Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

What did they have to gain from going to war with the United States?

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FDR had been egging them to go to war so he could finally get the American people to get involved with a war they didn't want to fight in.

>Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan planned in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the next seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

This.

They just wanted to kick the white man out of asia in one big hit, they didn't want the protracted war they got

they thought the US would be a pushover so a sneak attack would get the US to end the oil embargo

They gained two great big explosions is what they gained.

It was either attack the United States and win or lose their expansive empire. Not going to war might have actually been worse for them than going to war and losing.

America starved their access to oil. The only way to get access to the oil they needed to continue their war effort was to conquer certain american protectorates.

This was nessecerily proceeded by severely diminishing american power in the region somehow. The method they arrived upon was Pearl Harbour.

It was them or us

>mfw Pearl Harbor was a preemptive strike during the ongoing invasion of British Singapore

They actually considered attacking pearl harbour a war crime at the tokyo trials? lol weren't two nukes and entire island firebombing enough

Honor for the Emperor.

The consensus held by the Japanese was that the USA and its citizens were weak and would do just about anything to avoid war;

In December 1937 the Japanese attacked and sunk the USS Panay off Nanking, China, and though US investigations believed it couldn't have been incidental (the ship was clearly marked and flew flags) they simply asked for an indemnity of $2,214,007 and an apology.

On January 26, 1938 John Moore Allison, a consul at the American embassy in Nanking, was struck in the face by a Japanese soldier and American properties were looted. Again, the US asked for an apology.

And to push it back further, the Japanese wanted an empire because they had achieved a level of industrialization and quality of life that was exhausting their very limited natural resources. Japan is very mountainous and isn't good for farming. They needed the rich soils of SE Asia to sustain their growing population. They also needed raw industrial resources like oil and iron which are scarce in Japan.

They had no choice but to build an empire, and the best chance of doing that successfully meant defeating one's imperial competitors (USA) with a pre-emptive strike. If they didn't, if they just began taking resources while waiting for an American intervention, Japan would lose it all. An intact US Pacific Fleet would smash Japan almost instantly.

At the heart of the cause of the war was the economic system: capitalism. All nations get addicted to growth and wealth and power and will go to war before giving it up for a peaceful but unglamorous steady state economic system.

For the lulz

this

Why do people in Sup Forums think Japan attacked pearl harbor? Ya'll some blue-pilled ass mothe' fuckuhs. I swear for a second I thought I was reading the newyorktimes.

Seriously tho, Nipbro, did anyone in Japan actually honestly think they could knock a country the size of the United States out with a sucker punch like Pearl Harbor?

I mean even if the Japs had won Midway, even if the Japs had flown another wave and destroyed the oil farms at Pearl Harbor as well, even if the 2 US pacific fleet aircraft carriers had been docking at pearl harbor that day and been destroyed, even if Japan had then occupied Hawaii, would this have really granted them victory?

The Empire of Japan lost the moment they decided to attack US.

Ofcourse they did. The only part of this that is a conspiracy is that the americans knew and let it happen.

>would this have really granted them victory?
Well the Americans couldn't have exactly walked across the Pacific Ocean.

>reeeee muh capitalism

pathetic

Human nature is to conquer once you get powerful. Nations expand until they come up to resistance.

the united states issued a ultimatum . hand over a portion of what you have annexed or we will be at war

since the league of nations (predecessor to the U.N) had already tried to tell japan to stop and they walked out after saying they
>"cant stop wont stop they dont know how to stop"~some gook
basically they had no reason not to

the emperor wanted to keep going with the grand unification of east asia and pacific island. war was going to happen between america and japan might as well hit a launching pad america needed

"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. " -General LeMay

good goy.

>Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?
>What did they have to gain from going to war with the United States?

ETERNAL

good gaijin

also nice quads

>implying the Japs did it

topkek

FDR and his Jew goons were behind it all.

12/7 was 100% a false flag operation

they coudlhave kept the empire without attakcing usa, right now theyd have indonesia and be a 500 million peopel superpower. should have let it mature and developed nukes too.

