Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īt dawn on Sunday, December 7, the carriers turned into the wind to launch their planes amid heavy swells. To avoid detection, the carrier task force observed radio silence and followed a northerly path to Hawaii, a route that was little traveled and subject to winter storms, which thwarted aerial reconnaissance. Five days later Emperor Hirohito authorized war on the United States, and Yamamoto sent Nagumo a coded message to proceed with the attack: “Climb Mount Niitaka.” Shielded by battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, the carriers were dispatched by Yamamoto on November 26 as peace talks in Washington were breaking down.
Chuichi Nagumo’s Mobile Force to launch more than 400 warplanes of the First Air Fleet against Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto drew heavily on that investment when he assigned six big aircraft carriers of Vice Adm. No nation invested more in naval air power before World War II than Japan. On December 1, Admiral Yamamoto gave aircraft carriers the go-ahead to bomb Pearl Harbor-one of several blows delivered simultaneously in a vast Japanese offensive that expanded World War II enormously.
President Franklin Roosevelt declined to make concessions under the gun. Talks in Washington faltered after deciphered cables from Tokyo indicated that Japan would attack if a deal was not reached by November 30. National ArchivesĪfter Japan took all of Indochina in late July and was subjected to an American oil embargo, Emperor Hirohito asked Prime Minister Hideki Tojo-a general committed to imperial expansion-to make one last effort to avert war. On July 2, Tokyo authorized “preparations for war with Great Britain and the United States.”Įspionage and other intelligence gathering went into the making of the Japanese charts of Pearl Harbor indicating the position of U.S. French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies were fairly easy targets, but the British would not yield Malaya and Burma without a fight, and their American allies would have to be dealt with as well. They did not rule out invading Russia if the German advance on Moscow succeeded, but they saw more to be gained by seizing those Asian colonies and their resources, which they hoped to use to subdue China and sustain a vast empire they called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. When Germany invaded Russia in late June 1941, Japanese leaders debated whether to join their Axis ally and attack the Soviets-who had defeated Japanese troops along the northern border of Manchukuo in 1939-or proceed with plans to target European colonies in the Far East.
#STRATEGIC WAR WORLD MAP FULL#
This new book tells the full dramatic story of WWII through maps, including rare documents used by both the Axis and Allies and more than 100 new maps created by National Geographic. In honor of Pearl Harbor Day, we are publishing an excerpt from National Geographic's Atlas of World War II.
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