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Post by Phaedrus on Dec 7, 2019 8:35:28 GMT -5
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called December 7th "a date which will live in infamy," because it was on this day in 1941 that Japanese planes attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor. More than 2,300 Americans died in the attack, and the United States joined World War II, which it had stayed out of the war for more than two years, adhering to its policy of neutrality in Europe's affairs.
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Post by azvb on Dec 7, 2019 12:58:34 GMT -5
Not sure if the “awakened a sleeping giant” statement is true, but it should be!
Big mistake, Japan.
Wonder how long we would have stayed out the war?
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Post by future on Dec 7, 2019 15:32:06 GMT -5
Not sure if the “awakened a sleeping giant” statement is true, but it should be! Big mistake, Japan. Wonder how long we would have stayed out the war? Waking the Sleeping Giant Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto probably never uttered the phrase The “sleeping giant” in this case refers to the United States of America. Hearing it may bring up questions like “how was it sleeping?” or “what does ‘waking’ even mean?” but the phrase isn’t intended to be taken literally. Essentially, it refers to the prod that led to America’s active involvement in World War II. Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US had taken a neutral stance. Though it supported the Allies with arms and other resources, the nation wasn’t willing to send its military into battle. But once the Japanese struck the naval base on Oahu, the sentiment of most of the nation—represented by Congress—changed. The United States awoke from a slumbering state of neutrality, eventually sending over ten million troops to war. The question of whether anyone actually considered the United States a “sleeping giant” remains. The idea that the phrase was actually spoken by the man it’s attributed to may be a fallacy brought about by a fictionalized recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the conclusion of the 1970 war film Tora! Tora! Tora!, the character of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto questions the effectiveness of the attack on Pearl Harbor, saying, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” While it makes for great cinema, and it’s known that the man who orchestrated the attack was on the fence about going after the United States, there’s no indication that this line was ever spoken by him. Regardless of whether it is a real part of history, it became such an iconic line that it was quickly ingrained into the history of the attack. Fiction, but Still Fact Though the phrase may have been a creation of screenwriters to make for a great dramatic closing to their film, one can’t deny the factual element to it. Japan did essentially awaken a sleeping giant and, through its own actions, inadvertently sealed its fate. It wasn’t long after the United States started patrolling the Pacific that Japan saw its first major defeat, at Midway Atoll. Attempting to recreate the success of the surprise at Pearl Harbor, Japan sought to strike Midway without American advance knowledge. The United States was wide awake from its pre-war slumber, however, and American code breakers deciphered Japan’s plans, enabling their forces to prepare and strike back against the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway in June of 1942. visitpearlharbor.org/pearl-harbor-waking-sleeping-giant/ With much of its navy destroyed at Midway, the Japanese never fully recovered and never quite regained the power it started the war with. The power it had before waking a sleeping giant. I will say that the students in my class love to delve into the conspiracy theory of Pearl being a "Back Door to the War" . Ultimately, they all come to the consensus that the US made some poor choices and SERIOUSLY underestimated the Japanese. Here is a solid article from the Smithsonian www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-almost-everyone-failed-prepare-pearl-harbor-1-180961144/
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Post by Wolfgang on Dec 7, 2019 15:45:06 GMT -5
All the years I lived in Hawaii, I never once visited Pearl Harbor.
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Post by Phaedrus on Dec 8, 2019 10:05:22 GMT -5
From Heather Cox Richardson. A Political historian.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
December 7, 2019 (Saturday)
On the sunny Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, Messman Doris Miller had served breakfast aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was collecting laundry when the first of nine Japanese torpedoes hit the ship. In the deadly confusion, Miller reported to an officer, who told him to help move the ship’s mortally wounded captain off the bridge. Unable to move him far, Miller sheltered the captain behind the ship’s conning tower. Then another officer ordered Miller to pass ammunition to him as he started up one of the two abandoned anti-aircraft guns in front of the conning tower. Miller had not been trained to use the guns because, as a black man, his naval assignment was to serve the white officers. But while the officer was distracted, Miller began to fire one of the guns. He fired it until he ran out of ammunition. Then he helped to move injured sailors to safety before he and the other survivors abandoned the West Virginia, which sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.
