Hawaii as an opportunity to dominate the Pacific. After the Sino-Japanese War the League of Nations condemned Japan's invasion of Manchuria, distancing it from the rest of the league and distancing it from the major European powers. With an expanding population in an isolated archipelago of Japan, he not only wanted to gain more ground for military power, but also to gain natural resources that Japan lacked. Japan continued to invade Manchuria to help accommodate its expanding population. The rest of the world, however, saw it as a threat and was concerned that Japan would seize valuable resources and then use them to its advantage, building up its military to become an imperial power. To limit Japanese expansion, the United States began supporting China, even declaring an embargo on natural resources such as oil and other vital war materials. Japan was enraged that America supported China and knew that the embargo would cause major problems if they didn't do something about it. The decision was made preemptively to strike America and this day soon became known as the Day of Infamy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay During the interwar period, Japan constantly felt excluded and mistreated. This may have been a result of racism or exclusion from their unequal participation in the First World War. Journalist Josh Axelrod states that “Japan asked for, and almost passed, a clause in the treaty that would affirm the equality of all nations, regardless of race.” The unproven clause, however, was one of the major incidents that made Japan dissatisfied with the treatment it was receiving and made it feel isolated from the other League powers. Furthermore, after Japan invaded Manchuria, China demanded that Japan be investigated and even withdrawn from the league. A commission of inquiry was established by the League and historian Chris Trueman informs us that the League “concluded that Japan should leave Manchuria.” With this demand and the exclusion of Japan from the Versailles Peace Treaty, Professor Yaw Yeboah of Pennsylvania State University states that “after being rebuked for its actions by the League of Nations, Japan left the League, rejected the liberalism, capitalism and democracy as engines of weakness". After years of mistreatment due to racial discrimination or participation in the Great War, Japan took matters into its own hands by leaving the league so it could begin building an empire to rise to power in the Pacific. For Japan to gain imperial power they desperately needed land to support their rapidly growing population and military. They wanted to dominate Asia and the Pacific, but at this stage Japan was also trying to resolve the demographic struggle and economic difficulties they had faced coming out of the Great Depression. Axelrod also states that Japan “attempted to devour more land and further assert its power globally.” Manchuria in this case was their main target. With their increasingly limited access to international markets, and with Manchuria featuring over 200,000 square kilometers of rich terrain offering numerous natural resources, it is clear why Manchuria was so valuable to the Japanese. Regarding the invasionof Manchuria, Yeboah suggests that “there has been a push in Japan to gain complete control of the area that some have described as 'Japan's lifeline', from the perspective of supply of raw materials, housing and safety." Japan was absorbed in nationalism and militarism and saw the invasion of Manchuria as its ticket to the top, without stopping or doubting itself even after the reaction of the rest of the world. When Japan invaded Manchuria, most of the world was completely occupied. Backwards. The world population was not fooled by this act and felt threatened especially when they realized what Japan aspired to and its objectives in pursuing Manchuria. The League of Nations, after China asked Japan to withdraw its military, offered many verbal warnings to Japan to remove its army from Manchuria, but this only further aggravated Japan. The League of Nations launched a long and extensive investigation into the invasion with which Japan threatened Manchuria, concluding on the other hand that Manchuria should be run as a semi-dependent country and that Japan should withdraw its navy. In this case, historian Chris Trueman suggests that “The League could not assert its authority.” Japan barely paid attention to what the League was saying and in response decided to resign from the League and continued to further occupy Manchuria until 1945, 14 years after the original invasion. The United States of America noticed the lack of difference the world was making to Japan's rise to power and saw it in their interest to limit the expansion of the Japanese empire. Once Japan officially left the League of Nations, the United States took it into its own hands to prevent the Japanese from expanding into other Asian nations. Yaboah reports that “at the end of the 1930s, Japan produced only 7% of the oil it consumed. The rest was imported, 80% from the United States and 10% from the Dutch East Indies.” Realizing this, as historian Sarah Pruitt argues, “the United States hoped that the embargo on oil and other key goods would lead Japan to halt its expansionism.” The American government imposed an embargo, and Japan's assets in the United States were frozen, including their precious oil. In addition to imposing embargoes on Japan, when the Japanese bombed China during the Sino-Japanese War, the United States offered financial and military aid to China to reduce the effect and scale of the attack launched by Japan against them. America also banned the export of iron and steel, both valuable war materials, which angered Japanese leaders. In reaction to this, the day after the US iron and steel export ban went into effect, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy to gain greater control and to expand its empire again . However, at this point Japan had to become the number one military in the Pacific but, as pointed out by Dr. Chris Mann “In the face of US and British sanctions, Japan had to neutralize US naval power in the Pacific, at least temporarily. , in order to take over British and Dutch resources in the region, especially oil.” Thus Pruitt argues that “for Japan, war with the United States had become inevitable, to defend its status as a great world power.” America's involvement with China, the imposition of embargoes and the freezing of Japan's assets were the last straw for Japan and saw.