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In the years leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack did Americans see Japan as a potential threat. From this perspective in how this would have been seen to the "Average Joe" rather than somebody in the military or related service.

Question:

Was Japan known to be a potential threat to the USA in the 10 year period prior to 1941

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Short Answer:

Yes some military experts did realize the inevitability of war between the United States and Japan as early as 1912. Most did not up until the late 1930s.

No conventional wisdom in the 1930's would not permit the American public to have viewed agrarian feudalistic Japan 5300 miles from California much of a threat. Aircraft warfare was yet unproven, much less aircraft carrier warfare. The United States Pacific Fleet was conventionally believed to be more than a match for Japans navy right up until Pearl Harbor.

Detailed Answer:

Yes

United States General Billy Mitchel, an early visionary of US air power, in March 1912 after touring Russo Japanese War Battle Fields in the Pacific, deemed war between the United States and Japan inevitable. In 1924, General Mitchel delivered a 324-page report, which not only continued to predict war with Japan, but it predicted Japan's surprise attack by air on Pearl Harbor.

No.

History remembers Mitchel as a visionary of the use of airpower in the coming decades. But, at the time, Mitchell did not have much support among the US military leadership. His predictions that Japan would threaten the United States were deemed amazingly misguided by the US military leadership.

Mitchell, who reached the rank of Major General and Assistant Chief of the Air Service, was demoted to colonel and court marshaled in 1925 for "accusing senior leaders in the Army and Navy of incompetence and "almost treasonable administration of the national defense." after a series of avoidable air accidents. Mitchel would be re-advanced to the rank of Major General posthumously and he goes down in history as a visionary and outspoken advocate for airpower decades before war in the Pacific would prove him right.

Beyond Billy Mitchell, what really soured relatively good relations between the United States and Japan was 1937 and the Second Sino-Japanese War. This "caused the United States to impose harsh sanctions against Japan, ultimately leading to the Japanese surprise attack against the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.

As for Conventional wisdom.

Pearl Harbor the Advanced base for the US Navy was seen as impervious to air attack due to it's shallow harbor right up until the Japanese did it on Dec 7th 1941. The United States enjoyed superiority over Japan in Battle ships and other capital ships, believed to be the measure of a navy up until Pearl Harbor and early WWII. Japan was just too far removed from America's shores to be conventionally considered a real threat. Japan was also shacked by treaties like like the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 which kept the Japanese Navy numerically inferior to the US.

Sources:

• Billy Mitchel


• Russo-Japanese War


• Japan United States Relations


• Japan, China, the United States and the Road to Pearl Harbor, 1937–41


• Washington Naval Treaty of 1922

Some people did, most didn't. Billy Mitchell, among others, warned. But most people didn't see those funny little yellow men with thick glasses and hilarious swords (stereotype of the day) as really dangerous. Not for America, anyway.

Yes, the massacre of Nanking was widely known, but that was somewhere far, far away. In 1937 there had been an incident in which the USS Panay was sunk with loss of life. But the Japanese government apologized and paid for damages.

Look especially at the America First movement. That movement was politically very strong and extreme (certainly by our standards) isolationist. It was their influence that kept America out of the war against Germany. Until the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The America First movement was not aligned with the democrats or the republicans. It was a kind of popular movement, and voiced what the 'Average Joe' thought.

The movement collapsed almost overnight after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They folded (voluntary) on 11 December 1941.