Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#31

Post by cgriswald » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:36 PM UTC

threefour wrote: post #5

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" * Am…

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.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#32

Post by powera » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:38 PM UTC

threefour wrote: post #5

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" * Am…

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.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#33

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

dctoedt wrote: post #28

The headline doesn't square with everything I've ever read about the attack. Embarrassment was at best a minor factor in the Japanese thinking. The major factor, IIRC, was that certain military officers -- many of them belonging to (or fearful of) a murderous ultranationalist faction -- had come to dominate the Japanese government [1]. These military men: + wanted to strike south to secure desperately-needed sources…

[deleted]

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#34

Post by powera » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:45 PM UTC

The tone here is incredibly biased towards "nobody in Japan wanted war". Apparently nobody in Japan wanted war, but they somehow kept invading countries?

And the claim that "Japan had planned to declare war shortly before its planes bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, but a series of errors by typists and translators prevented the Japanese embassy from giving Washington the declaration in time." is beyond absurd.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#35

Post by hibikir » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:46 PM UTC

rquantz wrote: post #2

And untold millions died because of Japanese leaders' cautious stupidity. It seems like there are lessons to be learned here? Let's start with, whenever there are positions that are culturally unspeakable, you have a problem. Perhaps another is, whatever idiocy a foreign nation's leaders are spouting, it's a good bet nobody actually wants war ( cough cough Putin )

This is a problem in all organizations, not just governments. Few things predict failure better than an environment where criticism and negative feedback are suppressed, often because it's seen as not nice, or uncivilized. I've seen startups fail because big problems were readily visible and understood by most of the staff, but people were terrified to talk about them. By the time people were aware of how widely shared the suppressed opinions had spread, the damage was done. Just this week, I talked with employees of another high profile startup that claim they are heading in the very same direction, because discussing the technical problems in their platform leads to social ostracism.

It's not as if there's only one way to et into an unsafe culture: I have seen situations where people were intimidated by using abusive, aggressive behavior, and others where the same things were accomplished through smiles and backstabbing.

If you are leading a startup and you don't see dissent in your organization, beware, because what it means is that it's been forced to go underground.

So yes, we should learn from imperial japan that every organization needs ways for people to safely and politely express unpopular, honest opinions.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#36

Post by powera » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:47 PM UTC

joshmaker wrote: post #27

Interesting read, but there is something a little odd about an article that describes Emperor Hirohito as "merely a figurehead" but later casually mentions that Hirohito had the power to surprise General Tojo by naming him prime minister and spends a good deal of time talking about how Hirohito could have potentially prevented the war due to how much influence he had.

The article appears to be of the belief that literally nothing the Japanese government could have said or done was a sign they wanted war.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#37

Post by rntz » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:48 PM UTC

powera wrote: post #34

The tone here is incredibly biased towards "nobody in Japan wanted war". Apparently nobody in Japan wanted war, but they somehow kept invading countries? And the claim that "Japan had planned to declare war shortly before its planes bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, but a series of errors by typists and translators prevented the Japanese embassy from giving Washington the declaration in time." is beyond absurd.

> And the claim that "Japan had planned to declare war shortly before its planes bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, but a series of errors by typists and translators prevented the Japanese embassy from giving Washington the declaration in time." is beyond absurd.

It appears to be the truth, or pretty close to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#Japanes...

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#38

Post by oblio » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:52 PM UTC

dctoedt wrote: post #28

The headline doesn't square with everything I've ever read about the attack. Embarrassment was at best a minor factor in the Japanese thinking. The major factor, IIRC, was that certain military officers -- many of them belonging to (or fearful of) a murderous ultranationalist faction -- had come to dominate the Japanese government [1]. These military men: + wanted to strike south to secure desperately-needed sources…

> an alternative they debated was to invade Siberia

You're too polite. They did try that. There were minor skirmishes along the Soviet-Japanese border before WW2, they were close to an actual war. But the Japanese Army got smashed so that idea was scrapped.

The other faction vying for power then gained favor and they headed south.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#39

Post by mcintyre1994 » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:52 PM UTC

rui314 wrote: post #21

rquantz wrote: post #2

And untold millions died because of Japanese leaders' cautious stupidity. It seems like there are lessons to be learned here? Let's start with, whenever there are positions that are culturally unspeakable, you have a problem. Perhaps another is, whatever idiocy a foreign nation's leaders are spouting, it's a good bet nobody actually wants war ( cough cough Putin )

One thing we could learn is that the pre-war Japanese Constitution had a serious problem. The Constitution gave all powers to the Emperor and let him govern the country through the parliament, cabinet, courts, army and navy. That was interpreted to mean the army and navy did not have to obey the cabinet as long as they obey the Emperor. The Emperor didn't actually govern just like UK, so there was no head of the coun…

This is a pretty interesting point because Germany had the exact same problem - with Hitler able to have the Enabling Act passed. It's a more extreme example because it allowed the Reichstag to vote themselves out of power in favour of Hitler, but it's interesting that Japan similarly had a constitutional power balancing problem.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#40

Post by powera » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 10:54 PM UTC

rntz wrote: post #37

powera wrote: post #34

The tone here is incredibly biased towards "nobody in Japan wanted war". Apparently nobody in Japan wanted war, but they somehow kept invading countries? And the claim that "Japan had planned to declare war shortly before its planes bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, but a series of errors by typists and translators prevented the Japanese embassy from giving Washington the declaration in time." is beyond absurd.

> And the claim that "Japan had planned to declare war shortly before its planes bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, but a series of errors by typists and translators prevented the Japanese embassy from giving Washington the declaration in time." is beyond absurd. It appears to be the truth, or pretty close to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#Japanes...

I think it's far far far more likely that they intended for the declaration to arrive after the attacks, but with some amount of plausible deniability.