It’s also the 70 year 2 month anniversary of the US and the UK cutting off Japan’s oil coming from what was then called the Dutch East Indies (now known as Indonesia) when the war with Japan really started.
I guess you can pick your starting point where you want...
“It sounds like a familiar story: on a bright Sunday in December, nearly 70 years ago, Japanese planes blazed out of the sky to strafe and bomb an American warship while it lay at anchor. The surprise attack caught the crew off-guard, and despite valiant action, the ship was critically damaged, had to be abandoned, and soon sank. If you said December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor, you’d be wrong. The date was December 12, 1937, and the place was the Yangtze River in war-torn China. The vessel? The gunboat USS Panay...”
http://www.usspanay.org/attacked.shtml