The President of America described the attack as a day that will live in infamy.
The attack left America feeling distressed. Experiencing many casualties, families were left torn apart, not expecting such a loss, due to the fact that they weren’t even supposed to be in the war. It all came as a bit of a shock.
The reason for this attack was mainly to secure Japan’s advance into Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, executed to protect their access to natural resources, mainly oil, also due to the fact that America had restricted many of their resources.
Now having prevented any possible intervention provided by the USA, the Japanese Navy high command was certain that Britain would demand America’s help in the war if they were attacked. Ironically, President Roosevelt had deliberately moved the fleet to Hawaii to prevent any Japanese aggression against China and Europe.
Japanese leaders had had second thoughts about the bombing, but decided to go ahead with the plan anyway, with the Hull note of November 26, 11 days before the expected bombings. The reason for their determination and stubbornness was due to the fact that they had been planning it for 10 months and didn’t want to give up now, after having came so far, having been having serious training for most of 1941.
The fact that Japan was going ahead with this attack, and several other attacks around the same time in other places such as China, only showed that England and the USA were losing face, and losing the respect of Japan, with Japan completely ignoring every complaint they made.
During the second Sino-Japanese war, America and Britain had gained a lot of power over Japan, but they were steadily losing it now, as the Japan’s were attacking despite all arguments coming from the US and Britain. The two countries were also losing a lot of political power over countries that had been taken over by them; such countries seeing Japan’s actions to the contrary of what the UK wanted, was showing them that they had little actual power, they should rise up against them. With this, they lost a lot of natural resources, such as oil, an expensive a resource as now, and losing future political possibilities such as alliances with countries.
Due to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, both the USA and Britain were losing big time.
Alex Tansley.