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With Wednesday being the 81st anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Carl Storms explained to the Morristown Rotary Club some of the circumstances around the infamous attempt to take out the United States’ Pacific fleet.

“There are many books, movies and documentaries about what happened on Dec. 7, 1941,” Storms said. “Most of us don’t know a whole lot about why in the world would a little country like Japan pick on a big country like the U.S., attack them and start a war.”

“In Franklin Roosevelt’s speech to Congress, it’s the last sentence we need to look at a little closer,” Storms said. “Roosevelt asked, ‘(Congress to) declare war since the unprovoked and dastardly attack of Japan, a state of war has existed between the U.S. and the Japanese Empire.’”

World War II started in September, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The world was in conflict even before that, Storms said. Japan was one of the players in “creating mischief” around the world at that time. During World War I, Japan had been on the Allies side.

Storms explained that Japan is an island nation with its land being fed by volcanoes for centuries made for rich soil for farming land. However, after World War I, Japan set its sights on becoming an industrialized nation. To achieve this goal, Japan had to purchase steel, iron, copper, coal and oil from the U.S. and other countries.

“Japan didn’t have the resources to be a strong industrial nation,” Storms said. “We were supplying them with a lot of their resources to help them build their navy, especially during the early days of the 20th century. In 1932, Japan created an incident in China and used it as an excuse to attack Manchuria. Their goal was to gain land and resources to supply their people with the things they needed.”

Predictably, the U.S. wasn’t too happy when Japan attacked Manchuria, but the country had the Great Depression to deal with and many countries were struggling to survive, Storms said. Things were changing in Europe with Hitler taking power in Germany.

“We were more worried about what was going on in Europe than we were about what was going on in Asia,” Storms said. “Japan pretty much did what they wanted in Manchuria for a few years.”

In 1937, Japan attacked China to begin the Second Sino-Japanese War in Nanking, the Chinese capital at that time. China resisted Japan’s advances until the end of 1938, a period of stalemate until 1944 and Allied counterattacks in the Pacific and Japan’s home islands. The Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre resulted in as many as 300,000 civilians and troops killed and the rapes of at least 80,000 women on the orders of the Japanese command.

This prompted the U.S. to cut exports of materials to Japan, Storms said.

“Instead of sending more and more materials, the U.S. kept sending Japan less and less,” he said. “By the 1940s, Japan was really beginning to hurt, especially with oil. They were able to recycle steel, but they didn’t have the oil to run their war machine.

“A modern economy, at least in the last 100 years, has run off oil,” Storms said. “Japan, looking to maintain their supplies, began to look to other places to get steel and oil.”

The Japanese were told to remove their troops from Manchuria. China was not only fighting the Japanese, but fighting as a Civil War was also going on.

“You had Mao Zedong and Chaing-Kai shek fighting against each other,” Storms said.

Crampton Helms gave Storms access to the “Pacific Crucible: War at Sea” trilogy of books written by historian Ian W. Toll. The books serve as a narrative history of the opening phase of the Pacific War, which took place in the eastern Pacific between the Allies and Japan.

“It very well covers what led up to the war,” Storms said.

The emperor was not in charge of the military, but some unknown mid-level military officers were the ones who determined Japan’s strategies, according to Storms.

“They’re the ones who encouraged the attacks in Manchuria and in China,” he said. “They even put out ‘hit-lists’ of the general officers who were going along with what they wanted.”

Japan’ leaders turned to the 1892 book “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History” by Alfred Thayer Mahan, which advocated for a strong naval presence. This helped Japan to gain an upper hand in getting more supplies from other countries.

“This book was based entirely on history before airplanes,” Storms said. “Mahan used examples involving the Spanish Armada and others. His theory was that if one could defeat their enemies’ navy, one could win a war.”

Japan’s idea in their attack on Pearl Harbor was that if they could knock out the U.S. Navy, the Japanese would win the war, Storms said. However, the Pearl Harbor attack brought the U.S. into the war, plus some American aircraft carriers and submarines were out on maneuvers during the attack.

Japan also attacked targets throughout Southeast Asia, including British, Dutch, French and United States possessions in order to gain oil from that part of the world, Storms said.

“On Dec. 7, 8 and 9, they not only attacked the U.S., they attacked some other countries,” he said. “Much like 9-11, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, there were lines outside of the recruiting officers and people were joining the military as fast as they could in order to punish Japan for what they had done.”

Born and raised in Morristown, Storms served as Morristown Rotary secretary from 1978 to 1984, as president in 2002-03, served on the board of directors and foundation chair for a number of years. He is an Eagle Scout, an active member/elder and deacon of the First Presbyterian Church, a 1969 graduate of Morristown-Hamblen High School West and a 1973 graduate of Colorado State University with a B.S. degree in industrial construction management. He has served on the Morristown Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, the Boys and Girls Club Board of Directors, the Morristown-Hamblen Healthcare System Board of directors and is the current board president of the United Way of Hamblen County. He was elected to the Tennessee Boys and Girls Club Hall of Fame in 2017.