Admiral Yamamoto, to name one, caught sight of how the war would unfold. With war being seen as inevitable, the leaders (rightly) decided that the only way to beat the US was to strike first and strike hard. Forget Chicago, Japan didn't have the logistics for Hawaii. The mistake was not military but political. Japan knew that American industrial centers could be converted into the production of war materiel. Yamamoto told his political superiors: “If you insist that we really do it, you may trust us for the perfect execution of a breath-taking show of naval victories for the first half-year or full year. An invasion would have required a supply line as long as the Americans had to build going the other way and take nearly as long.The Pearl Harbor attack was simply a flank clearing exercise intended to shock the US into giving Japan free run of the Pacific.The attack was a surprise because the Americans didnt grasp the outrage in Japan resulting from their oil and steel embargo.Japan … Japan erred by attacking Pearl Harbor—then it erred in how its aviators attacked Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Roosevelt called the attack “a day which will live in infamy,” and the American … And attacking West basically meant having to attack the US. Now, Japanese strategists had seen the United States as the next likely enemy in the Pacific since shortly after the turn of the century. And the repercussions were hardly unexpected. Why did Japan do it? • And after the sleeping giant had started awake, the Japanese leadership failed to walk back its ambitious political and strategic aims. As we afford our hallowed forebears the remembrance they deserve, let’s also try to learn from what transpired here seventy-five years ago, and see what it tells us about America’s future as an Asia-Pacific sea power. Pearl Harbor was attacked after the US passed economic sanctions on Japan after hearing about their war crimes committed in China. In fairness, that was the first real example of America's political will when attacked. And even if it did awaken the American giant, it would have avoided filling him with what Yamamoto called a “terrible resolve” to crush Japan. That left the United States Navy as the next big thing for Japan’s navy. They thought it was a good idea because it was surprise attack and they thought they could beat they because of the ships and weapons they destroyed. but IJN dropped the bomb while negotiations were still happening. Some of them nearly had a fit. Every time Japan extended its defense perimeter eastward or southward was like extending the radius of a circle: it expanded the sea area Japan’s fleet had to police by the square of the distance from the Japanese home islands, which lay at the empire’s center. The Western allies were limiting exports of goods such as rubber and oil to Japan which it needed to continue its war in China. So Yamamoto was right: Japan had to win quickly or not at all. Pearl Harbor was attacked after the US passed economic sanctions on Japan after hearing about their war crimes committed in China.