16. Japan’s Underestimation of American Might Led to Disaster
During World War I, Japan and America fought on the same side. By the 1930s, the two countries were rivals steadily inching towards war. In 1941, Japan was bogged down in a quagmire of a war in China, with no end in sight. It had recently been hit with US and British sanctions, including an asset freeze that crippled its trade. In one of history’s worst decisions, the Japanese government decided to solve its problems by starting a war with America. The result was a disaster for Japan.
The prelude was American displeasure with Japanese aggression in China, first by seizing Manchuria in 1931, followed by an outright invasion in 1937. In those days, because of decades of American missionary work, America had sentimental ties to China in addition to economic ones, and there was a powerful “China Lobby” in the US. Japan made things worse in 1940 by seizing French-Indochina, which destabilized the entire region. Aside from further proof of Japanese aggression, it brought Japanese forces uncomfortably close to America’s colonial possessions in the Philippines, and British ones in Malaya and Burma.