El camino a la guerra

This essay provides an introduction to Japanese-U.S. relations from the Washington Conference of 1921-1922 until the Pearl Harbor attack of December 1941. It opens with an overview of the system of Anglo-American-Japanese cooperation instituted at the Washington Conference. It considers the enhancement of that system at the London Conference of 1930. It then provides an overview of the two events which ended this cooperative system, namely, the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and the Second London Naval Conference of 1935-1936. It follows with the opening shots in July 1937 of the Sino-Japanese war, and with reactions to Japan’s presumed new order in East Asia. It moves onto conclusion of the Japanese-German-Italian Tripartite Pact, before examining the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese-U.S. negotiations.