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Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

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Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#81

Post by nkurz »

dang wrote: post #80
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.

For future reference, the previous title was "Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to avoid embarrassment", which is the title that appears at the top of the linked story. While clearly a proposition rather than a solid fact, I think it's an accurate summary of the thrust of the article.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#82

Post by awfullyjohn »

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 completely agree. The title is reductive.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#83

Post by sirkneeland »

powera wrote: post #32
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.

2 years, really. It kicked off in late 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, subsequent declarations of war by Britain and France, and then an awkward months-long period of shuffling about known as the "Phony War".

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#84

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #75
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 t…

[deleted]

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#85

Post by scurvy »

mcguire wrote: post #49
powera wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They wanted to go to war, just not against the US. They very much thought that they were racially superior to other Asians and would easily dominate them in battle.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#86

Post by marshray »

mikeash wrote: post #69
powera wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that? What advantage would that provide? It seems like they would have been a lot better off if the declaration had arrived before, but maybe I'm missing something.

My understanding is that the Japanese' Bushido code specifically looked down on sneak attacks. I.e., a lower-class Ninja* might kill you in your sleep, whereas a noble Samurai would wake you up and give you a chance to draw.

If you've ever noticed the Americans' official reaction to Pearl Harbor often made a curious point about calling it a "despicable sneak attack". While a sneak attack seems like a rather obvious way to start a war for Westerners, the emphasis may have been a propaganda point towards the Japanese.

[*] No offense is intended to any actual Ninjas.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#87

Post by twoodfin »

merpnderp wrote: post #58
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.

An absolute disgrace that so many monstrously evil war criminals were let off after the war. But the US is currently shipping weapons and money to brutal dictators in several countries in a horrible display of RealPolitik, so not much has changed.

I'm genuinely curious: Which brutal dictators are currently receiving U.S. arms? With Mubarak gone I can't come up with any. The Saudis? Hard to describe what they're running (or at least barely managing) as a dictatorship.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#88

Post by arrayjumper »

twoodfin wrote: post #87
merpnderp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An absolute disgrace that so many monstrously evil war criminals were let off after the war. But the US is currently shipping weapons and money to brutal dictators in several countries in a horrible display of RealPolitik, so not much has changed.

I'm genuinely curious: Which brutal dictators are currently receiving U.S. arms? With Mubarak gone I can't come up with any. The Saudis? Hard to describe what they're running (or at least barely managing) as a dictatorship.

Pakistan? Their democracy is a joke. The military holds all the power as evidenced by the multiple military coups in their past

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#89

Post by adventured »

qbrass wrote: post #70
JackFr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 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.

It also skips over the part where they failed to kick the British out of Canada.

The US never tried to take over the territory later called Canada, whether to annex it or to remove the British. There was never a war declared for that purpose, the US never mobilized its full military toward that aim, there was never a large amount of financing raised to pay for such an immense effort, and so on. There's zero evidence to support the notion that US planned to try to accomplish that outcome. At best it was a skirmish toward a narrow goal.

Re: Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

#90

Post by hasenj »

jacquesm wrote: post #23
pixl97 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History does not tell you about new things. For example, how will technology affect the outcome of war. Evolution is another such thing. You're poisonous caterpillar that no one can eat, you prosper, then suddenly you get decimated by a bird that can stomach your poison.

> For example, how will technology affect the outcome of war. That's one thing you do learn from history. You'll win this one if you have the technology and your opponent does not. Otherwise you lose. The next war, you'll both have the technology.

I read somewhere on wikipedia that Japan did some research on nuclear weaponry but concluded it's not feasible.
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