Why did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor?

Before Japan made a secrete pact with Germany and resulting WWII, Why did Japan need to go to war with the United States? Why did Japan choose this direction with Germany as a partner?

 

Because we (the US) were decimating their economy and war industry with our embargoes, starving them of resources. They retaliated. We really didn't provoke them, they just took the offensive.

Their choice to join the Axis is unique but it seems they saw the writing on the wall with militaristic regimes (Nazi Germany) and those would not be able to compete (France) as it became more apparent with the rise of the Nazis.

 

Japan needed much more land and resources to survive and was planning to attack and take some countries in South East Asia, including some islands under U.S. control. Japan did not want the U.S. to interfere with its plans, thus it attacked Pearl Harbor in an attempt to destroy the U.S. Pacific fleet.

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In a related WWII matter, today was Designated Day (D-Day), anniversary of the Allied attack on Normandy beaches to end the war.

Today's commander of all America's military forces (Obama), never mentioned that fact.

 

One vital fact to be kept in mind is that they had ordered their ambassador to give the standard 30 minute warning as was required by the Geneva Convention but he couldn't type and the secretary was sick or something so the warning was about 90 minutes late.

They had thought the US would back out quickly. In 1941 the USA was listed as number 17 in a ranking of World Powers and the Japanese seemed about to take over China and most of SE Asia as well. Many of their leaders thought Japan would come out of the war as well as the United Kingdom did after Napoleon and share major world influence with the German Empire.

 

Because the United States declared an oil embargo against them, which is a recognized act of war. If we had declared war on OPEC in 1973 for the same reason, we'd have no recessions, no inflation, and no terrorism. So if we American sheep were allowed to know what is going on, we would understand why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

 

In 1941, Nazi Germany pressed the Japanese government to attack British possessions in East Asia and the German Foreign Minister also gave an assurance that Germany would join the Japanese government in case of war against the United States. Hitler declared war on the US just days after Pearl Harbor without hesitation because it was part of his grandiose plan for world domination and he had been pressuring Japan to join the global war for some time. Imperial Japan could have avoided the catastrophic war against the US if it had agreed to withdraw from China as demanded by American peace negotiators but both Hitler and Hirohito had too much faith in Japan's military capabilities. Moreover, a surprise attack against the Russian Far East Fleet at Port Arthur in 1904 completely befuddled Tsar Nicholas II and the Russo-Japanese War came to the victorious conclusion for Japan and the Japanese leadership misleadingly believed that the same success could be repeated by launching a pre-emptive attack against the US.

[video=youtube;f_aRxHR1F4E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_aRxHR1F4E[/video]

 

This pretty much the answer. If Pearl Harbor did not cower the US, the Japanese fully expected to put the issue to rest by provoking Kantai Kessen, and wiping the US navy from the map.

There was a fair amount of cultural ignorance at work as well. The US moving naval units to Pearl did not appear as the threat they'd hoped the Japanese would see. It had the reverse effect of making Pearl just that more juicy a target to consider. On the other hand the Japanese thought such a hammer blow would discourage the US from perusing force as a remedy. All it really did was make America angry.........very angry

 

The reason the aircraft carriers weren't at Pearl Harbor was because FDR had ordered them to shadow the Japanese fleet heading for Southeast Asia and try to provoke an attack. Don't expect governments to reveal information like this, or to even have written it down. You have to think for yourselves, if that's not too hard for Netties.

 

Let me add another piece to the puzzle. Why didn't Japan simply seize parts of Mongolia or Siberia while the Soviet Union was fighting for its life in 1941 against the Wehrmacht? Japan's Kwantung Army was in Manchuria along the Soviet border. Why didn't they strike?

The answer to that question comes down to one man. His name was Georgi Zhukov. He survived Stalin's purges of the thirties and went on to become the greatest Soviet commander of WWII. Check this out:

"In the summer of 1939, Soviet and Japanese armies clashed on the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier in a little-known conflict with far-reaching consequences. No mere border clash, this undeclared war raged from May to September 1939 embroiling over 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks and aircraft. Some 30,000-50,000 men were killed and wounded. In the climactic battle, August 20-31, 1939, the Japanese were crushed. This coincided precisely with the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (August 23, 1939) – the green light for Hitler's invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II one week later. These events are connected. This conflict also influenced key decisions in Tokyo and Moscow in 1941 that shaped the conduct and ultimately the outcome of the war.

