Has America Forgotten? - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

TTaM · #1 12-07-2003, 10:29 PM

I wasn't even close to being born at the time, but I haven't.

May all of those that have given their lives in defense of our freedom be remembered on this day

gemoore · #2 12-08-2003, 12:36 AM

I don't think we've forgotten. It's just that ... gee, the U.S. didn't treat Japan very well, and so the Japanese leaders got frustrated and finally lashed out at the U.S. Pearl Harbor, in other words, was the fault of FDR and his administration. We brought it on ourselves.

I trust that's politically correct enough for the likes of Dean and that foul-mouthed twit, John Kerry.

Can you imagine what would have happened in World War II if we had had the society we have today. My guess is we'd all be speaking German and Japanese.

The Warden · #3 12-08-2003, 12:45 AM

I don't believe that my grandfather was old enough to join just yet when Pearl Harbor was bombed, but he did join in '43 or '44 (Navy; he worked as a machinist's mate in Hawaii).

December 7th 1941, to me, is like September 11th '01, along with such inhumane acts as the Holocaust and Stalin's paranoid efforts to maintain power (at the cost of 20 million lives) as unforgettable.

Thank you for posting this.

Hatterasguy · #4 12-08-2003, 03:09 PM

Forget, never. Very well said Warden, lets also not forget the Japanese slaughter of hundreds of thousand of Chinese. Or the fact that they tested there biological weapons on Chinese villages.

Also in a twist in history the brave Nazi in China (his name escapes me now) who saved thousands from rape and murder. The Japanese didn't want to mess with an angry German apparently.

MTI · #5 12-08-2003, 05:07 PM

As I drive past the Arizona Memorial nearly every day, it is not easily forgotten. December 7th shall always be knowns as the "day of infamy" in these parts.

It would also be a disservice to forget or fail to remember the other events which followed America's awakening that war had been brought to its "doorstep."

In the wake of the horrendous attack, the United States government and its citizens wrongly imprisoned its own citizens purely on the cries of "national security" as a thinly veiled cover for racism, ignorance and hatred. Homes, business, personal property and lives were taken away from citizens who were Japanese in ancestry. The shrine in the picture above is in Bishop California, the site of the Manzanar Internment Camp.

Despite this, Japanese Americans voluntarily formed the 100th Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and served in the intelligence units in the Pacific. Imagine, they were serving their country while their parents, wives, and siblings were locked up in internment camps in the deserts of the western states.

Botnst · #6 12-08-2003, 05:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by gemoore
I don't think we've forgotten. It's just that ... gee, the U.S. didn't treat Japan very well, and so the Japanese leaders got frustrated and finally lashed out at the U.S. Pearl Harbor, in other words, was the fault of FDR and his administration. We brought it on ourselves.

Whoa, dude.

The Japanese Empire was spreading throught Asia and Asia and teh Asian Pacific by military conquest. It was perpetrating horrid atrocities hundreds of thousands of Chinese--murdering and butchering men, women and chidlren for no apparent reason in Nanking and many other cities. The USA refused to sell oil to the Empire and the Japanese used that as an excuse to attack our interests in the Pacific.

It was so bad that even the Nazi representative to Japanese Army Command in China sent official dispatches to Berlin recounting the horror he saw and asking teh Reich to intervene on behalf of the Chinese.

There is plenty of historic documentation of the facts associated with Japanse expansion and our pitiful complaints against it.

rickg · #7 12-08-2003, 06:03 PM

I think he was being sarcastic with that coment. I hope. He did follow it with
"I trust that's politically correct enough for the likes of Dean and that foul-mouthed twit, John Kerry"

AustinsCE · #8 12-08-2003, 06:27 PM

How come you're not jumping on him like he's satan!!! No fair, i must have caught all the hell there is to catch on this board.

rickg · #9 12-08-2003, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by AustinsCE
How come you're not jumping on him like he's satan!!! No fair, i must have caught all the hell there is to catch on this board.

You're not helping yourself here........

MS Fowler · #10 12-10-2003, 06:01 AM

As Rush has pointed out....
Its ironic that we remember and honor those involved in the second-most devasting attack on America, while sympathizing with the attackers, and blaming ourselves for the most devastating attack ( Sept 11--in case you didn't know).
I am a luke-warm supporter of the president, however, I think much of the opposition to the Iraqui war borders on treason-giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the US.
After the Dec 7 attack on Pearl, all the discussion about isolation ( which was quite popular) evaporated and the country unified behind the mission of winning the war. Now the out-of-power party sees the war as an opportunity to regain their political power. Sad! People that want power that badly should be disqualified from ever exercising it.

