We can run wild for six months or maybe a year, but after that, I have utterly no confidence.
— Vice Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Following the Mukden Incident and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Chinese and Japanese forces occasionally skirmished along the new border, until Japan invaded in 1937, causing the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands to impose crippling sanctions.
With the European powers distracted by the war with Nazi Germany, the Japanese government, guided by Osami Nagano and Isoroku Yamamoto, came up with a plan. If the US fleet could be crippled in Pearl Harbor, then they could take large areas of land, including the vital oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, and fight a defensive war of attrition that would (in their minds) lead the…
