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Good one! an even earlier surprise attack before Japan’s empire expansion. Port Arthur was against the Russians, in 1904.Apologize for the length of this post- but memory is triggered in many history nuts.

In re: your screen name tag— The British government aided the Japanese in the attack on the Tsar’s Russian Fleet anchored in Port Arthur. British intrigue against Tsarist Russia well before the start of WWI. Intrigue also with securing the Soleiman Masjid region of Iran for oil for the British Navy is interconnected with a British foreign agent who essentially aided oil rights for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (but this is another story, all true).

No longer fiction (the British foreign agent, Sidney Reilly working under loose direction of the Foreign Section of the British Secret Service Bureau) documentary evidence indicates that agent Sidney Reilly working under the cover of running a timber company in Port Arthur, Manchuria in 1899(Sidney Reilly was a cover name created for one Sigmund Rosenblum, and also a timber company-by head of then British Special Branch William Melville).

Reilly was approached by Japanese Kempeitai and recruited (at that point working for both British and Japanese Intel) aided the Japanese navy by providing them with port maps of the mine fields placed there by the Russian navy. They sailed in and attacked the Russian ships at anchor and shelled the port town. They did not do quite as well as they might but they did kill some 31K russian navy personnel. Paid for this by the Japanese (in 1904). Interesting how the Brits were involved in this sneak attack— imo just as they were about not informing the US of the approaching Japanese fleet to bring the US into WWII at a time Britain without us likely would have failed.

Trump’s joke likely was not about Port Arthur in any case. Pearl Harbor being 85 years ago there are not many US or Japanese veterans left (if at all)- so this is only levity generated for the academic “historians” (esp. the Leftist ones!).