The headline doesn't square with everything I've ever read about the attack. Embarrassment was at best a minor factor in the Japanese thinking. The major factor, IIRC, was that certain military officers -- many of them belonging to (or fearful of) a murderous ultranationalist faction -- had come to dominate the Japanese government [1]. These military men:
+ wanted to strike south to secure desperately-needed sources of oil, rubber, and other resources for their war machine (an alternative they debated was to invade Siberia);
+ felt that for a strike south to succeed, they had to neutralize both the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the American bases in the Philippines, from which the U.S. surface fleet, submarines, and air forces could have caused serious problems for Japan's maritime supply lines from Southeast Asia; and
+ perhaps most importantly, were out of their depth when it came to assessing a political risk, namely the extent to which a surprise attack would bring down on them the implacable fury of an enraged and industrially-powerful United States.
I've read the linked book[0] and you're right that the headline gets it wrong. It should have said that the decision to attack Pearl Harbor was the result of Face-saving among the Japanese military leadership. To summarize:
The US had embargoed Japan and was demanding that the army (IJA) withdraw to its pre-war Manchurian borders in China. The IJA needed American goods to prosecute the war but such withdrawal would result in an utter loss of face for the IJA.
The IJA instead proposed that the US and Dutch be attacked and goods be secured from American and Dutch colonies (Philippines and Indonesia) to fight the war in China. This would chiefly be a Naval war and thus executed by the IJN.
The IJA hoped to force the IJN to share in its loss of face by admitting it wasn't powerful enough to fight the USN. But the Admirals refused to publicly admit that they couldn't fight the USN (privately they lobbied the Emperor and his subordinates to intervene). Through this impasse between the service branches the Japanese government drifted towards a war they knew they couldn't win.
They did try invading Soviet territory, but got slapped so badly by Zhukov that they gave up. Permenantly; the Soviets were able to send all of their military forces west when their spy in Japan confirmed that the latter had no plans to attack them.
Some important Japanese politicians did anything they could to stop war with the USA (Mamoru Shigemitsu, a pacifist, and Fumimaro Konoye, who considered an attack on the USA to be a very bad idea) but the militarists had the ear of the emperor, and kool aid was drunk.
The article and the commenters here vastly underestimate the weakness of the US strategic position and the initial advantage that the IJN had. They institutionally understood and embraced the new reality of carrier and air warfare.
The reality is that the Philippines were incredibly vulnerable and run by a General who was not so effective. Ditto the fossils living in WW1 dreadnought world on the Navy side.
Had fate turned ever so slightly at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, or Midway, the great gamble made by the Japanese would have been genius.
The embarrassment and face saving nonsense killed them not in 1941, but in 1943, when they followed through on a fools errand instead of settling for peace. Once the US industrial power was mobilized, the result was pretty certain.
Had fate turned ever so slightly at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, or Midway, the great gamble made by the Japanese would have been genius.
The embarrassment and face saving nonsense killed them not in 1941, but in 1943, when they followed through on a fools errand instead of settling for peace. Once the US industrial power was mobilized, the result was pretty certain.
Disagree strongly. The way those battles turned just sped up the destruction of Imperial Japan---and if you expect every battle to go your way, you're a damned fool.
The surprise attack, their brutality in war, plus our memory of how WWI did not end in a lasting peace, made sure settling for a peace was not an option by 1943. By the time we were focusing on the home islands with Operations Starvation and Downfall, plus the fruits of the Manhattan Project, the details of the Bataan Death March unquestionably revealed by the liberation of the Philippines ... well, it really sucked to be Japanese by then. But not hardly so bad as the subject people in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which they were killing at a rate of 400,000 per month by then.
I'm finishing reading Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947/... and it's really sobering. Olympic as planned, the invasion of southern Kyuushu, wasn't going to work, and with Marshall pushing for all nuclear weapons after Nagasaki to be earmarked for it, and liberal use of poison gas, it would have made Okinawa look like a walk in the park. And there's no way Coronet, the planned March invasion of the Kanto plane in Honshu that includes Tokyo would have happened on schedule before the weather made it impractical. Yet we were absolutely determined to see it through, one way or another, with as many as a million of our men dying the process.
The US would have been able to replace their aircraft carrier losses pretty quickly, far quicker than the Japanese. By the end of the war the US had close to thirty carriers IIRC.