That night, America declared war on Japan. Japan declared war on America the next day, and four days later, on December 11, 1941, Italy and Germany both declared war on America. “The powers of the steel pact, Fascist Italy and Nationalist Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United States of America,” Italian leader Benito Mussolini said. “We shall win.” Of course they would. Mussolini and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, believed the mongrel Americans had been corrupted by Jews and “Negroes,” and could never conquer their own organized military machine.
The steel pact, as Mussolini called it, was the vanguard of his new political ideology. That ideology was called fascism, and he and Hitler thought it would destroy democracy once and for all.
Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown terribly frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter how hard socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince ordinary people that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production.
The efficiency of World War One inspired Mussolini. He gave up on socialism and developed a new political theory that rejected the equality that defined democracy. He came to believe that a few leaders must take a nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must organize the people as they had been during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together. And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an "other" that their followers could hate.
This system of government was called "fascism," after the Latin word "fasces," which were a bundle of sticks bound together. The idea is that each stick can be easily broken alone, but as a bundle are unbreakable. (It was a common symbol: in fact, Lincoln's hand rests on fasces in the statue at the Lincoln Memorial.) Italy adopted fascism, and Mussolini inspired others, notably Germany's Adolf Hitler. Those leaders came to believe that their system was the ideology of the future, and they set out to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.
America fought World War Two to defend democracy from fascism. And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were African American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups who fought, Native Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied men from 18-50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that Hitler’s codebreakers never cracked.
The American president at the time, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hammered home that the war was about the survival of democracy. Fascists insisted that they were moving their country forward fast and efficiently—claiming the trains ran on time, for example, although in reality they didn’t— but FDR constantly noted that the people in Italy and Germany were begging for food and shelter from the soldiers of democratic countries.
Ultimately, the struggle between fascism and democracy was the question of equality. Were all men really created equal, or were some born to lead the rest, whom they held subservient to their will?
Based in the principle that all men are created equal, democracy, FDR reminded Americans again and again, was the best possible government. Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all races and ethnicities—a mongrel population-- the Allies won the war against fascism, and it seemed that democracy would dominate the world forever.
But as the impulse of WWII pushed Americans toward a more just and inclusive society after it, those determined not to share power warned their supporters that including people of color and women as equals in society would threaten their own liberty. Those reactionary leaders rode that fear into control of our government, and now, once again, democracy is under attack by those who believe some people are better than others.
In June 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that democracy is obsolete. He believes that a few oligarchs should run the world while the rest of us do as we are told, and he is doing his best to destroy both American democracy and the international structures, like NATO, that hold it in place. The interests of reactionary American leaders and Russian president Putin run parallel. Astonishingly, that affinity has recently come out into the open. Some of our leaders are publicly echoing Putin’s propaganda, apparently willing to work with him to undermine the principles on which our nation rests so long as it means they can stay in power.
Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?
When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality. He did so until 1943, when he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the U. S. S. Liscome Bay, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank in minutes, taking two-thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it.
I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the oligarchs will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller.
Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.
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Jim Dietz
Freshman
Thinking and writing, not always in that order....
Posts: 81
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Post by Jim Dietz on Dec 9, 2019 13:10:45 GMT -5
The quote by Yamamoto is unlikely to be true as written, but during the 1930s, Yamamoto pushed to avoid conflict with the United States because of his time in America. He DID note that American economic might would gear up quickly and that it was likely to be 6-12 months after it was at war that the US would be able to take the offensive--that any Japanese war effort should focus on expansion during that 6-12 month period, after which Japan's policy should be a mobile defense with its navy and fortifying island possessions/keeping the US navy away from oil transports from places to be conquered back to Japan.
For his efforts, militarists tried to assassinate him at least once. It's why the IJN gave him a command at sea for a time to make killing him far more difficult.
Yamamoto's official assessment proved rather accurate. He was off by only a couple days as the US stopped Japan beginning on 6/4/42.
**** Related is a prediction from 1919 and Versailles from Foch, Commander-in-Chief for the Allies in WW1. After the Versailles Treaty was signed, he is documented to have said (so not just apocryphal) "This is not a peace treaty. It is an armistice for twenty years." He said this on 6/28/1919. World War Two began officially on 9/1/39, just over 20 years later.
