Japan's Role in World War 2

Hank Wu

Japan’s Goal for World War II: China
If Japan can take China and control it, they’ll have all the resources they’ll need for the next 100 years.
China is so big, and it’s so hard for Japan to control, that it takes way too many resources for Japan to actually control China.
1937: Japanese Invasion of China
1931: Pearl Harbor
1945: Hiroshima
Japan’s Vicious Cycle:
Japan invades China. In order to keep fighting in China, Japan needs more resources (food, ammunition, fuel, and parts).
Japan invades northern French Indochina for resources. This is a French colony. U.S. institutes an embargo on military parts (which means America won’t sell them parts). This says to the Japanese that the U.S. is very unhappy.
Japan invades southern French Indochina for rubber. -U.S. institutes an oil embargo (at the time, the U.S. supplied 90% of Japanese oil).
Japan wants the Dutch East Indies (aka Indonesia) because it has a lot of oil, but the U.S. fleet is in the way
The Bombing of Pearl Harbor (12/7/1941):
Goals:
Cripple the U.S. Fleet (Navy: Ships)- This was partially successful. It causes a 6 month delay, and the U.S. must undergo a 6 month rebuilding period before the U.S. has enough ships to go to war with Japan.
This is controversial because some U.S. Fleets were gone during the bombing, and we know for sure that the Japanese Code was broken and a message regarding Pearl Harbor being bombed was decoded by Americans. We don’t know whether F.D.R. knew about this or not, and allowed the bombing to occur in order to push the American public to go to war and not risk revealing to the Japanese that we had broken their code.
Scare the U.S. out of getting into the war.- This backfires dramatically. Instead of intimidating the U.S. out of the war, it encourages them to go to war and the U.S. declares war within 33 minutes.
In order to defend against U.S. attack, Japan takes islands throughout the pacific (defensive perimeter around Japan and China).
Turning Point in the Pacific: Battle of Midway (1942)
U.S. sinks all four of the Japanese aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers were very crucial, and at this point the U.S. had won the war.
U.S. Goal: Get Within Bombing Range of Japan.
Island-Hopping Campaign: Like leapfrog, the U.S. bypasses unimportant islands and focuses on key islands that will get it close to Japan. Achieves its goal- U.S. bomber bases near Japan.

Conventional (Non-Nuclear) Bombing Campaign: Mostly destroys a lot of important Japanese cities and military targets.
May 1945: Hitler commits suicide and Germany surrenders.
By June, the Japanese are trying to surrender.
BUT: The Japanese Emperor was treated as a god in their society and their one condition was that the Emperor has to be allowed to live.
The Hiroshima Myth: The atomic bomb saved American (and Japanese) lives.
July: The Potsdam Conference
Conference of Allied Leaders.
The conference was supposed to happened earlier, but it was postponed until July 17th by the U.S. The reason it was postponed because July 16th was The Trinity Test (the world’s first successful nuclear test) because we wanted to go into the conference knowing whether we had nuclear weapons or not.
The Potsdam Declaration (demands for the Japanese surrender) was edited after the Trinity Test.
Rough Draft (1st draft): Demands the Japanese surrender and guarantees the life of the emperor. Paragraph 12 is the paragraph that guaranteed the life of the emperor (and is very symbolic about this controversy).
Final Draft: Implies the emperor might be treated as a war criminal.
Most Likely Reason that the U.S. dropped Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: To demonstrated the bomb to the soviets.