Pearl Harbor

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Well, Since I wached the movie, Pearl Harbor for the first time last night, I thought I post a few questions.

1. What are your thoughts on what happened Dec. 6, 1941?

2. What are your thoughts on how the US fought back? (i.e. the dropping of the 'A' bomb)

In my opinion, I think the Japps were stupid for being allied with Hitler in the first place. I also think the US should have dropped one more 'A' bomb on those bastards...right in the heart of Tokyo.

[ September 07, 2002, 18:19: Message edited by: Kitrax ]

 

I thought it was December 7, 1941.

My thoughts: I still don't understand why Japan thought attacking us was the way to go. And I don't understand how it came as so much of a surprise to us. I would have thought we would have been more on top of things, but apparently Pearl Harbor was a disaster waiting to happen.

As for the A-bomb, a harsh retaliation. I hate that we resorted to that.

But in the end, I am glad we now have a good relationship with Japan, and Germany for that matter.

 

1. First of all, it was December 7, 1941. Just a correction, no insult intended.

As for my feelings about it, I think it was a sneaky, cowardly, underhanded attack on a country that didn't want to get involved with the war any more than they already had (provididing materials to England and such, but not being directly involved with the war).

That said, I can also see WHY Japan attacked us. They felt threatened, pushed into a corner, so to speak. I don't know the exact details, but I know that Japan felt it had reason to do what it did. If their intelligence (not personal, but military) had been a bit better, the attack might have succeeded in totally crippling the U.S. Navy. As it was, all our carriers were out to sea, and I firmly believe that for that reason alone we were able to go forward with our response. Otherwise, Japan would have been able to control the Pacific for years longer than they did. This would seriously delayed the end of the war, because we needed to be within a certain distance to even consider dropping the bombs.

I don't hate the Japanese, though. Like England, we fought a war with them and used whatever means we could to win. With Japan, it was the A-Bomb, with England, it was guerrilla tactics. We are all now pretty good friends, and Japan has given us more than we would have on our own.

A friend of mine once said that Americans come up with great ideas, but it takes the Japanese to actually DO something with them.

2. We couldn't have dropped a third bomb if we wanted to. There was only enough weapons-grade plutonium and uranium for three weapons, and one of those was used at the Trinity test site. At the time, it was a much more costly and time-consuming process than it is now, relatively speaking. This was not well-known and the implication that we had more of these weapons was enough to convince the Emporer to surrender.

There is also the firebombing to consider. That had been going on for quite awhile before the A-Bombs were used, and in a few cases, were more destructive than the A-Bomb. But it was more costly overall, in terms of men, planes, and other materials. We were looking to end the war as soon as possible, and the A-Bomb was a means to that end. The consensus is that an invasion would have cost more American and Japanese lives than both bombs put together. While that is the major reason given for the justification of using the bomb, I don't think it's the only reason. We were also trying to show the world (the Soviet Union in particular - sure, we were allies, but we were never friends) that they had better not mess with us again, in the way Japan did in 1941.

Nowadays, we're a bit more mellow. If America had the same mind-set one year ago as we did 61 years ago, Afghanistan would be a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground.

[ September 07, 2002, 19:55: Message edited by: MaxxQ1 ]

 

An invasion of Japan would probably have killed more people than those two bombs did.

 

An excellent, in depth analysis of Pearl Harbor can be found in a book titled "At Dawn We Slept", by Gordon Prange. He interviewed many of the survivors on both sides, including some of the Japanese officers that planned the attack. A great read.

 

Well, for the first question, i think that it was a cowardly attack that almost put the USA out of the war. It was just because the navy's air craft carriers were at a different port that the navy wasn't completely wiped out.

While i think dropping the A bombs was a horrific thing i also think it was for the best. Japan would never had surrendered and it saved alot more than it killed. (It was costing the USA half its invasion force with each Japanese isle they took.

And for that final statement, i don't see how you could possibly say such an awful thing. I think you're missing the whole point of the A-bomb attacks. They were dropped to show the crazy rulers that the USA had the power to wipe out all of Japan. They wern't dropped to try and kill as many as possible.

[ September 07, 2002, 22:14: Message edited by: Z-Layrex ]

 

"Well, for the first question, i think that it was a cowardly attack that almost put the USA out of the war."

Z, the U.S. wasn't in the war to be put out of. We entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

Big B America was preparing for war anyway. They were going to enter either way. German u-boats had been attacking civillian ferrys. America had been preparing an army for years.

 

Z, the US wants preparing for war for many years, as you say it.
The US had just gotten out of the Great Deppresion in 1939. They couldnt have been preparing for years.

 

Cade strai that was when they finally got out of the deppression and COULD enter the war. They'd been training soldiers properly for 5 years!

 

Why Japan attacked USA?!?

100 years before Pearl Harbor the US marine attacked Japan and forced to trade with the rest of the world (before that the only western country they were trading with was Holland).
Japan waited then for the right moment to strike back. The American government ofcourse denies this.

What I don´t understand about Pearl Harbor is this:
A hour before the real attack a Japanese submarine acting as scout was sunk by the U.S. navy, the captain of this U.S. ship reported this and asked for full alert on Pearl. But nothing happened, like Roosevelt was waiting to be attacked and then having a pretty damn good excuse to start war with Japan and Germany

Oh and the movie, it sucked horribly. When I saw it, I just needed to puke.
Come on, why does there have to be romance in a warmovie. Ain´t the blood and dead bodies enough. No!! they need a female crowd too!

