war against the most prosperous and industrious nation in history.
That’s when Roosevelt went into the Pacific with a similar scheme, albeit one that targeted Japan. FDR figured that if he could provoke the Japanese into attacking the United States, he would probably be able to secure a declaration of war against both Japan and Germany, given the alliance between them.
Among the things that FDR did was to freeze Japanese assets in the United States, notwithstanding the fact that the United States and Japan were not at war. When Japan expressed a willingness to peacefully resolve all disputes with the United States, FDR set forth terms that were designed to humiliate and demean the Japanese. Most important, FDR was able to orchestrate a worldwide oil embargo on Japan, which threatened to leave Japanese military forces in China unable to maintain what they had achieved there.
That’s why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Threatened with an oil cutoff for their forces in Japan, Japanese officials had but one chance to secure oil. That was in the Dutch East Indies. But Japan knew that if they invaded there, there was a good chance that U.S. forces would attack them. By attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan’s aim was to cripple the U.S. Pacific fleet to such an extent that it would not be able to interfere with Japan’s efforts to secure oil in the Dutch East Indies.
But the wily Roosevelt, whose administration had secretly broken the Japanese diplomatic codes and thus was reading their diplomatic messages, had made sure that American aircraft carriers were removed from Pearl prior to the attack. He left some battleships and troops there to serve as bait for the Japanese. He also left thousands of U.S. soldiers in the Philippines to also serve as bait.
Roosevelt’s scheme worked masterfully. Taking the bait, Japan attacked both Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, destroying battleships and killing and injuring soldiers at Pearl, and killing, injuring, or capturing hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers in the Philippines. Coming to the aid of its ally, Germany declared war on the United States.
Stating that he was shocked by the Japanese attack on a “day that will live in infamy,” FDR secured his congressional declaration of wars against both Japan and Germany. Opposition to the war disintegrated, with virtually all Americans supporting war with Germany and Japan. The wily Roosevelt had gotten what he wanted.