REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR.
A day that will live in Infamy…
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Today is a day to remember the dead. But maybe someday there will be an honest discussion about how OUR short sighted foreign policy decisions made war in the Pacific all but inevitable.
Seeing the footage from that day still amazes me. It is both incredible and unbelievable what was done to America and how “The Greatest Generation” rose to combat this in all out war. The other day a friend sent me this link to live footage of a bombing run over Japan. The numbers of men, the planes and the bombs needed to pound the enemy into submission was incredible. WW2 really was a World War and may we never forget the sacrifices that were made and just how terrible it was.
The link to cut and paste. http://archive.org/details/TheLastBomb1945
I remember December 7th 1941. Was living in El Paso, TX, Late in the afternoon, sunsetting, my father and I watched little bi Planes flying around in front of the sun set, in what I would later know to be the Naval Air Station, what would be called “a show of strength”.
Personally, my first wife’s Birthday was 12/07/37 and my second wife’s death date was 12/07/2003, my first wife died in August and my second wife was born in August.
I definitely will not for get !2/07.
Barry
Todd Haskins said:The effort needed to supply not only our own military, but England, Russia and the rest of the Allies was staggering. A fascinating and in depth look at this was recently published and is worth a read:
Seeing the footage from that day still amazes me. It is both incredible and unbelievable what was done to America and how "The Greatest Generation" rose to combat this in all out war. The other day a friend sent me this link to live footage of a bombing run over Japan. The numbers of men, the planes and the bombs needed to pound the enemy into submission was incredible. WW2 really was a World War and may we never forget the sacrifices that were made and just how terrible it was. The link to cut and paste. http://archive.org/details/TheLastBomb1945
I remember that maybe five years ago I was talking with my mother - she’s 92 today - about my live steamer build. This led to a discussion regarding some of my machine tools. My jaw nearly hit the floor when she started to tell me some of the tricks she remembered when using an engine lathe - she spent the early part of the war boring the rifling into gun barrels (45 ACP) on a Monarch 10EE. She’s getting a little forgetful now, but she could remember EVERYTHING about that lathe - guess if you do something several thousand times, it tends to stick!
Brian
Taxachusetts
I have been reading several histories of WW2, its really almost impossible today to imagine the effort and sacrifices made by the sailors, troops and civilians in the war effort.
If anyone is interested I highly recommend the following books,
At War With the Wind, on the kamakazes’ and the US responses
Halseys Typhoon, on Typhoon Cobras’ effect on the US Third Fleet
Neptunes Inferno, on the US Navy at Guadelcanal and the Tokyo Express
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, on the experience of Taffy 3 at the Battle off Samar
I have Bismarck, and Downfall, a book about the planned invasion of Japan, and a book on the Flying Tigers.
Mik, the powers that be will NEVER allow a review of what lead up to that conflict! Always keep that in mind, those in power are the ones who write the history. I’ll just keep running trains until I am planted, and to hell with the rest of them!
Paul
Mik said:Shockin' photos to this day. I was about to query if any of you American chaps had any idea what provoked that attack, as I've always wondered what on earth the Japanese were thinking... now this comment from Mik. I find it amazing.
But maybe someday there will be an honest discussion about how OUR short sighted foreign policy decisions made war in the Pacific all but inevitable.
It’s not my place as an outsider to criticize the USA - I love the place and the people, and the country is Canada’s best friend - but I have almost always thought US foreign policy astonishingly … well… , er, may I quote you, short sighted.
No offense intended. Has it been pretty dumb since before the War, then? Nothing new under the sun, I guess. What policy were you refering to, Mik?
I can say that when I think back on my world history lessons, the policy that always made the most sense to me in 99% of circumstances was isolationism, and if I were an American I think I’d still be in favor of it 99% of the time. I still don’t see for the life of me that you guys need the rest of the clowns out there any more than we do.
All the same, if the USA hadn’t joined the Allies back then we’d all be in very deep doodoo today. That was necessary for sure, but that day of infamy - what a lousy way to begin.
U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor
John,
Japan was under what amounted to a military dictatorship with an emperor that was both revered and under the influence of the likes of Tojo and the Army Japan had been making war on China since at least the 1930’s and controlled most of coastal China as well as Korea and Manchuria. Their rule there was quite brutal and motivated by the desire and need for raw materials.
The only thing that really stood in Japan’s way to implement the “Greater Southeast Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” was the US fleet based mostly at Pearl Harbor. When Roosevelt increased the embargo on certain raw materials essential to Japan’s military ambitions in an attempt to discourage further incursions into China it precipitated a crisis. With the European powers embroiled in war in Europe the Japanese decided the time to strike was now or never. It can be argued whether or not Hirohito fully wanted the war but nevertheless he endorsed it. Ironically the instrument used for the attack, the Japanese Navy, didn’t really want war with the US; it was mostly Tojo and the Army.
The object was by knocking out the US Pacific fleet to win a series of early victories and establish not only a defensive perimeter far into the Pacific but also to secure the much needed raw materials. Thus the Japanese invaded the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore (Malaya), Burma, French Indochina and numerous islands in rapid succession.
