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Pearl Harbor: What If Japan Never Attacked?
1945 ^ | 12/7/21 | Robert Farley

Posted on 12/07/2021 9:26:40 AM PST by MAGA2017

What if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor eighty years ago today?

The attack is today regarded as an enormous tactical success, but a strategic failure. Several older battleships were damaged or destroyed, but the treachery of the attack spurred the United States to fully mobilize for war and to pursue that war with a vengeful fury. The attack also pushed the United States to adopt innovative tactics that would quickly overturn Japanese advantages in air and naval technology. What other military options did Japan have besides an attack on Pearl Harbor?

It would have been extremely difficult for Japan to avoid attacking the United States in the context of a general offensive into Southeast Asia. While Washington had stopped short of making an ironclad security guarantee to British and Dutch possessions in Asia, it had made clear to Tokyo that it did not welcome further aggression. The US had cut Japan off from steel and oil, putting tremendous economic pressure on the Japanese war machine.

(Excerpt) Read more at 19fortyfive.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Japan; News/Current Events; US: Hawaii
KEYWORDS: 1941; hawaii; japan; pearlharbor; worldwareleven
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To: Leaning Right

If I am not mistaken. The decision as to the emperor’s status
was left up to McArthur. He decided that leaving a powerless Hirohito on the thrown would be useful in building a post war Japan.


141 posted on 12/07/2021 12:15:09 PM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: Bull Snipe

He also knew keeping Hirohito would make it much more difficult for the Communists to gain traction in post-war Japan.


142 posted on 12/07/2021 12:15:59 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Tallguy

Those who believe Japan wanted to rule half the world need to consider, in the case of Wake Island, IJN had to land their troops by running old destroyers aground.

They had very little sealift capacity - to say they were overextended is an understatement.

Japan’s early success says more about the allies lack of coordination & preparation in the region.


143 posted on 12/07/2021 12:25:37 PM PST by skeeter
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To: MAGA2017

If Granma had balls she’d be Grandpa.


144 posted on 12/07/2021 1:02:46 PM PST by slouper (LWRC SPR 5.5 6)
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To: BenLurkin

That’s the real question.


145 posted on 12/07/2021 1:17:57 PM PST by NorthWoody (Half of all people are below average, and half of those are in the bottom 25%.)
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To: dfwgator

Read up on the Wolfenstein series of video games. It’s ‘Ubersoldat’, aka ‘super soldier’. You were close with “Uberman”.


146 posted on 12/07/2021 1:20:45 PM PST by NorthWoody (Half of all people are below average, and half of those are in the bottom 25%.)
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To: BenLurkin

He did give us term limits, though.

I wonder if any of his wheelchairs are in the Smithsonian, or if that’s still a secret.


147 posted on 12/07/2021 1:25:40 PM PST by NorthWoody (Half of all people are below average, and half of those are in the bottom 25%.)
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To: Red Badger

“What if” past tense is a factor in every single criminal investigation.

What if he did it? What if he didn’t?


148 posted on 12/07/2021 2:24:22 PM PST by MercyFlush (DANGER: You are being conditioned to view your freedom as selfish)
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To: M1903A1

The Japanese could have made a different case across all of Asia. Instead of being an imperialist like the Europeans were in Asia at the time, the Japanese could have backed indigenous independence movements, winning the support of future indigenous independent governments, and in that way gaining the raw materials trade access it sought. It could have made indigenous friends across Asia, as it does now, instead of trying to control them. It copied European imperialism and instead it should have just worked against it across Asia.


149 posted on 12/08/2021 8:18:13 AM PST by Wuli ( a)
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To: MAGA2017

Hitler would have slept better at nite...


150 posted on 12/08/2021 8:19:08 AM PST by wardaddy (Too many uninformed ..and scolds here )
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To: Michael.SF.

“** instead, the assets were liquidated for non-payment of taxes. This was wrong. How can you pay taxes when you are held in a camp?”

Why didn’t that socialst creep FDR make sure they were re imbursed???

No one would EVER reproach HIM for that!


151 posted on 12/08/2021 8:38:51 AM PST by SMARTY (Republics decline into democracies & democracies degenerate into despotisms. Aristotle)
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To: SMARTY

As I recall from reading of this many years ago, the people that benefited were big time Democrat donors to FDR and the Party. Before helping the little guy, FDR had to help himself.


152 posted on 12/08/2021 8:48:55 AM PST by Michael.SF. (Never do anything illegal, when you are doing something illegal. )
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To: Michael.SF.

Yup!!!

And for THAT America is routinely give a black eye AS IF it was a Conservative solution to FDR’s problem


153 posted on 12/08/2021 8:59:20 AM PST by SMARTY (Republics decline into democracies & democracies degenerate into despotisms. Aristotle)
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To: wardaddy; MAGA2017

Oddly enough Hitler declared war on us on December 11th before Congress considered whether or not to include Germany as an enemy.

We had already been in an undeclared naval war with Germany for months, firing on their U-boats, sending destroyers and supplies to Great Britain under Lend-Lease. FDR had been working around Congress’s insistence on American neutrality and stretching that all that he could. It was a surprise when Hitler declared war.

An excellent book on events leading up to this is Thomas Fleming’s “The New Dealer’s War”.


154 posted on 12/08/2021 12:33:08 PM PST by Pelham (Q is short for quack )
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To: Kevmo

Japan could have attacked the Dutch colonies and Brit colonies without getting America into the war. It was a strategic blunder which I’m grateful they engaged in, because the USA was the most instrumental in ending WWII, in particular with such forcefulness against the Jap aggressors.

Yes. Congress would never have declared war on Japan to save the western colonial empires. Especially since 1942 was an election year. I suppose Roosevelt would have tried a provocation like sending our ships into the combat zone.


155 posted on 12/08/2021 10:13:32 PM PST by rxh4n1
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