8 ms·

The US was not in any significant danger of being directly invaded during WWII. It would have been an incredibly costly logistical nightmare for the would-be in

The US was not in any significant danger of being directly invaded during WWII. It would have been an incredibly costly logistical nightmare for the would-be invaders, very unlikely to succeed. US worries were legitimate (atrocities perpetrated against civilians, future control of Europe/Asia, the international economic order and security of global trade networks, etc.) but “urgent” invasion wasn’t one of them.

Nomentatus 4y ago
The mainland you mean, not the U.S. as a whole - since part of Alaska was invaded and seized. One of the reasons that's not well-known is that I believe it was kept secret during the war as it was a tad embarrassing.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign It wasn’t a very successful invasion. They held a couple of islands for two months at the cost of 4000 of their 8000 men.
  - Nomentatus 4y ago
    However it's worth noting that the invasion caused at least tens of thousands of deaths and probably hundreds of thousands of deaths in North America - because the US and Canada built the Alaska highway to counter the Japanese; and that project spread illnesses to such as TB to native people who had never encountered them before; with a staggering deathtoll amongst them. Also not reported during the war.
coryrc 4y ago
Pearl Harbor was US. The Philippines was US. We were literally invaded. They also bombed the West Coast.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  Hawaii and the Philippines were only territories. The mainland US was not in any danger. What I mean by this is that the average US citizen was completely safe (well, until drafts)
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  > They also bombed the West Coast. Two bombs, and it was basically a non-event. The intent was to start massive forest fires, but they failed. They also shelled the West coast, and all they did was damage a baseball backstop at Fort Stevens and tear up the beach a bit.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  US Navy ships in the territory of Hawaii were bombed but the island was not “invaded”. You are right that the Philippines was invaded, and was at the time a US territory. But it was at that point under a government intended to transition it to independence. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare–Hawes–Cutting_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare–Hawes–Cutting_Act From what I can tell (this was decades before my birth and I have not extensively studied it, so I probably have an oversimplified impression) for mainland Americans, the Philippines was not really considered to be part of the country in the same way as, say, Illinois or Texas, and Filipinos were not considered to be Americans in the same way. (e.g. after WWII the Congress voted to strip benefits from Filipino veterans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission_Act_of_1946 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission_Act_of_1946) I’m sure the US wanted to maintain some navy and trade presence there though. The Japanese also occupied the Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu (part of Alaska territory). But it’s hard to imagine that people 3000 miles away in, say, Oregon were worried that the Japanese would be imminently launching an amphibious assault from there.
  - coryrc 4y ago
    People were literally killed by bombs in Oregon: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon-bomb-killed-six-americansfive-them-children-oregon-180972259/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon...
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Atrocities perpetrated against civilians wasn't a concern. It got retconned into our national consciousness, and sending refugees back demonstrates that thoroughly. The rest of what you say is right though.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  From what I can tell people in the US were not happy about cities in Britain getting bombed, France being conquered, etc. Disclaimer: I am not an expert in contemporary American understanding of WWII.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    Oh, that’s fair and you’re right, they did care about those kinds of atrocities. Edit because I’m exhausted and not being mindful about finishing thoughts, I didn’t mean this to be fighting words so much as clarifying words: they cared about mass attacks on civilians in some cases but not others. Bombings of allied cities was absolutely a concern. Mass murder or German and mostly eastern European Jews wasn’t such a concern. There wasn’t any such reaction to sending Jewish refugees back to be murdered. The whole concept of actually caring about nazi atrocities on the scale they they committed them, to the victims they were committed against, was a retroactive set of moral concerns. And that’s unsurprising given that the US was the primary inspiration for those atrocities.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
The fear was that Germany could occupy a South American country and use that to launch attacks on the U.S. this never happens obviously, but one could imagine it if the wars in Europe and Russia had gone differently.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
justshowpost 4y ago
Bulls. Hawaii was in clear and direct danger. I presume the famous American educashun kicked in and geographically spoiled the slogan of bad bad America.

Nomentatus 4y ago

The mainland you mean, not the U.S. as a whole - since part of Alaska was invaded and seized. One of the reasons that's not well-known is that I believe it was kept secret during the war as it was a tad embarrassing.

shepherdjerred 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign It wasn’t a very successful invasion. They held a couple of islands for two months at the cost of 4000 of their 8000 men.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  However it's worth noting that the invasion caused at least tens of thousands of deaths and probably hundreds of thousands of deaths in North America - because the US and Canada built the Alaska highway to counter the Japanese; and that project spread illnesses to such as TB to native people who had never encountered them before; with a staggering deathtoll amongst them. Also not reported during the war.

coryrc 4y ago

Pearl Harbor was US. The Philippines was US. We were literally invaded. They also bombed the West Coast.

shepherdjerred 4y ago
Hawaii and the Philippines were only territories. The mainland US was not in any danger. What I mean by this is that the average US citizen was completely safe (well, until drafts)
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
> They also bombed the West Coast. Two bombs, and it was basically a non-event. The intent was to start massive forest fires, but they failed. They also shelled the West coast, and all they did was damage a baseball backstop at Fort Stevens and tear up the beach a bit.
jacobolus 4y ago
US Navy ships in the territory of Hawaii were bombed but the island was not “invaded”. You are right that the Philippines was invaded, and was at the time a US territory. But it was at that point under a government intended to transition it to independence. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare–Hawes–Cutting_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare–Hawes–Cutting_Act From what I can tell (this was decades before my birth and I have not extensively studied it, so I probably have an oversimplified impression) for mainland Americans, the Philippines was not really considered to be part of the country in the same way as, say, Illinois or Texas, and Filipinos were not considered to be Americans in the same way. (e.g. after WWII the Congress voted to strip benefits from Filipino veterans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission_Act_of_1946 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescission_Act_of_1946) I’m sure the US wanted to maintain some navy and trade presence there though. The Japanese also occupied the Aleutian islands of Kiska and Attu (part of Alaska territory). But it’s hard to imagine that people 3000 miles away in, say, Oregon were worried that the Japanese would be imminently launching an amphibious assault from there.
- coryrc 4y ago
  People were literally killed by bombs in Oregon: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon-bomb-killed-six-americansfive-them-children-oregon-180972259/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon...

eyelidlessness 4y ago

Atrocities perpetrated against civilians wasn't a concern. It got retconned into our national consciousness, and sending refugees back demonstrates that thoroughly. The rest of what you say is right though.

jacobolus 4y ago
From what I can tell people in the US were not happy about cities in Britain getting bombed, France being conquered, etc. Disclaimer: I am not an expert in contemporary American understanding of WWII.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Oh, that’s fair and you’re right, they did care about those kinds of atrocities. Edit because I’m exhausted and not being mindful about finishing thoughts, I didn’t mean this to be fighting words so much as clarifying words: they cared about mass attacks on civilians in some cases but not others. Bombings of allied cities was absolutely a concern. Mass murder or German and mostly eastern European Jews wasn’t such a concern. There wasn’t any such reaction to sending Jewish refugees back to be murdered. The whole concept of actually caring about nazi atrocities on the scale they they committed them, to the victims they were committed against, was a retroactive set of moral concerns. And that’s unsurprising given that the US was the primary inspiration for those atrocities.

shepherdjerred 4y ago

The fear was that Germany could occupy a South American country and use that to launch attacks on the U.S. this never happens obviously, but one could imagine it if the wars in Europe and Russia had gone differently.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

justshowpost 4y ago

Bulls. Hawaii was in clear and direct danger. I presume the famous American educashun kicked in and geographically spoiled the slogan of bad bad America.