In 1941 the United States government did not want war in the Pacific. America had opposed Japanese military expansion ever since the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and opposition had increased as the Japanese went further into China from 1937 onward. But then Adolf Hitler took center stage and diverted American attention. The fate of the world seemed at stake as Hitler reached for the conquest of all Europe. No one could say what could stop him, but in Washington that had become the essential question.
In the Pacific, the threat was more modest, and so were the American responses-with one exception. The exception was the oil embargo that resulted when Japanese assets in the United States were frozen in July 1941. Roosevelt may not have intended to stop all oil shipments. (In those days, oil-rich America was Japan’s principal source of oil.) But as the question became public, it became clear that the American people did not want their oil sold to support Japanese military expansion. The embargo became a public act of national opposition to Japanese aggression. Yet that act was not initially understood, by the government or the people, as likely to lead to war. Roosevelt and his associates expected to take the same sort of halfway measures in support of threatened friends that were all they could manage even in the more important Atlantic.
The Japanese government saw things differently. In August and September of 1941, it concluded that the American embargo threatened Japan’s ability to make its own decisions about the future of East Asia; the Americans must end the embargo or there must be war. In the event of war, Japan’s oil could be obtained by force from the Dutch East Indies, and the American Navy must not be allowed to threaten that process. So the war should begin with a blow that would paralyze the U.S. Pacific Fleet-the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
The diplomacy that followed was of secondary significance: the central point was that the Japanese would accept no limits on their freedom of action in China, and without such limits the American embargo would stand. So the attack came, and in reply the Americans went to all-out war-against Japan and Germany both, as Hitler simplified Roosevelt’s decision by his own immediate declaration of war. Great campaigns lay ahead, but it is plain in retrospect that the result was settled by Pearl Harbor.
If we step back from this extraordinary set of events, four underlying realities are clear. First, there could be no peace for any neighbor until the government of Japan was transformed. Second, that transformation could come only after a decisive military defeat. Third, that defeat could come only from the full engagement of the forces of the United States. Fourth, the one event that could ensure that full engagement was a Japanese attack on American forces in American territory. To Japanese naval planners, the assault on Pearl Harbor was the key to the protection of Japanese southward expansion from an American flank attack. In a larger sense, it was the key to the end of Japanese militarism and the establishment of the Pacific peace we know today. By its victory, the Japanese Navy ensured that the militarists’ war would be lost. In the end, that was a good result for both great peoples.
None of this can end the many other fascinations of Pearl Harbor. We can go on debating the reasons for the American failure to be alert. We can go on respecting the daring and the operational skill of the Japanese attack. We can go on, above all, in doing honor to those who lost their lives-on that day and through the next four years-on the way to the victory that made lasting peace possible. It was a terrible day, but it had a quite wonderful result.
I know that our Japanese friends find it hard to address Pearl Harbor across their memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I agree that those atomic attacks are open to question; I have questioned them myself and so have a good many Americans, while Japanese criticism of the Japanese record from Manchuria to Pearl Harbor remains muted. I think Nagasaki was unnecessary and Hiroshima debatable, and I agree that Americans remembering the 2,500 victims of Pearl Harbor should not forget that 50 died at Hiroshima for every one at Pearl Harbor. Nonetheless, we can say for Hiroshima that it put an end to the necessary war for which Pearl Harbor was the necessary ignition.
I also know that we have important issues with Japan today, and even differences among ourselves on what those issues are. I still insist on the basic point: our two countries have a shared record of economic and political success that dwarfs our differences, and a shared experience of cooperation that proves its own great value. We can do better in our relations; each country has plenty to do about its own national behavior. But would we trade decades of peaceful progress for the decade that led to war? Do we need or expect another Pearl Harbor? The questions are absurd.
