One of the prime motivators for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was they feared US entry into the war if they invaded British Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. Was this a realistic fear? What did the US plan to do in the event of a Japanese invasion of these regions if they left alone the US and its possessions in the Pacific?
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To me it just seemed like eliminating the only large naval threat in the Pacific that could launch a counterattack within a fairly short period of time. The US was already directly aligning itself with the nations whose territorial possessions they intended to capture, not to mention the obvious threat this would present to the Philippines and other American holdings in the region. Plus I had read somewhere a report a list presented to preconditions to cause a Japanese military reaction to the US, while never directly proven that this list was implemented to cause war with the Japanese, almost every point in the report was already implemented by the strike on Pearl Harbor… Read into that what you will… Thanks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollum_memo This is what I was referring to the McCollum memo. Thanks again