These assertions about Pearl Harbor have been around since the 1940's and have nothing to do with Rockwell or Black.
As to the paranoia of it, mainstream historians such as John Toland are hardly paranoid or deceptive.
The embargo of Japan in 1941 was clearly a provocation and cause of the war, as Japan being bereft of most natural resources relied upon trade to supply critical items such as oil, coal, iron, and rubber. Under such an embargo, it was only a matter of time before something had to give to allow Japan to secure these resources. The foolish decision to attack the US was one result.
One might also note the double standard whereby Japanese attempts to establish a colonial empire in China and SE Asia were branded evil and subjected Japan to international opprobrium, while existing European and American colonial adventures in China and SE Asia were perfectly acceptable and legitimate. Thus, Japanese attacks on Indo-China and the Indonesian archipeligo are "agression" while existing western colonial subjugation of the same is evidence of western munificence. This is similar to the double standard whereby England subjugating and colonizing Ireland and Scotland is perfectly acceptable, while Germany subjugating Poland and Bohemia or Italy subjugating Greece and Albania is not.
Your silly comments make it sound as though Japan just came up out of the blue and without provocation attacked an unsuspecting US. Nothing could be further from reality.
Sorry. Not buying the equivalence here. The Western powers established these colonies against weak, pre-modern states that mostly refused to trade with us. Granted it wasn't pretty. The Western nations forced trade under, at least initially, an unfair mechantilist system. But still they were basically economic colonies.
By the time Japan attacked it's neighbors they were far closer to modern states and would in most cases have been willing to trade with Japan. Japan simply wanted to TAKE their resources, without even the unbalanced merchantilist trade system. Furthermore the Japanese were not merely establishing economic colonies but were also consciously and systematically carrying out genocidal campaigns. Incidents like the Rape of Nanking (never mind the systematic use of germ warfare against civilian populations) bore little similarity to occasional bloodlettings in European colonies, which were almost always related to putting down revolts.
You make it sound like the embargo of Japan was economic aggression by America. This wasn't something that America wanted to do. It wasn't something that was for America's economic benefit. It was a sanction for Japan's aggression against China. It was a measure that had overwhelming popular support in America and indeed was demanded by the American public. The Japanese could have ended the embargo by withdrawing from China.
But not the only possible one; indeed, it was far from the desired one (that was a negotiated Japanese withdrawal from Indochina) and certainly not the anticipated one. It seems natural only in retrospect.
What shocked the West about the Japanese foreign policy of the time was not the expansionist activity - that had been in the cards since the Russo-Japanese War. What shocked the West was the remarkable brutality. This was not simply a matter of European-style colonization and subordination of native governments, it was outright military invasion and massacre of anyone opposing. One might claim a moral equivalency but in practice they were quite different affairs, as the citizens of Nanking might attest - the survivors, anyway. (Curiously, I knew personally one of the participants on the Japanese side, who corroborated some of the horrifying details. Precisely why that got out of control would be an interesting study - according to my acquaintance even some of the Japanese soldiers tried to stop it. A topic for another time, perhaps).
And hence the sanctions. As a step short of war sanctions to this day have been given a credibility that actual performance seldom justifies. In this case they proved a casus belli. A cautionary tale for the Peace Studies crowd. But I do take issue with the characterization of the embargo as a provocation. That it was not; instead it was a measured, rational, and entirely hopeless approach to put pressure on the Japanese short of shooting.
The real difficulty with Pearl Harbor as a solution to that resource challenge was, as Yamamoto pointed, that it only worked if it succeeded so completely there was no reply. Whether the Japanese could have remediated the situation through diplomacy instead we will never know. But that was the intention.
“Your silly comments make it sound as though Japan just came up out of the blue and without provocation attacked an unsuspecting US. Nothing could be further from reality.”
Wow. It’s been some time seen I’ve seen a true blue Japanese apologist.
Rockwell and Black are their current retailers, helping to keep this anti-American myth alive. Please do not misunderstand me: I did not mean to suggest that Rockwell or Black have ever had an original thought in their heads.
As to the paranoia of it, mainstream historians such as John Toland are hardly paranoid or deceptive.
John Toland was not a serious historian, but a jumped-up novelist dabbling in history. His famous Imperial Japan-fellating work The Rising Sun - which won numerous leftist accolades including the Pulitzer Prize - was a work of semi-fictional speculation written from the viewpoint of Japanese commanders in the Pacific. It was published in 1971 at the height of anti-Vietnam War hysteria - the Pulitzer Committee was delighted to read a nasty, anti-American work from the viewpoint of a put-upon Asian totalitarian state. Very topical and PC at the time.
His book is less than worthless.
The embargo of Japan in 1941 was clearly a provocation and cause of the war, as Japan being bereft of most natural resources relied upon trade to supply critical items such as oil, coal, iron, and rubber. Under such an embargo, it was only a matter of time before something had to give to allow Japan to secure these resources.
In other words, Japan had no choice in the matter. They could not pursue conference or compromise. They were an inscrutable, mysterious other bereft of the human ability to negotiate with other powers.
Sorry, no sale.
The foolish decision to attack the US was one result.
One result of the hubris of Japan's policy. Certainly not the result of anything America did.
One might also note the double standard whereby Japanese attempts to establish a colonial empire in China and SE Asia were branded evil and subjected Japan to international opprobrium, while existing European and American colonial adventures in China and SE Asia were perfectly acceptable and legitimate.
The Japanese position in China was based on mass slaughter, atrocities against Chinese civilians and the use of concentration camps.
The US and European colonial presence in China was based on negotiations from a position of military strength against a Chinese government that wanted trade to be purely one-way.
The US did not act like an angel in China: it used threats of blockade to obtain favorable trade agreements. The Japanese did not threaten blockades - they just murdered more than a million Chinese civilians wholesale.
Two different kinds of approach - hardly a double standard.
Thus, Japanese attacks on Indo-China and the Indonesian archipeligo are "agression" while existing western colonial subjugation of the same is evidence of western munificence.?i>
A straw man. The West's preferred method was not mass slaughter of civilians. Imperial Japan's was. Your moral equivalence game will not wash.
This is similar to the double standard whereby England subjugating and colonizing Ireland and Scotland is perfectly acceptable, while Germany subjugating Poland and Bohemia or Italy subjugating Greece and Albania is not.
The British method of subjugating Ireland and Scotland was to forge alliances with Irish and Scottish families that wanted change of government in Ireland and Scotland, and of using these families as proxies to gain political control over those territories.
More Poles were slaughtered by Nazis in the first month of World War II than Irish or Scots died in warfare with the English between 1066 and 2007.
Even the one actual widescale atrocity committed by England - Cromwell's invasion - pales in comparison. And the English had such horror of Cromwell's government and regime that they scrapped it entirely without any external compulsion.
So again you compare apples with whole roast boars and try to force a moral equivalence.
Your silly comments make it sound as though Japan just came up out of the blue and without provocation attacked an unsuspecting US. Nothing could be further from reality.
Yet that is what Japan did. Japan was frustrated with our trade policy. Did they blockade our trading vessels using their navy as retaliation? No. Did they go to other powers to negotiate incentives to get around US policy? No. Did they consider making significant policy concessions to the US in order to get what they wanted? No.
They attacked us literally out of the clear blue sky because their leadership believed that Americans were inferior beings who should kowtow to their divine emperor, rather than allowing their emperor to sully himself by altering Imperial policy.
They had a thousand options: in their arrogance they chose the one that would put their Empire to an end.