The gunmen came from air, sea and land. They shot at civilians, took hostages and forced families to barricade themselves indoors, fearing for their lives.
it was actually done to prevent a war, as weird as it may sound.
It was meant to intimidate the Japanese and prevent them from attacking the US. kind of a “look at us, we put our fleet closer to you, we are ready to fight you, so don’t even try to attack us!” move. didn’t really work out as planned though.
It was also done to intimidate the Japanese into stopping committing their Atrocities in China.
So no, it was most certainly not done to enter a war.
I know what was the formal rhetoric, yet nobody can explain how grouping ships (that Japanese already knew about & their numbers didn’t suddenly increase) in a very defenseless way helps intimidate anyone that does not come for a guided tour - which wasn’t really needed as they intentionally posted detailed photos in papers & sent the seamen on vacation.
Not to mention that you can’t intimidate someone with a bad tactical decision, this isn’t a split second decision-making, all of it takes months of planning. And all the documented warnings within the military were just ignored as false positives.
And US didn’t really give a damn about China at that time (no political pressure either), but they owned quite a lot of debt and other interests towards various European countries. But the public was still full of veterans from previous wars & Nazi propaganda was hitting strong in US (eg rich manufacturers & exporters like Ford, but also “common folk” responded to their, em, “racial theories”).
But above all that, everytime since the civil war when US arms industry didn’t get a big hike in spending seemingly extremely provoked preventable attacks happen that saway the public option in a big way for the next two decades (then hippies come, get criminalized, a few years of peace, etc).
So in about 10 years or so US will rig live nukes (in a random city like Las Vegas) & connect them to a big red bottom, pay Hollywood to make action movies about it … then sad times of money over mass tragedy continue.
On January 27, 1941, Grew secretly cabled the State Department with rumors passed on by the Peruvian Minister to Japan: “Japan military forces planned a surprise mass attack at Pearl Harbor in case of ‘trouble’ with the United States.”
– wiki/Joseph_Grew
Edit: Oh, my bad, US did go beyond politics & actively blockaded resources to Japan.
it was actually done to prevent a war, as weird as it may sound.
So no, it was most certainly not done to enter a war.
I know what was the formal rhetoric, yet nobody can explain how grouping ships (that Japanese already knew about & their numbers didn’t suddenly increase) in a very defenseless way helps intimidate anyone that does not come for a guided tour - which wasn’t really needed as they intentionally posted detailed photos in papers & sent the seamen on vacation.
Not to mention that you can’t intimidate someone with a bad tactical decision, this isn’t a split second decision-making, all of it takes months of planning. And all the documented warnings within the military were just ignored as false positives.
And US didn’t really give a damn about China at that time (no political pressure either), but they owned quite a lot of debt and other interests towards various European countries. But the public was still full of veterans from previous wars & Nazi propaganda was hitting strong in US (eg rich manufacturers & exporters like Ford, but also “common folk” responded to their, em, “racial theories”).
But above all that, everytime since the civil war when US arms industry didn’t get a big hike in spending seemingly extremely
provokedpreventable attacks happen that saway the public option in a big way for the next two decades (then hippies come, get criminalized, a few years of peace, etc).So in about 10 years or so US will rig live nukes (in a random city like Las Vegas) & connect them to a big red bottom, pay Hollywood to make action movies about it … then sad times of money over mass tragedy continue.
Edit: Oh, my bad, US did go beyond politics & actively blockaded resources to Japan.