Japan Pearl Harbor attacked

Shortly after Japan s December 7,1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. became more driven to expedite its timetable for developing the first fission weapon because of fear that the U.S. lagged behind Nazi Germany in efforts to create the first atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942 at 3 49 p.m., Enrico Fermi and Samuel K. Allison achieved the world s first controlled, self-sustained nuclear chain reaction in an experimental reactor using natural uranium and graphite. 

In the 1930s, more than 90 percent of the natural rubber used in the United States came from Malaysia. In the days after Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941 and the United States entered World War II, however, Japan captured Malaysia. As a result, the United States—the land with plenty of everything, except rubber—faced its first natural resource crisis. The military implications were devastating because without rubber for tires, military airplanes and jeeps were useless. Petroleum-based synthetic rubber had been developed in 1930 by DuPont chemist Wallace Carothers but was not widely used because it was much more expensive than natural rubber. With Malaysian rubber impossible to get and a war on, however, cost was no longer an issue. Synthetic rubber factories were constructed across the nation, and within a few years, the annual production of synthetic rubber rose from 2000 tons to about 800,000 tons. 

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. The U.S. enters World War II. 

The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, finally precipitated the entry of the United States into the war against not only Japan but Germany and Italy as well. Immediately U.S. atomic bomb development accelerated. 

If imperial Japan had employed the Fischer-Tropsch or the Bergius flow reactor process to turn coal from its possession of Manchuria into gasoline in the late 1930 s, it may not have felt so threatened hy the U.S. gasoline embargo, which helped precipitate Japan s decision to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941. 

During the early phase of the war. Japans military leaders placed a low priority on development of the atomic bomb because they were certain they would achieve their objectives with existing weapons. After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had crippled America s Pacific-based fleet, Japan easily achieved victories as it attacked and defeated... 

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