- Pearl Harbor, October, 1940.
Admiral James Richardson cables the chief
of Naval operations
demanding to know why the heck he's here.
In April, the US Pacific Fleet had left its home base
in California to conduct exercises in the Pacific.
Then one month in
he'd received orders to issue a press release stating
that he was remaining at Pearl Harbor on Naval business.
He's furious.
He has no business here, and what he'd been told
would be a two week stay has stretched to six months.
Pearl Harbor is a forward station.
It doesn't have the facilities to properly house, supply
or repair the fleet.
Re-enlistments are down, ammunition and fuel short,
morale has collapsed.
Why is his fleet being left to rot?
Finally, he gets an answer.
President Roosevelt wants the fleet
in Pearl Harbor as a deterrent
against Japanese attack in the Dutch East Indies
and to give America leverage in diplomatic negotiations.
The US specific fleet is now a pawn in a high stakes game,
one where Roosevelt unknowingly is running out of time.
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Hey everyone, quick note up top.
This series will be drawing on two previous shows we've done
about the history of Japan.
Of course, you don't need to have watched them
but we're also not gonna repeat some info
on previous topics much, so if you want extra background
or just to brush up, you can check out our completed series
on the end of the Samurai and Japanese militarism.
Links to those in the description.
But now onto the infamy.
December 7th, 1941 is one of the most famous dates
in world history.
The day that the Empire of Japan
attacked the US Naval Station at Pearl Harbor
bringing an unaware America into World War II.
That is traditionally how it's told
in textbooks and documentaries, but it's not the full story
or even in many ways, the real story
of how and why these countries came to blows.
Because mere weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor
diplomats were still negotiating for peace
and even proposing that Roosevelt
and Japanese Prime Minister Prince Konoe meet face to face.
In fact, the road to December 7th was a crooked one
fraught with tense meetings, cultural misunderstandings
and dismissed warnings.
A surprise attack that remained a surprise,
even though the US State Department had decrypted
and was reading Japanese diplomatic cables
about the operation.
But to trace the roots of this conflict
we have to go back much further than 1940.
We're heading back to the late 19th century when both Japan
and the United States emerged as Pacific Empires.
Both were late to Pacific colonialism.
By the 1870s Spanish colonies in the Philippines
and the Marianas were already three centuries old
as were Dutch possessions in modern Indonesia.
Heck, the British had been
in Australia since the late 18th century
but the US and Japan, by contrast, had been constrained
by internal factors and only began to scramble
for territory in the late 1800s.
Japan, its centuries long isolation ended by the expedition
of American Admiral Perry,
wanted to be counted among the great powers,
and that meant establishing a colonial empire.
It started slowly at first
with the addition of islands such as Okinawa
that it considered part of its historical borders.
Then it moved on to Taiwan, Korea, and Sakhalin Island.
Spoils of the firsts Sino-Japanese War
and Russo-Japanese War.
The United States had a similar delay
since it had only become a Pacific power
in the 1840s when the Mexican American War
won it the Southwest and California
and a treaty with the UK seated it, the Oregon country
yet its first official forays
into exerting power in its new Pacific domain.
Like Perry's expedition to Japan were put
on hold during the Civil War.
But even then
us expansionism continued because US interests
in the Pacific were not initially territorial
but rather commercial and religious.
Merchants trying to strike it rich
in the China trade, established trading enclaves.
And American whalers spread across the Pacific
from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
Plus New England missionaries set down
on nearly every island and port city
from Honolulu to Yokohama.
So though not officially part
of the US government or its plans
this American presence forced the State Department to set
up embassies and consulates
at a rapid pace to serve these Americans abroad.
Not to mention the purchase
of Alaska in 1867 also increased American reach.
But both the whaling industry and the China trade
were dependent on reliable resupply stations,
especially for the coal increasingly used to power ships.
And since the best ports in the mid Pacific
such as the Kingdom of Hawaii imposed high taxes
on refueling, the US began looking for alternatives.
It first claimed Midway Island in uninhabited atoll
that was part of the Hawaiian island chain in 1859.
But the first efforts to dredge it
into a useful harbor ended in disaster when
the project failed and a naval vessel wrecked on return.
So the US Navy began looking to a more suitable location.
