What was the goal of Japan when attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941?

Question

Did the Japaneese really think they could win a war (including support from Italy and Germany) against the United States?

Answer 1

The objective of the attack was to render the US fleet in the Pacific usless. Japan's goal was to creat a buffer zone around Japan that could withstand American attacks. The hope was that the war would prove too costly to Americans that they would lose the stomach for war and sue for peace allowing Japan to retain what they had conquered.

Side note, don't let people fool you into thinking that the attack was focused solely on carriers. In 1941 the carrier was seen as an equal to the battleship, not superior yet. Remember the Bismarck was tacticly sound with the theory of hte day. Use carrier and her aircraft to damage the battlefleet then use your battlefleet to destroy them. The Ark Royal's planes damaged the Bismarck allowing the British battleships King George V and Rodney closed and sunk her. In a way the US admirals were forced to rely strictly on carriers after Pearl Harbor. Before hand US doctrine was that carriers operated on their own with their support ships.

Answer 2

The Japanese believed that their only chance of defeating the United States was by a quick sneak attack that would severely cripple their Pacific fleet so they could fully support their vast Asian Empire without American interference at least on a naval scale. I believe that after the Japanese signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR in 1941 that they had put their hopes on facing the US by themselves. This could be also why they went after the British and Australian forces in SE Asia to make sure that they face the US alone in their sphere of influence. The Japanese, however failed in two regards :First, the American fleet was not all there so they escaped the Japanese barrage and secondly they missed a golden opportunity by not destroying the main oil depots at Pearl Harbor which would have severely hampered the US efforts to reinforce themselves to fight the Japanese in the future. The Japanese also did not take into consideration that they awoke a sleeping giant and the American resolve to rebuild the fleet.

Answer 3

The goal of the Pearl Harbor attack was to wipe out the US pacific fleet so they coudn't interfere with the Japanese expansion. It was also hoped that a bad enough beating there would force the US to sue for peace and stay out of the pacific war.

And yes, they really did think they could win. Admiral Yamamoto did caution that they had to win quickly though, and he was proven right when he promised six months of victory, but after that he feared the US would be like a sleeping dragon finally woken up.

Six months after Pearl Harbor was the Battle of Midway, where the US gained the initiative and never let go of it.

Answer 4

It was a tactical calculation: Japan intended to invade Asia and conquer the lands from China all the way south to Indonesia, and they almost succeeded.

The main threat to this plan was the naval force at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The Japanese knew the Americans would never stand by and let them conquer half of Asia, so they decided to take out the American force, hoping that would give them time to secure their gains in Asia.

Significantly, the head of the Japanese Navy, Admiral Yamamoto, did not believe that attacking Pearl Harbor would succeed in the long run, because he realized that the United States, once attacked, would not stop fighting until Japan was defeated. However, he was overruled by the leaders of the government, who felt that Americans were racially inferior, and could not stand up to the superior Japanese race.

Answer 5

Pearl Harbor was to take out the aircraft carriers and battleships to ensure we did not help anyone in the war.

However, bless the Lord, the carriers were not in the harbor that day, and Japan did not launch the third attack that would have destroyed our docks.

We repaired our ships and headed out to war much sooner because of those two facts.

Answer 6

The goal of the attack on Pearl Harbor was to take out the three aircraft carriers ported there. However, the day before the attack, the aircraft carriers were removed from the harbor, so the Japanese did not complete their objective. Aircraft carriers were deadly weapons during the time, and the Japanese might have actually won against us if they had taken out our carriers.

Answer 7

No, in fact, that was far from their objective. The plan's objective was to prevent the US from interfering in their immediate plans to take over the Pacific Rim. Their theory was that if the US had all their military capability, the US would intervene if they took over the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and all the other Pacific Rim countries that were part of their ambitions. Their hope was that a knockout blow would hurt our ability to fight in the Pacific and, more, would force us to stay out of their way. Obviously, they badly miscalculated. They'd been terrorizing the mainland for 6 years by this time, and we'd not intervened, although we were refusing them the oil they needed. Now, with one single blow, we were in the war to stay and would eventually soundly defeat Japan.

Answer 8

The United States refused to trade scrap metal and oil with Japan because they wanted to stop Japan's aggresion. Japan was angry so they dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor, where all the boats, ships and planes were. As a result many ships and planes were destroyed and many people were killed.

Answer 9

Japan's goal was to cripple the Pacific Fleet. Knowing this they could attack anywhere in the Pacific without fear the U.S. Navy. It would have taken years to recuperate the fleet.Plus, taken many months to shift the Atlantic Fleet, to support both Pacific and Atlantic Theaters. But of course this is just my opinion.

Answer 10

The us had an economic embargo on the Japanese that was going to ruin their economy and grind there war machine in china to a halt soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long story short the Japanese thought if they crippled the us navy they could buy themselves enough to time take over some strategic areas and build an unassailable defensive position. it didn't work.