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Old 03-19-2014, 12:46 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowball7 View Post
Japan was stupid to attack Pearl Harbor.
I think that is obvious.
A good point. It is an interesting question to ponder in terms of what would the US have done had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese wanted the resource areas of the South Pacific, in particular the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies. Two major threats existed when viewing the geographic position of the Dutch East Indies:

1. The British naval base and dockyard at Singapore.
2. The American territory of the Phillipines.

The Japanese felt that securing Singapore was an absolute must. However, they debated over what to do about the Phillipines. They felt that based on the US response to previous provocation there would be no way the US would standby while they siezed the Duch East Indies and Singapore. Since the Phillipines lay along the shipping route from these territories back to Japan, they must be taken. The decision was made to sieze the Phillipines.

Yamamoto then floated his plan to launch an attack on the US fleet at Pearl in order for Japan to buy time to establish their "island defensive ring" and await the US assault and "decisive battle" as called for by Japanese doctrine. His plan was eventually approved because there was no other role for the carriers in the initial moves. The entire attack on Pearl was a sideshow to the major Japanese moves, not the centerpiece to their plan as is often portrayed.

It is difficult to see what the US's response might have been had Japan not attack the Phillipines or Pearl Harbor. The US would then be in a position similar to what we were with Germany, wanting into the war, but not really equipped militarily or psychologically to enter it. The Japanese provided the catalyst that was needed to ignite the US war machine.

Ultimately, their strategy is questionable. They did not disable the US fleet with the attack on Pearl. They had the ability to sieze the Phillipines at their leisure if the US decided to intervene in their moves. The fleet at Pearl was not "combat ready" and would have taken 6 months to be able to engage in operations. The Japanese may have been better off forcing the US to react to their aggression versus handing the US a cassius belli on a silver platter.
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Old 03-19-2014, 01:05 PM
 
Location: On the Great South Bay
9,108 posts, read 13,127,239 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
...and that evidence is for a desire to intervene in Europe, not the Pacific.



They knew because they maneuvered Japan into that corner over repeated aggressive moves by Japan throughout the Pacific. The major sanctions were not put in place until Japan siezed French Indochina which was a major escalation of what until then had been a contained war between China and Japan in which the US only cared about maintaining its trading rights with China.



There are several known pieces of intelligence that called out the fact there would be an attack in the latter part of 1941. Some were even specific to Hawaii and the fleet. These are often pointed out by people who believe in the "FDR Peral Harbor conspiracy". What they fail to mention is that these individual pieces of intelligence were one amongst tens of thousands of pieces of intelligence the US was getting. Pearl Harbor became a case study for the young CIA in learning to separate "intelligence" from "noise".



The fleet was moved to Pearl to send a message to Japan to back down. This was "gunboat diplomacy" 101. No one actually believed that the Japanese were capable of or desired to sail their fleet halfway around the world to bomb the fleet. Even the Japanese HQ did not fully believe in the veracity of the plan and only agreed to "Yamamoto's sideshow" under pressure.

FDR wanted war with Germany, not Japan.



Some did argue it and some people still argue it today. Both were misguided.
Goat gets it pretty good here.

If the United States was just trying to get Japan to attack the battleships they could have sent one or two of them Manila, much more in range for Japanese attack. Remember it only could took the loss of the outdated Maine to get the USA in the Spanish American War. Similarly the USA could have sent one of the older battleships like the Arkansas with her 12 inch guns to the exposed port of Manila as BAIT.

Instead the USA sent EIGHT of the stronger "standard type" battleships with their 14 inch and 16 inch guns to what was considered to be much more safe, Pearl Harbor. It was also believed by the navy that Japanese torpedoes would not work at Pearl.

These battleships along with the build up of American aircraft and the British build up at Singapore indicate to me at least, that the Allies intended to use what NJGoat calls "gunboat diplomacy" for Japan to change its behavior.
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Old 03-19-2014, 01:50 PM
 
Location: Glasgow Scotland
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Quote:
Originally Posted by -thomass View Post
And the Brits tried like crazy to get us involved. As a matter fact, I believe it was Britain that intercepted Germany's telegraph to Mexico.
IF they did, they shouldnt have had to surely..
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Old 03-19-2014, 02:42 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by unseengundam View Post
Japan's actions of attacking Pearl Harbor to keep the US from interfering in WWII also seemed counter intuitive. Did Japan have no better course of action of keep the US stopping Japanese invasion of Asia?

Also, I have often heard the US had pushed Japan into corner by cutting of oil supplies. Do you think US actions such these forced Japan to take on an aggressive attack on the US?
Japan was already on an agressive nationalist tack well before the start of WW2.

If you are confused by this, ask some Chinese or Koreans you may know if they agree with the premise that Japan was innocent and provoked by the US and Britain.

