The Diplomatic Front
June 1st, 1937
The United States tries to negotiate the Japanese withdrawal from China.
The government of Prince Kanoye, though receptive, refuses because the Imperial Japanese Army wants to crush China. Negotiations go nowhere and
stall for six months.
September 1-December 1, 1937
Negotiations resume but break down over Secretary of State Cordell Hull's
demand that the Japanese give up all their gains in China. American forces
are put on alert.
December 12, 1937
Japanese planes bomb, strafe, and ultimately sink, the U.S. Navy's gunboat
USS PANAY. The PANAY incident brings the United States and Japan to the brink of war. FDR demands reparations from Japan. He claims that the Japanese deliberately sank an American warship. The Japanese deny this and offer to pay reparations to make it go away. FDR refuses the payment of what he terms "blood money."
December 13, 1937
FDR goes before a joint session of Congress and asks for a declaration of war. Congress approves it. The House votes 220-1 in favor of war with Japan. The lone hold out is Montana's Jeannette Rankin, who'd also voted against American involvement in World War I.
December 14, 1937
The USS Connecticut, which was due to be scrapped, is given new guns, radar, and new oil-fired boilers, and sent to the Philippines, along with the
USS South Dakota, and the USS Lexington, to deter Japanese aggression
in the Pacific. Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, the commander of the Asiatic Fleet,
puts the Asiatic Fleet on alert and clashes with Douglas MacArthur over who's in charge.
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto decides to move the Combined Fleet to the Philippines and make the United States Pacific Fleet fight its way to the Philippines.
December 15, 1937
The Asiatic Fleet fights and loses its first battle. The United States Army in
the Philippines retreats from Manila, declaring it an open city, and heads for the Bataan Peninsula. As the Americans fall back, they find themselves ill-prepared for war and wait for reinforcements that never come. MacArthur is evacuated to Australia by early 1938.
January 10, 1938
Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright takes over from MacArthur and
makes the hard decision to surrender four days later.
January 14, 1938
General Masaharu Homma, the commander of the Japanese invasion force, and Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, acting commander of
American and Filipino forces, meet to agree on terms of surrender. The Americans and Filipino are forced on a death march to Camp O'Donnell,
and other Japanese prison camps in the Philippines.