This conflict (called the Nomonhan Incident by Japanese, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol by Russians) was provoked by a notorious Japanese officer named TSUJI Masanobu, ring-leader of a clique in Japan’s Kwantung Army, which occupied Manchuria. On the other side, Georgy Zhukov, who would later lead the Red Army to victory over Nazi Germany, commanded the Soviet forces. In the first large clash in May 1939, a Japanese punitive attack failed and Soviet/Mongolian forces wiped out a 200-man Japanese unit. Infuriated, Kwantung Army escalated the fighting through June and July, launching a large bombing attack deep inside Mongolian territory and attacking across the border in division strength. As successive Japanese assaults were repulsed by the Red Army, the Japanese continually upped the ante, believing they could force Moscow to back down. Stalin, however, outmaneuvered the Japanese and stunned them with a simultaneous military and diplomatic counter strike..."

http://thediplomat.com/2012/08/28/the-forgotten-soviet-japanese-war-of-1939/

Long story short: The Japanese thought the Americans would be an easier opponent to deal with after the blow at Pearl Harbor.

 

One of the parts of the lie that Stalin was caught napping by Hitler was that the best Russian troops were kept back because of fear of Japan. Since this proves there was no fear of Japan by the time of the German invasion, obviously Stalin used his worst troops to meet the Germans knowing that the inferior part of the Red Army would collapse. All along, it was Stalin's plan to trick Hitler into invading and seeing the Stalin's manufactured illusion of a quick and easy total victory. That's what it looked like to FDR too, so he ordered the Navy to provoke an attack by Japan before Hitler got overwhelmingly strong through his apparently imminent conquest of the Soviet Union. The Russian counter-offensive, its first real effort to fight, started on the same day as Pearl Harbor, which Stalin had known about for weeks beforehand.

 

The US was giving economic aid to Europe, and the Japanese considered that an act of war. They bombed pearl harbor so that the US would stop helping England and Russia, but it readied the US military to join the conflict.

It was strategic to put a naval base on Pearl Harbor so the US could stay out of the fight for as long as possible to build up resources, without the threat of ever being attacked at home.

After the war we reigned victorious over England and Russia, because most of their resources were lost in world war 2 while we were the only ones in the world able to develop during that period.

The Northern Europeans like the Swiss were neutral, that is why they have better economies today than everyone, but they never developed those economies to become military powers so they mean nothing in the grand scope of things. The USA will reign Supreme in the world for a long time ahead.

 

Sorry, but an internal embargo is not an act of war. Every nation is perfectly free to trade and not trade with whoever it wants to.

You are confusing an embargo with a blockade, which can be an act of war. That is stopping the ships of other nations from reaching the targeted nation. All an embargo is is the opposite of a boycott, which is also not an act of war.

*****

Now as for why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, this had less to do with Pearl Harbor itself then it did with another group of islands further west.

Japan had definitely eyes upon other European territories in the region. Specifically the British, Dutch and French territories in the region. And at that time Japan was not at war with anybody other then China. So in order to gain the needed resources (specifically oil and rubber), it needed to take over those British islands.

The only problem with that was that if it declared war against England alone, it would be leaving the island fortress of the Philippines sitting right smack dab in the middle of their supply lines. So if they had attacked just Malaysia and the other southern islands, it ran a very great risk of the US then jumped into the war and cut their supply lines in half. So if they started their war against England, they would also have to start one against the US at the same time just to keep from being cut in half at a later date.

Now US war plans of the time had planed for a massive infusion of troops and equipment to the Philippines if such an attack happened (in fact men and equipment were already arriving during this time). Japan knew this, and decided that by attacking Hawaii, they would both damage/destroy ships that would be used for this resupply mission, as well as possibly even cause the US to largely abandon the Philippines, as they would be more concerned about their closer territory of Hawaii.

