World War II Trucks and Tanks by John Norris

Author:John Norris [Norris, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-09-29T21:00:00+00:00

Pearl Harbor

By 1941 it was becoming increasingly clear to many people that it was only a question of time before Japan entered the war as a full signatory of the Tripartite Pact alongside its allies Italy and Germany. Japan had actually been engaged in hostilities against China since the invasion of 1937 and fought brief but bloody border engagements with the Russians. Relations between America and Japan had been deteriorating for some time and finally, on 7 December 1941, Japan used aircraft flying from aircraft carriers to bomb the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor, thereby showing the world what it was capable of. Japanese forces rapidly expanded across the Pacific to invade other territories such as Borneo, Timor and Malaya. Japanese aircraft bombed the British colonies of Singapore and Hong Kong in the early hours of the morning of 8 December. President Roosevelt condemned the attack on Pearl Harbor and on 8 December addressed Congress and called it ‘a date which will live in infamy’. Britain reacted to the attacks by declaring war on Japan later the same day. Four days after the Pearl Harbor attack, 11 December 1941, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on America. Hitler had unwittingly made an enemy of this mighty industrial nation. He would have done well to heed the prophetic words spoken by the Japanese Admiral Isiroku Yamamoto, who said after the Pearl Harbor attack: ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.’ America would indeed become the ‘arsenal of Democracy’ as Roosevelt had declared, and in terms of the armoury of the Allies, it would change the entire course of the war.

When Winston Churchill first heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor he could scarcely contain himself because he knew that with America as an ally the defeat of Germany was almost certain. In February that year Churchill had broadcast an impassioned speech calling for America to ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job’. As he later wrote after the war in the multi-volume work The Second World War: ‘So we had won after all!’ He continued in the same work by writing: ‘No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States on our side was to be the greatest joy.’ It had taken a dreadful act of war to push America into the fray, but he knew that it also meant survival. Churchill travelled to Washington, where between 24 December 1941 and 14 January 1942 he conducted a series of talks with Roosevelt in what is referred to as the Arcadia Conference. Here they agreed to combine all resources at their disposal to make the defeat of Germany their main priority. The effect was almost immediate as the great industrial might of the country shifted into producing tanks, guns and planes for the battles that lay ahead. America’s entry into the war also gave Britain, which had been standing alone against Germany for eighteen months, another much-needed ally.

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