[duckfang]

Lets remind us our dates.

July 4, 1898, the Newlands Resolution was a joint resolution by the United States Congress to annex the independent Republic of Hawaii. In 1900, Congress occupied the Territory of Hawaii, despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians.

Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawai'i, an occupied territory.

August 21, 1959 is when they were forcibly turned into a state, after 60 years of occupation.

Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.

Edit: both posts are at -4. And indeed it's sad to see close minded nationalism take and keep hold. The world is bigger than from Hawai'i to Maine, and the USA is often the aggressor. I liken to consider myself a citizen of the earth, and not any one nation.

[monoideism]

> Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawai'i, an occupied territory.

With the end objective of occupying themselves, like they occupied so many countries during WWII.

> Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.

Yes, because those settlements had no military value, so they focused on targets of military importance. When able, the Japanese had no hesitation about killing or raping local inhabitants of the places they occupied during and before WWII - see Nanking and Korean "Comfort Women".

I'm OK with someone criticizing US conduct in Hawaii in the years leading up to WWII, but let's not pretend that imperial Japan was some kind of benign force for good in the world during the same time period.

[pdonis]

> With the end objective of occupying themselves

The Japanese had no intention of occupying Hawaii. They simply wanted to incapacitate the US Pacific Fleet. Had the US Pacific Fleet's carriers been in port at Pearl Harbor at the time, they would have succeeded.

[coredog64]

Japan could have also crippled the US fleet had they targeted the oil stored at Pearl.

[duckfang]

I suggest you look up some reading on the subject, and try to shy away from the US propaganda.

No Choice but War: The United States Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvqmp3br Beyond Pearl Harbor: A Pacific History

And you'll find out that there was continual and worsening relations with Japan due to US imperialism. Hawai'i was only one such territory colonized and conquered.

And there were economic sanctions from 1931 to 1941 for various products.

But this is also out of the US playbook to surround an enemy or proposed enemy, pull out economic sanctions, and then pull out the single bad thing. For example, here's the AFB's around Iran https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4d67205db3b8a9d820ca77... , but we're supposed to only look at Natanz nuclear refining.

Now, I'm not saying that Japan was honorable in combat. They death-marched Chinese. The "comfort women" were rape and murder victims. But really, all nations have similar horrific stories. Japan, alike the US, was no different in that regard.

[AnimalMuppet]

The US trying to throw spikes against Japan's tires to slow down its destruction of China left Japan "no choice but war"? Only because they were unconditionally committed to their horrifying attack against China.

From Japan's perspective, the US actions may have left them no choice but war. That doesn't make the US actions wrong; it makes the Japanese pre-WWII perspective incredibly skewed and incredibly morally flawed.

[lostlogin]

> But really, all nations have similar horrific stories.

And the acts of Japan during that period stand out, even within a context of ‘everyone is bad.’

[jabl]

Certainly all of the major combatants of WWII have blood on their hands and committed what would certainly today be called atrocities and war crimes. That being said, there's certainly massive differences in motivation and scale.

For that reason, Imperial Japan certainly ranks right up there together with Nazi Germany as the most evil regimes in recent history, and the US of that era does not (saying this as a non-US'ian who is generally pretty critical of the post-WWII foreign policy adventures the US has gotten itself involved in).

[GuardianCaveman]

The Japanese started planning their revenge on the US since commander perry forced them to open trade. The US has a history of creating cassus belli like mexican war and Vietnam etc but what you link to is propaganda. And WW2 we had a clear cassus belli for Japan. Japan not only did things more evil than any other force on the planet I’ve ever read about in history as listed in the rape of Nanking but never faced any real consequences from paying reparations or apologizing and even today it’s full of the equivalent of Holocaust deniers who continue to spew falsehoods in defense of the poor Japanese who were only trying to liberate Asia from imperialists

[whoooooo123]

> commander perry forced them to open trade

Tangential: if anyone is interested in learning more about this, I recommend the YouTube channel History Buffs' review of the film The Last Samurai

[travisjungroth]

The history of US colonization of Hawaii is legitimate and relevant. The hint that WWII Japan was gracious towards island natives is absolutely wild.

[JustFinishedBSG]

> Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force.

Ah yes, Imperial Japan, known for it's incredible humanity toward civilians.

[mc32]

Yeah especially considering their attitude toward civilians in Nanking/Nanjing, Manchuria and The Philippines.

[NotSammyHagar]

And Korea and everyone, right? The us had its racism, blocking of black pilots for most of the war, and rounding up and basically forcing the loss of businesses for Japanese Americans. It's painful to imagine my grandparents supported all those things too, cause I asked them. Imagine the after the war differences too.

[umvi]

Japan didn't bomb native settlements because doing so would have been a waste of resources that offered no strategic advantage. It would be like during the revolutionary war if Britain had focused on destroying the (largely neutral) Native Americans settlements instead of the "occupiers".

[whoooooo123]

Also, Japan brutalised and terrorised every nation it occupied during the war (and before). If Japan brought no harm upon the "occupied" Hawaiians it certainly wasn't out of any ethnic good will towards them. Does anyone seriously thank that, had Japan won the war and occupied Hawaii, it would have treated the natives any better than it treated the Chinese or Vietnamese?

[samatman]

Credit where credit is due: painting Imperial Japan as an anticolonial liberating force is novel.

It's risible and insane, but novel nonetheless.

[whoooooo123]

As long as we're bringing up historical facts that are only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, let's also remind ourselves of the rape of Nanking, the Burma death railway, Unit 731, the tens of thousands of PoWs that Imperial Japan murdered in its camps and the twenty million people who were killed (many of them by chemical and biological warfare) in Japan's genocidal campaign against China.

[goodcanadian]

I would point out that 94% of residents voted for statehood.

[AnimalMuppet]

Fair, but what fraction of the population was natives at that point?

[goodcanadian]

I can't find a number for 1959, but in 1970, it was 58%.

[bialpio]

Thanks for the history lesson, but what was the point of it? Are you arguing that Japan was a liberator here, responding to calls for help from Hawaiian government-in-exile? In any case, they had attacked US military assets in full conscience, did they expect it not to lead to war?