Why the hell did Japan bomb us @ Pearl Harbor anyway?

[NFS4]

You can slap me if you want, but why the hell did they bomb us? I never really paid to much attention in history class (still got A's though) and was either chatting with friends or drooling over the hotties

I mean we weren't even involved (to the best of my knowledge) in the war until the bombed us in Dec '41. So what did we do to provoke them?

 

[warlord]

we didn't provoke them, they wanted to take over the world. the Hawaiian islands were one of the stepping stones on the way to making an assult on main land USA

edit, I couldn't spell hawaiian

 

[ForeverSilky]

They wanted to take control of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. I guess Pear Harbor was one of the things in their way.

 

[NFS4]

Ahh, now it's coming back to me Well I guess those plans were thwarted in '45

 

[uncouth]

at the time we, the US, were threatening to cut the Japanese off of the supplies that we were selling them. Metals and oil were perhaps some of these. Anyways, the Japanese were invading Manchuria and we said if they did not pull out we would stop giving them the goods. The Japanese, instead of complying, did the next best thing and ruined our navy. It was a reasonably good move because the US, being out a navy, basically sucked in the Pacific. We still had our Carriers but it is only by luck that we even kept those. Battle of Midway should have been won by the Japanese and then we would have been hard pressed to win the war without any major ships...

thats my 2cents

 

[NFS4]

<< Battle of Midway should have been won by the Japanese and then we would have been hard pressed to win the war without any major ships...
>>


Midway was a good movie...had Charleton Heston and Mr. Miagai in it

 

[uncouth]

If Hawiai was a &quot;stepping stone&quot; to the main land America, as some others have indicated, instead of bombing the hel1 out Peral Harbor they would have landed there and taken over the islands...

 

[uncouth]

That was a good movie... had a good way of flipping back and forth between Japs and us. I always love how they use actual footage to show the fighting scenes. Never would see that today...

 

[brandc]

What Foreversilky and warlord said, except that the U.S. had applied an oil embargo on them for thier actions in Manchuria and China and they considered that a provocation.



[oops]not Mongolia[oops]

 

[unxpurg8d]

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Prelude23.html

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

Japan is mineral and energy resource poor. In '41 the US cut off oil shipments to the Japanese because of their attacks on China. The Japanese knew they would never be able to get resources by conquering other Pacific states while the US Navy was operational. Thus, they decided to launch a sneak attack in order to reder the US powerless in the Pacific.

The US Navy was lucky - all of its aircraft carriers were away when the Japanese attacked, and aircraft carriers had supplanted battleships as the most important naval vessels.

 

[uncouth]

brandc, those other guys are not right at all. The &quot;Hawiai was in the Way&quot; theory or the &quot;it was a Stepping Stone&quot; don't really fit the truth. They wanted our Navy sunk, end of story

 

[Frenchie]

Not to sound like a conspiracy theory nut, but there is documentary proof that the US Navy had advanced warning of the bombing. This may be the reason that there were no air craft carriers around to be bombed. Most of the naval vessels being bombed were old outdated ships. The bombing allowed us to do three things: 1) enter the war 2) build anew fleet 3) put the popular vote against the enemy and in favor of the military.

As for the bombing, they wanted to quickly eliminate a threat to the axis powers...us.

Edit: spelling.

 

[LouisXIX]

Fact: War is required for the survival of capitalist economies. However, unlike its european allies, the US didnt have a good reason to engage in WW2, certainly not in the pacific at least. What Uncouth says about Japan's supplies being cut off was a contributor to Japan's hostility towards the US, which it expected. We are told that is was 'lucky' that most of America's carriers were not in port in Pearl Harbour at the time of the bombing. Perhaps it was, maybe it was planned, who knows, except those at the top.

To answer NFS4's question, Japan bombed Pearl Harbour because the US forced its hand.

 

[LouisXIX]

wow! Fenchie, your post entered 1 second after I posted! Telepathy? Nah, great minds just think alike.

 

[Frenchie]

LouisXIX

Great minds.....and ours too!!! LOL


edit: damn spelling/typing impairment. Knew I shouldnt have had that drink over lunch!

