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This timeline seems to put all the blame on Japan. No doubt they had over-militaristic tendencies. But let's also take the long view on America from Japan's per

This timeline seems to put all the blame on Japan. No doubt they had over-militaristic tendencies. But let's also take the long view on America from Japan's perspective: * Settlers displace native peoples in the north east of North America and the Caribbean. * The first Americans kick out the British. * Americans move west, killing more native peoples. * Americans take over land from Mexico. * "Manifest Destiny" * Americans topple the Hawaiian monarchy and take over Hawaii. * Americans go to war with the Philippines, killing tens of thousands. It doesn't seem unreasonable for Japan at this point to feel threatened by America or compelled to take action to protect themselves.

krapp 11y ago
I doubt Japan felt threatened by the US because of manifest destiny or the American revolutionary war. I think you're going a bit too far trying to paint the US as appearing unusually hegemonic or aggressive for the time.
- jkyle 11y ago
  Japanese culture perceives time differently than western culture. For example, a train in London is considered "on time" as long as it's within 14 minutes. In Japan, a train is considered late if it's not within 1 minute of schedule. Those perceptions of "lateness" permeate throughout the culture. I don't claim any authority, but it's important not to project our own views of cultural permanence onto other cultures. Japan has businesses that have spanned over a 1000 years contiguously. I would not be surprised if Japan had a view that spanned much further into the past (particularly during the days of the Emperor). Oh, just another side. Those are only a couple of examples of Western aggression in the previous century. Europe and the U.S. had been quite active in South East Asia. There likely would have been Japanese alive at the time who had a living memory of events like the colonization of Vietnam.
  - krapp 11y ago
    I think that's less about perception of time as it is cultural expectations. Plenty of people in Europe would consider a train that's 15 minutes late "late," it just happens often enough that society has to take the slop of inefficiency into account. But, my point is that even conceding such a long view of history, the US probably didn't look more menacing than Europe. The US was a minor political and economic power, whereas Europe was much more powerful and had its own much longer history of imperialism and territorial expansion by divine right. The implication seems like a bit of historical revisionism in hindsight, based on how threatening the US seems to a lot of people now.
    - learc83 11y ago
      >The US was a minor political and economic power I agree with you that the US was under-powered militarily at the time, but by the 40s the US had been the world's largest economy and industrial power for decades.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    How long have they held that perception of time? I'm under the impression that in the Anglosphere it is only as old as railroads.
    - jkyle 11y ago
      The paper on cultural time perceptions I found, which I'll have to dig up again, attributed the difference to a deep cultural value placed on timeliness in Japanese society. e.g. the value predated the specific train result. edit Though I've read papers that also trace a shortening of the window of timeliness to the appearance of public clocks. Like Big Ben.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    > For example, a train in London is considered "on time" as long as it's within 14 minutes. That may be true in London, for all I know, but it's definitely not true in western culture as a whole.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      It's not true in London. Trains delayed by 4 minutes count as late. There are different times for when you can actually do anything about it - mostly if a train is delayed by an hour you can get a refund (if you chose not to travel) or compensation (if you were already travelling before the delay happened), but it's a bit complicated. For London tube trains you can get some refunds if the train is 15 minutes late. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/dec/18/how-claim-train-delayed http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/dec/18/how-claim-train... > Transport for London (TFL) offers refunds if a passenger's journey is delayed by more than 15 minutes. For tube passengers, this amounts to the fare for the single journey you were making, whether you have a season ticket, or have purchased a single fare. London Overground users get the same, but only when their train is delayed by more than 30 minutes
- mc32 11y ago
  Considering the US was way undermilitarized after wwi compared to European nations, it's hard to think Japan would consider the US as an immediate adversary. Specially considering a growing USSR. Mostly they hoped to take out the US naval fleet and have their way in the pacific while Germany kept the allies busy, and then eventually win in Europe creating a world wide axis.
  - ctrager 11y ago
