What prompted Imperial Japan to go to war with the United States
In my recent post I discussed how the US export ban on helium triggered off a series of events that led to the Hindenberg disaster.
Here’s another episode from that period on the political consequences of economic statecraft.
In the 1930s, Japan’s imported 50% of its crude oil demand from the United States and 25% from the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia.) After Japan began its invasion of East Asia in mid-1941, the US first imposed a trade ban on metal and aviation fuel and froze all Japanese assets. It then embargoed all oil exports before freezing all trade with Japan. This not only squeezed Japan’s energy supplies but also cut off access to financial assets invested in the US. ::: {.aside} Van Rebrouk’s book is an eye-opener. The Dutch conduct before, during and after the war was disgraceful. The story of European atrocities in their Asian colonies in the 1940s exposes the narrative of the their being the ‘good guys’ against the bad Germans, Italians and Japanese. Unfortunately we do not have a word for the wilful crimes Western powers committed in Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Cambodia, among other places. ::: Then the London-based Dutch government-in-exile decided that it too would join the embargo, cutting Japan off from its Indonesian oil supply. As David Van Reybrouk writes in Revolusi, his excellent account of Indonesia’s emergence from colonial rule:
When the oil negotiations with the Dutch colony fell through on 17 June 1941, it was a serious economic setback, especially because Japan hoped to push on from China to Russia. On 2 July, scarcely two weeks later, high-level consultation took place in Tokyo; even Emperor Hirohito was present.
The conclusion was that Japan must continue its war on China but, in order to do so, would need to tap into the Dutch East Indies oil reserves. That meant expanding the war, if necessary, even to include the United States and the United Kingdom. [Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World, Ch 6]
Pearl Harbour was certainly a pre-emptive military strike, but contrary to the popular narrative could hardly have been unexpected. Perhaps it was the audacity that Washington did not expect, coming as it did from an Asian power it had coerced into opening up a few decades earlier.