(06-20-2014 11:23 AM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  

(06-20-2014 05:53 AM)Kittonhead Wrote:  Japan never should have entered the war against the US. That never made sense why they did that.

Had they concentrated on China they could have overthrown the government there and installed a puppet while keeping Korea and Manchuria as territories.

In the long term the US probably would have gone for a friendly Japan with Korea and Manchuria that was a bulwark against Communism in Asia. It could have been the Japanese in Vietnam fighting Communism in the backyard instead of the US.

You can't run a war, even in 1930's China, without oil and metal; two things the Japanese certainly didn't have at home or in the lands they had conquered up to that point. When the Japanese invaded French Indochina Roosevelt imposed a scrap metal embargo against the Japanese and also closed the Panama Canal to their shipping. 75% of Japanese scrap metal and 95% of all copper (electrical wires) came from the U.S. In the Summer of '41 they added an oil embargo which would completely shut down the Japanese military and economy within months. That's why Nomura and Kurusu were still negotiating with Cordell Hull up to December 7th.