<P> President Wilson fought vigorously against Japan's demands at Paris in 1919, but he lost because Britain and France supported Japan . In China there was outrage and Anti-Japanese sentiment escalated . The May Fourth Movement emerged as a student demand for China's honor . The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved a reservation to the Treaty of Versailles, "to give Shantung to China," but Wilson told his supporters in the Senate to vote against any substantive reservations . In 1922 the U.S. brokered a solution of the Shandong Problem . China was awarded nominal sovereignty over all of Shandong, including the former German holdings, while in practice Japan's economic dominance continued . </P> <P> Japan and the U.S. agreed on terms of naval limitations at the Washington Conference of 1921, with a ratio of naval force to be 5 - 5 - 3 for the U.S., Britain and Japan . Tensions arose with the 1924 American immigration law that prohibited further immigration from Japan . </P> <P> By the 1920s, Japanese intellectuals were underscoring the apparent decline of Europe as a world power, and increasingly saw Japan as the natural leader for all of East Asia . However, they identified a long - term threat from the colonial powers, especially Britain, the United States, the Netherlands and France, as deliberately blocking Japan's aspirations, especially regarding control of China . The goal became "Asia for the Asians" as Japan began mobilizing anti-colonial sentiment in India and Southeast Asia . Japan took control of Manchuria in 1931 over the strong objections of the League of Nations, Britain and especially the United States . In 1937, it seized control of the main cities on the East Coast of China, over strong American protests . Japanese leaders thought their deeply Asian civilization gave it a natural right to this control and refused to negotiate Western demands that it withdraw from China . </P> <P> Relations between Japan and the United States became increasingly tense after the Manchurian / Mukden Incident and subsequent Japanese military seizure of much of China in 1937--39 . American outrage focused on the Japanese attack on the US gunboat Panay in Chinese waters in late 1937 (Japan apologized), and the atrocities of the Nanking Massacre at the same time . The United States had a powerful navy in the Pacific, and it was working closely with the British and the Dutch governments . When Japan seized Indochina (now Vietnam) in 1940--41, the United States, along with Australia, Britain and the Dutch government in exile, boycotted Japan via a trade embargo . They cut off 90% of Japan's oil supply, and Japan had to either withdraw from China or go to war with the US and Britain as well as China to get the oil . </P>

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