[literallycancer]

The Japanese had no choice, if they wanted to keep the territory they controlled at the time. They were heavily reliant on imports from the US, and the US imposed an embargo on them.

>US Ambassador Grew in Japan kept Roosevelt fully advised of her precarious economic situation and urgent need for imports. Chief of Naval Operations (NCO) Stark had warned the president of the danger of imposing an oil embargo on Japan. Stark had "made it known to the State Department in no uncertain terms that in my opinion if Japan's oil were shut off, she would go to war." He did not mean "necessarily with us, but … if her economic life had been choked and throttled by inability to get oil, she would go somewhere and take it … and if I were a Jap, I would" do the same.[1]

You can google many papers about this.

1 - https://mises.org/library/us-japanese-relations-wwii