Remember Pearl Harbor

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Horrifyingly enough, that photo does not look a lot different than some parts of the Bronx, and the process for that took more than a few seconds.

As to Pearl Harbor day, the day was originally marked a a remembrance of being stabbed in the back thus inspiring workers and soldiers alike to win WW II. Now, the day is now regarded as a day to remind us of the need for vigilance, not as a celebration of victory or such.

So while one could argue that Pearl Harbor initiated a series of events leading to nuclear strikes on civilian targets, that whole line of reasoning would be irrelevant when related to why Americans mark the day. We do not celebrate or condemn betrayal or duplicity of any participant on this day, but remember when we were completely unprepared. If the US carriers had been in harbor, this day might have been a great success for Japan rather than a provocative and ultimately pointless gesture. (We didn't need the battleships anyway, and the men would be replaced.)

Yes, but many remember the chain of events that took place, not necessarily the attack on Pearl Harbor but evnets leading up and culminating on that day with this tragedy, which we paused, reflected and then retalliated.

Again, I am sorry so many lost their lives but War is War and many heinous things happen.

This, we should never forget.

Gramps

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll


Really?

Just how tasteless?

Maybe you could contact the Japanese Government, and aske them if they could do it all again, would they snaekmattack on a Sunday morning and kill all those military personnel?

I will say this, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima sent them a message, You fricked with the wrong Hombre', Amigo!!

The innocent persons in those cities, I am sorry about but war sucks and thats the awful truth about the matter.

As for tasteless, it is history and that cannot be changed.

I personally have nothing against either Japanese or German persons, heck, I am a descendant of Deutche lineage.

Be well but cannot agree that the picture was tasteless, it was revisiting what we did when we got back on our feet

Gramps

So you are saying that attacking military personnel, whose job it is to die for their country, is morally equivalent to vaporizing and irradiating civilian non-combatants? Yes, it was tasteless.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles


So you are saying that attacking military personnel, whose job it is to die for their country, is morally equivalent to vaporizing and irradiating civilian non-combatants? Yes, it was tasteless.

But we were not at War with Japan at the time.

This is the difference.

And one more time, it is a shame innocent civilians had to die.

I didnt see bodies in that picture, or did my old eyes miss something?

My point and thank you for pointing this out, is what happens when war breaks out, attrocities.

Or would simply never ever speaking of these events somehow make them pass from remembrance?

GT

[chequita guevara]

War or not, there is a difference between killing soldiers, whose job it is to die, and civilians, the people they are supposed to give their lives protecting.. And keep in mind that the Japanese Navy was operating under the assumption that the declaration of war had already been properly delivered to the U.S. They really had no way of knowing that the translation machine at the Japanese embassy in Washington had broken down. They timed the attack to begin 30 minutes after the declaration of war, which was what was required by treaty.

And the reason you don't see any bodies is because they were vaporized. That's what an atomic bomb does. You can't draw equivalency between the acts. Japan certain did some horrible stuff in the war, like Nanking, human experiments, and the treatment of POWs. But the deliberate destruction of cities is not justice for Pearl Harbor.

[TCO]

It's an interesting concept and I would urge that all think about the different sides of this. The idea of combatants and non-combatants comes from the Napoleanic times when armies fought pitched battles away from towns. But at it's core, war is theft and murder. And if you are committing (or resisting) said events, it may be more reasonable to not think about the artificiality of combatant/non-combatant but to fight total war. Perhaps Ender was right to obliterate the alien's home, not just their ships, when he saw that as the way to win.

There are of course, arguments to the contrary. But I urge thinking about these things without immediately joining a position.

Plus it was getting harder and harder to upset the liberals and Europeans (but I repeat myself).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
Yay for pre-emptive strikes without declaration of war? Sound tactic, I should think. Though, the scale was much too thin to really cripple the adversary, so it wasn't that well planned... I quess they were desperate.

But really, isn't that the modus operandi of the US today? Massive surprise attacks to cripple their enemies? And nothing wrong with that, mind.

Afghanistan and Iraq weren't exactly surprise attacks.

