I mean, yes and no. Pearl harbor wasn’t the only place hit 12/7. Philipines, Guam and Wake were all hit as well
Hong Kong and Singapore were also attacked and the empire invaded Malaysia.
America took a sharp hit square in the face, but Britain got sent home in a body bag at the end of 1941. By Feb 1942 the UK had lost all of Malaysia, lost Hong Kong and lost Singapore. They lost 12,000 troops, the rest surrendering. Zero soldiers made it home. America had never been pit against such an enemy. You have to take all of WW2 into that context. Fuck in WW1 they played soccer across no-man’s-land on Christmas. The next year the Canadians had arrived and…well…I’m not saying shit about canuckistani military just that over half of the geneva convention exists because of Canada.
The us was very much in an existential threat at the time. We had just lost almost our entire navy, which compared globally, not a single branch of our military held any high esteem. Our equipment was run down and I’ll maintained and our factories were not set. We weren’t mobilized. We didn’t even know if Japan was gonna stop. The emporers men invaded the aluetians too, taking two islands (and digging in hard on one).
So we effectively lost our Navy, then the UK and the Dutch lost the rest of South Asia. The UK lost 60x more men between 12/41 and 2/42 then we did. Can you even wrap your head around the amount of pain that causes a nation? Can you even imagine 120,000 ANYTHING? McCarthy was dug in in Manila and they are expected to fight down to the last man, as we didm’t have the means to get them reinforcements, if we even had the men we could somehow spare. If Japan has focused on us and not China then it’s doubtful we’d exist today. China only lost what…20million people in those 8 years? Chinas lost an estimated 100,000,000 people in the 20th century.
Man if that’s not under threat, idk what is. The fear is on full display, look up the Battle of Los Angeles.
It’s easy with hindsight to pass judgement from your current position with absolute knowledge. It’s also immature, foolhardy and you discredit yourself displaying your unawareness towards empathy, let alone forgiveness, compassion or understanding, to say such things. I was 17 once too and thought I knew everything. We all were, that’s the thing.
I’m not trying to hate on ya guy, it sounds like you’re being consciously reductive and overly critical, which implies you’re arguing in bad faith or, as I’m assuming, you are young and just don’t know what you don’t know because you can’t know. Wisdom takes time to develop, no way around it.
Okay good point about the threat WWII Japan posed but you’re going too far in the other direction. When asked about going to war with America admiral Yamamoto said what amounts to “this is a bad idea don’t”. Now part of their failure definitely lies in poor leadership, and I can see the idea that if they’d concentrated on America instead of opening a war on three (two and a half?) fronts they might’ve made significant gains until America’s industry caught up, but they simply didn’t have the industrial base to keep the US down. The US also has very good natural defenses that you forgot to take into account. Remember: Their ships and airplanes were all handmade.
How is loosing territories some 5.000-10.000 km away an “existential threat”? Even if they wanted to, Japan had no means of successfully invading main land US.
The US justifies dropping the Nukes with it preventing an extraordinary loss of life if they had to stage an amphibious invasion of main land Japan. But at least the US could stage much closer to Japan, than Japan could to the US.
In the same wake the Britains loosing their empire was not an existential threat to the US just as much as the genocide against China was not an existential threat for the US just as the Holocaust and the genocides in eastern Europe weren’t an existential threat to the US.
I mean, yes and no. Pearl harbor wasn’t the only place hit 12/7. Philipines, Guam and Wake were all hit as well
Hong Kong and Singapore were also attacked and the empire invaded Malaysia.
America took a sharp hit square in the face, but Britain got sent home in a body bag at the end of 1941. By Feb 1942 the UK had lost all of Malaysia, lost Hong Kong and lost Singapore. They lost 12,000 troops, the rest surrendering. Zero soldiers made it home. America had never been pit against such an enemy. You have to take all of WW2 into that context. Fuck in WW1 they played soccer across no-man’s-land on Christmas. The next year the Canadians had arrived and…well…I’m not saying shit about canuckistani military just that over half of the geneva convention exists because of Canada.
None of those put the US at existential threat.
The us was very much in an existential threat at the time. We had just lost almost our entire navy, which compared globally, not a single branch of our military held any high esteem. Our equipment was run down and I’ll maintained and our factories were not set. We weren’t mobilized. We didn’t even know if Japan was gonna stop. The emporers men invaded the aluetians too, taking two islands (and digging in hard on one).
So we effectively lost our Navy, then the UK and the Dutch lost the rest of South Asia. The UK lost 60x more men between 12/41 and 2/42 then we did. Can you even wrap your head around the amount of pain that causes a nation? Can you even imagine 120,000 ANYTHING? McCarthy was dug in in Manila and they are expected to fight down to the last man, as we didm’t have the means to get them reinforcements, if we even had the men we could somehow spare. If Japan has focused on us and not China then it’s doubtful we’d exist today. China only lost what…20million people in those 8 years? Chinas lost an estimated 100,000,000 people in the 20th century.
Man if that’s not under threat, idk what is. The fear is on full display, look up the Battle of Los Angeles.
It’s easy with hindsight to pass judgement from your current position with absolute knowledge. It’s also immature, foolhardy and you discredit yourself displaying your unawareness towards empathy, let alone forgiveness, compassion or understanding, to say such things. I was 17 once too and thought I knew everything. We all were, that’s the thing.
I’m not trying to hate on ya guy, it sounds like you’re being consciously reductive and overly critical, which implies you’re arguing in bad faith or, as I’m assuming, you are young and just don’t know what you don’t know because you can’t know. Wisdom takes time to develop, no way around it.
Okay good point about the threat WWII Japan posed but you’re going too far in the other direction. When asked about going to war with America admiral Yamamoto said what amounts to “this is a bad idea don’t”. Now part of their failure definitely lies in poor leadership, and I can see the idea that if they’d concentrated on America instead of opening a war on three (two and a half?) fronts they might’ve made significant gains until America’s industry caught up, but they simply didn’t have the industrial base to keep the US down. The US also has very good natural defenses that you forgot to take into account. Remember: Their ships and airplanes were all handmade.
How is loosing territories some 5.000-10.000 km away an “existential threat”? Even if they wanted to, Japan had no means of successfully invading main land US.
The US justifies dropping the Nukes with it preventing an extraordinary loss of life if they had to stage an amphibious invasion of main land Japan. But at least the US could stage much closer to Japan, than Japan could to the US.
In the same wake the Britains loosing their empire was not an existential threat to the US just as much as the genocide against China was not an existential threat for the US just as the Holocaust and the genocides in eastern Europe weren’t an existential threat to the US.
Removed by mod