America's attack on Japan WWII?

The first U.S. attack on Japan was known as the "Doolittle Raid". Read and learn: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Doolittle+Raid%...

It was decided in a major conference between Churchill (England) and Roosevelt (USA) called the ARCADIA conference that they would primarily deal with Germany first and hold Japan more or less in check while doing so. There were many reasons. Read and learn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_first

Well, Germany declared war on the US and attacked the US Navy and US shipping in the Atlantic 4 days after the Japanese attacked the US at Pearl Harbor. Germany was known as by far the stronger enemy so they would be 1st priority.

Despite the above the US 'did' fight Japan 1st before turning to fight Germany. The US fought the Japanese in the Philippines (Dec. 1941-May 1942), in May 1942 fought the Japanese in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and in June 1942 fought and defeated the Japanese in the huge and war changing naval battle of Midway. In August 1942 US ground forces 1st went in against the Japanese at Guadalcanal.

The US didn't start fighting the Germans on land till Nov. 1942 with invasion of German held North Africa. So, Japan did come 1st but Germany had to be taken care of too and had priority from 1943-1945.

German subs were attacking neutral US cargo vessels & warships long before Pearl Harbor.

An American warship, the USS Reuben James (DD-245), was sunk by a Nazi submarine months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Only 45 men out of its crew of 160 survived.

The same applies to the USS Kearney (DD-432): 11 crewmen died when it was hit by a Nazi torpedo.

Link - http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/USS...

A Nazi air raid on Norway in 1940 killed a US consular employee and the US army officer trying to evacuate US diplomatic personnel to safety in a railway tunnel.

Such things are considered acts of war under international law.

Nations can, do, and have gone to war over less provocation than that.

The US tried ignoring these incidents, but when Pearl Harbor forced the US into WW2, Germany was already an enemy America wanted payback on.

It didn't help Germany's case that it was allied with Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy, or that Hitler was a nut who declared war on the USA following the Japanese air strikes on Pearl Harbor.

from the day after Pearl Harbor there was a steady and desperate series of fights between the Japaneses onone hand and the Americans and Brits and Dutch on the other.....culminating after 90 days of terrible struggle of the biggest surrender in American history, the thirty thousand American and 50 00 allied Filipino troops in the Philippines, followed by the Bataan Death March where the Japanese forced American and Filipino POWs to walk 100 plus miles to their prisons. The Japanese killed over 10,000 POWs along the way, the sick the weak and some just for fun.

(The British Army has it's own surrender at Singapore,and they and their Australian and South African and New Zealand fellow soldiers got to work to death for the next four years in Burma.).

While the American troops were fighting in the Philipines the US, UK, Australian and Dutch navies in the far east fought for four months in Indonesian waters until they were wiped out almost to the last man.......the Fleet the Gods Forgot. To say Americans weren't fighting the Japanese until the Doolittle Raid dishonors the memory of .thousands of brave men who died under terrible circumstances from Manila to the beaches of Australia.

and yes the decision early on was made to concentrate on beating the Nazis and to hold the line in the Pacific......but six months before North Africa off Midway Island in the Pacific, USS Hornet, Yorktown and Enterprise ( she later got a starship named for her) had sunk four of the six Japanese carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor;

By the time the landings in North Africa took place, for two months US Marines, losing a thousand in the process, had killed 6,000 Imperial Japanese Marines on a before this unknown island in the SouthWest Pacific known as Guadalcanal; and the US and Japanese Navies had sunk so many of each other ships during the campaign the waters of the Solomon Islands are to today know as Iron Bottom Sound..

Four days after Pearl Harbour, Germany declared war on the US, which rather dragged her into the European theatre of WW2.

The first attack on Japanese territory (as opposed to attacks on territory occupied by the Japanese and subsequently re-taken) was at Iwo Jima in February 1945. Unless you count bombing, in which case it was the Doolittle raid.

Japan, Germany and Italy were allies.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the US declared war on Japan, and by extension, Germany and Italy. This happened the day after Pearl Harbor.

In response, Japan, Germany and Italy declared war on the US.

The US then went to war on two fronts - Europe, and the South Pacific. Remember, a good portion of the US fleet was lost in the attack at Pearl Harbor, and it took awhile for those ships to be replaced. Meanwhile the US' Atlantic fleet was unaffected so they were able to head to Europe almost immediately.

Germany declared war on the United Sates after Pearl Harbor.

Because Germany declared war upon them.

And while D-day required a great deal of preparation, openly up an African front was not very difficult at all.

In contrast, they needed to build a lot of ships to take down the Japanese.

3/4s of all went to fight in Africa then Europe at the start of the war. 1/4 went to fight japan. Part of it was logistics. Bad roads to the west coast, more ship builders on the east coast. and such. Great lakes shipping to the east coast. Port at New Orleans, Population on the east coast and Midwest.