> an alternative they debated was to invade Siberia
You're too polite. They did try that. There were minor skirmishes along the Soviet-Japanese border before WW2, they were close to an actual war. But the Japanese Army got smashed so that idea was scrapped.
The other faction vying for power then gained favor and they headed south.
> + perhaps most importantly, were out of their depth when it came to assessing a political risk, namely the extent to which a surprise attack would bring down on them the implacable fury of an enraged and industrially-powerful United States.
By "out of their depth" do we mean "dumber than six pounds of gravel"? I admit that the fantasy that slapping someone in the face will instantly cow them, instead of provoking angry retaliation, is a common one in history, but I don't think that makes it any less stupid given the historical evidence.
(See also Every Terrorist Ever, with the exception of the ones who want to provoke angry retaliation.)
>(See also Every Terrorist Ever, with the exception of the ones who want to provoke angry retaliation.)
I don't pretend to know what a terrorist's goals are, but my observation, as a US civilian is that our responses to terror have harmed us a whole lot more than the terror attacks themselves, so assuming that a terrorist's goal is to maximize damage to my country, it would be rational for them to focus not on how many people they kill, but on how big and self-destructive of a response they can provoke.
(the counter-argument, of course, is that I don't know how many terror attacks would have happened without our massive reaction.)
As I understand it, the goals are to provoke overreaction and sharpen the conflict. And so to radicalize supporters, and build support among potential allies. Except for the violence aspect, the strategy is not all that different from nonviolent resistance.
I think that nonviolent resistance is different because the nonviolent resistor is saying, essentially "give me what I want or I will put myself in a position where you have to hurt me." - which only works if the authority in question has some problem with hurting the nonviolent resistor.
Terror, on the other hand, seems to be saying something more like "no matter how powerful you are, you can't prevent us from coming in and inflicting shocking, unexpected violence on you."
Do you see the difference? one relies on fear, while the other relies on... well, I had it called guilt, but a better person than I am would call it 'empathy' or something like that.
I agree that the initial primary goal of terrorism is fear. There's also anger, because fear and anger are connected. But I'm not so sure that nonviolent resistance is all about fostering guilt/shame/empathy. I think that guilt etc and anger are also connected. And so both can lead to overreaction. And once you've goaded an opponent into overreacting, they will be hurting innocents. And that will foster sympathy, and build general support for your cause.
Sure, I'm just saying that nonviolent resistance only works at all if the enemy is unwilling to just kill you and your supporters.
I'm saying that nonviolence operates on your enemies willingness to harm others, rather than focusing on harming the enemy, and that makes it fundamentally different from other forms of warfare.
Now, there is a connection in that both terror and nonviolence are fundamentally psychological warfare; both rely on giving the enemy feelings rather than just killing the enemy in the most efficient way possible, but I think that nonviolence is interesting and different because it is a new form of warfare that only works against modern societies that are able but not willing to just kill a bunch of the opposing group.
Yes. And yet, I think it useful to distinguish the immediate enemy that you're facing from the group that they're acting for. Consider Ghandi. I'm guessing that many of the British his people were facing in India would rather have killed him and his followers. They certainly did hurt a lot of protesters. But they knew that the British public would have been outraged. And eventually, it was public support in Britain that led to Indian independence. It's not that the colonial managers were converted. Maybe some were. But mostly they were overruled.
Certainly. and I agree that terror and nonviolence both target the civilian population's feelings on the matter. Also note, that has a direct effect on how front line soldiers act; if the boss says he'll demote me if I do X, well, I'm a lot less likely to want to do X, regardless of my feelings on the matter. (And while I've never been in such a position myself, I read that killing people who are not fighting back is harder for most people than it sounds.)
but I think that the genius of Gandhi was that he saw that he couldn't win through conventional military means, so he found another way; ethics aside, I think he should be remembered as a great general; a great strategic thinker who won a war that seemed impossible to win because he considered options that were not obvious to the military leaders who tried for Indian independence before him. (and may not have been available to those leaders... but still, it was a great innovation in strategy and tactics, really, that you could fight a war by.. not fighting.)
That's the thing that seems weird about the current wave of middle-eastern terror; if the goal is to get the US out of the middle east, terror has been woefully ineffective. It's possible that there is some deep game, someone trying to get the US to attack some countries and not others... but it's also just as likely that this current wave of terror has no real strategic planning, that it's just a howl of undirected, incoherent rage; like a man putting his fist through the drywall in his own house.
