ABSTRACT
The decade of the 1930s offers an interesting comparison between military preparations in Japan and in the United States. The Japanese military increased its influence in government, created a large war machine that included the immense BW program previously described, and engaged in adventures in Manchuria and China, and in border skirmishes with the Soviet Union. The United States, by contrast, retreated further into the isolationist mode it had adopted in the previous decade. The American military, always regarded as little more than a pesky necessity in peacetime, was pared by Congress to a tiny size. Military research was largely neglected. Army and Navy leaders' requests were ignored generally by Congress and Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt.
