The United States was at peace with that nation

[midnight Target]

Originally posted by Rich46yo
Some points,

                         
                         I get a good laugh at the revisionists who say we provoked the war by shutting off their oil and other materials they need to import to supply their war machine. .........................snip ............................. ..............  The bottom line is Wars have almost always been fought for mineral and resource wealth. And always will be.

Sounds like someone is a little conflicted.

[Rich46yo]

Originally posted by midnight Target
Sounds like someone is a little conflicted.

                               Nope, no confliction at all. The difference is in methodology. America doesnt slaughter, enslave, rape, throw people into ovens, and has no desire for Empire. We simply want access to the resources at a fair price.

                             If it were any different we have the power to annihilate the entire MidEast and just take what we want.

                           The worst we'll do is use proxy like we had to in Africa. We were forced to because the Soviet Union actively pursued a policy of exporting their revolution into countries and regions we were dependant on for resources. The cold war was was about resources too.

[midnight Target]

So explain to me why a person is a "revisionist" if he says we provoked Japan into attacking us due to our oil embargo? And maybe what that has to do with how brutal they were.

[Fishu]

Originally posted by SIG220
It is ironic that Japan is the only nation that we ever dropped nuclear weapons on, yet now they are one of our best allies.

Hardly a wonder, japs have millions of sworn enemies around them. Chinese especially are known for their long memory.

[Shifty]

Originally posted by midnight Target
I wonder what would have changed had the Japanese attacked and taken Midway instead of just shelling it with destroyers?

Probably nothing. The whole battle of Midway was more of an attempt to lure the American fleet into a decisive battle than it was for the real estate.
Sure they could have based long range bombers there to threaten Pearl, but they would have been stretched too far from supply and support.

The best thing Japan could have done was ignore Midway in both December and May, and concentrate instead on the Solomons, and Samoa.
All capturing Midway would have done is give new US Carrier Air Groups coming out of California another warm up target other than Wake Island.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by Saxman
Moray,

You DO realize that the same type of equipment and tactics "pioneered" by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor were first used by the British at Taranto, right?

Yes.  But, 24 biplanes, in Italy (800 miles from Britain (?)) isn't 350, 3,000 miles away from Japan.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by Rino
Golly, if only we had overlooked their little adventure in Manchuria and
allowed them to rape and pillage the mainland in peace, we could have
avoided that whole WW2 unpleasantness

     After all, we obviously forced them into attacking another country in the
first place.

I'm not defending the Japanese, as you so obviously think.  I simply stated that Japan wanted nothing to do with war with the United States... and that we made our own destiny when it came to them "surprising" Pearl Harbor.  

Japan's atrocities, as well as the United States' are well documented, and not to be overlooked by either nation.  For some reason, though, our war dead are overlooked...Anyone ever been to any pacific islands we fought over?  I have.  And it saddened me to see American graveyards overgrown and almost jungle, whilst the Japanese ones were manicured.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by FiLtH
I dont think they could have held it for long. Actually I dont know why they later attacked Midway with intent to capture it. It is  a long ways from any japanese port. If they have won Midway, Im sure that island and any ships in the area would have benn bombed daily. I mean ya, bait out the US fleet to destroy it, but why the invasion force?

His bringing up Midway was meant not as a strategem, but as a hypothetical.  If Japan had taken Midway, (which had some strategic value, but was otherwise only consequential as a dot in the Pacific)  then, the Battle of Midway, as it happened, would never have been so.  Without that single event occuring, it is truly debateable whether or not we ever would have gotten off our side of the pond in that decade.

If it weren't for some incredible timing, and sacrifice, as it were, we would have, and probably SHOULD have lost at Midway.  I personally lost a grandfather I obviously never met, at Midway.

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by lazs2
so moray.. you believe that the japs had no intention of ever building an asian empire with them at the head and that they would have simply stayed on their little island like nice folk if we hadn't "forced" em to "defend" themselves?

I have always wondered how people who believe this came by that theory.

I guess there is a grain of truth to it.. if we would have let em have everything they wanted they might of saved us for last.

lazs

Lazs, again.... you really need to start reading.  History is in those books on the library shelves.  And American policy isn't all roses and pretty words.

Were the Japanese nice folk at that time>?  Their actions don't portend them to be.... but I'm pretty damn sure they were just like ALL of us...and still are.  And I never said "we forced them to defend themselves".  You are incredibly dense... I said we forced them to attack us... which they did.  If you don't see the difference in said statement... then I'm debating with a wall.

I wasn't debating whether or not it was right, which everyone seems to think, I was simply stating WHY we were attacked.  It doesn't make anyone right or wrong... it's the fact.

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by Rich46yo
Some points,

                          The Japs had already over-ran and enslaved Korea, and much of China, showing such wanton cruelty that even the German observers were moved to protest. Imagine that? Even the Nazis were sickened.

                         I get a good laugh at the revisionists who say we provoked the war by shutting off their oil and other materials they need to import to supply their war machine. That same war machine was busy creating a slave empire that had designs on the entire far East. Only a blind man, or a stupid one, would have been able to look around the world in 1940 and think we could avoid war.

The oil and steel embargo levied by our country against the Japanese is what forced Japan into engaging in war with our country, sooner rather than later.  War between our two countries at the time would have been inevitable with the expansionist policies of Japan, we just kind of quickened things up with the embargo.

One another note, Japan really didn't expect the United States to declare war.  The Japanese high command (Tojo and crew) along with some senior diplomats actually believed we would pursue a peaceful settlement instead of going to war.  Of course, this was ignorance on their part, as pointed out by some senior members of Japan's armed forces (Yamamoto was one) but the Japanese government believed that due to our isolationist/non-interventionist stand at the time, we didn't have the stomach for war.  Their attack on Pearl Harbor also took the Nazi regime by surprise and forced Nazi Germany to declare war on the United States a couple of years earlier than what Hitler planned on.


ack-ack

[Rolex]

I have to write this in small sections, since time is kicking my butt right now.