The latter explanation of terror actually seems more plausible to me than any grand strategic plan.
I totally agree about Ghandi. It was an amazing strategy. And nonviolent resistance has been so successful for so many.
Maybe you're right about radical Wahhabi terrorism. There is a lot of incoherent rage. But I do think that, at least for the rational planners, the goal is to draw the Christians into battle in the Middle East. Look at how they played the US into attacking Iraq, ruled by their former pocket anti-Communist strongman, and creating chaos that ISIS could later exploit. It's beyond amusing how both the radical Christian new right and the radical Wahhabis see conflict in the Middle East in the context of Armageddon. They just disagree about which side Christ will favor.
> By "out of their depth" do we mean "dumber than six pounds of gravel"?
There's no excuse for the Japanese militarists' infliction of millions of deaths and untold suffering, but please keep in mind that they were doing the best they knew how at the time with the hand they were dealt (genetics, education, training, experience, social pressures, etc.), in a situation with enormous risks for their nation, which they believed to be on their shoulders. I'm curious what if anything you know of such pressures.
There's no excuse for Adolf Hitler's infliction of millions of deaths and untold suffering, but please keep in mind that he was doing the best he knew how at the time with the hand he was dealt (genetics, education, training, experience, social pressures, etc.), in a situation with enormous risks for his nation, which he believed to be on his shoulders. I'm curious what if anything you know of such pressures.
Seems like you can plug just about any name you want into this paragraph. What are you trying to say?
1. it's better to understand who and what you're dealing with, especially when it's a mortal adversary whom you might have to fight to the death;
2. the older I get, the less judgmental I get about other people personally, because I really do believe everybody does the best they know how --- and that's true even though very often I don't accept (and might be more than willing to fight against) what they regard as "the best"; and
3. I'm mindful of the words of a very wise, first-century Middle Eastern sage [1] who urged us to love our enemies [2].
Certainly the situation as a whole was quite complex, but when you get down to the details, dctoedt specifically asserts that there were people who thought the US would roll over and cower if attacked once, and if that is true, then those people were bloody great idiots.
If it's not literally true, then perhaps they were something else.
> dctoedt specifically asserts that there were people who thought the US would roll over and cower if attacked once
For the record, that overstates what I said, which I hope was a bit more nuanced than that.
Certainly the Japanese militarists, as a whole, decided to roll the dice that the outcome would not be "An enraged U.S. will counterattack us until our way of life is destroyed." It doesn't necessarily follow that there were those among them who thought, "The US will roll over and cower if we can just take out their battleships at Pearl Harbor."
(Of course, some Japanese militarists had an overly-exalted regard for Japanese military virtue and prowess. So it does seem likely that there were indeed some militarists, especially junior officers, who held the latter view, and yes, that view proved fatally naïve.)
I've been reading Dower's"Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II" and I think embarrassment is a significant factor, though this is not exclusive with your explanations. While the nation as a whole may not exhibit signs of shame, the Japanese culture at the time seemed to encourage the direction of moral responsibility upwards.
So while (particularly) the need for oil can't be overstated in this case, I think that there was a degree of self-consciousness that DID characterize the actions of the upper military acting on pressure from those "beneath" them. I don't think the pressure was directly to attack, but there was enough power concentrated in the hands of the few that their decisions were allowed to be implemented rapidly and without much resistance.
For future reference, the previous title was "Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to avoid embarrassment", which is the title that appears at the top of the linked story. While clearly a proposition rather than a solid fact, I think it's an accurate summary of the thrust of the article.
I think a lot of wars, murders, suicides, as well as a great many companies, inventions, organisations, movements happened at least partially to avoid embarrassment.
In such cases, people prefer terms like "honour", "principle", "fear of failure", "perseverance", etc.
+ wanted to strike south to secure desperately-needed sources of oil, rubber, and other resources for their war machine (an alternative they debated was to invade Siberia);
+ felt that for a strike south to succeed, they had to neutralize both the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the American bases in the Philippines, from which the U.S. surface fleet, submarines, and air forces could have caused serious problems for Japan's maritime supply lines from Southeast Asia; and
+ perhaps most importantly, were out of their depth when it came to assessing a political risk, namely the extent to which a surprise attack would bring down on them the implacable fury of an enraged and industrially-powerful United States.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_militarism