[lostalex]

Originally Posted by Zee

Yeah I'll bet those Japanese commanders thought "nah this won't piss them off", definitely.

actually they did, they did genuinely think that the US would be intimidated by them.

America was trying to stay out of things at the time. America was not a major military power back then.

You don't seem to understand the situation if you don't understand that., America was not the World Power you know it as today, it was just a former british colony.

You really don't understand that America was not a superpower before ww2, do you? America had no interest in being a world power back then.

The people on this forum seem to have no historical perspective, they view everything from the modern lens. You cannot understand history if you look at it from a modern perspective, you can only understand history if you can see it through the eyes of the time.

The narrative is defined by the time.

[Z]

Originally Posted by lostalex

actually they did, they did genuinely think that the US would be intimidated by them.

America was trying to stay out of things at the time. America was not a major military power back then.

You don't seem to understand the situation if you don't understand that., America was not the World Power you know it as today, it was just a former british colony.

You really don't understand that America was not a superpower before ww2, do you? America had no interest in being a world power back then.

I understand the situation perfectly well. America had no desire to be drawn into the conflict unless it was on its own terms. The Japanese logic may well have been to attack American soil and intimidate America; but in what world would they have thought "this won't piss people off" exactly? Just as the Japanese vindictiveness inspired the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, the USA got revenge (and more) by dropping two A-bombs on Japan. There is just no excuse for what they did to generations of Japanese people in my opinion, there are people alive today who are severely disabled and completely outcast from society because of complications of nuclear radiation. The USA used World War II to position itself as a global leader and to pretend that it was provoked into joining the war when it hadn't been mulling it over for years is just madness. Refugees were flooding over to American soil to get away from the war; Hitler's own nephew enlisted in the American military when he got the chance - America may not have entered the war for a couple of years but it was very much affected by it and was always going to be joining the war effort one way or another, it just took its time to pick a side.