ANGLO

Had the aircraft carriers been at Pearl Harbor as expected by the Japanese, then it's possible America would've gotten BTFO

>The consensus held by the Japanese was that the USA and its citizens were weak and would do just about anything to avoid war;

Well we were a bunch of cucks, just waiting to die for the jew (and we did_) but we would have stayed out of Japan and Europe's war, if only the retarded Nips hadn't taken the jew bait and attacked Pearl Harbor.

The American people, seriously wanted to stay out of the war, and just enjoy life and smoke dope while the world burned. But the jew Rosenveldt was able to bait Japan into attacking us, by coordinating an oil embargo against Japan, and other provocative actions towards Japan.

You poor dumb Japs, you could have played it cool, pretended to be peaceful until you built a nuclear bomb, then you could have done what you wanted on equal footing.

you again!
youtube.com/watch?v=PbcctWbC8Q0

...

>Seriously tho, Nipbro, did anyone in Japan actually honestly think they could knock a country the size of the United States out with a sucker punch like Pearl Harbor?

See They saw the USS Panay sinking and aftermath as proof that America were cucks who cared only for money. They didn't have to "knock us off", just demoralize us into yet another act of meekness.

BLOOD

>They didn't have to "knock us off", just demoralize us into yet another act of meekness.
That is basically how you defeat a nation like the USA, with the size and general geographic islolationism you can't expect to kick them flat, you could never really hope to hold the whole place down either it is just too big, you would need to do what Japan did in China which is hold down the major cities, but now compound that with you are doing it against a global power and across an ocean.
It is the same kind of deal with Russia, it is so big that it is just impossible to simply knock it flat and beat it into submission, you need to demoralize it into not fighting anymore.

Japan was at war with China

Japan imported 80% of their oil, mostly from USA

Not getting oil would make their war with China more difficult, not to mention the impact on other industries at home

In 1941 UK, France, Netherlands were occupied with Germany so it was a good opportunity to grab their SE Asian colonies, many of whom produced oil or had deposits. But by doing this, US might declare war on Japan. If Japan could cripple the US fleet so they couldn't fight a head to head battle, Japan might as well grab Guam and the Philippines from the US as well.

At the time, IJN considered battleships to be more important than aircraft carriers and three USN carriers were not at Pearl Harbor - IJN knew this

The biggest critical fuckup was Midway. IJN got the first attack on Midway island itself, which let the USN locate and get the first strike against the IJN carrier group, before the IJN could strike the USN carrier group

As you can see here, the first American planes attacked Japanese carriers at 9:30 AM, while the first Japanese planes attacked American carriers at 12:00PM

Japan lost 4 carriers and basically lost the war at Midway. USN lost 1 carrier.

Other people have given good reasons, but the reason that Pearl Harbor happened in 1941 is because the US was about to commence work on a massive naval expansion intended to render the US Navy superior to every other navy on earth combined. The Japanese hoped to cripple the existing US Navy and demoralize the American public in order to force an armistice that would last until they could conquer enough strategic resources.

Here's a really good documentary:
youtube.com/watch?v=1w30FkSXyTE

had Japan managed to destroy the entire pacific fleet, they would have free reign and be able to blockade the west coast of America and destroy coastal shipyards

That's ridiculous. Do you think that modern Japan conquers its neighbors in order to feed its population? Normal countries trade for food. It's not hard. The aim of a potentially starving nation would be to befriend agricultural powerhouses like the USA, instead of invading others en masse. The Japanese were looking for strategic resources like oil, not farmland.

You do relize the Panama Canal exists right? Also while more dangerous you can also sail around South America year round.

Yo, it's also prudent to mention that the Japanese thought that the US would attack them for invading British territories in Southeast Asia.

Additionally, the Americans were anticipating the attack on Midway to begin with thanks to the fact that they had cracked the Japanese code and could read their communications.

evidence of this?