 

Getting involved in WWII is what got the US out of the Depression, not the other way around. Also, The US was deeply into isolationism at the time. FDR was NOT planning on getting involved until Pearl Harbor occured and the public was jolted out of its false sense of secure detachment.

I am really disgusted by the bigoted statements made in the topic and shamelessly printing here on a site that is frequented by Japanese people. Calling them Japps, or Italians Wapps, or Polish Pollacks, or Spanish Spiccs.... is insulting.

[ September 08, 2002, 00:49: Message edited by: scarampella ]

 

One of the reasons of the attack that you have not mentioned is that Japan was afraid to attack Soviets from behind, as the Germans wanted, because the japanase army had suffer humilating defeat from Soviets in Manjuria and so they decided to attack american and commonwealth forces.
As for the A-bomb there are two reasons:
1)To reduce the cost of lives of a possible invasion (Japanese would have fought to the last man)
2)To send a message to the Soviet leaders

 

BOC i'd already said number 1

 

MaxxQ1, Japan did not feel threatened by the United States, it did not feel pushed into a corner. Japan had been waging war on China for years before they struck Pearl Harbor; they needed to expand to gain resources, something the Japanese islands are not well-stocked with. They especially needed rubber, for which they spread south into the Indonesian area. They felt that eventually this would put them at odds with the US...they knew that due to the industrial potential of the United States, they could not win a prolonged conflict. They decided to strike before the US could start gearing up for conflict, and saw an opportunity to eleminate the Pacific fleet at the same time. They took it. They tried to give us about a half an hour of notice through their embassy, but some bungling resulted in our getting the message after the fact.

Morgoth, the idea that the United States' opening of Japan to the West is directly responsible for their attacking us in Hawaii is absolutely ludicrous. We did not resort to violence to open Japan; we sailed our black ships into a Japanese harbor and declared that they were now open for business. Obviously, there is a threat of violence implied in this action, but it was never necessary to actually carry through. At this time the Japanese were still under the control of the samurai system, their katanas were no match for Western firepower. The Japanese did not respond to this with resentment, but rather decided never to be in such a weak position again. The opening of Japan ushered in the Meiji era, an amazing transition to a modern state. Their war in China is a result of this drive to be a powerful Western nation...the same Imperialism that led to the division of Africa among the European nations and US control of Pacific and Caribbean islands.

BOC, it can be argued that your number 2 is a far more realistic, if cynical, reason than number 1. The Russians were driving the Japanese out of mainland Asia far faster than the US had expected. If we had not forced the Japanese to surrender quickly, the Russians would have launched the invasion, then occupation, of Japan, rather than the United States. Stalin knew that the nuclear explosions were a message to back off...he didn't take it very well. Here comes the Cold War.

 

Exactly. The Japanese are nothing if not long-term thinkers. They realized that in order to have these resources they needed, that they had to get what they percieved as their greatest threat out of the way. For whatever reason, they felt backed into a corner because they figured we would not allow them to get the materials they needed. Therefore, a preemptive strike was deemed necessary. Yes they also knew our wartime industries could be up and running very quickly, but not fast enough to replace most of the Pacific Fleet, if they had managed to take it completely out. Actually, I admire them for the planning that had to go into that operation, but not for the act itself. Like I stated above, if their intel had been just a bit better, things would be very different now, or at least the Pacific war would have gone on much longer than it did.

The fact of the matter is, if they hadn't felt threatened (whether real or perceived), they wouldn't have attacked us.

 

The thing that you're all forgetting here is that those lives lost would have been soldiers, not civilians. A solder's duty is to die for his country.. and the whole reason for that is to ensure that others will NOT have to die for their country. The people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to at least 95% not soldiers. There is a difference between killing innocents and killing soldiers, one is an act of war, the other is a warcrime.

The attack on Pearl Harbour harbor was indeed cowardly, but it was an attack by one country's army, on another country's army. Thus, it was an act of war, and war is seldom noble... The "brave" way to attack pearl harbor would have been to make a formal declaration of war first, I suppose... but surprise, surprise, it's tactically stupid to do that, since you're warning your opponent. The US did not make a formal declaration of war before attacking Afghanistan, for example. Was that cowardly?

My point here is that while bombing pearl harbor may have been cowardly, so was nuking thousands of civilians.

 

Something generally overlooked by most people is that the United States was actually put on trial for War Crimes for those bombings. I'm gonna go look it up, see if I can get some results or something.

EDIT: Sadly, no luck for the amount of effort I am willing to put into this. Oh well.

[ September 08, 2002, 07:38: Message edited by: The Deviant Mage ]

 

To declare war openly against Amarica would have been so friggin stupid that they would have had their asses blasted halfway and back across the Pacific before they could launch their attack. It was not cowardly, but intelligant. Well, I take that back, any attack on Amarica is stupid, but against any other country, it would have been intelligent.

 

Wait a minute.
I don't see why attacking USA is stupid and attacking other countries isn't?

If it wasn't the nuke, it would be some chemical weapon, don't you think? The only thing I can see here is that decision on exterminate people or not with consequences that will feel in years after depends on only few persons. These persons should be sent to those Nine Hells you have in your sig.

[EDIT]
I forgot to add something. IIRC Bin Laden is still alive and well somewhere on holidays. And the person who attacked my country is in jail and prosecuted for war crimes. Now I ask you again, why is stupid to attack USA, and wasn't stupid to attack other countries? I don't see any difference, I see only stupidity to attack anyone, USA or someone else. Unless, of yourse, the attacker has a sick need to fill magazine covers and major TV shows.

[ September 08, 2002, 13:03: Message edited by: Extremist ]