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Post by holidayhusker on Dec 9, 2019 15:05:38 GMT -5
Not sure if the “awakened a sleeping giant” statement is true, but it should be! Big mistake, Japan. Wonder how long we would have stayed out the war? Waking the Sleeping Giant Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto probably never uttered the phrase The “sleeping giant” in this case refers to the United States of America. Hearing it may bring up questions like “how was it sleeping?” or “what does ‘waking’ even mean?” but the phrase isn’t intended to be taken literally. Essentially, it refers to the prod that led to America’s active involvement in World War II. Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US had taken a neutral stance. Though it supported the Allies with arms and other resources, the nation wasn’t willing to send its military into battle. But once the Japanese struck the naval base on Oahu, the sentiment of most of the nation—represented by Congress—changed. The United States awoke from a slumbering state of neutrality, eventually sending over ten million troops to war. The question of whether anyone actually considered the United States a “sleeping giant” remains. The idea that the phrase was actually spoken by the man it’s attributed to may be a fallacy brought about by a fictionalized recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the conclusion of the 1970 war film Tora! Tora! Tora!, the character of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto questions the effectiveness of the attack on Pearl Harbor, saying, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” While it makes for great cinema, and it’s known that the man who orchestrated the attack was on the fence about going after the United States, there’s no indication that this line was ever spoken by him. Regardless of whether it is a real part of history, it became such an iconic line that it was quickly ingrained into the history of the attack. Fiction, but Still Fact Though the phrase may have been a creation of screenwriters to make for a great dramatic closing to their film, one can’t deny the factual element to it. Japan did essentially awaken a sleeping giant and, through its own actions, inadvertently sealed its fate. It wasn’t long after the United States started patrolling the Pacific that Japan saw its first major defeat, at Midway Atoll. Attempting to recreate the success of the surprise at Pearl Harbor, Japan sought to strike Midway without American advance knowledge. The United States was wide awake from its pre-war slumber, however, and American code breakers deciphered Japan’s plans, enabling their forces to prepare and strike back against the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway in June of 1942. visitpearlharbor.org/pearl-harbor-waking-sleeping-giant/ With much of its navy destroyed at Midway, the Japanese never fully recovered and never quite regained the power it started the war with. The power it had before waking a sleeping giant. I will say that the students in my class love to delve into the conspiracy theory of Pearl being a "Back Door to the War" . Ultimately, they all come to the consensus that the US made some poor choices and SERIOUSLY underestimated the Japanese. Here is a solid article from the Smithsonian www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-almost-everyone-failed-prepare-pearl-harbor-1-180961144/thank God the US did get involved. It could have been a far more sinister end result.
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Post by azvb on Dec 9, 2019 15:19:16 GMT -5
All the years I lived in Hawaii, I never once visited Pearl Harbor. I didn’t visit the Grand Canyon until I was in my 20’s. And it’s my one and only time. I’ve been to Pearl Harbor 3 times.
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Post by mikegarrison on Dec 9, 2019 15:52:53 GMT -5
All the years I lived in Hawaii, I never once visited Pearl Harbor. I didn’t visit the Grand Canyon until I was in my 20’s. And it’s my one and only time. I’ve been to Pearl Harbor 3 times. I've been to Mount Rainier hundreds of times. You folks should be getting out more.
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Post by Phaedrus on Dec 9, 2019 18:47:42 GMT -5
The quote by Yamamoto is unlikely to be true as written, but during the 1930s, Yamamoto pushed to avoid conflict with the United States because of his time in America. He DID note that American economic might would gear up quickly and that it was likely to be 6-12 months after it was at war that the US would be able to take the offensive--that any Japanese war effort should focus on expansion during that 6-12 month period, after which Japan's policy should be a mobile defense with its navy and fortifying island possessions/keeping the US navy away from oil transports from places to be conquered back to Japan. For his efforts, militarists tried to assassinate him at least once. It's why the IJN gave him a command at sea for a time to make killing him far more difficult. Yamamoto's official assessment proved rather accurate. He was off by only a couple days as the US stopped Japan beginning on 6/4/42. **** Related is a prediction from 1919 and Versailles from Foch, Commander-in-Chief for the Allies in WW1. After the Versailles Treaty was signed, he is documented to have said (so not just apocryphal) "This is not a peace treaty. It is an armistice for twenty years." He said this on 6/28/1919. World War Two began officially on 9/1/39, just over 20 years later. John Maynard Keynes predicted it as well.
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