    The US was maybe more active in Japan's neighborhood than you might be thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Panay_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Panay_incident
  - jonnathanson 11y ago
    The US was under-militarized at the beginning of the WW2 years, but its industrial capacity was unrivaled and undeniable. Even before its entry into the war, for instance, it was almost singlehandedly supplying the British and Soviet war efforts. The US was supplying nearly 40% of all the USSR's food, clothing, munitions, and military hardware during Hitler's Barbarossa campaign, in the months prior to Pearl Harbor. It was doing all of this while its economy was roaring back up from the Depression, and its output was just getting started. (The US produced about 2,500 warplanes in 1940; by 1944, it was producing just under 100,000 per year.) Germany and Japan correctly feared the United States long before its entry into the conflict. They feared it not necessarily as a war machine, but as a relentless and massive industrial machine. They knew that, if war with the US were to drag on for a few years, the US would eventually get its shit together and outproduce and outgun either of them by an order of magnitude.
- ctrager 11y ago
  I don't know what the Japanese felt, but I think the US maybe was about as hegemonic as Japan, Britain, Russia, Germany, France. It wouldn't hurt for US citizens to know these bullet points in their history that relate to Japan's neighborhood: Perry's expedition to Japan, the Spanish American war, but especially the Phillipine Insurrection, the Anti-Imperialist League, the Boxer Rebellion, the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and the Yangtze Patrol, and its context.
skeolawn 11y ago
Well I guess Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, while the US was attempting to find a peaceful solution, so Japan gets the blame.
- mikeash 11y ago
  And let's not forget spending a decade rampaging about China raping and murdering. So, yeah, it turns out that when a country goes out and commits mass murder for ten years then carries out a surprise attack against another country who thinks they should maybe just cut back a bit on that whole raping-and-murdering thing and has otherwise stuck to their own borders for a couple of decades, the first country gets the blame for the ensuing war. Go figure.
baddox 11y ago
It's fair to point out American imperialism and colonialism in the past, and even ongoing to a certain extent in the 1940s, but leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor it hardly matched the intensity or blatantness of Japan's own imperialism and colonialism, particularly in Manchuria and the Pacific.
ajmurmann 11y ago
Let's not forget the black ships forcing Japan to open up. Many right wing Japanese still link the entire war period back to that and they do have somewhat of a point. I strongly recommend Ian Buruma's "Inventing Japan"
damienkatz 11y ago
So if a convicted murderer moves in beside me, it's partially his fault if I attempt to murderer him in his sleep
- woah 11y ago
  It is if there are no legal authorities more powerful than the both of you (as was the case). Actually, your use of the word "convicted" is nonsensical in this case. The more accurate analogy is if a murderer murders your neighbor, and then moves into his house, and the police don't exist.
- chrisfosterelli 11y ago
  I think this may be an unfair metaphor, because we have a police force and laws that give us incentive to not murder our neighbours in their sleep and give us assurance that we will be protected while we sleep ourselves. On the world scale, this doesn't exist. If there was no laws, police, or government and a serial murderer moves in beside you, you may very well try to murder him in his sleep.
trynumber9 11y ago
That's ridiculous. Let's take a long view on China from Japan's perspective: * Han Chinese displaced people in every direction, throughout what is now China and even into Malaya. * Chinese moved south & west, killing native peoples. (numerous Mongol, Dzungar and Tibetan elimination campaigns) * China takes land from Tibet (1930-1932). * "Chinese unity" includes a lot of places that aren't Han Chinese. (routinely interfering in Mongolia) * China previously demanded tribute from Japan. * Republic of China oppressed the Manchu, killing hundreds of thousands. * China wanted to kick Japan out of the mainland. It was only logical to feel threatened by China. If properly unified it would outclass and defeat Japan. They had a momentary advantage and felt compelled to take action to protect themselves against a hostile China.
- knughit 11y ago
  Where is the ridiculous part? Aside from aspect that many national governments were expanding and conquering, as they are wont to do.
  - trynumber9 11y ago
    Most nations have many reasons to fear their neighbors if you look far enough back. The situation dictated policy. Either their war in China ground to a halt or they conquer SEA. I don't think the "Manifest destiny" entered much into IJA/IJN thinking in 1941.
cgriswald 11y ago
