Remember Pearl Harbor

Discussion in 'History' started by mathman, Dec 7, 2020.

  1. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    2,002
    Dec 7 (a date which will live in infamy) seems to have been forgotten. I have not seen any announcements today about it.
     
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  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    For you, yes.

    For us in Britain it was the day we knew Hitler would eventually be defeated.
     
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  5. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps
    The war started with the US embargoes on Japan?
    Then we bated the trap with some obsolete(mostly-pre-ww1) battleships while our carrier fleet was safely at sea
    And then, Japan foolishly took the bait, followed by us declaring war, followed by that idiot Hitler honoring his treaty with Japan and declaring war on the US.
    and....................................................
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2020
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Dec 7th should be remembered as a day of mourning and homage for those Americans that lost their lives in that attack.....just as Armistice/rememberence day and ANZAC Day in Aust and NZ for the lives lost in all wars.
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The Japanese had been at war since 1937 at the latest (1931 if you count the first military coercion and occupation of Manchuria).
    Their capture of Nanking was 1937.
    Of the seven battleships lined up in Battleship Row, three were commissioned before WWI - 1914, 1916, 1916. The 1914 ship had been modernized in the 1930s - it was salvaged and repaired and ended up at Normandy on D Day. The other two remained sunk.
    The other four, commissioned in the 1920s, were repaired and fought the rest of WWII in the Pacific - one of them was at Tokyo Bay for the surrender.

    There were two others docked elsewhere, both damaged - one in dry dock, strafed partly because it fought back, 1916 commissioned, fought with the Pacific Fleet from March of '42 on after repair; the other one the only battleship that was obsolete and pre-WWI: it was a target and gun training ship, and was left where it was sunk.

    To have our carriers intentionally out of port when the Japanese attacked - but not so soon that the Japanese observers would have had time to send the info to the attacking force - would have taken considerable coordination among many people (including enemies of Roosevelt and the large American contingent of Nazis) and precise intelligence over several weeks, all of which was kept completely secret to this day.
     
  9. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    U.S. had only 2 new battleships at the time (North Carolina and Washington). All others were WW I or early 1920's Limit by U.S., U.K., Japan treaties.
     
  10. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Not hardly!
    Peoples always make a big ceremony of commemorating predictable and even deserved bad shit that happened to them, and a cult of forgetting bad shit, justified or not, that they inflicted on others.
     
  11. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    1,152
    I think mathman has it right -- in part, time has caused the event to recede into the distance.
    But also practically everyone with an interest in WWII now knows that the Japanese were provoked/tempted/suckered into the attack. A poker play costing 2400 lives does not have the same resonance as a tale of outragious atrocity by a fiendish enemy.
     
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,935
    Imagine the reaction of people in 1941 if a time traveller went back and showed them this:

    American deaths by day:

    Dec 08, 2020 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 09, 2020 : 1.3 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 10, 2020 : 1.3 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 11, 2020 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 12, 2020 : 1.0 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 13, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 14, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 15, 2020 : 1.2 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 16, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 17, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 18, 2020 : 1.2 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 19, 2020 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 20, 2020 : 0.7 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 21, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 22, 2020 : 1.3 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 23, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 24, 2020 : 1.2 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 25, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 26, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 27, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 28, 2020 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 29, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 30, 2020 : 1.6 Pearl Harbors
    Dec 31, 2020 : 1.4 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 01, 2021 : 1.1 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 02, 2021 : 1.0 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 03, 2021 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 04, 2021 : 0.6 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 05, 2021 : 1.5 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 06, 2021 : 1.6 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 07, 2021 : 1.7 Pearl Harbors
    Jan 08, 2021 : 1.6 Pearl Harbors

    That's 35.0 Pearl Harbors in 32 contiguous days.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2021
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Or back to 2001 and told people "yeah, we are having more than a 9/11 a day in deaths, but a lot of people don't think it's real and don't want to wear a mask."
     
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    And when they ask how fast we fired the president for such a gaff, we were all:

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  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Only because they were dedicated to military conquest, robbery, and harsh domination via atrocity of their neighbors. Had they been willing to live in peace with their neighbors they would have had no reason to attack the US.
     
  16. river

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    17,307
    And the US had the intelligence about pearl-harbor but failed to act on the intelligence gathered .
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    That's pretty much the story of every military failure, ever. The Charge of the Light Brigade. Custer's Last Stand. Hitler's invasion of Russia. The Battle of Waterloo. All of those defeats involved ignoring some intelligence that could have prevented the defeat.
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    18,935
    Wasn't that because they are a tiny set of islands with no peaceful growth potential?

    It's like taking Australia as your stronghold in a game of Risk. If you don't keep Asia open, you're ultimately doomed.
     
  19. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    2,002
    Japan is doing quite well these days without trying to conquer China.
     
  20. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    hhmm...
    for some reason this raises flags in my memory
    i thought china & japan were at war for some decades prior with japan occupying parts of china prior to WW1.
    some Chinese raiding groups on japan prior suggesting the emperor send in military control etc ?

    my last impression was china japan war was a tit for tat escalation process over decades

    i might go back & start re reading.
     
  21. river

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    17,307
    In pearl-harbours' case . Was not so much defeat , but about surprise . That should never have happened .
     
  22. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    1894---1st sino japan war

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  23. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    People have been crazy for a long time and don't look like stopping any time soon.
    But at least we have a lot of holidays and statues to prove it.
     

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