Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor: Causes and Consequences
This paper examines the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, tracing the diplomatic and economic tensions that drove Japan toward war with the United States. Drawing on historical scholarship and eyewitness accounts, the paper explains how Japan's imperial expansion in Asia, U.S. oil and steel embargoes, and the freezing of Japanese assets created an explosive atmosphere. It also details how the attack achieved tactical surprise, describes the experience of both Japanese and American combatants during the raid, and analyzes the immediate and long-term American response, including internment of Japanese Americans, massive industrial mobilization, and ultimate victory in the Pacific.
- Reasons Behind the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor: Imperial expansion, embargoes, and rising U.S.-Japan tensions
- How the Japanese Attack Achieved Surprise: Radar failures, open aircraft, and unprepared defenses
- Eyewitness Accounts: Japanese and American Perspectives: Fuchida's air assault and Nightingale's deck-level ordeal
- U.S. Actions Immediately After Pearl Harbor: War declaration, internment camps, and industrial mobilization
- The War's Impact on the United States: Casualties, Allied victory, and superpower emergence
- Conclusion: Japan's strategic miscalculation and its ultimate defeat
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What makes this paper effective
- Integrates multiple scholarly sources alongside primary eyewitness testimony to build a layered, evidence-based narrative rather than relying on a single perspective.
- Moves logically from root causes, to the mechanics of the attack, to human-level accounts, to national consequences — giving the argument a clear arc.
- Uses direct quotations from both Japanese commander Mitsuo Fuchida and American Marine Corporal Nightingale to ground abstract historical claims in lived experience.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective synthesis of secondary scholarly sources (Maechling, Field, Leavy, Dowswell) with primary eyewitness material to answer a set of focused research questions stated in the introduction. Each section addresses one question, keeping the argument focused and the evidence relevant throughout.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing paragraph that poses five research questions, then answers each in turn through six sections. The introduction sets expectations; the body moves from geopolitical causes, to tactical surprise, to firsthand accounts, to American retaliation, to long-term national impact; and the conclusion closes with a brief anecdote about the Japanese midget submarines before offering a final evaluative judgment.
Reasons Behind the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
What events led to the attack on Pearl Harbor? Why was Japan willing to engage in a bold, highly secretive raid on the main American Navy base in the Pacific? How was Japan able to pull off this dramatic, deadly strike on a cloudless Sunday morning in Hawaii? What did the United States do in retaliation? And how did the Pacific Theatre of World War II impact the United States and its people? These questions are reviewed and answered in turn throughout this paper.
Why did Japan attack the United States, a nation far more powerful, with vast resources available to build the weaponry that could defeat a much smaller nation like Japan? There are many reasons for the hostility that grew between the two nations, but it is widely recognized that Japan had been spoiling for war by aggressively attacking and occupying nations in Asia with clear imperialist intentions.
Japan had attacked and occupied Manchuria in the 1930s, and when Japan carried out its murderous massacre of over 200,000 Chinese citizens in Nanking, it turned public opinion in the West — the United States, England, and parts of Europe — sharply against Japan. Author Charles Maechling writes in the journal History Today that at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan had "over a million" troops in China and occupied all the "principal Chinese cities," yet Japan was "heavily dependent on outside sources for the minerals, petroleum and other raw materials needed to fuel its economy" (Maechling, 2000, p. 41).
Ninety percent of the oil Japan needed to run its navy and other military programs came from outside sources, Maechling explains. The Japanese also depended on scrap iron and steel, and when the United States placed an embargo on steel, iron, and aviation fuel to Japan, tensions between the two nations grew sharply. In June and July 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt placed an embargo on all petroleum products to Japan and "ordered the freezing of all Japanese assets in the United States," it was "greeted with shock and dismay" in Japan (Maechling, p. 46). Maechling, a retired Navy officer and international lawyer, explains that the United States was simultaneously demanding that Japan withdraw from China, which further outraged Japanese leaders.
Maechling believes the Japanese attack should have been expected because of: (a) the "deterioration of relations" due to Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere; (b) the potentially "explosive consequences" of the American decision to "recklessly cut the energy lifeline of a powerful adversary"; and (c) because the Japanese military had demonstrated it was out of control by boldly seizing political power — in 1936, "fanatical young officers" had assassinated "elderly and conservative [Japanese] cabinet ministers" deemed "unworthy of Japan's imperial destiny" in order to seize power (Maechling, p. 47).
Professor Norma Field writes that Japan became trapped in its own obsession with expansion. Once it launched its imperialistic aggression, it "set in motion a logic of perpetual expansion" that made it necessary to occupy Manchuria in 1931 (Field, 1991, p. 818). In order "to safeguard the spoils of earlier battles" — and not lose face — the Japanese penetrated into the heartland of China. The only solution from that point on, Field explains, was "further expansion" into Southeast Asia and "full-fledged war with the Allied Powers," including the United States (p. 818). Field also suggests that Japan was willing to go to war with the United States because of a "half-century of national aspiration to approach parity with the Western colonizers" (p. 820).
Works Cited
Dowswell, Paul. Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941. Mankato, MN: Heinemann-Raintree Library, 2003.
EyeWitnesstoHistory.com. "Attack At Pearl Harbor, 1941 / The Japanese View." 1957. Retrieved August 26, 2011, from
Field, Norma. "Beyond Pearl Harbor." The Nation, 1991. Accessed August 24, 2011, from EBSCO.
Leavy, Patricia. Iconic Events: Media, Politics, and Power in Retelling History. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.
Maechling, Charles. "Pearl Harbor: The First Energy War." History Today 50 (2000): 41–48. Accessed August 25, 2011, EBSCO.
Tanaka, Shelly. Attack on Pearl Harbor: The True Story of the Day America Entered World War II. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2001.
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