With Pearl Harbor , the European war of 1939 acquires its characteristic of world conflict on December 7, 1941, after the attack of Japan on the US naval base from Pearl Harbor , the war spreads throughout the world and transforms into the World War II .And not just because a new theater of operations opens in Asia and in the Pacific, but because the Japanese action is going to be the trigger that will launch the United States into war.
Until Pearl Harbor , two conflicts juxtaponed in the world, because the European war generated by the Nazi government of Germany had been preceded by that of China in 1937, with the conquest of Manchuria.
The conflict in China , without emb argo, it was a conflict until then located, and that around 1940 seemed to be in a stalemate. Japan , owner of the eastern ports, of the big cities and Asian communication routes from Beijing to Nankin and Canton, had not delved into the conquest of Chinese territory.
Trying to look for other fields of expansion, the Japanese government turns its gaze to European colonialism in Asia, now weakened by the war in Europe. The United States soon poses the danger that its positioning in the Pacific will be compromised by Japanese expansionism, so that a policy of rigorous measures and economic sanctions begins to curb the Japanese advance.The US government seizes exports successively of iron and steel to Japan , and blocks Japanese assets, to ban, finally, in 1941, oil shipments.
Next, the US ambassador to Japan points out the obvious danger of such a policy.And he is not mistaken.In October 1941, General Hideki Tojo is appointed Prime Minister of Japan, Tojo is the man of the military expansion, which manages to agree to the army of the land and the navy.
On December 7 in the morning, the US fleet is destroyed by surprise in the port of Pearl Harbor , on the Hawaii islands.A powerful Japanese fleet approached the base, more than 5,000 kilometers from Tokyo, and launched its aircraft on its enemies launchers and their bombers, supported by eight battleships and three cruisers.More than 200 aircraft were put out of combat; Only the three US carriers that left the port could escape the destruction.
Pearl Harbor had two immediate consequences.First, the full support of American public opinion for the Roosvelt policy: thereafter, war becomes a personal issue for United States .Indignation definitely eliminates American isolationism.
Second, Pearl Harbor supposes, in a first phase, the air and naval domain of Japan, after the destruction of the US fleet and the touch of grace for the already weakened British navy (on December 8, England loses its most important units, the Prince of W ales and the Repulse ). Japan expands rapidly throughout the Pacific Ocean, setting the foundations for a new warlike focus of World War II.
Sources:
- Roncayolo, M.: Our Contemporaries, The World and its History, Argos
- "Pearl Harbor Damage Revealed" , LIFE Magazine, December 14, 1942, Time Inc.
- "So you don't remember Pearl Harbor?" , Popular Mechanics, December 1966, Vol.126 , No.6, Hearst Magazines.
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