U.S. Japan
On December 7, 1941, Japan launched an assault on the U.S. Naval Headquarters for the Pacific Fleet, located at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This assault led directly to the open war between the U.S. And Japan, which several years later would culminate in the U.S. invaded Japan in the Okinawa archipelago and dropping two atomic bombs on Japan. The events that led to the U.S. invasion of Japan are therefore discussed on the macro, meso and micro levels.
Macro-Level Factors
If the U.S. invasion of Japan was spurred by Pearl Harbor, then one has to look at the causes of that attack to understand how the U.S. invasion came about. Japan was one of the world's great imperial powers during the decades prior to World War Two. After the rise of Emperor Hirohito in the 1920s, Japan embarked on a mission, believing that it could and should control "Asia, the South Seas and eventually the four corner of the world." While civilian Japan was in chaos in the early 1930s, suffering the effects of the Great Depression, the army unilaterally invaded Manchuria and set up a puppet state there. By 1937, Japan occupied Beijing, and won a critical victory at Shanghai. The Japanese then turned their attention to the Dutch East Indies (today, Indonesia), in order to meet Japan's need for oil (History, 2014).
It was against this backdrop that Japan sought to sweet across the Pacific. The U.S. had significant military interest in the Pacific, including a significant military presence in the Philippines. However, the Navy had already deemed Japan enough of a threat to U.S. interests in the Pacific to move its fleet to Hawaii. The U.S. had already enacted an embargo against Japan, a move intended to reduce Japan's access to oil and steel. Japan and the U.S. had engaged in some negotiations about the embargo, but Japan realized that in order to fulfill its ambitions, it needed to get the U.S. out of the way. A strategy was drawn up to attempt to destroy a significant portion of the U.S. Pacific fleet in one go, at Pearl Harbor (Rosenberg, 2014).
Japan had hoped that the attack would cow America, but it did the opposite. America declared war on Japan instead, an easy decision given Japan's alliance with Nazi Germany and the Pearl Harbor attack. The U.S. had been hoping to that point to sit out the war as a neutral, but it was now going to be impossible. Of key importance here is that America's aircraft carriers were not at port on the day of the attacks as they were out on maneuvers. While this made Pearl Harbor more vulnerable, it also spared those aircraft carriers from destruction. Destroying the aircraft carriers was a critical element of the Japanese strategy, so failing to do so was a major problem now that the two countries were going to war.
The U.S. would come to win the war in the Pacific. It had pushed Japan back, island by island, in brutal fighting. The final push came at a point in time when the U.S. was calling for Japanese surrender. The problem was that Japan did not want to surrender. The U.S. invaded Okinawa, a Japanese archipelago, and it was felt that they might have to invade the Japanese mainland in order to secure victory, as the Japanese seemed unwilling to surrender. On April 1, 1945, the invasion of Japan began, to seek a final resolution to the conflict. The Japanese soldiers were decimated by June and the U.S. held Okinawa, but there was still no surrender and an attack on the Japanese mainland would be necessary (Tsukiyama, 2006). This was known as Operation Downfall, but was complicated by a variety of factors, such as the lack of available landing beaches in Japan, which made the mainland easier to defend (HistoryLearning, 2014).
The final push came via the atomic bomb. Despite repeated setbacks, the Japanese refused calls to surrender. The U.S. civilians and forces were weary from four years of war, and the U.S. had now developed the atomic bomb. There were several macro-level factors that led to that final move of the war. The first is that Japan had 2 million man strong army on the Japanese mainland, enough to make anybody think twice about invading. The second was that the U.S.S.R. had just declared war on Japan, and following its capture of all of Eastern Europe, that the atomic bomb was to send a signal to the Soviets. Against this backdrop, the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima first, then Nagasaki, thereby ending the U.S. invasion of Japan and the Second World War (U.S. History, 2014).
Meso-Level Analysis
A meso-level analysis is that of tribe, clan, community or state, so groups smaller than nations. This level of analysis is trickier, because much of the rationale...
Even the established chain of command was seen as being too inhuman to the conscripts because of any arbitrary order from a superior. Conclusion In conclusion, this report focused on the frontline battlefield experiences of both American and Japanese soldiers as depicted in the semibiographical but fictional work "The Naked and the Dead" by Norman Mailer and the autobiographical account of World War II experienced by Ooka Shohei in the "Fires
World War II in the Context of History and Modern Warfare The 20th Century was simultaneously a Century of exceptional advancement and unsurpassed violence. Why was this a Century of incomparable violence? The quick answer is that we, as a human race, used many of our advancements to become far more efficient killers; where advancements of prior centuries allowed armies to kill tens of thousands, the advancements of the 20th Century
Gradually, though, the war effort eroded the practical and theoretical underpinnings of racism in the United States. The war stimulated the domestic economy, particularly in the industrial and manufacturing sectors. Jobs were opening up rapidly, and because so many white men were fighting the war, many black men were available to work. "For black workers World War II opened up opportunities that had never before existed," (O'Neil 1). The
World War II -- a Catastrophic Event that Changed the World What was the most crucial and important cause of World War II? It would be fair to look to the Nazis and Hitler's fanaticism as the most crucial and important cause of World War II. And certainly historians and scholars have few doubts as to Hitler's accountability in the tragic, bloody and catastrophic slaughter in Europe. But what were the events
In this regard, the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers led to many antagonisms to the European colonial dominance across the world. In this regard, Britain and France had a lot of challenges in maintaining their colonies across the world and had to decolonize most of these colonies in order to cut costs. Moreover, many people in Britain felt that it was high time
Diversity -- with the exception of homophobia -- was beginning to be commonly accepted and praised. Technology -- such as the use of DNA in criminology and the introduction of the PC -- was becoming more prominent in the lives of everyday Americans. In the Cold War, President Gorbachev asked for openness and economic freedom, while President Reagan asked him to tear down the Berlin Wall, which he did.
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now