>he still believes that the Jpas did 12/7
LMAO
let me guess, you also think that Saddam never had WMDs right?

Here, have some feels.

Has anyone read this book?
A Jewish commie spy succeeded in leading Japan into war.
amazon.com/Target-Tokyo-Story-Sorge-Ring/dp/0070506779

Oil embargo meant Japan had to either abandon it's conquests or secure resources from European colonies in SE Asia.
They presumed USA will intervene if they did that so they aimed to cripple the Pacific Fleet and buy some time, or potentially knock out USA.

so bottle necking your Atlantic fleet in the Panama is a good Idea? It's not like it's existence was a secret to the Japanese, also D-day may never have happened because of the treat of invasion in the homeland

>so bottle necking your Atlantic fleet in the Panama is a good Idea? It's not like it's existence was a secret to the Japanese, also D-day may never have happened because of the treat of invasion in the homeland
What? Are you insane? Roosevelt was staunchly anti Nazi and the threat of invasion of the homelands was always there, fuck the Japs actually did invade some of the islands in Alaska.
Also you don't bottleneck the entire fleet in Panama, but you have it as an option to send shit through, also don't forget about other allied nations, the Japs would need to blockade all of Canada as well, and would need to deal with the coastal forts, land based aircraft, and new equipment being churned out daily.
The Japs could never mount an effective blockade of the US, they could never invade the continental united states successfully either, hell China was in the middle of a massive civil war the Japs couldn't even quell them.
Japan was fighting out of it's weight class because it made the same assumption the Germans did in Russia, it would be a quick demoralizing war, and we will get what we want before it gets into a long drawn out conflict we can't win.

no that's just the nature of animals and barbarians like niggers.

human nature is to create and to protect themselves and their kin, not to destroy or enslave innocents.

>Romans were Barbarians
Are you for real?

romans would regularly crucify and otherwise kill people in most brutal ways. they were the previous version of the nwo, destroying families and tribal identities to mix everything into one gray blob that worships the cesar. pretty barbaric.

back then everyone was barbaric to some extent.

Yes. It was a well attested fact.

Romans were some nasty pieces of shit. Only christianity settled them down a little.

Tripfag, there's a difference between a regime that makes you butthurt and literal barbarism.

what regime are you talking about?

The Roman one, obviously.

Why didn't the IJN then attack the USN carries and leave the island alone. Just a full frontal carrier vs carrier battle?

Didn't they know the USN carries were there?

Seems pretty stupid to attack an island when there are enemy carriers there 2bh.

>implying roman society makes me butthurt

I love the roman epoch. But loving it does not mean i have to ideolize it. The romans were some nasty cunts. And a violent bunch motherfuckers. They organized fights of unarmed/armed with wooden swords christians vs fucking lions. And they cheered for it. Nasty

The Japanese were trying to lure and trap the American carriers in an attempt to cripple the US Navy. They attacked Midway believing that their four carriers would go up against only two American carriers. In reality, they went up against three. The reason that their trap failed is that the Americans had intercepted and decoded Japanese communications indicating their plan. Knowing the planned date and time of the attack, the Americans were able to trap and sink the Japanese carriers instead.

You use an arbitrary and useless definition of barbarism. The Romans were completely different from the barbarians they conquered.

Nobody would give Japan a fair deal in trade, because nobody wanted to create a Super Power in Asia.

lol, fuck you. Stop being pedantic. we both know what barbarians mean in this situation.

>The Romans were completely different from the barbarians they conquered.

REALLY!?!?!??!?!?!? OMG!!!!

Are you actually trying to suggest that nobody would sell food to Japan? What?

Most Americans don't learn about firebombing. When I tell Americans about it they are always surprised. Propaganda has worked well.

oh boy, time to tally up the number of times stagnation has defeated expansion!

Nice. Top tier decoding capabilities helped the allies enormously in ww2 I recon

Most Americans don't learn about firebombing. When I tell Americans about it they are always surprised. Propaganda has worked well.

