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Informative piece. Short history tangent: > (Donald Gibbs, of Pearl-Harbor conspiracy-theory infamy) I had thought thae "USA wanted in to WWII and provoked Ja
by lionhearted 17y ago
Informative piece. Short history tangent:
> (Donald Gibbs, of Pearl-Harbor conspiracy-theory infamy)
I had thought thae "USA wanted in to WWII and provoked Japan" was just a generally accepted position by most everyone who'd looked into it.
United States companies were responsible for 80% of Japan's oil. U.S. Government bans companies from exporting oil to Japan, declares Japan "a hostile nation", and starts stationing more troops, supplies, and armaments in the American-owned places you'd need troops to launch an attack against Japan.
Following the embargo, Japan goes into "oil shock". They're set to run out of oil in two years. Consumer prices for oil-based products go up 10x or more. The nearest place where there was oil was Indonesia, which was at the time was owned by European colonial powers already at war with Japan.
Here's a decent world map:
http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/boilproj/images/Reference%20Material_world_pol98.jpg http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/boilproj/images/Reference%20...
America owned the Philippines at the time. Japan's war was taking them into Indonesia. The United States had just declared Japan a hostile nation, embargoed them, and started moving troops and arms into the Philippines and Hawaii.
It was obvious Japan would attack the United States following those events. Since United States foreign intelligence and military analysis were very good at this time, the pretty obvious conclusion is that the U.S. Government wanted war with Japan. Later, Pearl Harbor was sold as attacking for no reason to the American people for PR reasons, but the leadership must have known that their actions made a Republic of USA/Empire of Japan war pretty inevitable.
- lisper 17y agoThe popular mythology in the U.S. is that the attack was not only unprovoked but actually unexpected. Without this myth it's very hard to maintain our self-image as the Good Guys, particularly in light of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- tocomment 17y agoDidn't we lose a lot of ships though? If we thought they might do something like bomb pearl harbor, wouldn't we have spread out our ships, or kept the oldest ones at the harbor? It seems like a bad strategy to sacrifice a significant amount of useful military assets in a false flag..ish operation.
- pradocchia 17y agoAs I recall, the aircraft carriers were not at port that day, and were repurposed as capital ships after the battleships were destroyed. Wikipedia has a long article on foreknowledge here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_debate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_...
- ovi256 17y agoSupposedly, the loss of the battleships was not prevented, as the Navy knew they were useless in modern warfare. This smacks of internal struggle and politics, between the two camps of naval warfare, carrier-based and battleship. The carrier guys took advantage of the situation to eliminate their opponents crown jewels.
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoHas everybody forgot about the invasion of China? The rape of Nanking? And when does an oil embargo cause another country to take up arms in a sneak attack? Come on, guys, Japan always had the option of terminating their belligerence. There was a legitimate reason for the oil embargo, and it wasn't to provoke a war. Geesh.
- pradocchia 17y agoWell, sure, but one should be careful about bringing moral legitimacy into the discussion. We might accept that the US was a more benevolent hegemon, and still allow that it willfully provoked Japan to attack. You seem to imply that since there was a legitimate reason, this was in fact the motive reason, or that legitimate motive precludes subterfuge.
- Perceval 17y agoI don't know why you're being moderated down. The Japanese had already begun conquering large swaths of East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and so on. A U.S.-Dutch oil embargo was hardly belligerent compared to the actual conquests of the Japanese. The grandparent poster reads like they got their information about WWII from the Yasukuni Shrine museum...
- gruseom 17y agoI downvoted because it has nothing to do with the point under discussion, which is whether the US knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened. Imperial Japan certainly was nasty, but "Imperial Japan was nasty, so Donald Gibbs, lisper, and lionhearted are wrong about this factual question" is a non sequitur.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]