Japan's surprise bombing of the US navel fleet at Pearl Harbor on  the 7nth of December in 1941 marked the entrance of the United States into war with Japan and direct war against the Axis in Europe. The Japanese had been on a bloody fiery pillage across Asia since 1937, millions of men, woman, and children had perished at the hands of the Japanese empire. The western colonial powers of France, England and The Netherlands were preoccupied with the War against Nazi Germany and were unable to hold off Japanese take over of their East Asian holdings , not that they would have cared much as to the condition of the natives as much as the lose of recourses. The United States continued it's isolationism, yet continued to meddle in Latin America and obviously had taken possession of the Hawaiian islands by this point.