13. Japan Miscalculates What Declaring War on the US Meant
1941 saw Japan bogged down in a quagmire of a war in China. It also faced American and British economic sanctions, including an asset freeze that crippled its trade. In one of history’s worst decisions, the Japanese government decided to solve those problems by going to war with the United States. The prelude to that decision was American displeasure with Japanese aggression in China, first by seizing Manchuria in 1931, followed by an outright invasion of China in 1937. Back then, the US had sentimental ties to China, in addition to economic ones, due to decades of American missionary work, and there was a powerful “China Lobby” in America. 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.
The US responded by enacting severe sanctions that bit deep. Until Japan withdrew from China and French-Indochina, America imposed an embargo on the sale of products vital to Japan, particularly oil, and froze Japanese assets in the US. The British and Dutch, whose Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia) oil fields fueled Japan’s economy, followed suit. That cost Japan 75% of her overseas trade, and 90% of her oil. The loss of trade was bad enough, but Japan only had enough oil reserves for 3 years of peacetime consumption, or 18 months of wartime consumption. Once the oil reserves ran out, Japan’s economy would simply crash. That presented Japan with a dilemma: bow to the sanctions, or go to war to seize the resources, particularly oil from the Dutch East Indies and rubber from British Malaya, that her economy needed?