[Riesstiu IV]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
You know, when you talk about remembering victims of pretty much anything, you dont erect monuments with pictures of the retailiation on it. Cause thats tasteless.

I wonder, what the US would deserve by now btw, if a country who did (a pretty obvious - PH was much less of a surprise than publicy considered) first strike causing some 3.000 dead ´deserves´ to get nuclear bombed twice for it, in comparisson.

Thats like nighbors kitty bites my arm and i smash it against the wall and make a picture of the blood stain it leaves behind. Some days later i come around the neighbors house and leave a card with the picturs and a text saying ´remember: kitty´s bite´.... not tasteless ?!

Who cares? I don't see Japan owning up to killing 15 million people in China. At least American history text books actually mention the devastation of these nuclear weapons. The Japanese don't even acknowledge their own crimes.

The only reason people make a big deal about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is because it was the first and only use of nuclear weapons. The fire bombing of Axis cities was much more devastating yet receives less attention.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
..., but remember when we were completely unprepared. If the US carriers had been in harbor, this day might have been a great success for Japan rather than a provocative and ultimately pointless gesture. (We didn't need the battleships anyway, and the men would be replaced.)

Well, prepared enough to not have the carriers there...
Common guys, it is a ´well known secret´, that the US-governemt knew very well what was about to happen. Plan Rainbow was in action. Japanese communication were intercepted (´Negotiations are over, but you may not reveal that. Say you wait for instructions´). Friendly nation´s (australian IIRC) intelligence informed Washington of that japanese carrier force the US-Intell lost track of heading east (edited) etc. pp. A year before the attack on Pearl, it was listed among the top three likely things to happen in case of war with Japan by an official study, which also mantained that war would start before the proper exchange of DOWs... I could go deeply into detail, list sources and such, it´s only that this is so well-known i will only do that, if someone asks for it explicitely. So please stop whining about ´they got us totally innocent with our pants down and for that they deserved just about everything´. Its propaganda-BS and anyone who believes it just fell for it.

What is to be remembered about Pearl is the loss of lives. Not it being justified or not. It´s the horror these men and women had to go through. Fine if people want to honor those (wo)men and feel their pain for a moment. But thats exactly why people should not feast upon the suffering of others, like those in Hiroshima. Cause thats exactly what you are thinking when you put those two together the way its done in the OP - You think: ´We suffered badly that day, but we made them suffer a great deal more (muhahaha)´. Juvenile, stupid, tasteless.

BTW, CS, a soldier´s job is not to die, but to kill (though not even that really - but if you choose to be polemic, this would be more correct). But in essence, you have a point. When today a bomb goes off in bagdad that kills an american soldier and, say, 3 civilians that´s an atrocity, an act of terror, but if you nuke (!) wodden (!) cities (!) full of civilians (!) with a military to civilians loss ratio of about 1/10, twice in three days, thats okay.

EDIT: In fact, thinking about it, Hitler couldnt have done worse with the bomb: As soon as the US got them, they used them, on civilian targets (though they picked the targets from a military pov, cities are cities), and as excessive has they could (after Nagasaki, the nuclear arsenal was empty and it took weeks to get more bombs built), against an enemy they had already on its knees.

[snoopy369]

It's also a well known secret that the CIA had JFK killed

[Unimatrix11]

Snoopy, this is not some sort of conspiracy theory, but a fact known to anyone, who reads more than the typical school book about the affair.

[snoopy369]

On a more serious note, I would suggest that there was a marked difference between the 'rules of war' (and, thus, commonly acceptable morality) in 1945 and those of today, largely as a result of said war, are not the same. Every side bombed civilians regularly; the fact that the US did so more frequently was largely simply a matter of our being better at it. The germans certainly would have happily leveled london to the ground, though I couldn't speak for the Japanese aerial campaign I think Nanking tells you something about their opinions.

Very simply, I think that the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bomb being dropped were at the time perhaps overdoing things, but still largely in the realm of legitimate actions. Pearl harbor wasn't - simply because the understanding of war pre-WWI, which many still held by (even as many began to veer away from it) was based on honor, not civilian involvement - largely because it was difficult to actually attack others' civilians in an active war (that was not already at its completion). Bombers changed that - and, as is normal with war, the 'acceptable' and 'not acceptable' definitions came about after the war in which they were effectively introduced.