Plus the Japanese Empire had already decided that the Philippines rightly belonged to them, as part of their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

 

US put alot ecnomic pressure on japan as well as embargo. japan decide they need to take out us in order to do what they pleased in the pacific.

 

The fuse for war with Japan was lit in 1905 during the Theodore Roosevelt administration.

>"In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his gun-toting daughter Alice and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. There, they would quietly forge a series of agreements that divided up Asia. At the time, Roosevelt was bully-confident about America's future on the continent. But these secret pacts lit the fuse that would-decades later-result in a number of devastating wars: WWII, the Korean War, the communist revolution in China."<
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452811-the-imperial-cruise


Even before WW l it was determine by both Imperial Japan and the United States that war was inevitable.

Japan drew up it's war plans taking on the United States before WW l and the United States drew up it's war plans starting before WW l. War Plan Orange (how America would fight Japan in the Pacific) was adopted in 1926 and this was how the war against Japan was fought from 1941-1945. < http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/war-plan-orange.htm >

Basically Japan wanted to control the trade on the western Pacific rim and to do so Great Britain, France and the Dutch had to be removed and give up their colonies in Asia and the Western Pacific. The Philippine Islands under American control threaten Japans communication lines from Japan too South East Asia.

It should be noted that FDR also wanted the British, French and Dutch out of the Western Pacific and Asia since these three nations controlled the trade in the Western Pacific rim during the time.

Japan's war plans never called for occupying the Hawaiian Islands. Japan believed that if one major surface naval battle was fought and the U.S. Navy was defeated that the United States would sue for peace.

American war plans called for losing the Philippine Islands to the Japanese during the early stages of the war.

The following link is what history of America's involvement during WW ll is written from:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AMH/AMH/index.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AMH/AMH/AMH-23.html

The two links below are the most informative with the war in the Pacific during WW ll..

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/

 

The Japanese felt that in order to continue their aggressive and expansionist policies in East asia they had to secure access to the raw materials of South East Asia. To do that they had to conquer vast territories there under the control of the European powers, which would inevitably bring them into conflict with both those European powers and the US. So they decided to try to take out the US Pacific fleet, to give them the necessary breathing space to complete their conquests before the US could intervene.

 

Simple. They needed our oil (Ironic) and scrap metal. We also froze all their assets in the US. They were going to run out of oil soon and they though that the US would try to seek peace rather than war, as FDR was focusing more on Europe than Asia. Germany, because they saw them as on the winning side. If I'm correct, France had already fallen, so if Japan tried to make a move against French Indochina (As they would), they knew they could get Germany's backing due to Hitler's belief in the Japanese ruling Asia (Or I think, I'm forgetting where Hitler placed every ethnicity in his mad head)

 

France had fallen, and their colonies like Indochina was controlled by Vichy France (the German controlled puppet government). During this time Vichy France administered Indochina, with Japanese supervision. This lasted from 1940 until March 1945, when France was liberated by the allies. At this time Japan took control of Indochina, which lasted until August 1945 when as part of their surrender they returned it back to France.

 

Remember Admiral Yamamoto warned his people how dangerous our nation could be if forced into war, he lived here, he knew you (*)(*)(*)(*) off the Americans and make us angry they will win its only a matter of time. The army thought it was not true and didn't believe him.

His attack on Pearl Harbor was brilliant but he missed our carriers, didn't knock out the fuel supply (a major mistake) and they failed to declare war ahead of time. Its the Japanese governments fault I would have did this message: Japan declares a state of war, we attack in thirty minutes from now our on notice under the Geneva Conventions is satisfied. Have a nice day. (or something else simple)

But how often up to that point did the US lose a war that started on our territory: ZERO. And Americans will fight when you threaten our homes and fight very hard add in out technological strengths we are devastating enemies.

 

Actually, the US is the one that sued for peace during the War of 1812. Just a fraction of British forces was enough to cripple most of our nation, and with the abdication of Napoleon, Brittan would have been able to bring enough forces in to crush us. So while the war did end with a status quo ante bellum, we did indeed loose that war.

And during the war had our capitol sacked and burned, several major cities occupied, and major industry destroyed.

 

There's a myth that Admiral Yamamoto said something like "We woke up a sleeping giant," referring to the United States. After the war American military investigators were not able to locate one Japanese individual who could acknowledge that Admiral Yamamoto ever made such a comment.

