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Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

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Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#71

Post by protomyth »

merpnderp wrote: post #57
apsec112 wrote: post #43

"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...

By the end of the war, the US was producing as many light aircraft carriers per month as Japan had produced over the entire war. Whatever the exact numbers were, it was silly lopsided.

Or the speed at which the US was producing ships. It was beyond lopsided.

Also, I seem to remember reading Canada had a part in the pre-war story (very anti-Japanese PM), but I don't remember the source.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#72

Post by protomyth »

merpnderp wrote: post #60
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…

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 fro…

If that is what Wikipedia is claiming then it is off by orders of magnitude on the the Native American genicide.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#73

Post by protomyth »

JackFr wrote: post #50
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.

... Without representation. The taxes weren't the whole problem.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#74

Post by LeoardoDavinci1 »

novaleaf wrote: post #63
merpnderp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

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.

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.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#75

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

The article and the commenters here vastly underestimate the weakness of the US strategic position and the initial advantage that the IJN had. They institutionally understood and embraced the new reality of carrier and air warfare.

The reality is that the Philippines were incredibly vulnerable and run by a General who was not so effective. Ditto the fossils living in WW1 dreadnought world on the Navy side.

Had fate turned ever so slightly at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, or Midway, the great gamble made by the Japanese would have been genius.

The embarrassment and face saving nonsense killed them not in 1941, but in 1943, when they followed through on a fools errand instead of settling for peace. Once the US industrial power was mobilized, the result was pretty certain.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#76

Post by merpnderp »

protomyth wrote: post #72
merpnderp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

If that is what Wikipedia is claiming then it is off by orders of magnitude on the the Native American genicide.

If you try to prove this you'll find the problem. There is very little evidence to go by except guestimations. You can say it is off by orders of magnitude (which is silly because 2 orders of magnitude would be the total estimated population of N. American before Columbus), but you certainly can't back that up with evidence.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#77

Post by lsc »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #64
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…

> + perhaps most importantly, were out of their depth when it came to assessing a political risk, namely the extent to which a surprise attack would bring down on them the implacable fury of an enraged and industrially-powerful United States. By "out of their depth" do we mean "dumber than six pounds of gravel"? I admit that the fantasy that slapping someone in the face will instantly cow them, instead of provoking a…

>(See also Every Terrorist Ever, with the exception of the ones who want to provoke angry retaliation.)

I don't pretend to know what a terrorist's goals are, but my observation, as a US civilian is that our responses to terror have harmed us a whole lot more than the terror attacks themselves, so assuming that a terrorist's goal is to maximize damage to my country, it would be rational for them to focus not on how many people they kill, but on how big and self-destructive of a response they can provoke.

(the counter-argument, of course, is that I don't know how many terror attacks would have happened without our massive reaction.)

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#78

Post by merpnderp »

LeoardoDavinci1 wrote: post #74
novaleaf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#79

Post by pyre »

LeoardoDavinci1 wrote: post #74
novaleaf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#80

Post by dang »

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…

Ok, we changed the headline to the more generic HTML doc title.
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