ABSTRACT
The Japanese were often unkind conquerors, though this can easily be exaggerated by American memories of the Bataan death march and other horrors in the treatment of prisoners. By the beginning of the 1940s Japan was involved in an exhausting and seemingly endless war on the Asian mainland. The "China incident" dated back to the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931, and was greatly escalated by the clash at the Marco Polo Bridge which expanded into severe open warfare with China in 1937. The United States had participated in staff conversations with British and Dutch military personnel at Singapore. In deciding to attack Pearl Harbor the Japanese took what they fully recognized to be a great risk. There is no doubt but that the Imperial government realized it could not win a long war with the United States if the Americans chose to fight such a war.