 

[warlord]

uncouth, have you ever seen the final plans for where the axis forces were going to share the world? Japan wanted to control North america, for its resources. ofcourse japan wanted our navy out of the way, so they could continue to take over islands in the pacific, you really can't do that if our navy can enforce embargos.

Frenchie, those advance warnings were all ignored by higher ups. it has been explained why they were ignored, whether you choose to believe them or not is another matter.

 

[brandc]

uncouth,
After checking unexpurg8d's link and reading further I stand corrected.

<a target=new href="http://www.metalab.unc.edu/pha/pha/congress/part_1.html#10
">http://www.metalab.unc.edu/pha/pha/congress/part_1.html#10
</a>

 

[Makanani]

Along with other theories was that Hawaii was the closest you could get to Japan for the US, and I guess the Japanese found it threatening to them that we had such firepower there.

 

[rahvin]

Simple answer of which 90% of the pieces have already been placed.

1. The US had cut off oil supplies to Japan because of the attacks on Manchuria.

2. Oil supplies in Japan would only allow the Japan a 6month war with the US.

3. It was decided to eliminate the US naval presence in the Pacific area thereby rendering the millitary ability of the US to 0. (at that time planes could not traverse the pacific ocean, ships were required).

4. By eliminating the Naval ability of the US, Japan would be able to secure resources in SE asia to help sustain their war effort (a major point of this was the capture of the phillipines)

5. They had ill founded hope that the US would take 2 years to rebuild any significant Naval ability in the pacific. This proved to later be false when the US launched 18 new ships within 6months of Pearl. Not only this, they salvaged all but 1 ship (the arizona, believed to be too badly damaged with 8 hits) from the bottom of Pearl and had most if not all repaired within 6-12months.

This is also a good lesson in intelligence and listening to your millitary. The admiral that attacked the US at pearl had attended an American university for a period and is on record saying that Japan could not sustain a long war with the US, he had hoped to get the US to a cease fire within 6months. Possibly by securing SE asia and starting peace negotiations with US. Japan severly underestimated the industrial capacity of the american infastructure. Detriot switched within 2 months from making cars to tanks and aircraft. Boeing was created almost overnight.

Basically Japan was trying to elimate our ability to assist in the pacific theatre, up until the bombing the US had a neutral stance in the pacific but had been assisting China and the US was aware that we would be become involved eventually (probably with the attack on the phillipines and the Batan death march).

WWII was a war about resources, we elimated Japans resources and thereby eliminated most of their ability to fight. (Kamikazies were created because Japan often had the planes, the pilots, and only half the fuel required. In the end of the war they were cutting down every tree in Japan and making ethanol out of them to have fuel to power their war machine.

 

[biohazard2]

we were the ONLY threat to thier domination of the south pacific. Hawaii was the closest naval base we had, and it possed most of our surface fleet in the pacific at the time. they opted for a pre-emptive strike to cripple us before we got mad enough to send a comlete naval fleet against the Japanese fleet which was already tiring because of the war.

 

[CyberSax]

I think a more difficult question would have been &quot;Why shouldn't Japan have bombed Pearl Harbor&quot;, which I would have a very difficult time coming up with a response to.

To answer your question:

1) Japan's allies were already at war with America's allies. War between Japan and America was imminent.

2) In 1941, Germany was doing quite well in its conquest of Europe, and the U.S. was effectively distracted by it

3) America had treated the Japanese people like cr@p.

4) The Japanese government at the time had a desire to control the Pacific rim.

5) Invading Hawaii was the first logical step in conquering the American side of the Pacific rim.

6) It was a sound plan, but the Japanese did not realize that much of the U.S. fleet was going to be out when they bombed Pearl Harbor. Had they taken out the full U.S. Pacific fleet (as planned) the war could have gone either way.

 

[403Forbidden]

hey how much time elapsed between the bombing at peral harbor and the bombing of heroshima?

 

[Passions]

Thats true about WWII, it was a war of resources. And America had plenty. Theres a popular German saying somthing like, For every german tank, it could destroy 10 American tanks. But the Americans always seemed to have an 11th. Hehe.

 

[tmj]

3) America had treated the Japanese people like cr@p.

But didn't that all start after pearl harbor?