At 6 am, the first wave of fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes took off. By early morning, December 7, 1941, the ships had reached their launch position, 230 miles north of Oahu. It followed a route that took it far to the north of the normal shipping lanes. On November 26, the Japanese attack fleet of 33 warships and auxiliary craft, including six aircraft carriers, sailed from northern Japan for the Hawaiian Islands. America's superior economic and industrial might would tip the scales in her favor during a prolonged conflict. Though personally opposed to war with America, Yamamoto knew that Japan's only hope of success in such a war was to achieve quick and decisive victory. The principal architect of the attack was admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. The objective was to immobilize the Pacific Fleet so that the United States could not interfere with these invasion plans. The attack on Pearl Harbor was part of a grand strategy of conquest in the Western Pacific. Although both governments continued to negotiate their differences, Japan had already decided on war. By the summer of 1941, both countries had taken positions from which they could not retreat without a serious loss of national prestige. The Japanese government viewed these measures, especially an embargo on oil, as threats to their nation's security. The United States applied both diplomatic and economic pressures to try to resolve the Sino-Japanese conflict. Over the next three years, war broke out in Europe and Japan joined Nazi Germany in the Axis Alliance. Although alarmed by this action, neither the United States nor any other nation with interests in the Far East was willing to use military force to halt Japanese expansion. Japan ignored American protests, and in the summer of 1937 launched a full-scale attack on the rest of China. The breakdown began in 1931 when Japanese army extremists, in defiance of government policy, invaded and overran the northern-most Chinese province of Manchuria. The attack on Pearl Harbor was the culmination of a decade of deteriorating relations between Japan and the United States over the status of China and the security of Southeast Asia.
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