Botnst · #11 12-10-2003, 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rickg
I think he was being sarcastic with that coment. I hope. He did follow it with
"I trust that's politically correct enough for the likes of Dean and that foul-mouthed twit, John Kerry"

Oops.

Sorry.

tabasco85331 · #12 12-10-2003, 11:28 AM

The absolutely most devastating events to all humanity were committed by the U.S.! The mass, mass execution of men, women, and children civilians, when atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities. Literally, wholesale murder of non-combatants. Those that made those decisions, will burn in the hottest part of HELL forever. I can't even imagine that we did such things and am throughly ashamed of that part of our history.

rickg · #13 12-10-2003, 11:34 AM

You haven't studied the whole history very well, have you.

tabasco85331 · #14 12-10-2003, 11:54 AM

I have... Have you? It's evident that you don't know the numbers of innocent people (civilians) murdered.

psfred · #15 12-10-2003, 12:27 PM

The attack on Pearl Harbor was only a shock because it was so far from Japan, and most people in the higher reaches of both military and political circles hadn't appreciated the power of modern aircraft yet. After all, if you had bad weather it was still faster to take express trains to the West Coast from Washington, to say nothing of safer! Boeing had just started selling the first pressurized airline, and it had to stop twice from LA to New York for fuel.

On top of that, arieal torpedos, up to that point, needed 50-60 feet of depth to recover from being dropped into the water at 100 mph, and Pearl is VERY much shallower than that. Tricky Japs found a way to prevent that inital drop, so they could use their very much superior torps on us. No one at the Navy ever cottoned on to such a deal (remember the dud torpedo problem that plagued us til 1944!!).

There was some speculation in the 'teens that Teddy Rooseveldts "Great White Fleet" would meet with the Japanese Navy in an all-out battle for supremacy, so war with Japan wasn't exactly unforeseeable -- in fact, it was only a matter of time before Japan attacked the US anyway. This is why B-17s were being rushed to the Far East -- we were only a couple weeks late, or we could have wiped out the invasion fleet for the Phillipines at anchor, if the B-17s had actually gotten there rather than being shot up on the ground in Pearl (they landed during the attach). The Phillipines were the expected attack point, logically because they stood between Japan and SE Asia (where all the oil and rubber was, and is). Not that we were ready, there, either.

The true failure at Pearl was the rigid ship scheduling in view of impending war, along with the assumption Pearl was "too far away" to be attached in strength. Note that Halsey made damned SURE that only one carrier was in harbor at any one time, and then for the absolute minumum possible time (usually overnight). The result was that we had both (against 8!) available next day.

The US had been savaged by the Depression. Hard to understand today, especially for the younger generation, just how bad things really were. No money. Literally. Vast amounts of capital vanished in the Crash (like the "tech bubble" only it affected everything, and most manufacturing companies simply vanished. No layoffs, the factory closed and EVERYONE lost their job. There was no money to circulate, period. Barter was common, as no one had money. Food was available, but purchased "stuff" wasn't -- no one made anything, the factories were closed, no one had any money, etc.

The result was a pre-occupation with internal problems, not a surprise as they were really severe (imagine 80% of the population today being in need of a job and there being nothing available, not even crap jobs digging ditches), but that inward turning lead to not paying much attention to international events, compounded by the fact that international trade vanished when Germany chose to get out of the war reparations by deliberately causing horrendous inflation (this was a deliberate policy, by the way, not "economic pressures" -- and I blame the French for failing to enforce the Versailles Treaty on this point) and the fact that the greedy Brits couldn't resist having their own "downturn" to drive wages down. Kinda overdid that one, eh? They were immune to the US depression until the lure of low wages got to be too much for them (sound familiar????!!!!!).

Pearl Harbor was tragic for a number of reasons. We did learn the lesson of the terrible vulnerability of capital ships, and didn't build many more. Terrible cost in lives for something of very limited usefulness, terribly vulnerable to torpedos delivered by aircraft. Avoidable? From this perspective, probably not -- we didn't learn the lessons from the Brits at Trento (I think that was where the Italian fleet was) when they mangled them, things moved slower in those days, and the Brits didn't share information with us them like they do now. Brillantly planned attack, and almost worked -- if the carriers had been there, we might still be fighting Japan for SE Asia! They needed six or seven months to consolidate control of the central Pacific, and almost made it. If they'd occupied Midway, it would have taken much longer to push them out.

Peter

Peter