After all, would it not be helpful to set
up a naval station inside the kingdom of Hawaii?
In 1875 during the rain of King Kalakaua
the Hawaiian government signed a free trade agreement
with the United States deepening the already
largely American presence in Hawaii.
But upon the agreements renewal in 1887, America insisted
in negotiations that the US Navy get exclusive
rights to use an underdeveloped location
as a coaling and repair station.
The place, a pristine bay of several locks
with lush oyster beds would come to be called Pearl Harbor.
Yet Pearl was inferior
to the nearby commercial port of Honolulu Harbor
which could accept large deep draft ships.
By contrast, Pearl's entrance was shallow and mostly blocked
by coral reef with only a small entrance that had been cut
by a native Hawaiian chief.
And Congress didn't really wanna shell
out the money to develop it further.
But then in 1898, America's posture in the Pacific changed.
In the wake of the Spanish American war,
a wave of empire building politicians looked
to the Pacific no longer for commerce or conversion,
but now territorial expansion.
In 1893, a group of American businessmen
and Hawaiian subjects of American descent staged a coup
against the Hawaiian monarchy with the goal
of annexing the islands to the United States.
However, when newly inaugurated President Grover Cleveland
blocked annexation, the coup planners briefly
formed a republic to wait
for the US to elect an administration
with a more expansionist mindset.
And they got what they wanted in President William McKinley.
See, when the United States took over Manila Bay
in 1898 as part of the Spanish American War
it was clear to the McKinley administration
that the Philippines would not be liberated
but made a territory of the United States.
And needing a way station to
support America's Asian territory
McKinley gladly accepted the offer
of Hawaiian annexation as well
as seizing the formerly Spanish Guam
and claiming Wake Island.
Within months
the US had established a trans-specific empire
with a reliable system of trade routes and way stations.
Development work began at Pearl Harbor
with the Navy commencing dredging operations
so it could finally accommodate large ships.
And while the first dry dock collapsed
in a 1913 engineering disaster, by 1919
Pearl Harbor finally became a functioning naval station.
A functioning naval station
that Japan looked on with unease.
After all, they've been thrust into this modern world
by a visiting American fleet, and now they had
the potential to have one at their doorstep.
The combination of Pearl Harbor
and the Philippines represented a new potentially
game changing threat, allowing the US to project naval power
across the Pacific and into Asia.
But despite a few diplomatic incidents
things remained largely cordial between the US and Japan.
The two fought on the same side during World War I
with Japan further expanding its colonial possessions
in the Pacific Islands
gaining a mandate over German colonies after the war.
Yet that was where things started to sour.
During the negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles
Japan let a push for a statement
on racial equality in the treaty
that the US knocked down.
Similarly, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922
meant to limit the size of fleets
to prevent another arms race.
And World War constrained Japan
to having only three capital ships
for every five the US and Britain possessed.
While the London Naval Conference of 1930 loosened
this ratio on heavy cruisers making it 10 to seven
it was still rightly seen
as an attempt to constrain Japanese naval power.
It seriously inflamed both international relations
between the two countries as well
as fueling hard line militarists parties in Japan.
And in 1931 things shifted again when Japanese officers
staged the Mukden Incident using a false flag bomb attack
on a rail line as a pretext to invade Chinese Manchuria.
US diplomats at the League of Nations
attempted to stop the invasion
by invoking a Peace Pact Japan and China had signed in 1928.
Yeah, that had no effect.
So declaring that Japan's actions
had voided the Washington Naval Treaty,
Secretary of State Henry Stimson announced
that the US would no longer be bound by the arms agreement.
A new naval arms race in the Pacific had begun
and its conclusion ran a straight line to 1941
right to the US Pacific Fleet Languishing at Pearl Harbor
which will talk about next week.
- Yeah, about that.
I hate calling myself out, kind of live on the internet
but actually, narrator voice Matt
I was about to start watching EP two
of Path to Pearl Harbor right now over on Nebula, so.
- Wait,
what are you talking about casual, Matt?
It's already out over there.
How the heck does that work?
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Our by creators for creators streaming service.
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Everyone knows the tagline by now
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- Wait, let me see that.
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Don't forget the original podcast and videos us Matts made.
- Yeah, I'm pretty sure they know all about those by now.
Though I will say
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