This Pearl Harbor Day

[ralfy]

Can you show me where anyone here has indicated that outlook? I think you are so determined to tell your self-important opinions and what you think you know, that you seize on anything resembling an excuse, then squeal with delight to have emptied out your thoughts even when nothing justified you giving them. If you think innocent people do not suffer as a result of government's actions (which is what my original post was about) I invite you to rise from your armchair and visit a war-torn country. It might be fatal to your pre-conceived ideas of reality. Been there, done that, it changed me. Try it. It's humbling. In the meantime, just give it a bit of a rest, mate, OK?

It came from several history books, including Agoncillo's Fateful Years and the documentary I just mentioned earlier.

About self-importance, etc., aren't you the one who created this thread and shared the following pronouncement?

May I break with tradition this Pearl Harbor Day and impart my condolences to the millions of Japanese people who suffered as a result of their warmongering government picking the stupidest fight in the long history of stupid fights. Governments decide and innocent people suffer. War is a terrible thing.

The ff. addresses that and other points you raised in your recent post:

Where did you get the idea that the Japanese people were generally "innocent," that they were coerced by a warmongering government, that that government became warmongering for no reason at all and decided to "[pick] the stupidest fight" without considering the repercussions of such, and that you're even breaking with tradition?

The U.S. has been friends with Japan from the start! Why do you think they didn't punish the Emperor?

The Japanese people mostly supported the war and were even willing to die for the Emperor. That's why the U.S. had to use the atomic bomb because it turned out that incendiary bombing wasn't enough, and they were anticipating two million allies dead if they tried to invade Japan. But the Emperor had to speak up (and it was the first time that the Japanese heard him, not just during the war but throughout Japanese history) to stop them from fighting. Even then, he couldn't even just the word "surrender"!

About that "stupidest fight," that stemmed from Japan's calculated risk of preventing the U.S. from using its aircraft carriers to counter the former's sweep of Southeast Asia to take down British colonizers. But even with failure to ensure that plus significant disadvantages, Japan managed to hold on. What's not mentioned in that break from tradition is that to this day the Japanese barely know about the war, especially atrocities that they committed, while South Koreans and Chinese know them all-too-well.

Why the need to control resources in SE Asia? Raw materials needed for its industries was lacking due to effects of the Great Depression, and cold relations with the West due to Japan's victory over Russia didn't help.

One more thing: why do you keep asking forum members about their background when this forum doesn't require ID verification and thus any references to such can't be proven?

[ralfy]

On second thought, why am I even still reading your posts and replying? Talk to yourself. (Your style would probably be better appreciated somewhere else, and I hope you find it. You're not a jerk, just mildly annoying in your adolescent certainty you know something.)

Why "adolescent certainty"?

[ralfy]

From what I remember, the U.S. government believed that the Japanese people would continue fighting, and that in order to stop them the U.S. would have to invade Japan. They estimated allied casualties at around two million, and to prevent that decided to use the bomb.

[lester1/2jr]

Or they could have not invaded Japan OR dropped the bomb

[ER]

Cigarette? Blindfold?