Japan's Decision to Attack Pearl Harbor

This research paper analyzes the factors which led the Imperial Japanese Government to strike southwards in late 1941 and to launch its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, rather than to attack the Soviet Union to its north.

During the 1930s, expansion-minded militarists and radical civilian ultranationalists came to dominate the Japanese state.

Since the turn of the century, Japanese relations with the Russians were intermittently hostile. Elements in the Japanese Army with considerable domestic political support favored Japan's northward expansion. Border warfare erupted in 1937-1939 which was triggered by officers in Japan's Manchurian (Kwantung) Army which proved to be no match for the Red Army. Meanwhile, Japan's military interventions, first in Manchuria and later in north China, ripened in 1937-1938 into full-scale war with the Chinese Nationalist regime.

Unable or unwilling to extricate itself from the Chinese quagmire, the Japanese government undertook in the years 1937-1941 a major army and naval buildup. In the summer/fall of 1940 Japan committed itself in collaboration with the European Axis powers to the establishment of a New Order in Asia which required access to the oil and other raw materials and resources of Southeast Asia. Japan's dependence on imported oil and the rapid blitzkrieg victories of Nazi Germany in Western Europe which rendered Western colonial possessions in Southeast Asia vulnerable to Japanes