[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