The American government imposed an oil embargo on Japan circa July 1941. Therefore Japan joined in the Second World War by attacking Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. It took five months of trade war to force them into action. Cutting off their Oil was what did the trick. Stanley Hornbeck, a diplomat was influential in the embargo policy. Then there was the McCollum memo of 1940, which proposed bringing America into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States. It worked. Whence the Attack on Pearl Harbour.
Pat
Buchanan explains Why Japan Attacked Us,
for oil. The same forces explain
Why Germany really lost World War II
- the article explains the Japanese oil dilemnas..
Why Did Japan Attack
Us? But why did Japan, with a 10th of our industrial power,
launch a sneak attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, an act of state terror
that must ignite a war to the death it could not win? Were they insane? No, the
Japanese were desperate. To understand why Japan lashed out, we must go back to
World War I. Japan had been our ally. But when she tried to collect her share of
the booty at Versailles, she 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." In 1921, at the Washington Naval Conference, the United
States pressured the British to end their 20-year alliance with Japan. By
appeasing the Americans, the British enraged and alienated a proud nation that
had been a loyal friend. Japan was now isolated, with Stalin's brooding empire to
the north, a rising China to the east and, to the south, Western imperial powers
that detested and distrusted her. When civil war broke out in China, Japan in 1931 occupied
Manchuria as a buffer state. This was the way the Europeans had collected their
empires. Yet, the West was "shocked, shocked" that Japan would embark upon a
course of "aggression." Said one Japanese diplomat, "Just when we learn how to
play poker, they change the game to bridge." Japan now decided to create in China what the British had
in India – a vast colony to exploit that would place her among the world powers.
In 1937, after a clash at Marco Polo Bridge near Peking, Japan invaded and,
after four years of fighting, including the horrific Rape of Nanking, Japan
controlled the coastal cities, but not the interior. When France capitulated in June 1940, Japan moved into
northern French Indochina. And though the United States had no interest there,
we imposed an embargo on steel and scrap metal. After Hitler invaded Russia in
June 1941, Japan moved into southern Indochina. FDR ordered all Japanese assets
frozen. But FDR did not want to cut off oil. As he told his
Cabinet on July 18, an embargo meant war, for that would force oil-starved Japan
to seize the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies. But a State Department lawyer
named Dean Acheson drew up the sanctions in such a way as to block any Japanese
purchases of U.S. oil. By the time FDR found out, in September, he could not
back down. Tokyo was now split between a War Party and a Peace Party,
with the latter in power. Prime Minister Konoye called in Ambassador Joseph Grew
and secretly offered to meet FDR in Juneau or anywhere in the Pacific. According
to Grew, Konoye was willing to give up Indochina and China, except a buffer
region in the north to protect her from Stalin, in return for the U.S. brokering
a peace with China and opening up the oil pipeline. Konoye told Grew that
Emperor Hirohito knew of his initiative and was ready to give the order for
Japan's retreat. Fearful of a "second Munich," America spurned the offer.
Konoye fell from power and was replaced by Hideki Tojo. Still, war was not
inevitable. U.S. diplomats prepared to offer Japan a "modus vivendi." If Japan
withdrew from southern Indochina, the United States would partially lift the oil
embargo. But Chiang Kai-shek became "hysterical," and his American adviser, one
Owen Lattimore, intervened to abort the proposal. Facing a choice between death of the empire or fighting
for its life, Japan decided to seize the oil fields of the Indies. And the only
force capable of interfering was the U.S. fleet that FDR had conveniently moved
from San Diego out to Honolulu. And so Japan attacked. And so she was crushed and forced
out of Vietnam, out of China, out of Manchuria. And so they fell to
Stalin, Mao
and Ho Chi Minh. And so it was that American boys, not Japanese boys, would die
fighting Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese to try to block the aggressions of a
barbaric Asian communism. Now Japan is disarmed and China is an Asian giant whose
military boasts of pushing the Americans back across the Pacific. Had FDR met
Prince Konoye, there might have been no Pearl Harbor, no Pacific war, no
Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, no Korea, no Vietnam. How many of our fathers and
uncles, brothers and friends, might still be alive? "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are
these: 'It might have been.'" A few thoughts as the War Party pounds the drum
for an all-out American war on Iraq and radical Islam.
Stanley Hornbeck
ex Wiki
In November 1941, contemptuous of the
Japanese
capacity to challenge U.S. strength, Hornbeck dismissed the fears of a young
Foreign Service officer[who?]
Japan might initiate war out of desperation over the
oil
embargo
imposed by the
United States. Then, ten days before the
attack on Pearl Harbor, after drafting with Secretary of State
Cordell Hull a hard-line memo laying down conditions for relaxation of the
sanctions, Hornbeck wagered that Japan would relent and that war was not
imminent. The note Hull sent the Japanese on November 26, 1941, said that Japan
would have to withdraw from
Southeast Asia and
China before the
United States would resume the oil shipments. Confident that his tough approach
would cause Japan to back down, Hornbeck wrote in a memorandum the following
day: For more than a decade, Hornbeck had urged the United States to pursue a
policy of economic pressure on Japan. Although Hornbeck had been derided by
historians
for his ill-founded wager, some observers[who?]
argue that he understood as well as any other U.S. policymaker at the time the
irreconcilable conflict between Japan and U.S. interests. Some observers believe
that had the United States heeded his recommendations much earlier, Japanese
power would have been significantly weakened.[2]
PS an American government official, Dean Acheson
ensured that Japan would be screwed.
Acheson also contrived to set off the war in Korea. Deliberate? Incompetent?
Both? At all events disastrous. Many thousands died. The cost was monstrous and
he walked free.
QUOTE
Patrick J. Buchanan
12/11/01
Of all the days that will "live in infamy" in American
history, two stand out: Sept. 11, 2001, and Dec. 7, 1941.
UNQUOTE
Pat Buchanan is a decent sort of politician.
Hornbeck was a dangerous fool.
QUOTE
Stanley K. Hornbeck was a
diplomat,
born in
Franklin, Massachusetts. A
Rhodes scholar and the author of eight books, he had a distinguished career
in government service. He was chief of the
State Department Division of Far Eastern Affairs (1928–37), a special
adviser to
Secretary of State
Cordell Hull (1937–44), and
ambassador
to The
Netherlands (1944–7).
In the opinion
of the undersigned, the Japanese Government does not desire or intend or
expect to have forthwith armed conflict with the United States. . . Were
it a matter of placing bets, the undersigned would give odds of five to
one that the Japan and the United States will not be at "war" on or
before March 1 (a date more than 90 days from now, and after the period
during which it has been estimated by our strategists that it would be
to our advantage for us to have "time" for further preparation and
disposals).
UNQUOTE
'Some" claim he was right. Lots suppress the fact about American bullying.