The Japanese Attack on

Pearl Harbor as Another Oil

War

Iakovos Alhadeff

As you can read in the first 3 paragraphs of the following Wikipedia link about the

causes that led to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan, that had already invaded

China which was a U.S. ally, invaded in 1940 what was then the French Indochina

(yellow circle). The French Indochina was approximately located in the region

occupied today by Vietnam and Laos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

To retaliate, the United States imposed a restriction on oil sales to Japan, which is one

of the poorest countries in the world in terms of oil reserves, and even today it imports

almost all of the oil it consumes. At that time Japan’s was importing most of its oil

from the U.S., since most of the today’s big Middle East oil fields had not been

discovered yet. For example the first significant oil filed in Saudi Arabia was

discovered in 1938.

According to Wikipedia, the Japanese estimated that because of the American

embargo on oil exports to Japan, they could not achieve oil sufficiency for their navy

for more than 2 years, something that enhanced their plans of invading the oil rich

Dutch East Indies (blue circle), which is today’s Indonesia, and to also invade the

Philippines, which at the time was an American territory. Even today, Indonesia is the

30th richest country in the world, in terms of oil reserves, but at the time she was much

richer since most of today’s known reserves had not been discovered yet.

However the Japanese knew that the Americans would retaliate if they were to invade

Indonesia and Philippines, and they decided that destroying their Pacific Ocean fleet

would be the right strategy. On December 8 1941, 353 Japanese aircrafts attacked

Pearl Harbor and destroyed all 8 American battleships, another 8 ships of the

American Navy, and a total of 188 American military aircrafts, leaving behind 2.400

dead and 1.180 wounded Americans.

For the Pearl Harbor attack see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor