But why did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor in the first place?The war wasn't about Pearl Harbor.
It is obvious that you know your stuff about a lot of things. What in a nutshell caused it. I would think it was a contest over who was going to exploit Asia. And Japan had ambitions of an Asian empire which the U.S. interest in the same real estate was thwarting.
Hastings,
You are essentially correct. As Japan entered the industrial age, they lacked several components necessary for effective industrial growth, namely good supplies of iron, coal, oil, and rubber, and some elbow room.
Invading Manchuria was about the iron, coal and elbow room. Indonesian was about oil and rubber. Of course while they were at it, they decided to grab everything else of interest around them from Korea to the Philippines.
Japan was attempting to build a traditional empire which monopoly control over these resources through force, and in the process deny access to other nations that previously might access them through trade.
By this time the U.S. had transistorized to a trade based empire. We didn't need to control the peoples of the world, were were happy to trade with them for the betterment of both sides. The Japanese expansion in the Pacific threaten our trading interests, and consequently, earned them an intimate relationship with the power of the industrial west courtesy of Curtis Lemay.
