No, it sucked. But in a “world war” where casualties were weighed in millions the attack on Pearl Harbor was pretty meaningless. It gave Japan time and space to conquer their objectives but in the end they could not win the war and all it did was mobilize a nation that had little idea about how powerful it could or would be.
It was a “battle won” that ultimately proved rather meaningless 4 years later outside of the clear resolve it gave America to persecute the war to unconditional surrender. Japan did what we could not do ourselves.... we ended the depression and committed to total war against fascism and Japanese imperialism.
My taking a strategic view of an event does not mean I do not lament the lives lost. As a veteran I know the cost of war better than most. Pearl Harbor was a temporary win and a long-term loss for Japan. Period.
We killed about 100,000 Japanese in the firebombings of Tokyo alone. Women and children mostly. It was a total war (a lost concept in America) that Japan started and we finished in the Pacific.
America was incredibly fortunate in WWII that our civilian population was largely left alone. The rest of the world was not blessed with our geography.
Which in modern times no longer affords any real security.
Because I'm older now and had more time to research it - I don't believe that should have lowered our moral standing by the war of annhilation we conducted against the civilians of Japan. When we did that, we followed the lead of the barbaric ideologies we were opposing and rejected our founding as a Christian country.
We had a segment of our military forces who were both committed to the faith that the "bomber will always get through" - that strategic bombing could win all by itself and nobody but the low-born and the stupid would be needed for that grimy infantry war far below them.
bombing cities didn't work for the Germans against the Brits and as we found out in Europe, daylight "precision" bombing was inaccurate and wasted aircraft and young men's lives - so we adopted the Brit's tactics of massive, relentless night bombing of cities to kill civilians.
From there, it was an easy slide further down that moral sink to the apocolypse we conducted in Japan. Because of the high winds of the Jet Stream and the flaws in the Norden bomb sight, those very expensive and finicky B-29s had no real tactical or strategic effect up until January 1945. We had expended thousands of young Marines and soldiers to seize Saipan and Tinian - and then Iwo Jima - to secure the bases and the safe havens for those B-29s and they couldn't do anything at all until Curtis LeMay took over and committed those B-29s to low-altitude night incendiary attacks on cities with the express purpose of burning those cities out of existence and killing as many civilians as possible.
It was inhumane, unnecessary, and a genuine war crime - one that has influenced what the world would think about us for all time.
We had the Japanese completely defenseless by late 1944/early 1945. Our submarines had cut off all supplies of any kind to the Home Islands and the B-29s usefully mined the entrances to their ports. Our carriers roamed all around Japan and attacked every target within reach. Japan did not have the resources to go on and everybody knew that.
But the leadership had committed to total and complete defeat for Japan and the Bomber Mafia had to "prove" their thesis.
The more I learn about that war, the more I am sure that we could have secured victory against the Japanese without butchering civilians or invading them. We just had to cut them off and wait for them to give up.
Because I'm older now and had more time to research it - I don't believe that should have lowered our moral standing by the war of annhilation we conducted against the civilians of Japan. When we did that, we followed the lead of the barbaric ideologies we were opposing and rejected our founding as a Christian country.
We had a segment of our military forces who were both committed to the faith that the "bomber will always get through" - that strategic bombing could win all by itself and nobody but the low-born and the stupid would be needed for that grimy infantry war far below them.
bombing cities didn't work for the Germans against the Brits and as we found out in Europe, daylight "precision" bombing was inaccurate and wasted aircraft and young men's lives - so we adopted the Brit's tactics of massive, relentless night bombing of cities to kill civilians.
From there, it was an easy slide further down that moral sink to the apocolypse we conducted in Japan. Because of the high winds of the Jet Stream and the flaws in the Norden bomb sight, those very expensive and finicky B-29s had no real tactical or strategic effect up until January 1945. We had expended thousands of young Marines and soldiers to seize Saipan and Tinian - and then Iwo Jima - to secure the bases and the safe havens for those B-29s and they couldn't do anything at all until Curtis LeMay took over and committed those B-29s to low-altitude night incendiary attacks on cities with the express purpose of burning those cities out of existence and killing as many civilians as possible.
It was inhumane, unnecessary, and a genuine war crime - one that has influenced what the world would think about us for all time.
We had the Japanese completely defenseless by late 1944/early 1945. Our submarines had cut off all supplies of any kind to the Home Islands and the B-29s usefully mined the entrances to their ports. Our carriers roamed all around Japan and attacked every target within reach. Japan did not have the resources to go on and everybody knew that.
But the leadership had committed to total and complete defeat for Japan and the Bomber Mafia had to "prove" their thesis.
The more I learn about that war, the more I am sure that we could have secured victory against the Japanese without butchering civilians or invading them. We just had to cut them off and wait for them to give up.