After all, they'd already killed at least 10 million Chinese before the end of the 1930's.
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Old 03-19-2014, 03:52 PM
 
9,981 posts, read 8,540,952 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
The Japanese may have been better off forcing the US to react to their aggression versus handing the US a cassius belli on a silver platter.
I'll go a step further, and say that Imperial Japan should have backed off aggressive behavior in South East Asia entirely, backed off its militarism and rhetoric against both the Soviet Union and China, and minded its own damn business by embracing a neutral, defensive position.
They lived by the sword and died by the sword. Still, I don't agree with the a-bombs.
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Old 03-19-2014, 03:54 PM
 
Location: On the Chesapeake
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowball7 View Post
I'll go a step further, and say that Imperial Japan should have backed off aggressive behavior in
South East Asia entirely, backed off its militarism and rhetoric against both the Soviet Union and
China, and minded its own damn business by embracing a neutral, defensive position.
THey lived by the sword and died by the sword. Still, I don't agree with the a-bombs.
Would you be here had they not been dropped? I wouldn't be and I imagine several other posters wouldn't either.

The bombs had a dual purpose: knock Japan out of the war without a bloody invasion or a several years long blockade. The second purpose was to warn Stalin who, contrary to popular mythology on the Cold War thread, was already being belligerent and not cooperating in Occupied Europe as well as imprisoning Allied airmen who crash landed behind Soviet lines.
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Old 03-19-2014, 04:23 PM
 
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I personally don't agree with the atomic bombing either.

The US could have made the decision of enforcing a naval blockade of Japan so as to starve the Japanese from external supplies of food and other materials that are essential for war.

At around that time, Japan had suffered a tremendous blow to her naval strength and thus started employed kamikaze pilots as a last resort while the US naval power was pretty much stable.

But as the Japanese have always abided by the belief of fighting to the death as embodied in the Bushido code, a naval blockade (and subsequently a direct American invasion of the Japanese mainland itself) would only lead to further bloodshed. In this sense, I guess it's difficult to blame the US for their decision to quickly end the war and bloodshed by dropping the atomic bombs.
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Old 03-19-2014, 04:26 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person View Post
Would you be here had they not been dropped? I wouldn't be and I imagine several other posters wouldn't either.

The bombs had a dual purpose: knock Japan out of the war without a bloody invasion or a several years long blockade. The second purpose was to warn Stalin who, contrary to popular mythology on the Cold War thread, was already being belligerent and not cooperating in Occupied Europe as well as imprisoning Allied airmen who crash landed behind Soviet lines.
I would argue that this was never one of the intentions behind dropping the bomb. The decision started and ended with the desire to avoid having to invade Japan. Nuclear weapons did not have the stigma attached them that they currently do. They were simply viewed as "really big bombs" and no different in application then dropping thousands of regular bombs on a city.

Stalin knew more about the atomic bomb program throughout the war than Truman did. Stalin reacted with feigned surprise when he was told of the existence of the bombs at the Potsdam conference. The US knew that he knew about the bombs and their capabilities. No messages needed to be sent by dropping them on Japan. I have never personally read anything that amounted to more then specualtion about the intent being to intimidate Stalin; while there are reems of evidence that it was all about Japan and ending the war.
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Old 03-19-2014, 04:32 PM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,497,497 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fellowjoe View Post
I personally don't agree with the atomic bombing either.

The US could have made the decision of enforcing a naval blockade of Japan so as to starve the Japanese from external supplies of food and other materials that are essential for war.

At around that time, Japan had suffered a tremendous blow to her naval strength and thus started employed kamikaze pilots as a last resort while the US naval power was pretty much stable.

But as the Japanese have always abided by the belief of fighting to the death as embodied in the Bushido code, a naval blockade (and subsequently a direct American invasion of the Japanese mainland itself) would only lead to further bloodshed. In this sense, I guess it's difficult to blame the US for their decision to quickly end the war and bloodshed by dropping the atomic bombs.
So you would trade the deaths of ~150,000 people in the atomic bombings for the deaths of millions via starvation during a blockade? The estimate was that within 6 months of the establishment of a blockade upwards of a million Japanese would starve to death, the vast majority women and children. Any available food would have been diverted to keep the military supplied.

Japanese resistance to accepting the inevitable led them down the path that ended in atomic bombings. Japan was utterly defeated militarily long before the bombs were dropped...but being defeated and admitting that you are defeated are two different things.
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Old 03-19-2014, 04:41 PM
 
366 posts, read 978,633 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
So you would trade the deaths of ~150,000 people in the atomic bombings for the deaths of millions via starvation during a blockade? The estimate was that within 6 months of the establishment of a blockade upwards of a million Japanese would starve to death, the vast majority women and children. Any available food would have been diverted to keep the military supplied.

Japanese resistance to accepting the inevitable led them down the path that ended in atomic bombings. Japan was utterly defeated militarily long before the bombs were dropped...but being defeated and admitting that you are defeated are two different things.
Please read my last paragraph.
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