ABSTRACT
The events of December 7, 1941 did indeed bring the United States into World War II but there was no necessary connection between Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the war in Europe. With America’s military resources limited, it remained far from clear that the United States could (or should) conduct a two-front war. Much of American popular opinion screamed for the early war effort to be directed at Japan in order to avenge the Pearl Harbor attack. Most members of the United States Navy, seething for the chance to take revenge, agreed; they argued vehemently against shifting significant naval resources to the Atlantic. The nation’s most senior admiral, the irascible Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King, held a passionate and often childish enmity for his Royal Navy counterparts.1 He argued strongly for a full and immediate devotion of American resources to the Pacific Theater, even if such a movement placed Great Britain and Russia in peril. The politically influential General Douglas MacArthur, ignominiously forced out of the Philippines by a Japanese attack soon after Pearl Harbor, agreed.
