Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?

The essay should support a thesis statement with information gained from research or investigation.
The paper will not be just a report presenting information, but will be an essay that carefully examines and presents your own historical interpretation of the topic you have chosen and your interpretation of the information you have gathered.
The paper may include consideration of problems and solutions, define key terms, or refute arguments against your thesis statement.
It will be important to choose a topic of interest to you.

Approach this assignment with an open and skeptical mind, then form an opinion based on what you have discovered.
You must suspend belief while you are investigating and let the discoveries shape your opinion. (This is a thesis-finding approach.)
Once you have found your thesis, write the paper to support it.
You will use some of the following critical thinking skills in this process:

Choosing an appropriate topic, limiting the topic
Gathering information, summarizing sources
Analyzing and evaluating sources
Defining key terms
Synthesizing information, comparing and contrasting sources
Testing a thesis, making an historical argument, using refutation
Amassing support for a position
Documenting sources
Because this may be a longer essay than you have written before and a complex process is involved, it is recommended that you complete this paper using the following steps:

Annotated Bibliography.

Once you develop an “answer” to the selected question, that will be your thesis. A good thesis is short and to the point and will identify exactly what the essay will argue. For example, “Although Reconstruction provided the means for the former Confederacy to re-enter the Union, the emergence of Black Codes and Sharecropping perpetuated a pseudo-slave system known as sharecropping”.

The essay should focus fully on this and sources used, as identified within the Annotated Bibliography, need to identify exactly how each source supports this statement.

For the Annotated Bibliography assignment, you are expected to find at least 3 scholarly sources (from the CTC library or other scholarly databases and not casual web searches).

These should include journal articles from such journals as:

The Journal of American History
The Journal of Contemporary History
Journal of Women’s History
The American Historical Review

The annotated bibliography must include the following:

An identification of your thesis (what do you intend to prove?) This should be a short statement at the beginning of the essay.
A properly formatted citation in either APA or Turabian style
A brief summary of the source (what does it argue?)
An explanation on how you specifically will use the source to support your thesis (what information contained within will help you prove your point?)