The Zero's Maneuverability (1 Viewer)

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Yet again you managed to deliberately misunderstand what I was saying. I never said they didn't attack Pearl Harbor, if you go back and read it. What I said is that Japan had little choice in the face of the embargo but to do SOMETHING or fail as a country. They chose a military response. Naturally, we didn't like it much.

Miisrepresentation or sarcasm seems to be your normal reply to me when I say something. Why?

I don't try to twist what you say into something else entirely or incite you into a sharp reply.

Seems like you just want to pick a fight. I'd rather not go there, myself. So, despite an inclination to respond in kind, I'll just say, cheers to you. Have a nice day.

Swapping sarcastic insults isn't likely to accomplish much except to get the mods angry with both of us. Please stop. I'm positive that if you want to engage in a discussion, you can do it without sarcasm. I can do the same. Again, cheers.
 
'They chose a military response' is darn close to "get into a war" in my book.
Japan was free not to go to the war with the West and still be fine as a country.


I read what people post, and if I find the stuff I disagree, I post my disagreement. Sometimes my attitude is not exactly a bed of roses, but it is not that I have any special agenda against you.
 
Note that for their atomic bomb program the Japanese, unlike the Germans, did the math right and as a result duplicated the Manhattan project. But they were unable to produce the hardware needed with the sufficient quality to build a bomb. They were just as advanced as anyone else in many respects in terms of "Science" but their industry had insufficient depth to do the job.

Think of how General Motors went on to build Wildcats and Avengers and Ford learned to build R-2800's very early in the war and a little later B-24's at an incredible rate. Martin and Bell built not only their own designs but B-29's as well. Maytag built aircraft engine parts. Well before the war ended the US was shutting down poorly performing firms such as Brewster. How many Japanese firms switched from consumer products to complex military hardware during the war?

The Germans knew how to design turbosuperchargers and jet engines but lacked the required nickel alloys to manufacture them in anything but trivial quantities. The engine for the V-2 rocket was a tremendous technical achievement but had to reply on hydrogen peroxide to drive the turbine because of their scarcity of high temperature alloys. I suspect the Japanese were in better shape in terms of access to minerals than the Germans but did not seem to have the industrial capacity to take advantage of it.
 

And if the situation had been reversed the USA would have done exactly the same - gone to war.
 

The joys English - both statements are correct depending on context
 
GregP said:
What I said is that Japan had little choice in the face of the embargo but to do SOMETHING or fail as a country.
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tomo pauk said:
Japan was free not to go to the war with the West and still be fine as a country.
Click to expand...
Japan had little choice in the embargo if they wanted to purse their imperialist plans in China.

Note that It was less "Japan" deciding to do that than it was a group of Japanese Army officers. In fact, there were fears that Adm Yamamoto would be assassinated by the Army due to an opinion that he was not sufficiently aggressive toward the USA. Of course Yamamoto was quite familiar with the USA due to his diplomatic assignments and thought that a war with America would be disastrous. He did, finally, take enough of an aggressive stance when dealing with the USA that the Army did not try to kill him. It is not for nothing that Hiroyuki Agawa's book on Yamamoto is titled "The Reluctant Admiral."

And note that even after the atomic bombings a group of Army officer attempted to stop the Emperor's surrender announcement, a coup that failed in part due to a USAAF B-29 raid at a coincidentally crucial time.
 


They didn't have to surrender as a country. They had to stop their aggression in China to avoid American sanctions. They chose war with the US rather than, you know, not killing more hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians.

They weren't forced to do anything.
 
Bergjon12 said:
I don't think I understand what you're saying.
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The US cut off all energy and rubber supplies to Japan in 1941.

Americans are booing Canadians for reacting to the current tariffs - that is offended national pride. It is totally misplaced because the the Canadians were forced to retaliate but still the Americans are suffering from offended pride.

Now how would you expect the to US react if Canada cut off all energy supplies to America?

Would it curl up and economically die or would it come out fighting?

You know as well as I do they would do the exact same thing that Japan did in December 1941.

Do as I say and not as I do is a problem everywhere. So is you cannot tell us what to do. Those are the two things that cause wars.
 

Yeah, no. Current rhetoric aside, 1) we won't "economically die" without Canadian electricity, and 2) the American public will not support a war against Canada.
 
 
It is. We, rather apprently, figured the "embargo" would make them stop trying to be expansionist. But, when you predict other people's behavior, you usually have to take into account whether they might go the way you don't really want or expect, the "road less travelled" so to speak. We apparently never figured they'd simply see the ebargo as an act of war and respond in kind. In hindsight, it is almost criminally negligent to not suspect someone will simply refuse to do what you want them to do, and to be prepared for it when it comes.

History is chock full of times when the other guys did just that, though, refuse the sensible choice and go the other way. I'm sure we can all think of many times when that was the eventual outcome, including the well-documented Trojan Horse episode. Pearl Harbor was one such episode that I'd rather we never repeat.

Go figure, huh.
 
Of course Roosevelt and co. were not blind to that possibility. The positioning of the P. fleet in Pearl was a maneuver for war, for one thing. The embargo was an ultimatum in so many words, in response to an intolerable situation that Japan had created.
 
Google "Greater East Asia Co-Prosparity Sphere" and you'll see that Japan intended to control East Asia by force.

Grasping at the current tariff issue and trying to equate that to Imperial Japan's actions and consequences is laughable at best.

That bullshit will also get a good thread shut down, so just stop, FFS.
 
My apologies but I could not see any other way to make people realise what the Japanese faced in ww2 and why they reacted the way they did.

My father was in ww2 and served at Guadalcanal. Before being sent there they were, in his words, brainwashed to hate the Japanese.

During the big Japanese push he was in the hospital at Henderson field, along with many other servicemen suffering from malaria. The only reason he lived to 93 was that the Japanese troops who went through the hospital area first banged on the roof of each hospital tent, then when there was no "reaction" sliced a hole in the roof, then when there was no 'reaction' stuck their heads in. When no one tried to kill them they just walked away. You would think from that he would look positively on Japanese but no - right to his end he could not look at, or hear comments about his Japanese son in law without the brainwashing instantly returning. Not even the fact that he liked his SIL and that his SIL was a highly respected doctor and HOD of his organisation could stop this occurring.

The same hatreds are being engineered in many countries right now and that scares the sh-one-t out of me.

EDIT. My BIL was born in an internment camp for Japanese even though his father and uncles were in the 100th Infantry Battalion.

442nd Infantry Regiment (United States) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org
 
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Thumpalumpacus said:
Yeah, no. Current rhetoric aside, 1) we won't "economically die" without Canadian electricity, and 2) the American public will not support a war against Canada.
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The Japanese would not have economically died without oil and rubber either but that was not what those in power believed. Anything that slowed the growth of their "Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere" dream was, to them, political and/or military death.

And if you had asked the average Japanese man, women, or child if Japan would ever attack the USA the answer would have been a resounding no. If you had been able to ask them if they supported the war against America before or soon after Pearl Harbor the answer would have been NO.

These decisions are always made by politicians for their own glory. Not by the ordinary man in the street who knows he and his family are the ones who will be the meat in the grinder while those who caused the war, and their kin, sit safe and sound well away from any fighting.
 
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