Give me a rundown on Pearl Harbor

Give me a rundown on Pearl Harbor

did nothing wrong

It's a nice place, good golf courses.

"How Not to Start a war," an instructional guide brought to you by the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Japanese consulate.

I'd like a detailed explanation of so I can take it down in my notes sorry if I'm asking for too much

In August of 1941, The U.S. froze Japanese assets in the country, stopped the sale of oil, and persuaded the Dutch, the second biggest exporter of oil to the Japanese, to do the same, and with an ultimatum that regular trade would not resume unless and until Japan made several major concessions in China and withdrew from French Indo-China (Whose occupation was the most immediate trigger for the embargo, although tensions had been building for some time).

Japan didn't want to cave into a foreign power, but needed oil to keep the war economy and the fleet running. The only real source that was close and big enough was what's now Indonesia, then a Dutch colony. They were producing slightly less than 8.5 million tons of the stuff a year, and the annexation of such would make Japan oil independent.

Problem: The U.S. was mighty sick of Japan's expansionism, and the Japanese knew it. And while the Dutch government in exile wasn't much of a threat, the Americans were. Still, they gambled on two major factors

A) The Americans didn't have the stomach for a long war
B) That although the Americans had about a 5:3 advantage in naval tonnage, they had those split between the Atlantic and the Pacific, giving Japan a slight edge at the outset of war.

They could then accentuate this edge by launching a surprise attack and knocking out as much of the Pacific fleet as possible. Even if the Americans decided to strip the Atlantic and bring most of their remianing forces into the Pacific, by the time they did so, the Japanese would have largely overrun the DEI and the Philippines, and necessitate a long, costly, bloody struggle for the Americans to take them back.

Thanks mate anymore details

Anything in particular you're looking for?

Why didn't they just move in and destroy DEI? Wouldn't most Americans have shrugged and said it's not our fight?

>japs hear about the taranto raid
>6 fleet carriers armed to the teeth with state of the art planes fail to cause as much lasting damage as brits did with a single carrier and 20 or so obsolete biplanes
>on the top of that they managed to give fdr a perfect propaganda tool to paint the war against japan as something else than americans sending their forces to die for european colonial holdings

Thanks a lot guys really appreciate the help
I'd like a bit more on the background and the actual attack

That is a question without a clear and convincing answer. FDR gave security guarantees to the Dutch government-in-exile over potential Japanese invasions, but that wasn't something that could bind congress, and it certainly wouldn't get public support behind the war the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor did. It might very well have worked. It almost might have backfired spectacularly.

Essentially, it was an attempt to re-do the Taranto Raid the British did over in the MTO. Sail a bunch of carriers over, bomb with surprise, get the fuck out. Interestingly, they launched the attack from Japan, not their closer bases in either the Carolines or the Marshalls, which necessitated the use of all of their available tankers to project the fleet all the way to Hawaii. Aerial tactics were fairly standard Japanese, made easier by the fact that they knew where the harbor was, and you don't have any of the searching around for each other that carrier battles on the open sea involved. They also attempted to use some mini-submarines to do attacks by sailing into the harbor, but they were comparatively unsuccessful.

Despite the overwhelming surprise, the Japanese lost about 10% of their cvp force.

>Taranto raid

Huh, never heard of this until today. Interesting stuff.

by the mid 1930's Japan's government was completely dominated by the military, and so the decision to attack America was made purely by military leadership. They looked at a map of the south pacific and said America's control of the Philippines was problematic, since it would split their empire in half, and be an excellent staging point to recapture anything in the south pacific. So since war with america seemed like an inevitability anyway they decided to attack in a shocking manner that would hopefully destroy a high number of ships. Despite America's economy that was 8 times larger than Japan's it was thought that America was a weak and decadent democracy with no stomach for war.

Because the government was so dominated by the military there was no consultation with members of the diplomatic corps to see if their appraisal of the American people's mentality was correct. It turned out it wasn't, and the image of the USS Arizona in flames became ingrained into every American's head. The war that seemed distant and unimportant was suddenly very real.

Veeky Forums is not /pol/ with dates, please leave

By late 41, 50% of Americans expected they would be at war with Japan, 27% did not, and 21% unsure.

Keep in mind this is just expectations, not "do you favor going to war with Japan". The Japanese seizure of French Indochina already threatened the Philippines, and seizing the Dutch East Indies would mean that the Philippines would be surrounded on both sides by Japanese possessions, and Japan would inevitably view the Philippines as a threat because American forces stationed in the Philippines could interdict the Japanese flow of oil between DEI and Japan.

The difference was that the Americans had the industrial capability to repair the damaged ships, while the Italians didn't. The Italians didn't repair their old ships because their newest ships had been damaged at Taranto.

cant break stronk nippon pride

Not to mention that the Italians didn't really have the fuel to get effective use out of the ships they had, another problem America didn't have to deal with.

Japanese bombs can't sink American steel battleships. Clearly an inside job.

>FDR gave security guarantees to the Dutch government-in-exile over potential Japanese invasions, but that wasn't something that could bind congress, and it certainly wouldn't get public support behind the war the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor did. It might very well have worked. It almost might have backfired spectacularly.
FDR wouldn't have given a basically public security guarantees unless he was sure of public and congressional backing. Honestly getting one warship sunk would've done it.

False flag by George Soros in order to frame the Japanese Empire and get America into a world war against Japan when it was the Nazis who Soros was working with is the one that declared war on us.

the armor on the battleships was designed to protect against torpedos, not aerial bombardment

>B) That although the Americans had about a 5:3 advantage in naval tonnage, they had those split between the Atlantic and the Pacific, giving Japan a slight edge at the outset of war.
silly nips

American intelligence fucked up and suffered a serious defeat. Thanks to their propaganda, many Americans still cry when they think about "this day of infamy".

>a ton of innocent Japanese civilians die
>"heh payback for that one time where you killed a few thousand professional soldiers of an imperialist power that was denying you access to vital resources"
Jesus Christ burgers are so dumb.

>country excercises it's sovereign right to not trade with you
>this somehow justifies an underhanded and surprise attack

>country pressures other countries to not trade with you
>this somehow is perfectly okay

>invade another country
>expect no consequences from the international community
lmao weebs and naziboos are something else

>WW1
>Japan invades German colonies in the Pacific after Germans lose control of them
>everyone is okay with it
>WW2
>Japan invades French Indochina after the French lose control of it
>REEEEEEEEEEEEEE EVIL NIPS EMBARGO THEM

>invade irrelevant shitholes after your ally asks you to
vs
>waging aggressive conquests of vast swaths of SE Asian and China while murdering 10s of thousands of civilians
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, wonder what pissed people off more

ahahaha you are literally an australian highschool student
i know because did this exact course a couple years ago
MODS

good shit

What about aerial torpedoes?

I'm not Australian nor am I a student