Essay Plans For Conflict In The Pacific

Resource Description

Conflict in the Pacific: Essay Plans per Syllabus Dot Point

• strategic and political reasons for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the US response

Potential Question: “Japan little choice but to bomb pearl Harbour if it wanted to achieve its foreign policy aims in the Pacific”

To what extent is this statement accurate?

Thesis: 

• There were many strategic and political reasons for the Bombing of Pearl Harbour which in turn enabled the Japanese imperialists to achieve their imperialist foreign policy aims at the end of 1941 which revolved around their expansion in to the South Pacific and South East Asia. However despite the effectiveness of this strategy in achieving their foreign policy aims, it was short lived in that within then next two years, they would be lose their strategic initiative and foreign policy aims. From this, the statement above can be seen as accurate in a short-term sense, but invalid for Japans long term goals. 

SHORT TERM DID HELP ACHIEVE GOAL OF GREAT EAST ASIA CO PRESPOERITY SPHERE

Paragraph 1:

• Japans foreign policy revolved around an aggressive imperialist attitude whereby they wanted to take control over the entire Pacific and many parts in South East Asia. 
• Japan bombed pearl Harbour for many reasons including; they couldn’t fight war with China as they were being denied Resources from the US after the expansion into Manchuria and China from 1937
• Japan was given two choices; Withdraw from China or look into SEA and the SWP to find resources that would resolve their economic crisis
• They would look to Malaya for Rubber and Dutch East Indies for Oil
• In order to do this they would have to eliminate the only threat in the Pacific at the time which was the Americans and their position at Pearl Harbour 
• British not a threat – occupied by Nazis
• Japan knew they could not knock out Americans from war entirely so instead they decided to delay them – This backed their decision to Bomb Pearl Harbour 
• This is the justification behind Japans reasoning to bomb pearl Harbour which would from their point of view be critical to enabling them to expand and achieve their foreign policy aims of expanding into SEA and the Pacific