Why Japanese leaders attacked Pearl Harbor

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.

Disagree strongly. The way those battles turned just sped up the destruction of Imperial Japan---and if you expect every battle to go your way, you're a damned fool.

The surprise attack, their brutality in war, plus our memory of how WWI did not end in a lasting peace, made sure settling for a peace was not an option by 1943. By the time we were focusing on the home islands with Operations Starvation and Downfall, plus the fruits of the Manhattan Project, the details of the Bataan Death March unquestionably revealed by the liberation of the Philippines ... well, it really sucked to be Japanese by then. But not hardly so bad as the subject people in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which they were killing at a rate of 400,000 per month by then.

I'm finishing reading Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947/... and it's really sobering. Olympic as planned, the invasion of southern Kyuushu, wasn't going to work, and with Marshall pushing for all nuclear weapons after Nagasaki to be earmarked for it, and liberal use of poison gas, it would have made Okinawa look like a walk in the park. And there's no way Coronet, the planned March invasion of the Kanto plane in Honshu that includes Tokyo would have happened on schedule before the weather made it impractical. Yet we were absolutely determined to see it through, one way or another, with as many as a million of our men dying the process.

Fatally flawed in that you couldn't form a government without a member each from the Army and Navy, and the Army abused this. Plus in the 20s or so a culture of acceptable political assassination developed.

In this context, I'm sure Hirohito, who would have much rather focused on marine biology, knew very well something unpleasant would happen to him if he didn't go along with the ultranationalists, there's way too much old and new Japanese history telling him exactly that.

I seriously doubt he could have prevented the war, especially since the genesis was so long in forming, e.g. without their depredations in China stretching back years, and of course the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, it's very unlikely things would have come to a head like they did. And why not go back to their turn of the century war with Russia and occupation of Korea? Not all that many people are upset with the former, even today, although it helped set the stage for the Bolsheviks and most of the bloodletting of the 20th Century.

Repeating a bit about what I've read especially in Hell to Pay (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685585), while we can debate his being able to influence things earlier, we, the peoples of East Asia, etc. can be very thankful that he was able to throw his weight behind surrender after the two bombs and the Soviet entry in the war, in a situation where the cabinet was still bloody minded enough to stay the course. And I'm not so sure they wouldn't have "won", they were quite willing to sacrifice 20 million of their own people in the process, a mere 1/5-1/4th.

Counterfactuals to that could include Hirohito trying earlier and being replaced by a pliable Emperor who wouldn't have dared try or have had the stature to make that utterly critical move when it most counted.

The targets were mid-sized cities because by the time the target planning started, Kyoto was the only big one the B-29s hadn't burned to the ground (well, the important parts; I forget when, but we'd given up on Tokyo after destroying 17 square miles or so), and Secretary of War Stimson, who'd visited it and Japan in general, removed it from the list, despite Groves imploring him many times to not. That was wise, if for no other reason that it strengthened the Emperor's hand when he was finally in a position to end the war, for a long time Kyoto was the Emperor's city, Tokyo the military's.

But sometimes the smallest of things derails you. The scientists' saving throw for a real program failed when the bigwigs Nazis were invited to a seminar, but the secretary sending out the invitations accidentally included in the packets the agenda for a different and very technical seminar they'd have no interest in.

"And the only source for deaths on the trail of tears is the US government"

No, they are not the only source. "Cherokee Population Losses during the Trail of Tears: A New Perspective and a New Estimate" gives the loses as double. Not counting the subsequent increase in loses where they ended up.

I doubt we would take German official's word at numbers during WWII, so I'm not sure why the US's word is valid in this instance. The US couldn't even keep the land ownership and payments straight for the tribes and lost a massive lawsuit because of it.