The Path to Pearl Harbor
How Japan found itself on the brink of war in December 1941:
By the mid–1930s, much of northern China was essentially under Japanese influence. Then, on July 7, 1937, a small-scale clash between local Chinese and Japanese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge in Wanping, a small village outside Beijing, escalated. The Japanese prime minister, Prince Konoe, used the clash to make further territorial demands on China. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist government, decided that the moment had come to confront Japan rather than appease it, and full-scale war broke out between the two sides.
Author:
Source:
New York Review of Books
Published: May 19, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,543 words)