One trap we always fall into on subjects pertaining to the US entry into the Pacific War is viewing these events with our modern perspectives and mores.

The view of Japan in the eyes of early/mid 20th Century Americans and Europeans was a very racist and distorted one. The Japanese were viewed as (literally) near sighted, short, people incapable of innovative thought, incapable of building anything but cheap copies of small household trinkets, and would never be able to fight a war against anyone but a poor, and poorly lead country, like China.

All intelligence to the contrary was simply ignored because it flew in the face of our pre-conceived ideas of what Japan was capable of. A perfect example is the stream of intel sent by Claire Chennault to the War Department about the capabilities of the Japanese in the air. General Chennault had first hand experience fighting the Japanese Air Forces, both Army and Navy in his role as air advisor to the Chinese government. Yet he was roundly ignored by the military brass back home.

There was no conspiracy. We simply did not take the Japanese seriously at all, because of our racial bias against Asians.

Very good add.

A lot of US officials did not believe for tht reason that any serious US force could be regulary defeated by the Japanese.

What is ironic is that many Japanese official latter in the war had a reciprocal tough against US armies

The Imperial Japanese were certainly as or more guilty of racism/sterotyping as we in the West were. They saw us as a country of lazy shopkeepers, certainly not warriors capable of defeating "samurai".

Of course ! I shld hve added that. Thx for the correction.

It's so bizarre, the Japanese had good intelligence on our industrial capacity, the number of men we had, and could add to our armed forces, the fact that we had our own domestic fuel supply and large refining capacity, and yet they chose to go to war with us anyway, based solely on their preconceptions of our lack of will to make war.

So many more questions get raised when new info becomes available.

We never stop learning.

El, I think that the Japanese generals at the time knew that they could not win a prolonged war so decided to launch one massive coordinated attack to set the US back some months from even being able to respond coherently. They could shore up their territorial gains in the South Pacific and maybe the US public wouldn't have the stomach for war on two fronts.

They were counting on doing more damage at PH then they managed, especially the carriers.

They also miscalculated the US's resolve and willingness to accept casualties.

Like they had a choice...

lol exactly my thought :)

C'mon guys, do you really think that the US would have done their best to stay out of WW2? If it wasn't Pearl Harbor they would have done something else.

Let's not forget that at the time Japan had dominance over pretty much the whole Pacific, they surely underestimated the capability to fight that the Navy and Marines had, nonetheless they made it a hard one to win, way harder than how it was in the ETO.

My grandfather said there were only 2 times he was really scared during WWII, 1st was a 109 lining up to strafe him, 2nd was when he was told he was going to the PTO, thankfully he didn't have to.

wow, sounds like a scary situation your granpa was in! :shock:
care to tell us more?