I'm going to be a little imprecise here, but hopefully accurate: 1853: Commodore Perry shows up on the shores of Japan with shiny ships and cannons and says "You're gonna trade with the world." It worked, but Japan didn't like it. Japan spent its time buying ships from Great Britain and sending its young people to school in the United States to learn what it could about empire building. Late 1800s: The United States, wanting to be seen as a world power, attacks and defeats the world's weakest "World Power" Spain, both in Cuba and in the Phillipines. Japan had been helping the Phillipines achieve independence and the United States basically stole the Phillipines out from under them. Early 1900s: Japan fights and wins against Russia in the Pacific. They basically destroyed Russia at Port Arthur (using the same tactics as were used at Pearl Harbor). To retaliate the Russians had to send their Atlantic fleet the long way around the world. By then Japan had rebuilt from the battle at Port Arthur and defeated the Russians again. The lesson: Defeating a world power only requires you to be powerful within your sphere of influence. Shortly before Pearl Harbor: U.S. cuts off oil supply to Japan. Japan needs the oil in the Phillipines and also wants to take the Phillipines back which they felt were stolen from them. Pearl Harbor was their attempt to recreate the Battle of Port Arthur and wipe out American presence in the Pacific, leaving Japan the most powerful entity in that sphere of influence. The long view of Japan and the United States is that we kind of grew up together, but we were the bullying older brother. They grew up to emulate us and when they got big enough... they punched back.
powera 11y ago
You seem to completely ignoring Japan's wars of invasion against China, Korea, Indochina, and basically every border other than "America" first. Or for that matter, the rest of World War II which had been going on for over a year.
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  2 years, really. It kicked off in late 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, subsequent declarations of war by Britain and France, and then an awkward months-long period of shuffling about known as the "Phony War". </pedantry>
  - zhte415 11y ago
    Pedantry? Japan's intrusions and occupations of Korea and China lasted decades before 'it kicked off in late 1939'.
JackFr 11y ago
> * The first Americans kick out the British. That really doesn't capture the flavor of it. In a very real sense, the first Americans were British -- they just refused to pay taxes to a government thousand of miles away.
- qbrass 11y ago
  It also skips over the part where they failed to kick the British out of Canada.
  - adventured 11y ago
    The US never tried to take over the territory later called Canada, whether to annex it or to remove the British. There was never a war declared for that purpose, the US never mobilized its full military toward that aim, there was never a large amount of financing raised to pay for such an immense effort, and so on. There's zero evidence to support the notion that US planned to try to accomplish that outcome. At best it was a skirmish toward a narrow goal.
    - dctoedt 11y ago
      > The US never tried to take over the territory later called Canada, whether to annex it or to remove the British. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Canada_(1775) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Canada_(1775) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Invasions_of_Upper_and_Lower_Canada.2C_1812 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Invasions_of_Upper...
- protomyth 11y ago
  ... Without representation. The taxes weren't the whole problem.
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Major General Smedley Butler predicted a war with the Japanese in his book "War is a Racket": Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.
merpnderp 11y ago
Wikipedia says that the US genocide of Native Americans numbered somewhere between 30-50K people over 120 years, some of those in military conflicts. In comparison in the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese murdered 50-300K. And averaged 300-500K civilians murdered per month between 1937 and 1945. By 1941 Japan had no reason to believe the US was in any way expansionist. There had been 20 years of isolationist rhetoric from both political parties and almost no public support for intervention in wars abroad.
- novaleaf 11y ago
  The Manifest Destiny doers didn't know it, but most of the Americas had been cleared a hundred years earlier by disease. Some estimate 95% fatality rates.
  - LeoardoDavinci1 11y ago
    So, is OK to decimate everybody left because disease had already killed a lot of the native people. So if another country had come to conquer the European nations after the black plague and committed genocide would it have been OK? Otherwise I'm not exactly sure what is your point. Is like you are trying to say, hey, I only killed 4%, the other 95% were already dead so is not so bad.
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      There's no one saying it is okay here. Everyone agrees it meets the modern definition of a genocide. But I'd would certainly need some evidence that the US was responsible for 80% of the deaths of the remaining native Americans. I looked around for these numbers and have never seen anyone claim this.
    - pyre 11y ago
      I'm guessing the parent post is saying that the numbers of dead would have been higher had the populations not been decimated by disease.
- protomyth 11y ago

