Under the rule of Emperor Hirohito, who had become the nation's regent in 1921, anti-Western resentments and authoritarian government flourished. Increasing military involvement in the government began to add to the problems already being experienced by the Japanese system of leadership. The emperor was supposed to be the sacred symbol of Japan's history and spirit. However, there were also right-wing zealots, primarily officers in the army, who felt they had to intervene to "save" him from Western corrupt practices and beliefs. "Pan-Asian" rhetoric resounded. Japan declared itself tribune and savior for nations downtrodden by the white West (Fallows 33). And yet, the Pan-Asian ideal led to strange distortions, since official Japanese propaganda and official acts simultaneously emphasized the superiority of Japanese people to all other Asians.
             President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was determined to keep the United States out of the conflicts taking place between Japan and China but the United States' diplomatic and trade offensives against Japan actually began with the London Naval Treaty of 1930 (denying Japan naval hegemony in its own waters) and culminated in the total U.S. embargo of all shipments of oil to Japan (Cockburn 802). On October 5, 1937, President Roosevelt made a speech declaring that America must "quarantine" or isolate expansionist countries such as Japan. Students of the causes of World War II should be well-aware that what was promoted as Roosevelt's "moral embargo" of Japan for its war against China scarcely did justice to the less romantic though more pragmatic epic of national self-interest in the struggle for economic advantage throughout Asia. And yet, American ships went on supplying Tokyo with American oil and steel. Times were hard, it was the middle of the Great Depression and business was business.
             In an apparent response to the statement or possibly as part of a larger inten...