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Many people mistakenly believe that the Pacific War (known in Japan as the Greater East Asia War) began with the Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor, the base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
In fact, Japan and the United States were at war even earlier.
On July 7, 1937, someone opened fire on Japanese troops who were legally stationed there under an agreement with China.
This led to a state of war between Japan and the Chinese Nationalist Party.
The shooting was said to be the work of the Chinese Communist Party, which plotted to pit Japan and the Chinese Nationalist Party against each other, weakening both, and then gaining control of China.
The United States has long considered China to be a large capitalist market, and has seen Japan as a hindrance to its ability to freely sell American products to China.
Therefore, the United States supported Chinese Nationalist Party both implicitly and explicitly.
Around this time, Colonel Chennault, an American soldier, was appointed as an air force advisor to the nationalist partys military.
With permission from Franklin Roosevelt, Chennault organized the Flying Tigers (American Volunteer Group; AVG) in inland China.
Approximately 100 American military pilots were dispatched, and approximately 200 military personnel worked on ground maintenance.
As for fighter planes, 100 Curtiss Army P40 fighters were sent to China.
The P40 had Kuomintang markings on its wings and fuselage.
This is because Japan and the United States had not officially started war until then.
The U.S. government and the U.S. military fought against Japanese fighter planes without putting American markings on the planes, even though they were actually American fighter planes with American pilots on board.
At this time, America and Japan were already at war.
The Panay Incident occurred on December 12, 1937.
When the Japanese army attacked Nanjing, the capital of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party, an American warship and several transport ships were attacked by Japanese aircraft.
The US government used the Yangtze River to provide civil and military supplies to support Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party.
At this stage, the United States was clearly an enemy of Japan, and in a sense, Japan and the United States were at war.
After this, Wang Zhaoming, the representative of the Chinese Nationalist Party, concluded a peace agreement with the Japanese military and the Japanese government, and peace came.
However, the United States encouraged Chiang Kai-shek, a branch of the Chinese Nationalist Party, to fight against Japan.
Its purpose was to destroy the stability of Japan-led China, unify China under American leadership, and make China a major market for American products and American financial capital.
On July 25, 1941, the U.S. government under Franklin Roosevelt declared a freeze on Japanese assets in the United States.
On August 1, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt banned oil exports from the United States to Japan.
When this happened, Japan was cornered.
At the time, Japan depended on the United States for 70% of its oil.
If that happens, Japan will be destroyed economically and militarily unless it somehow improves its relationship with the United States.
Then, on November 27, 1941, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, with the support of Franklin Roosevelt, presented Japan with a letter of demand.
The conditions for the Japan-U.S. reconciliation were, first, that the Japanese military completely abandon its current occupied territories and hand over all occupied Chinese territory to Chiang Kai-shek.
Japan thought it was close to making peace with the Chiang Kai-shek government when the American government made this proposal.
Under these circumstances, the Japanese government and military wanted to take control of Dutch Indonesia and secure its oil supply without provoking the American military as much as possible.
The Cabinet decided on a strategy to capture Dutch Indonesia, secure its oil supply, and then secure British territories Singapore, Myanmar, and Ceylon, and force Britain to surrender.
However, Admiral Yamamoto of the Navy announced that he wanted to attack Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Yamamoto then said that if I was not allowed to attack Pearl Harbor, I would resign from the military.
The government and Japanese military had no choice but to authorize Admiral Yamamoto to attack Pearl Harbor.
One theory is that Admiral Yamamoto planned and proposed the attack on Pearl Harbor to intentionally put Japan at a disadvantage.
The Japanese Navy attacked with carrier-based planes in the early morning hours of December 7, 1941, American time, but the only thing they found was an old battleship built during World War I.
None of the American aircraft carriers Lexington, Saratoga, Yorktown, Enterprise, or Hornet were at Pearl Harbor.
Also absent were the state-of-the-art battleships North Carolina and Washington.
What does this mean?
The United States had moved its Pacific Fleet headquarters from San Diego to Hawaii.
However, there were no main ships there, only old ships from World War I.
Common sense dictates that the U.S. government knew that Japanese aircraft carriers would attack Pearl Harbor.
And, at that timing, the main aircraft carrier and the most advanced battleship escaped.
Even more fortunately for the United States, the Japanese carrier task force did not attack port facilities, did not attack civilian warehouses, and almost never attacked military facilities.
If the Japanese military had wanted to, they could have destroyed the port's function in a second or third attack, rendering it unusable for several months.
However, the Japanese military did not attack Hawaii's port facilities, did not attack its infrastructure, and did not attack its warehouses.
Five American aircraft carriers and two state-of-the-art battleships were unharmed.
In reality, the Japanese side simply sank an old warship in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and achieved no results.
The operation was a complete failure.
In conclusion, the Pacific War, or as Japan officially called it, the Greater East Asia War, had begun before Pearl Harbor.
Japan and the United States were already at war at least as early as December 12, 1937, when a Japanese plane collided with an American transport ship delivering supplies to Chiang Kai-shek on the Yangtze River near Nanjing.
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