krapp 11y ago

I doubt Japan felt threatened by the US because of manifest destiny or the American revolutionary war. I think you're going a bit too far trying to paint the US as appearing unusually hegemonic or aggressive for the time.

jkyle 11y ago
Japanese culture perceives time differently than western culture. For example, a train in London is considered "on time" as long as it's within 14 minutes. In Japan, a train is considered late if it's not within 1 minute of schedule. Those perceptions of "lateness" permeate throughout the culture. I don't claim any authority, but it's important not to project our own views of cultural permanence onto other cultures. Japan has businesses that have spanned over a 1000 years contiguously. I would not be surprised if Japan had a view that spanned much further into the past (particularly during the days of the Emperor). Oh, just another side. Those are only a couple of examples of Western aggression in the previous century. Europe and the U.S. had been quite active in South East Asia. There likely would have been Japanese alive at the time who had a living memory of events like the colonization of Vietnam.
- krapp 11y ago
  I think that's less about perception of time as it is cultural expectations. Plenty of people in Europe would consider a train that's 15 minutes late "late," it just happens often enough that society has to take the slop of inefficiency into account. But, my point is that even conceding such a long view of history, the US probably didn't look more menacing than Europe. The US was a minor political and economic power, whereas Europe was much more powerful and had its own much longer history of imperialism and territorial expansion by divine right. The implication seems like a bit of historical revisionism in hindsight, based on how threatening the US seems to a lot of people now.
  - learc83 11y ago
    >The US was a minor political and economic power I agree with you that the US was under-powered militarily at the time, but by the 40s the US had been the world's largest economy and industrial power for decades.
- afarrell 11y ago
  How long have they held that perception of time? I'm under the impression that in the Anglosphere it is only as old as railroads.
  - jkyle 11y ago
    The paper on cultural time perceptions I found, which I'll have to dig up again, attributed the difference to a deep cultural value placed on timeliness in Japanese society. e.g. the value predated the specific train result. edit Though I've read papers that also trace a shortening of the window of timeliness to the appearance of public clocks. Like Big Ben.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  > For example, a train in London is considered "on time" as long as it's within 14 minutes. That may be true in London, for all I know, but it's definitely not true in western culture as a whole.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    It's not true in London. Trains delayed by 4 minutes count as late. There are different times for when you can actually do anything about it - mostly if a train is delayed by an hour you can get a refund (if you chose not to travel) or compensation (if you were already travelling before the delay happened), but it's a bit complicated. For London tube trains you can get some refunds if the train is 15 minutes late. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/dec/18/how-claim-train-delayed http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/dec/18/how-claim-train... > Transport for London (TFL) offers refunds if a passenger's journey is delayed by more than 15 minutes. For tube passengers, this amounts to the fare for the single journey you were making, whether you have a season ticket, or have purchased a single fare. London Overground users get the same, but only when their train is delayed by more than 30 minutes
mc32 11y ago
Considering the US was way undermilitarized after wwi compared to European nations, it's hard to think Japan would consider the US as an immediate adversary. Specially considering a growing USSR. Mostly they hoped to take out the US naval fleet and have their way in the pacific while Germany kept the allies busy, and then eventually win in Europe creating a world wide axis.
- ctrager 11y ago
  The US was maybe more active in Japan's neighborhood than you might be thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Panay_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Panay_incident
- jonnathanson 11y ago
  The US was under-militarized at the beginning of the WW2 years, but its industrial capacity was unrivaled and undeniable. Even before its entry into the war, for instance, it was almost singlehandedly supplying the British and Soviet war efforts. The US was supplying nearly 40% of all the USSR's food, clothing, munitions, and military hardware during Hitler's Barbarossa campaign, in the months prior to Pearl Harbor. It was doing all of this while its economy was roaring back up from the Depression, and its output was just getting started. (The US produced about 2,500 warplanes in 1940; by 1944, it was producing just under 100,000 per year.) Germany and Japan correctly feared the United States long before its entry into the conflict. They feared it not necessarily as a war machine, but as a relentless and massive industrial machine. They knew that, if war with the US were to drag on for a few years, the US would eventually get its shit together and outproduce and outgun either of them by an order of magnitude.
ctrager 11y ago
I don't know what the Japanese felt, but I think the US maybe was about as hegemonic as Japan, Britain, Russia, Germany, France. It wouldn't hurt for US citizens to know these bullet points in their history that relate to Japan's neighborhood: Perry's expedition to Japan, the Spanish American war, but especially the Phillipine Insurrection, the Anti-Imperialist League, the Boxer Rebellion, the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and the Yangtze Patrol, and its context.