>ARE YOU SERIOUS?
The Romans really were different from the people they conquered, you obnoxious fag. The Romans had order on a completely higher level than their peers, culminating in Roman superiority from military to culture. None of that really matters, though, because the initial claim that started this discussion was that the Romans were "barbarians like niggers". Obviously, the Polish guy was incorrect.

Not that anyone wouldn't, just not for a fair price. If Japan traded for everything it needed to maintain its Industrial status, their economy would have ground to a halt and they would have been drowned in debt. Which is exactly what happened in the Interwar years, and why they decided to go on a conquering spree.

and here you go, thinking like a wild beast. being human is about cooperation, not about defeating.

Can you show me any piece of evidence which indicates unfair prices for food? I've never heard of anything like that before. Not even from Imperial propaganda.

sure mate, whatever.

Really? You're just going to abandon ship? That soon? I'm honestly baffled, here. I was under the assumption that you were well-versed in Roman history and that you had some in-depth knowledge about the enemies of Rome that would prove me wrong. Are you telling me that you've been talking out of your ass this entire time?

Not like I expected better from a Sup Forums tripfag.

Bcause you are lecturing me on things i already know and inventing strawmans on my posts. Also you are being incredibly obnoxious. I won't argue with you.

My only claim was that Romans were extremily violent.

Also:
>culminating in Roman superiority [...] in culture

lol, ok.

>did anyone in Japan actually honestly think they could knock a country the size of the United States out with a sucker punch like Pearl Harbor?
yes, that's what they believed

they were delusional

the basic underlying assumption of the plan was that the Americans didn't have quite the same fighting spirit as the Japanese. The Japanese plan was to wipe out the American pacific fleet, and then entrench themselves so thoroughly in their newly conquered south-east asian territories that it would be too costly for the Americans to cross the pacific and push them out. Except that

1) no matter how much land the Japanese took in southeast asia, they would never have been to go head to head with the US, even if they had the advantage of fighting in the own hemisphere. What most people don't seem to understand about the Pacific theatre in WW2 is that Japan was an Italy-tier power in terms of industrial might and military strength (although they had better leadership and fighting spirit than Italy, but then again who doesn't?). Britain or France on their own would have been able to defeat Japan - the sole reason for Japan's early successes in 1941 was that all the European colonial nations were busy with Germany. The last time they went up against a European power was their battle over Mongolia with the Soviet Union in the late '30s, which ended in a humiliating defeat for Japan, That's right, they went up again the Red Army that Stalin had recently purged, the one that would fail to conquer tiny Finland and get utterly wasted by operation Barbarossa, and still got their asses handed to them.

2) The Americans were never going to let something like a surprise attack and the destruction of their Pacific fleet go. Not in a million years. But the Japanese really did believe that the west was just decadent, and that if they made things hard enough for them the Americans would just give up and accept the fait accompli presented to them.

Its because you cant shit all over the Germans for firebombing in ww2.

Everybody fucking did it, and it was extremely apparent that the Allies slaughtered many more with it than the Axis

Your claim was that Romans were barbarous. You argued that they were extremely violent to try to prove that they were barbarous. After I insinuated that the Romans were completely different from the real barbarians, you went into the "I literally just can't even right now" mode, trying to escape the argument with your ego intact by pretending that you're completely able to argue against me but just don't want to. It's been done 100,000 times and it'll be done again. You're not special.

Frankly, I should think that you should fuck off if you come to Sup Forums of all places and then complain about how people behave. What on earth do you expect? Your feelings matter less than that discourse is proceeding uninhibited.

>Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

Because Americans had it coming.

>Romans were extremely violent

In comparison to what?

The Greek Byzantine? The Arabic Persians? The Chinese Han Dynasty? The Japanese Yayoi Era?

See, this is why i'm not arguing with you. I'm not saying that they were worse that other cultures.

I don't know why i'm giving you (You).

