osevelt's diplomatic priorities was avoiding conflict with Japan by limiting any danger of a confrontation" (6). When the Japanese wantonly sunk the American gunboat Panay in the Yangtze River in December 1937, the United States accepted Japan's apology.
The objectives of Japan's militarists progressively became more unlimited in the 1930s and their power and influence in the government in Tokyo grew stronger. They were apprehensive over the rise of Chinese nationalism and the united front between the Chinese Nationalist Government headed by Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) headed by Mao Tse-tung (Mao) which was announced in early 1937. Spence says
Japan's goal in its Chinese operations was to win an extensive base of natural resources that would fuel further industrial development . . . and to expand the 'new order in Asia' . . . There was no intention of tying down the cream of the Japanese army in a protracted occupation of all China (451-452).
As, however, the Japanese army drove more deeply into China, forcing the Chinese government to withdraw to the interior in 1938-1939, Japanese national prestige became inextricably entangled with the subjugation of Chinese resistance. In 1939-1940, Japan formed a puppet Chinese government in Nanking and made some attempts without success to negotiate peace with China which would leave it in control of the richest part of the country. Consistently victorious over Chiang's inferior forces, the Japanese found themselves increasingly drawn into a long battle of attrition in China's vast interior.
Meanwhile, Japan's terror bombings and atrocities in China's cities together with the march of the Axis powers in Europe was gradually wearing down isolationist sentiment in the United States. According to Schaller, "during 1938 the tide of opinion reversed and China emerged as . . . a symbol of American-sponsored resistance to Japanese aggression" (17)...