For anyone to imply that US policy or for that matter that of Great Britain was responsible for the Pacific war is absurd! Japan had already put itself on a collision course years before and even complete appeasement would only have delayed things. The signing of the Axis treaty between Germany, Italy and Japan along with Roosevelt’s embargo simply brought the inevitable to fruition.
Without waxing political I can only say that the world situation was very different than it is now and the criteria for going to war also quite different. To understand history you must place yourself into the times and not use today’s situations and dynamics to judge what was done then.
Of course if the end of WWI had been handled differently or better yet the situation before WWI then it the whole of WWII might have been avoided…maybe. If the League of Nations had done their job… But hindsight is always easier than foresight.
Politics…
Bob McCown said:No, I hope just history. At least that's my intention. I'll comment no further as this could easily deteriorate.
Politics......
A case can be made that WW II began with the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 and 22 where the it was agreed that battle ships, the super weapons of the time, would be limited in a ratio of 5 for the US, 5 for Britain, and 3 for Japan. The Japanese military felt threatened, and events unfolded like dominoes falling.
Now, we return you to your regularly scheduled train station… 
Begging Bob’s indulgence, John, I’ll try to answer briefly. Most of what led to war with Japan was US provincialism, and a heaping helping of institutionalized racism. Today we boast of “American Exceptionalism”. At the end of the 19th Century it was called “Manifest Destiny”…
There are several major events that paved the road to war in the Pacific… I’m condensing about 5 books worth of info here, so if it sounds simplistic, it wasn’t. There were so many other plots and sub plots, stupid greed, and naivety going on, parts of it weren’t obvious (or even known) to the American Public at the time (and mostly still aren’t)
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The first thing you have to understand is Japanese Society was very codified, and had always placed a strong emphasis on “face”(for lack of a better term on my part), almost religiously so. Causing someone embarrassment was (almost) the worst thing you could do. OTOH this codification kept the Japanese society from internal war for 2 centuries at at time when "civilized’ Europeans were nearly ALWAYS killing each other.
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The American business folks decided that peaceful isolationist (sakoku) , “backwards”, Japan would be good to trade with, and a nice place for coaling stations to replenish our whaling fleets. The Japanese preferred to be left alone and rebuffed us some 27 times - So we kicked their door in.- Commodore Matthew Perry sailed a battle fleet into Edo (Tokyo) Bay on July 8, 1853 and “negotiated” a very uneven treaty pretty much at cannon point. For their part, the Japanese decided they never wanted to lose that much “face” again, and began rapidly modernizing and militarizing their society.
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By the late 1890s our “nation building” (read: overthrow of a democratically elected, fully functional government of brown folks) in the Philippines had gone dreadfully wrong…Sucking up a lot of manpower and treasure, so William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and a lot of others in our government decided that using the Japanese as a proxy in our next foreign adventure: to pry open the doors to China (and the lucrative Opium trade - amazing how many of our Great Families got their start running drugs or booze!), was a good idea. We (unofficially) promised them Korea as an incentive.- up to that point they had no real concept of, or even a word for, “colony” - In short the WE gave them the whole idea of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (aka the Japanese Monroe Doctrine), and encouraged it as long as it furthered OUR “national interests”.
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Japan completely embarrassed the Russian army and navy in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. The US had unofficially (as far as military, but actively in the press0 supported Japan with Teddy Roosevelt making a lot of “unofficial” promises to the japanese delagation in washington, while most of the European colonial powers supported the Russians. In the final treaty, the European powers exerted a lot of pressure, and Roosevelt couldn’t deliver on promises that the Japanese couldn’t prove he ever made.
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Subsequent US administrations tried to “contain” the Japanese. As the 1930s and early '40s progressed our demands became (from the Japanese viewpoint) more and more unreasonable, and worse, insulting - in short we were still treating them pretty much as we had the Filipinos, the native Hawaiians, and most of the indigenous peoples here… We were flat out telling them, “You can have what WE allow you to take and hold, no more”… in short we AGAIN offered them no way to save face.
If parts of this sound a lot like some of our more recent foreign policy debacles… well, everything old is new again. And we’re still never wrong.
Mik said:
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Anyone else notice the box cars in the back of this staged picture? Those do not look like the AMS ones I’ve seen. Could be an interesting subject for a build if I can find better pics.
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Sorry I promised but…
Manifest Destiny had to do with the US expanding across the North American continent coast to coast. that’s all.
The Philippines came into our control as a result of the Spanish American War in 1898. Not because we wanted to take them over. There was a guerrilla war which was put down by US Marines. This was done to maintain order as the US had responsibility then. The Philippines were scheduled for independence in the 1940’s and much was in place to implement it but WWII and the subsequent Japanese invasion put the whole thing on hold. They were finally given their independence shortly after the end of the war. Hardly an imperialistic action.
Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere
Here’s a pretty good description with much more detail than can be posted here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere
Note that it didn’t come into existence until 1940, years after Japan had invaded China. There was a previous less ambitious plan prior dating from about 1938 I believe.
Ya can’t argue with Richard. He was there. 
Steve Featherkile said:Well I don't remember everything. After all i was quite old then.....
Ya can't argue with Richard. He was there. :D :P
Very well “said” Mik.