I don't make any particular comment on which is worse - today, we would clearly consider the bombing of Tokyo/Hiroshima/Nagasaki massively worse than that of Pearl Harbor. But at the time, at least for many, the dishonorable way in which the Pearl Harbor attack was carried out was far worse than any act carried out in an ongoing war; particularly a war in which the enemy simply refuses to capitulate (even when thoroughly beaten, like the Japanese).

To me, going far back in time and applying today's moral standards to actions taken half a century back, or more (and, again, moral standards that came about as a result of said war) is an idiotic proposition that serves no meaningful purpose other than to make us feel better about ourselves now.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker Afghanistan and Iraq weren't exactly surprise attacks.

The DoD would be unhappy to hear that about Iraq. What was all that prattle about "Shock and Awe," if both sides knew it was coming?

As to the surprise part of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, 70 years later, we find plenty of evidence that multiple clues were available in that timeframe. I find it worth noting that the clues Unimatrix is talking about most likely did not end up all seen by one person or discussed by one group prior to the strike. That you think something will happen eventually does not mean you think it will happen one hour from now. The sailors and soldiers who died that day had no clue the attack was coming.

The carriers were out because of scheduling for one, unscheduled maintenance for a second, and a halt in schedule for the third while selected crew members assisted the second. Otherwise, two would have been at Pearl as the Japanese anticipated. No story or document has ever indicated that any of those ship captains or associated admirals had a clue that Dec 7 was the day. Nothing notes that Saratoga's maintenance was illegitimate nor that the Lexington's halt so that certain specialists could assist in the fix was bogus.

[Lord Avalon]

How many carriers did we have at the time? It was a battleship navy, so you'd think that if the attack were "well known," someone would have gotten the battleships out.

In an odd sense it was important to lose all the battleships, because a carrier-centric navy would turn out to be more effective.

Also, Japan being on its knees didn't mean much if they were going to fight to the death. It took the horror of the nuclear attacks to get them to capitulate. How many more lives on both sides would have been lost if we actually had to invade Japan?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
Snoopy, this is not some sort of conspiracy theory, but a fact known to anyone, who reads more than the typical school book about the affair.

I know very much about this point in history, and while some of the details are known that could have led to a discovery of the attack, many are not known. The conspiracy theorists would suggest that pearl harbor was fully understood, and that Roosevelt allowed it to happen in order to drag the US into the war. That's in the realm of conspiracy theory, to me, and not something remotely knowable.

If you had said "The US government had some clues as to what might happen, and could have prepared better for the attack", you'd be absolutely right. There's no question that there were strong indications (including a known fleet in the area and such) that were ignored by people who should've taken action on them. However, saying that the particular attack was known about at the particular time it happened is not something that can be done with the data presently available. (By known about, I mean that someone sufficiently high up in the chain of command, who had the power and responsibility to do something about it, had concrete knowledge that he trusted and believed in of the attack coming on a particular day.) There is a lot of evidence that people higher on the chain of command simply didn't believe that the Japanese would/could do something like the attack, and hence it was not believed to have been occurring, regardless of the actual data present.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon
How many carriers did we have at the time? It was a battleship navy, so you'd think that if the attack were "well known," someone would have gotten the battleships out.

In an odd sense it was important to lose all the battleships, because a carrier-centric navy would turn out to be more effective.

Also, Japan being on its knees didn't mean much if they were going to fight to the death. It took the horror of the nuclear attacks to get them to capitulate. How many more lives on both sides would have been lost if we actually had to invade Japan?

That is, of course, one of the main arguments made for Roosevelt/etc (like Nimitz) actually knowing about the attack and hoping for it - they didn't mind losing a few battleships because it made it easier to tell off the battleship-defenders (the old guard in the Navy) and forcibly convert to a carrier-based navy. It's pretty much in the realm of conspiracy theories, IMO, but that is the argument.