The Road from Perry’s Arrival to Pearl Harbor
Abstract
Abstract: The Road from Perry’s Arrival to Pearl Harbor:Why America started a War against Japan?
While there are a number of historically proximal events that culminated into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, one should also consider distal events. The current article suggests that the journey to Pearl Harbor began with the arrival of Commodore Mathew Perry and his ships into Edo Bay on July 8, 1853. Based on the Japanese perspective of this intrusion, one could conclude that a conflict between Japan, as the soon-to-be first independent Asian nation to industrialize, and America, a white nation with an evangelical foreign policy, was perhaps inevitable.
The article gives an overview of European rule over Asian colonies, clearly showing why native peoples saw the Japanese as liberators during the Great East Asian War. Again, perhaps it was inevitable, given the injustice perpetuated by Europeans in Asian countries, that a clash would occur between European colonialists and Japan. While Japan suffered defeat, Asian countries rose up and declared independence from their European masters. Thus, Japan offered hope in the midst of tragedy.