At the start of the Meji Restoration, Japan came out of centuries of self-imposed isolation under the threat of cannons from the US. The display of naval power by Perry and the letter from the US president were threats to either open up for US trade or risk being colonized as other nations throughout Asia had been.

Japan sent people around the world to study the world power structure. It did not want to be relegated to a colonized nation and ended up adopting Britain as a model. - a small, island nation with limited resources, a vast empire of colonies to provide resources, a long cultural history and a monarch with a parliamentary form of government.

Even today, Japan carries over these similarities in daily life. Japan drives on the left, has the same style of government and office hierarchy and organization is based on the English shipping insurance business from the late 1800s, as witnessed by Japanese visiting England at the time.

Japan had to either gain colonies or be colonized as China, the Philippines, Burma, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, even Midway and Hawaii, had been by the English, Dutch, Portuguese, French and the US. (The colonization of Hawaii is an interesting case study about patience and political influence that business has in US foreign policy.)

MacArthur was in the Philippines because it was a US colony and thousands of US soldiers, and many more thousands of Filipinos, died in the US fight to keep the Philippines from declaring independence from the US.

British and US companies were in control, or gaining control of many of Chinese resources and exports.

to be continued...

[T0J0]

Originally posted by MORAY37
I truly wonder how many of you know why Pearl Harbor was attacked.  Comparing Iran to the Japanese?  That's just plain ludacris.

The Japanese were pushed into confrontation with us by our stopping export of our oil to them in late 1939 in response to their invasion of Manchuria, which of course pushed US into war with them.  When we stopped our export of oil, it was only a matter of time till they were forced to confront us or they would starve; They only had about one year's worth of oil in country.

Originally, the Japanese were completely against confontation with the U.S. and saw it as "not worth the risk".  Our hardline stance forced them to invent the technology (shallow running torps, first use of carrier based airpower) with which they needed to disable the US PACFLEET, and therefore enable them to go after oil in the west pacific.

I was forced to listen to my father spout that garbage for 30 years, I never wasted my time pointing out his flawed rhetoric and revisionist history.
 I am just amazed this idea still gets airplay today, back then it came from the
anti FDR crowd, the same crowd who called it "FDR's WAR" It seems the war interrupted their parties and good times and it was all FDR's fault.. Sound familiar? It should!
Before you go feeling all warm and fuzzy about the japanese in those years
 read about the jap armies party in nanking, and if you still blame FDR and his admin seek treatment.. I had friends who lived in Nanking that year, they descsribed the raps and murders and decapitations, heads on stakes...
They would go inito a home randomely and pull the family into the street and disembowel the parents in front of the children, then rape the children..When
 finally chopping off the head of the children, and kicking the head down the street like a soccer ball....

TJ

[MORAY37]

Originally posted by T0J0
I was forced to listen to my father spout that garbage for 30 years, I never wasted my time pointing out his flawed rhetoric and revisionist history.
 I am just amazed this idea still gets airplay today, back then it came from the
anti FDR crowd, the same crowd who called it "FDR's WAR" It seems the war interrupted their parties and good times and it was all FDR's fault.. Sound familiar? It should!
Before you go feeling all warm and fuzzy about the japanese in those years
 read about the jap armies party in nanking, and if you still blame FDR and his admin seek treatment.. I had friends who lived in Nanking that year, they descsribed the raps and murders and decapitations, heads on stakes...
They would go inito a home randomely and pull the family into the street and disembowel the parents in front of the children, then rape the children..When
 finally chopping off the head of the children, and kicking the head down the street like a soccer ball....

TJ

JHC!!!!

Do you stop reading after a certain point? I wasn't defending the Japanese attack... and the truth is not REVISIONIST.  


 You also must remember, there was no "World News Tonight" back in the late 30's... the world didn't know about Nanking until AFTER the war.  You can't use a situation that was unknown to the participants of a war as a JUSTIFICATION for their decision TO GO TO WAR.  (ps..THAT's revisionist)

[T0J0]

Originally posted by MORAY37
JHC!!!!

Do you stop reading after a certain point? I wasn't defending the Japanese attack... and the truth is not REVISIONIST.  


 You also must remember, there was no "World News Tonight" back in the late 30's... the world didn't know about Nanking until AFTER the war.  You can't use a situation that was unknown to the participants of a war as a JUSTIFICATION for their decision TO GO TO WAR.  (ps..THAT's revisionist)

Considering my friends were US government employee's and were assigned to Nanking Its highly unlikely the government didn't know about it... Nanking wasn't the only chinese city where the occupants were butchered by the japs...

Japan needed oil to fuel its slaughtering of china, we turned off the oil because they were expandinig and slaughtering and we didn't like it...Since we shut down the oil supply is it a far stretch that the reason was to slow down the invasion of china.... Seems like a foriegn policy we employ today....

[Rich46yo]

Originally posted by MORAY37
JHC!!!!

Do you stop reading after a certain point? I wasn't defending the Japanese attack... and the truth is not REVISIONIST.  


 You also must remember, there was no "World News Tonight" back in the late 30's... the world didn't know about Nanking until AFTER the war.  You can't use a situation that was unknown to the participants of a war as a JUSTIFICATION for their decision TO GO TO WAR.  (ps..THAT's revisionist)

                            Of course the world knew about it. Nanking was an open city full of a large westerner population who took many firsthands accounts of the tragedy, witnessed much of it, and shot much film and pictures of the atrocities.

                          The world "knew". Of course it "knew". It just didnt care.