|
|
On December 7, 1941, one of the largest American military defeats in history occurred. Most of the United States Naval Pacific Fleet was destroyed and thousands of soldiers were killed or wounded, all before 9:00 A.M. that Sunday morning. The forces stationed there did not have any knowledge of the coming attack, mostly because of their superiors’ ignorance, but partially because of the military strategies of their Japanese opponents. Although a string of events earlier that morning all pointed to an attack, the United States forces were not ready because they did not believe the Japanese would ever directly attack American soil. Prior to 1941, World War II saw little American military intervention. After the fall of France to German invasion, President Franklin Roosevelt promised his country that no American troops would be sent to Europe to aid in the battle against Hitler and the Nazis. This statement made Roosevelt the target of much criticism, even from his closest advisors. The President’s response to these accusations was that he did not want to be looked down upon by the public. However, Roosevelt knew that Britain could not win the war without America. Two oceans to the east, Japan was deeply seeded in a war of its own. Japanese forces were concentrated on the Chinese front in an attempt to expand their boundaries and gain access to new supplies of natural resources, something scarce in the Japanese homeland. As a result of Japan’s unpopular declaration of war on China, the United States implemented an embargo on fuel supplies.
|