The Japanese navy would have wiped the floor with the paltry European ones. They had spent decades building it up and had plenty of practical experience with modern naval warfare thanks to the Russo-Japanese War. They lacked industrial might, but they poured it all into their navy. How else would they have been creating aircraft carriers? The Japanese navy was monstrous by 1941. The US suffered a wave of defeats against the Japanese, and the Japanese literally began to think that they were invincible. The reason that they couldn't win against the US was that American industry essentially made the copious American losses irrelevant.

This. Thank you.

oh, and the irony of it all was that Pearl Harbour was completely unnecessary anyway. The Japanese thought that the Americans would declare war if the Japanese tried to take the Dutch, British and French colonies in South-east asia. The Americans had no intention of doing that, though.

You aren't even going to argue against that guy either? Why not just admit that you don't want to argue at all?

Drop the passive-aggressive trite. It's really obnoxious. You either can argue or you can't argue. You're trying to invoke social pressure in order to silence anybody who comes against you. I find that detestable. I think that you've done this so much that you genuinely can't remember how to argue, and just revert to the "I literally just can't even" whenever it comes time to defend your beliefs.

If everyone is a barbarian at that time then no one is.

You're stupid to try and judge a society from 2000 years ago with present day moral and ethical standards.

>and had plenty of practical experience with modern naval warfare thanks to the Russo-Japanese War
I question this judgment. That was 30 years ago in the age of ironclad steamers and consisted of a handful of battles before the Russians limped away in disgrace.
This is like saying Argentina has 'plenty of naval experience' because of the Falklands war

You got btfo. Just take your trip off to avoid the embarrassment you stupid faggot.

leaf doesnt know google

The US was a major oil exporting country back then and Japan was one of our biggest customers as they had no oil fields of their own.
We didn't approve of their aggressive expansionist behavior and put an oil embargo in place.
Japan couldn't continue it's conquests without oil and they knew we would declare war if they made a move to take the oil fields of Southeast Asia so the idea was to knock out our Pacific fleet in a sneak attack then take Indonesian oil fields before we could recover.
With their own supply of oil they figured they could force us to the bargaining table to sue for peace then they could continue conquering Asia without us getting involved.

It almost worked but all of our carriers were out on maneuvers that day and were spared.

Either way, they certainly knew what they were doing by the start of World War 2.

That's because we got very good at it.

The Krauts and Japs' grasp on strategic bombing was hindered by poor leadership (Goring was a great ace, but didn't know shit about running an Air Force), a lack of resources, technological inferiority, inferior production (the Germans only built one four engined bomber in limited numbers), and poor coordination.

The Allies on the other hand refined strategic bombing into a literal fucking science. They even built a mock city of German and Japanese buildings in Utah to evaluate how to best set fire to them.

We broke their code is how we won midway

The US was strangling them. They hoped to get that foot off the neck and do enough damage to make us BTFO.

Those were dark days - we were losing our republic without even knowing it. The government lied their tails off to get that war.

Read this.

>It almost worked but all of our carriers were out on maneuvers that day and were spared.

Sure...

Keep telling yourself that.

Based Rob Stinett

Are you insinuating that they were in Pearl Harbor?

What?

Are you saying our carriers were not out on maneuvers that day?

>The Japanese navy would have wiped the floor with the paltry European ones.
France might have had trouble taking on the Japanese Navy, given that Japan's military build-up was weighted heavily towards the IJN, although in terms of overall military France had a small advantage. But the British Navy would have wiped the floor with them if it had been facing Japan alone.


check the GDP stats for 1939
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#Reference_data_for_summary_tables

Britain on its own outproduced Japan and all its territories. Include the British Empire, and it's not even a contest.

Enola Gay statue in Hiroshima when?

They didn't just happen to be out on maneuvers.

The Japanese code had been broken. The President knew where and when they would attack. He made sure that the most important assets were out of port, then left those there without warning of their impending doom. Because it worked out better that way politically. The whole sneak-attack and slaughter theme worked very well for our warmongers.