"Admiral Isoroku Yamamotu, the virtual commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy was opposed to war against the US. Educated in part at Harvard and a former naval attache at Washington. He knew that once aroused the US would settle for nothing less than total victory in the Pacific. The road to Hiroshima and Nagasaki began at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were lucky that we did not wreak destruction on them with the totality that their behavior in China indicated they would have wrought on us. Yamamoto died in the war. He was lucky. We would have executed him as we did Tojo, Homma and Yamashita. pl
This is the best documentary on Pearl Harbor that I have seen.
Not with Perry?
Timothy Bassett
Oh, I see, This is the colonialism BS. The poor Japanese had no choice! Sob! In fact US/Japanese relations were quite good until after the beginning of the Sino/Japanese war in 1937.
Admiral Perry was not a colonial – only wanted safe harbors for international fishing vessels who drifted off course and into Japanese ports, where they would be immediately imprisoned with no recourse. Many in Japanese leadership at the time did want to open to the West. This was far more a compact of mutually agreed interests.
Commander and Flight Leader Fuchida wanted a third flight wave to focus attacks on fuel depots, sub pens, and shipyard repair facilities.
Admiral Nagumo declines.
Slightly like a third ‘tap’ in modern parlance as no doubt some strafing would have occurred against the already hit areas as secondary targets or targets of opportunity.
A tactical error at the time but probably had little effect in the great scheme of things. Yamamotu was right, the US had the power to crush anyone in the Pacific and did.
I was reading about Singapore a few days ago. An interesting founding and a disastrous campaign by the British at the end. It seems Percival did not understand what Walrus has pointed out about “face”.
Of only minor interest:
My son and my two stepdaughters each spent two weeks in Japan on an exchange program when they were each only fourteen. They went as part of an exchange between a Japanese group called LABO and the kids’ 4-H club.
LABO was a club dedicated to teaching Japanese kids about “American culture.” We tried to take the three exchange students (on three different summers) to various places around our state. They were most interested in the agricultural places–got very excited to watch my brother-in-law’s dairy as the cows were being milked. They became for excited when my then fourteen-year-old son drove them around the entire ranch. None of them ever expected to be able to drive. I would have to guard their expensive cameras when I took them to the Royal Gorge (near where I lived at the time). Their were several rides, and they had the tendency to just put their things on a bench and expect them to be there when they came off the ride. My older stepdaughter got used to leaving all her stuff–purse, camera, jackets, etc.–on benches when they had her riding amusement park rides, since she could count on them being there when she was finished.
My son’s favorite memory is of riding the Bullet Train around Japan with his fourteen-year-old friend (who had come to our home).
My son has blond hair. When he was in Japan, women would come up to him and start feeling his hair.
The reason behind the LABO program’s interest in our country was to get a sense of why Americans had been able to defeat Japan in WWII. They actually told us that. And each of my kids weree in Japan on the anniversary of Hiroshima. They were each questioned about what they thought of our use of an atomic bomb.
I will report that each of the Japanese kids we hosted were keenly interested in filling their suitcases with American-made jeans to take home.