Remember Pearl Harbor

M

mathman

Valued Senior Member
Dec 7 (a date which will live in infamy) seems to have been forgotten. I have not seen any announcements today about it.
 
Perhaps
The war started with the US embargoes on Japan?
Then we bated the trap with some obsolete(mostly-pre-ww1) battleships while our carrier fleet was safely at sea
And then, Japan foolishly took the bait, followed by us declaring war, followed by that idiot Hitler honoring his treaty with Japan and declaring war on the US.
and....................................................
 
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Dec 7th should be remembered as a day of mourning and homage for those Americans that lost their lives in that attack.....just as Armistice/rememberence day and ANZAC Day in Aust and NZ for the lives lost in all wars.
 
sculptor said:
The war started with the US embargoes on Japan?
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The Japanese had been at war since 1937 at the latest (1931 if you count the first military coercion and occupation of Manchuria).
Their capture of Nanking was 1937.
sculptor said:
Then we bated the trap with some obsolete(pre ww1) battleships while our carrier fleet was safely at sea
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Of the seven battleships lined up in Battleship Row, three were commissioned before WWI - 1914, 1916, 1916. The 1914 ship had been modernized in the 1930s - it was salvaged and repaired and ended up at Normandy on D Day. The other two remained sunk.
The other four, commissioned in the 1920s, were repaired and fought the rest of WWII in the Pacific - one of them was at Tokyo Bay for the surrender.

There were two others docked elsewhere, both damaged - one in dry dock, strafed partly because it fought back, 1916 commissioned, fought with the Pacific Fleet from March of '42 on after repair; the other one the only battleship that was obsolete and pre-WWI: it was a target and gun training ship, and was left where it was sunk.

To have our carriers intentionally out of port when the Japanese attacked - but not so soon that the Japanese observers would have had time to send the info to the attacking force - would have taken considerable coordination among many people (including enemies of Roosevelt and the large American contingent of Nazis) and precise intelligence over several weeks, all of which was kept completely secret to this day.
 
U.S. had only 2 new battleships at the time (North Carolina and Washington). All others were WW I or early 1920's Limit by U.S., U.K., Japan treaties.
 
mathman said:
Dec 7 (a date which will live in infamy) seems to have been forgotten.
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Not hardly!
Peoples always make a big ceremony of commemorating predictable and even deserved bad shit that happened to them, and a cult of forgetting bad shit, justified or not, that they inflicted on others.
 
mathman said:
Dec 7 (a date which will live in infamy) seems to have been forgotten. I have not seen any announcements today about it.
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I think mathman has it right -- in part, time has caused the event to recede into the distance.
But also practically everyone with an interest in WWII now knows that the Japanese were provoked/tempted/suckered into the attack. A poker play costing 2400 lives does not have the same resonance as a tale of outragious atrocity by a fiendish enemy.
 
Imagine the reaction of people in 1941 if a time traveller went back and showed them this:

American deaths by day:

Dec 08, 2020 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
Dec 09, 2020 : 1.3 Pearl Harbors
Dec 10, 2020 : 1.3 Pearl Harbors
Dec 11, 2020 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
Dec 12, 2020 : 1.0 Pearl Harbors
Dec 13, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 14, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 15, 2020 : 1.2 Pearl Harbors
Dec 16, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
Dec 17, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
Dec 18, 2020 : 1.2 Pearl Harbors
Dec 19, 2020 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
Dec 20, 2020 : 0.7 Pearl Harbors
Dec 21, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 22, 2020 : 1.3 Pearl Harbors
Dec 23, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
Dec 24, 2020 : 1.2 Pearl Harbors
Dec 25, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 26, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 27, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 28, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 29, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
Dec 30, 2020 : 1.6 Pearl Harbors
Dec 31, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
Jan 01, 2021 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
Jan 02, 2021 : 1.0 Pearl Harbors
Jan 03, 2021 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Jan 04, 2021 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
Jan 05, 2021 : 1.5 Pearl Harbors
Jan 06, 2021 : 1.6 Pearl Harbors
Jan 07, 2021 : 1.7 Pearl Harbors
Jan 08, 2021 : 1.6 Pearl Harbors

That's 35.0 Pearl Harbors in 32 contiguous days.
 
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DaveC426913 said:
Imagine the reaction of people in 1941 if a time traveller went back and showed them this:
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Or back to 2001 and told people "yeah, we are having more than a 9/11 a day in deaths, but a lot of people don't think it's real and don't want to wear a mask."
 
billvon said:
Or back to 2001 and told people "yeah, we are having more than a 9/11 a day in deaths, but a lot of people don't think it's real and don't want to wear a mask."
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And when they ask how fast we fired the president for such a gaff, we were all:
upload_2021-1-9_18-12-40.jpeg
 
River Ape said:
But also practically everyone with an interest in WWII now knows that the Japanese were provoked/tempted/suckered into the attack.
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Only because they were dedicated to military conquest, robbery, and harsh domination via atrocity of their neighbors. Had they been willing to live in peace with their neighbors they would have had no reason to attack the US.
 
river said:
And the US had the intelligence about pearl-harbor but failed to act on the intelligence gathered .
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That's pretty much the story of every military failure, ever. The Charge of the Light Brigade. Custer's Last Stand. Hitler's invasion of Russia. The Battle of Waterloo. All of those defeats involved ignoring some intelligence that could have prevented the defeat.
 
iceaura said:
Only because they were dedicated to military conquest, robbery, and harsh domination via atrocity of their neighbors. Had they been willing to live in peace with their neighbors they would have had no reason to attack the US.
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Wasn't that because they are a tiny set of islands with no peaceful growth potential?

It's like taking Australia as your stronghold in a game of Risk. If you don't keep Asia open, you're ultimately doomed.
 
DaveC426913 said:
Wasn't that because they are a tiny set of islands with no peaceful growth potential?

It's like taking Australia as your stronghold in a game of Risk. If you don't keep Asia open, you're ultimately doomed.
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Japan is doing quite well these days without trying to conquer China.
 
iceaura said:
The Japanese had been at war since
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hhmm...
for some reason this raises flags in my memory
i thought china & japan were at war for some decades prior with japan occupying parts of china prior to WW1.
some Chinese raiding groups on japan prior suggesting the emperor send in military control etc ?

my last impression was china japan war was a tit for tat escalation process over decades

i might go back & start re reading.
 
billvon said:
That's pretty much the story of every military failure, ever. The Charge of the Light Brigade. Custer's Last Stand. Hitler's invasion of Russia. The Battle of Waterloo. All of those defeats involved ignoring some intelligence that could have prevented the defeat.
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In pearl-harbours' case . Was not so much defeat , but about surprise . That should never have happened .
 
RainbowSingularity said:
hhmm...
for some reason this raises flags in my memory
i thought china & japan were at war for some decades prior with japan occupying parts of china prior to WW1.
some Chinese raiding groups on japan prior suggesting the emperor send in military control etc ?

my last impression was china japan war was a tit for tat escalation process over decades

i might go back & start re reading.
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1894---1st sino japan war
1024px-JapanPunch29September1894.jpg
 
People have been crazy for a long time and don't look like stopping any time soon.
But at least we have a lot of holidays and statues to prove it.
 
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