Japan’s brutal military expansion in East Asia and the Pacific pitted the strength of the United States against a less industrialized and smaller country far away from American shores. The Japanese were dominant in that part of the world as they felt destined by culture and history to command what they believed was rightly theirs. From China to Russia, Japanese aggressive policies had overtaken Manchuria, Indo-China, and various Pacific islands. They saw this portion of the world as their sphere of influence and American or other foreign control would be unacceptable.
The Japanese decision to go to war with the United States in late 1941 was a product of a 50 years of political, economic, and cultural tensions between the two countries, in addition to the American’s controlling the flow of imported Japanese oil, a commodity that Japan needed if it were to continue its push towards Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. There appeared no doubt Japanese military moves were a piecemeal, systematic approach to overtake and dominate the whole Pacific. The United States was the only power to hamper Japan’s strategy of a New Order in East Asia, and if Japan waited too long, she would not have the reserves its aircraft and warships needed to wage attacks.