The headline doesn&#x27;t square with everything I&#x27;ve ever read about the attack.  Embarrassment was <i>at best</i> a minor factor in the Japanese thinking.  The major factor, IIRC, was that certain military officers -- many of them belonging to (or fearful of) a murderous ultranationalist faction -- had come to dominate the Japanese government [1].  These military men:<p>+ wanted to strike south to secure desperately-needed sources of oil, rubber, and other resources for their war machine (an alternative they debated was to invade Siberia);<p>+ felt that for a strike south to succeed, they had to neutralize both the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the American bases in the Philippines, from which the U.S. surface fleet, submarines, and air forces could have caused serious problems for Japan&#x27;s maritime supply lines from Southeast Asia; and<p>+ perhaps most importantly, were out of their depth when it came to assessing a <i>political</i> risk, namely the extent to which a surprise attack would bring down on them the implacable fury of an enraged and industrially-powerful United States.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Japanese_militarism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Japanese_militarism</a>