What Yamamoto did mention was that Imperial Japan couldn't match America's industrial strength. That Japan could only take on America for about a year in combat and unless there was a major naval surface warfare defeat of the U.S. Navy and the United States sues for peace, Japan couldn't defeat America militarily.

Like today there were those Americans who are pantywaist and don't have the cajones to fight back during WW ll. When the truth of what happened at Tarawa leaked out there was a public outcry in America. There was extremely heavy censorship of the press during WW ll. American soldiers, Marines and sailors were forbidden from keeping personal journals and diaries while on active duty. After VE-Day in Europe there was threat of mutiny of American troops when they heard they would be transfered to the Pacific Theater.

During the first year in the Pacific, America was getting it's butt kicked all over the Pacific. FDR, Gen. Marshal and Nimitz were kept busy firing generals and admirals who refused to take the fight to the enemy. There are only so many Halsey's and Patton's to go around. Smartest decision Nimitz ever made was putting Halsey in charge of the SW Pacific fleet.

Should be noted, 80% of those who served during WW ll were conscripted. But there's more to the story of why but I don't want to get in to it right now. By 1943 only 17 year olds were able to volunteer and enlist. By 1943 there were no Army, Navy or Marine recruiting stations, only draft boards.

 

In their defense Japan Theater combat was largely a holding action as we engage the Germans and Italians in Europe first with more of our efforts, but we did win in the end at Midway thanks to largely our carriers having damned fine damage and fire controls over the Japanese lack of such measures. And the fighting prowess and military intelligence of our armed forces.

As for the Draft no one had to serve if they didn't get CO or another exemption status there was prison or they could leave the country as options. A relative worked at Boeing and was considered as having vital skills so got an exemption and another went to prison refusing to fight and admitted he was a coward but was released after the war was over.

 

Oil.

America imposed sanctions which included limiting their supply of oil.

A soldier may march on his stomach...
but an Army marches on Oil.
The same holds true today...not much has changed.

Japan needed American oil to sustain their imperialist plan of controlling the Asian-Pacific.
We cut them off...they attacked to weaken our Navy and take us out of the war so they could have unrestrained access to resources in the Pacific to sustain Japanese imperialism.

 

That is rather obvious to those that actually studied the war.

It was discovered by early 1942 that there was simply no way to process the flood of individuals who had volunteered after the US entered the war. So recruiting stations were (mostly) closed, and drafts were then used to control the number of people entering the military to a manageable flow that the processing and training centers could handle.

An individual could still go to a recruiting station, but that was mostly so they could pick a branch of service prior to actually being drafted. So you could go to a recruiting station, but unless you had a highly needed skill (medical, pilot, Japanese translator, etc), they could not take you in but instead made a note on your draft record that you were requesting to service with the Navy/Army/Marines when your number did come up for the draft.

*****

And while the "sleeping giant" quote is more then likely that he never said that. However, he is recorded as saying two quotes that bear a similarity to that famous one from movies:

In an interview with journalist Ogata Taketora in January 1941

Then the second one, which is really a prophetic vision of how the war actually turned out:

Reply when asked by Prime Minister Konoe in mid-1941 about the outcome of a US-Japanese war

6 months after Pearl Harbor (4-7 June 1942) was the Battle of Midway, the high water mark for Japan in WWII. After that they increasingly lost more and more territory and ships, and was never able to regain either superiority or initiative.

 

Wow, not hardly!

While most people looking at Japan in WWII concentrate on the mighty naval battles and amphibious assaults, that completely ignores what was going on on the continent of Asia itself.

Japan made considerable advances against stiff and bloody opposition in China, Burma, was preparing to take over India, and towards the end of the war actually conquered French Indochina in a matter of weeks. The majority of their Army was on the Asian continent, we only fought a small portion of their real military during WWII.

 

Which is why we should have confiscated Arab oil to end the 1973 Embargo. Now we must confiscate it because these people are our dedicated enemies. The reason we don't is not pacifism or appeasement; it's because the traitors who own our oil companies make all their bloated wealth through piggybacking off OPEC price-gouging.