We'll continue here so as not to interfere with the other thread. I'm glad you brought that up. "All empires do is seek to conquer more. That's true. So militaristic Japan was building an empire, fascist Germany had established Fortress Europa and was invading the USSR, and the fascist Mussolini wanted to recreate the Roman Empire. So it was logical for the US to be concerned with what was going on in the world. If things went unchecked she would very possibly be the lone democracy left facing three agressive empire builders. But instead of automatically resorting to war, she tried diplomacy and an oil embargo (incidently, the Dutch also had an oil embargo against the Japanese. When Japan invaded Indochina [Vietnam, Laos, Cambocia], the Dutch were worried the Dutch East Indies were next. It was following Indochina that the US and Dutch started the embargoes). It was up to Japan to pursue peace or war, and she did have members of her cabinet asking to take the peaceful road. So again, it was in the US' best interest to attempt to halt that empire. And again, they tried peaceful measures first. Well, the US military did find out after the war from examining captured Japanese documents that the Japanese were hoping that America had no stomach for war and that Tokyo hoped the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would cause the Americans to lift the embargoes. Some of their top officers also believed that if Japan couldn't destroy American will during the first six months of the war then Japan would likely lose, because once the US industrial complex made the switch from commercial to military output, the Japanese could not hope to compete. And others in the cabinet believed that what Japan needed was a stable Asia, not one that was war-torn (Iriye, Akira, Power And Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945, pp. 30-32). At the time of Pearl Harbor, the US had 3 active fleet carriers. In 1945, there were over 70 fleet and light carriers total, while Japan had less than 5. The US had 40 carriers involved at Okinawa alone (Spector, Donald, Eagle Against The Sun, pg. 5320. And of course the Japanese were committed to winning. If you commit yourself to a war, you have to plan to win it no matter what the odds are. The Japanese realized that on 7 Dec. And there are your works cited. Still don't want to admit you responded to your own quote? OK. We'll drop it and pretend it never happened. Righttt. I'm not sure you are even aware of your mistakes, which in itself is rather humorous.
