GETTY X2, CORBIS X1, PRESS ASSOCIATION X1
AT A GLANCE
After World War I, the United States maintained a policy of neutrality. But a decade of Japanese expansion into China, and its invasion of French Indochina in 1940, led the US to move its Pacific fleet to the base at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Fearful of Japanese plans to overrun South East Asia, the US halted exports of key resources, particularly oil, to Japan. When diplomacy failed to break the deadlock, the Japanese military planned an attack aiming to disable the US fleet and remove any block to an invasion of the Dutch East Indies.