skeolawn 11y ago

Well I guess Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, while the US was attempting to find a peaceful solution, so Japan gets the blame.

mikeash 11y ago
And let's not forget spending a decade rampaging about China raping and murdering. So, yeah, it turns out that when a country goes out and commits mass murder for ten years then carries out a surprise attack against another country who thinks they should maybe just cut back a bit on that whole raping-and-murdering thing and has otherwise stuck to their own borders for a couple of decades, the first country gets the blame for the ensuing war. Go figure.

baddox 11y ago

It's fair to point out American imperialism and colonialism in the past, and even ongoing to a certain extent in the 1940s, but leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor it hardly matched the intensity or blatantness of Japan's own imperialism and colonialism, particularly in Manchuria and the Pacific.

ajmurmann 11y ago

Let's not forget the black ships forcing Japan to open up. Many right wing Japanese still link the entire war period back to that and they do have somewhat of a point. I strongly recommend Ian Buruma's "Inventing Japan"

damienkatz 11y ago

So if a convicted murderer moves in beside me, it's partially his fault if I attempt to murderer him in his sleep

woah 11y ago
It is if there are no legal authorities more powerful than the both of you (as was the case). Actually, your use of the word "convicted" is nonsensical in this case. The more accurate analogy is if a murderer murders your neighbor, and then moves into his house, and the police don't exist.
chrisfosterelli 11y ago
I think this may be an unfair metaphor, because we have a police force and laws that give us incentive to not murder our neighbours in their sleep and give us assurance that we will be protected while we sleep ourselves. On the world scale, this doesn't exist. If there was no laws, police, or government and a serial murderer moves in beside you, you may very well try to murder him in his sleep.

trynumber9 11y ago

That's ridiculous. Let's take a long view on China from Japan's perspective: * Han Chinese displaced people in every direction, throughout what is now China and even into Malaya. * Chinese moved south & west, killing native peoples. (numerous Mongol, Dzungar and Tibetan elimination campaigns) * China takes land from Tibet (1930-1932). * "Chinese unity" includes a lot of places that aren't Han Chinese. (routinely interfering in Mongolia) * China previously demanded tribute from Japan. * Republic of China oppressed the Manchu, killing hundreds of thousands. * China wanted to kick Japan out of the mainland. It was only logical to feel threatened by China. If properly unified it would outclass and defeat Japan. They had a momentary advantage and felt compelled to take action to protect themselves against a hostile China.

knughit 11y ago
Where is the ridiculous part? Aside from aspect that many national governments were expanding and conquering, as they are wont to do.
- trynumber9 11y ago
  Most nations have many reasons to fear their neighbors if you look far enough back. The situation dictated policy. Either their war in China ground to a halt or they conquer SEA. I don't think the "Manifest destiny" entered much into IJA/IJN thinking in 1941.

