Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#41

Post by jordanb » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:07 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…

I've read the linked book[0] and you're right that the headline gets it wrong. It should have said that the decision to attack Pearl Harbor was the result of Face-saving among the Japanese military leadership. To summarize:

The US had embargoed Japan and was demanding that the army (IJA) withdraw to its pre-war Manchurian borders in China. The IJA needed American goods to prosecute the war but such withdrawal would result in an utter loss of face for the IJA.

The IJA instead proposed that the US and Dutch be attacked and goods be secured from American and Dutch colonies (Philippines and Indonesia) to fight the war in China. This would chiefly be a Naval war and thus executed by the IJN.

The IJA hoped to force the IJN to share in its loss of face by admitting it wasn't powerful enough to fight the USN. But the Admirals refused to publicly admit that they couldn't fight the USN (privately they lobbied the Emperor and his subordinates to intervene). Through this impasse between the service branches the Japanese government drifted towards a war they knew they couldn't win.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Japan-1941-Countdown-Eri-Hotta/dp/0307...

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#42

Post by duaneb » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:11 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…

I've been reading Dower's"Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II" and I think embarrassment is a significant factor, though this is not exclusive with your explanations. While the nation as a whole may not exhibit signs of shame, the Japanese culture at the time seemed to encourage the direction of moral responsibility upwards.

So while (particularly) the need for oil can't be overstated in this case, I think that there was a degree of self-consciousness that DID characterize the actions of the upper military acting on pressure from those "beneath" them. I don't think the pressure was directly to attack, but there was enough power concentrated in the hands of the few that their decisions were allowed to be implemented rapidly and without much resistance.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#43

Post by apsec112 » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:15 PM UTC

"Pundits have long puzzled over why Japan, embroiled in an unwinnable war in China, attacked a country that supplied most of its oil and had an economy 70 times its own."

That's off by like an order of magnitude. Numbers like this are never exact, but no way was the difference 70x. Wikipedia's numbers have it at ~5.5x: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor...

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#44

Post by Cieplak » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:16 PM UTC

"Instead of being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for their data on human experimentation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

A bit off topic but perhaps interesting to some.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#45

Post by LoSboccacc » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:17 PM UTC

knughit wrote: post #29

krapp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu

I don't understand the debate of the meaning of ignore vs reject. The US made ultimatum without a specific deadline. The hawkish press spoke in behalf of the government, but without authority. The US continued its plan to attack until surrender was communicated. No doubt powerful in US govt wanted to see what the bomb could do. Dropping two a-bombs in a week wasn't an accidental race condition against communication l…

nobody expected them to surrender at the time, and they needed either to go trough a landings and ugly attrition war or display such force to let the parties surrender while saving face.

that's why the bombs and that's why the target were mid sized cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing...

especially source http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/opinion/blood-on-our-hands...

''We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war,'' Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, said later.''

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#46

Post by Cieplak » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:19 PM UTC

Cieplak wrote: post #44

"Instead of being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for their data on human experimentation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 A bit off topic but perhaps interesting to some.

"During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against San Diego, California. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Biological_warfare

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#47

Post by learc83 » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:25 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #26

jkyle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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,…

>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.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#48

Post by rangibaby » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:30 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…

They did try invading Soviet territory, but got slapped so badly by Zhukov that they gave up. Permenantly; the Soviets were able to send all of their military forces west when their spy in Japan confirmed that the latter had no plans to attack them.

Some important Japanese politicians did anything they could to stop war with the USA (Mamoru Shigemitsu, a pacifist, and Fumimaro Konoye, who considered an attack on the USA to be a very bad idea) but the militarists had the ear of the emperor, and kool aid was drunk.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#49

Post by mcguire » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:31 PM UTC

powera wrote: post #36

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.

The article appears to be of the belief that no one in the Japanese government wanted war but they were all bumbling fools who couldn't say they didn't want war.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#50

Post by JackFr » Sat, Dec 05, 2015, 11:32 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…

> * 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.