SDHF Newsletter No.51 The Road from Perry’s Arrival to Pearl Harbor

The Road from Perry’s Arrival to Pearl Harbor: Why America started a War against Japan? By Henry Scott Stokes, former Tokyo Bureau Chief of The New York Times

December 9, 2012

Japan-American war officially started on December 8 (Japan time), 1941, 71 years ago, by the Japanese naval attack on Pearl Harbor. However, deep historical review of this war leads to a conclusion that it was rather America which caused the war basically.
While there are a number of historically proximal events that culminated into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, one should also consider distal events. Mr. Henry Stokes’s this 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 suggests that the true purpose of Perry’s visit was to secure a permanent base for the US Navy. 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. Here is his essay;

Summary:　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/93_S2.pdf
Full text:　 https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/93_S4.pdf

Questions are welcome.

Sincerely,

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Secretary General
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact