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David Swanson, author of "War is a Lie", writes via CounterPunch:
The facts [of the Pearl Harbor story] do not support the mythology. The United States government did not need to make Japan a junior partner in imperialism, did not need to fuel an arms race, did not need to support Nazism and fascism (as some of the biggest U.S. corporations did right through the war), did not need to provoke Japan, did not need to join the war in Asia or Europe, and was not surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor. For support of each of these statements, keep reading.
[...] Churchill's fervent hope for years before the U.S. entry into the war was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in the targeting of submarines as it had been doing. On December 7, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew up a declaration of war on both Japan and Germany, but decided it wouldn't work and went with Japan alone. Germany quickly declared war on the United States, possibly in hopes that Japan would declare war on the Soviet Union.
Getting into the war was not a new idea in the Roosevelt White House. FDR had tried lying to the U.S. public about U.S. ships including the Greer and the Kerny, which had been helping British planes track German submarines, but which Roosevelt pretended had been innocently attacked. Roosevelt also lied that he had in his possession a secret Nazi map planning the conquest of South America, as well as a secret Nazi plan for replacing all religions with Nazism. The map was of the quality of Karl Rove's "proof" that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.
And yet, the people of the United States didn't buy the idea of going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and--just 11 days before the "unexpected" attack, and five days before FDR expected it--he had secretly ordered the creation (by Henry Field) of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.
[...] On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as "the Marshall Plan". In fact we don't remember it at all. "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan", Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret, which as far as I know they dutifully did.
[...] Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R-MT), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II [...] found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference [of August 1941]. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been "cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade by the Allied blockade". Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the catchy slogan "Kill Japs! Kill Japs!") had given instructions to him and others to "shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea".
The article is very detailed and shows repeatedly the duplicity of those who have claimed that the strike on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise".
(Score: 5, Informative) by mendax on Thursday December 08 2016, @06:22PM
Nothing here is exactly secret. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise" because it was unexpected. No one, including the Japanese, thought the Japanese could get a fleet of aircraft carriers that far out into the Pacific undetected, though they tried and succeeded. An attack by the Japanese was no suprise; the surprise was were the attack occurred. As for the draft, Roosevelt knew that war was brewing, either with the Germans or with the Japanese. Any well-informed person at that time could see the signs. The United States needed to be prepared. As for the Navy, the US was in the process of rearming starting in the mid-1930's because of what was happening in Europe and in Asia. The Japanese were building an excellent Navy and the US needed to be prepared for any reasonable contingency. As it turned out, the US focused more on aircraft carriers than battleships, and history proved it was the right choice. Incidentally, when Japan did attack, it had more carriers than the US. By the end of the war, the US had swamped them. There were 40 (yes, four-zero) American carriers (capital ships and escort carriers) involved in the attack on Okinawa, while the Japanese as I recall never had more than 10, and the US had sunk several of those.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:06PM
Exactly. War in the Pacific was inevitable as soon as the United States stopped trading oil to Japan. There is no big conspiracy here, just selective history lessons.
What is the author of the article getting at, anyhow? What was the alternative? Only go to war with Japan and ignore the war in Europe? The US was supporting Germany's enemies anyhow. The US needed to cooperate with her allies.
Appease Japan so they did not attack? Ask France and UK how that worked in Europe with Germany.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Funny) by BK on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:32PM
How could war be inevitable? Oil is bad and everyone knows this.
The Japanese should have switched to renewable wind power for their empire. They were only goaded to war due to their nearly criminal irresponsibility!
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Arik on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:56PM
The US could have set out WWII entirely and saved ridiculous amounts of money, and ridiculous numbers of lives.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday December 09 2016, @12:35PM
Possibility one, Germany develops nuclear weapons. They win the war against Russia, England either surrenders and is slowly incorporated into the German empire or A V2-carried nuke devastates London and the rest of the UK loses an invasion. Eventually, the German empire turns its attention to the USA, which doesn't benefit from the German rocket or nuclear scientists and so remains years behind in both technologies. The Nazi government had a power structure that, like Napoleon's empire, was only stable under continuous expansion, so it wouldn't have been too long before they started looking at the USA as a potential target.
Possibility two, Germany loses the second world war and Russia unambiguously wins. Russia gets all of the German scientists, instead of just under half of them. Russia's nuclear bomb programme and their rocketry programmes rapidly outpace the USA. Josef Stalin enjoys at least five years of being in charge of the only country with nuclear weapons and has the ability to use them against the USA with no possibility of retaliation. Guess what he'd have done.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday December 10 2016, @09:26PM
In fact, of course, those are simply fantasy scenarios concocted to justify murder, nothing more, nothing less.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:37PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday December 14 2016, @06:03PM
Had the US not sought confrontation with Japan they would have left us alone, they would not have been driven in the Axis pact. Hitler and Stalin would have exhausted their respective countries in a long and brutal war and, no matter which one won, neither would have been in any shape to threaten us anytime soon.
And war doesn't build trade or industrial power, quite the opposite. Our industrial might, our status in commerce, those are built in times of peace, war only depletes.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday December 15 2016, @01:21PM
How ambitious were they?
Hitler's power structure depended entirely on keeping the country on a war footing and on continuous expansion. So did Stalin's, though to a lesser extent. Fortunately for the rest of the world, the countries that founded NATO were relatively well balanced with the USSR, so he was able to maintain his power in a state of cold war and with proxy wars, knowing that he probably wouldn't win an all-out conflict (and, with the USA in possession of nuclear weapons, even if he'd won, would have likely enjoyed a pyrrhic victory).
The US was protected by distance and by an armed populace
The armed populous part of that argument is laughable. Most of the civilians in the USA had weapons that were obsolete in the start of the first world war against machine guns, let alone against tanks. The USSR was mass producing tanks at a phenomenal rate at the end of the war. Whoever won in Europe would have combined that manufacturing capacity with that of the loser and would have easily produced 5 tanks for every one that the USA could produce (the ratios were close to that just with the USSR and with the USA on a war footing).
As far as distance is concerned, you might want to check the distance between Alaska and Syberia. It's about as far as from England to France and Alaska is sufficiently rich in mineral resources that it would have been an obvious place for the USSR (or an Axis that had defeated Russia) to attack.
Hitler and Stalin would have exhausted their respective countries in a long and brutal war and, no matter which one won, neither would have been in any shape to threaten us anytime soon.
That's one possibility, but it's not the most likely. If the Russian counter attack had not succeeded (it probably would have done: the race to Berlin for the Allies was not to defeat Germany, it was to prevent Russia from defeating Germany alone), the Germans were about a year away from developing a nuclear bomb at the end of the second world war. This would have been a sufficiently decisive advantage to have allowed them to win and incorporate the USSR into their empire. At that point, there would have been a single nuclear power with a large industrial base and little compunction about killing lots of people attacking civilian targets.
And war doesn't build trade or industrial power, quite the opposite. Our industrial might, our status in commerce, those are built in times of peace, war only depletes.
War does build industrial capacity, though only in limited directions. It also increases spending on the kinds of science that lead to better weapons. The USA's status as a superpower; however, is closely linked to your participation in the second world war. Where do you think all of those trade links came from? You loaned a lot of money to the allies in return for favourable trade deals and imposed favourable trade deals on the defeated nations. You were the only one of the allies not to have fought on your home soil, so had a big advantage in trade at the end. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the USA was going through an isolationist phase and had no intention of building strong trade links with anyone. Without the impetus of the war to strengthen alliances, someone else would have had become the trade hub. The USA wouldn't have been a strong counterbalance for the USSR or Axis (whoever won in the end).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday December 15 2016, @03:37PM
"War does build industrial capacity"
No, it emphatically does not. It only redirects that capacity from productive pursuits. That's a classic example of the broken window fallacy.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday December 09 2016, @06:58PM
You have to be kidding.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday December 09 2016, @01:40AM
Well, not quite inevitable, but it became more likely. The Japanese attacked the Dutch colonies in Asia and China itself in order to get access to resources such as oil, coal, and iron ore. Japan did not have to attack the United States, but it did in order to destroy the Pacific fleet and keep the United States out of the way long enough that it could build a large enough naval fleet to give the Americans pause before interfering. As it turned out, Japan attacked, missed the two aircraft carriers stationed at Pearl Harbor because they were at sea looking for any Japanese task force, and the result was the United States had the 40 carriers attacking Japan instead of the other way around.
Incidentally, six months later, planes aboard the two carriers that Japan missed, along with those from a third carrier, sunk four of the Japanese carriers involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor during the Battle of Midway, with the loss of one American carrier..
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday December 09 2016, @07:05PM
Even if Japan has sunk all of the US carriers at Pearl, they woefully underestimated the amount of ships US manufacturing could produce. All the early battles the US carriers won would have been lost (if there even was a battle), but there would have been dozens more on the way.
Yeah, it would have been a 10 year war instead of less than 4, but I don't think Japan could have ever invaded Hawaii.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday December 09 2016, @08:06PM
Agreed, and this is what Admiral Yamamoto knew. He led the attack, but he was following orders. He knew it was a mistake. Furthermore, he knew the attack would unite a divided American people. Japan never had a chance of winning.
Oh, I don't know about that. Technology was advancing rapidly. The B-36 bomber, a remarkable bomber originally designed to attack Germany from North America, may have come online sooner and could possibly have evolved some more in order to have enough range to attack Japan with atomic weapons from Hawaii. The war would not have lasted more than two additional years I feel, but it would have been far bloodier.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday December 09 2016, @09:32PM
And the US was winning when it dropped nukes. Think of what would have happened if the US was in danger of losing the war.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:20PM
But that doesn't explain how the steel of those battleships melted at such low temperatures.