They did a pretty amazing job of it somehow. It's gotten pretty common to read that Japan was forced into war by the USA because they had no other options left, or that we craftily maneuvered them into starting the war we wanted to fight because we were racists who didn't want a non-white to become a world power like the white empires were.
And there was certainly some racist stupidity going on on both sides causing them to overlook each other. We didn't take the threat seriously enough because they were little yellow wannabe-europeans who couldn't even see straight enough to fly or shoot effectively, and they thought our morale would collapse easily because we were a bunch of weak-willed wimps who couldn't match the discipline or toughness of the glorious Yamato peoples. But that's different from "oh crap, an Asian nation is getting powerful, let's start a war with them to stop them - or better, let's force them to start a war with us!" which is about how things seem to be implied at times.
We did back them into a corner in one sense - we weren't going to keep supplying them with the war materials necessarily to murder and rape their way across China and SE Asia.
Last edited: Sep 29, 2016