cgriswald 11y ago

I'm going to be a little imprecise here, but hopefully accurate: 1853: Commodore Perry shows up on the shores of Japan with shiny ships and cannons and says "You're gonna trade with the world." It worked, but Japan didn't like it. Japan spent its time buying ships from Great Britain and sending its young people to school in the United States to learn what it could about empire building. Late 1800s: The United States, wanting to be seen as a world power, attacks and defeats the world's weakest "World Power" Spain, both in Cuba and in the Phillipines. Japan had been helping the Phillipines achieve independence and the United States basically stole the Phillipines out from under them. Early 1900s: Japan fights and wins against Russia in the Pacific. They basically destroyed Russia at Port Arthur (using the same tactics as were used at Pearl Harbor). To retaliate the Russians had to send their Atlantic fleet the long way around the world. By then Japan had rebuilt from the battle at Port Arthur and defeated the Russians again. The lesson: Defeating a world power only requires you to be powerful within your sphere of influence. Shortly before Pearl Harbor: U.S. cuts off oil supply to Japan. Japan needs the oil in the Phillipines and also wants to take the Phillipines back which they felt were stolen from them. Pearl Harbor was their attempt to recreate the Battle of Port Arthur and wipe out American presence in the Pacific, leaving Japan the most powerful entity in that sphere of influence. The long view of Japan and the United States is that we kind of grew up together, but we were the bullying older brother. They grew up to emulate us and when they got big enough... they punched back.

powera 11y ago

You seem to completely ignoring Japan's wars of invasion against China, Korea, Indochina, and basically every border other than "America" first. Or for that matter, the rest of World War II which had been going on for over a year.

sirkneeland 11y ago
2 years, really. It kicked off in late 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, subsequent declarations of war by Britain and France, and then an awkward months-long period of shuffling about known as the "Phony War". </pedantry>
- zhte415 11y ago
  Pedantry? Japan's intrusions and occupations of Korea and China lasted decades before 'it kicked off in late 1939'.

JackFr 11y ago

> * The first Americans kick out the British. That really doesn't capture the flavor of it. In a very real sense, the first Americans were British -- they just refused to pay taxes to a government thousand of miles away.

qbrass 11y ago
It also skips over the part where they failed to kick the British out of Canada.
- adventured 11y ago
  The US never tried to take over the territory later called Canada, whether to annex it or to remove the British. There was never a war declared for that purpose, the US never mobilized its full military toward that aim, there was never a large amount of financing raised to pay for such an immense effort, and so on. There's zero evidence to support the notion that US planned to try to accomplish that outcome. At best it was a skirmish toward a narrow goal.
  - dctoedt 11y ago
    > The US never tried to take over the territory later called Canada, whether to annex it or to remove the British. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Canada_(1775) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Canada_(1775) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Invasions_of_Upper_and_Lower_Canada.2C_1812 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Invasions_of_Upper...
protomyth 11y ago
... Without representation. The taxes weren't the whole problem.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

Major General Smedley Butler predicted a war with the Japanese in his book "War is a Racket": Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

merpnderp 11y ago

Wikipedia says that the US genocide of Native Americans numbered somewhere between 30-50K people over 120 years, some of those in military conflicts. In comparison in the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese murdered 50-300K. And averaged 300-500K civilians murdered per month between 1937 and 1945. By 1941 Japan had no reason to believe the US was in any way expansionist. There had been 20 years of isolationist rhetoric from both political parties and almost no public support for intervention in wars abroad.

novaleaf 11y ago
The Manifest Destiny doers didn't know it, but most of the Americas had been cleared a hundred years earlier by disease. Some estimate 95% fatality rates.
- LeoardoDavinci1 11y ago
  So, is OK to decimate everybody left because disease had already killed a lot of the native people. So if another country had come to conquer the European nations after the black plague and committed genocide would it have been OK? Otherwise I'm not exactly sure what is your point. Is like you are trying to say, hey, I only killed 4%, the other 95% were already dead so is not so bad.
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    There's no one saying it is okay here. Everyone agrees it meets the modern definition of a genocide. But I'd would certainly need some evidence that the US was responsible for 80% of the deaths of the remaining native Americans. I looked around for these numbers and have never seen anyone claim this.
  - pyre 11y ago
    I'm guessing the parent post is saying that the numbers of dead would have been higher had the populations not been decimated by disease.
protomyth 11y ago