The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: America Didn’t Provoke Japan—Here’s What Really Led to Pearl Harbor

Starting point is 00:00:00 Given that we're in the era of revisionism, especially about World War II, I think it's wise if we just review what Pearl Harbor was about. We have had the 84th anniversary of the surprise attack at 7 in the morning on December 7th, 1941. The last four months of 39, all of 40, most of 41. The United States had watched the Germans absorb most of Western Europe and the Balkans and had been in Russia. Meanwhile, the Japanese invaded China a second time in 1937, and they had half of what is now China under Japanese control. More importantly, what is now Indonesia then called the Dutch East Indies, and the Japanese wanted to absorb those. Don't believe a lot of the revisionism that has occurred. The United States did not provoke Japan.

Starting point is 00:00:47 Japan provoked the United States by attacking at a time of peace. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. This week, we have had the 84th anniversary of the surprise attack at 7 in the morning on December 7th, 1941. And given that we're in the era of revisionism, especially about World War II, I think it's wise if we just review what Pearl Harbor was about. Remember, the United States was not at war. The war had broken out in Europe on September 1st, 1939. So all of the last four months of 39, all of 40, and most of 41, we're talking almost two and a half years.

Starting point is 00:01:41 The United States had watched the Germans absorb most of Western Europe and the Balkans and had been in Russia. And at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, they were at the gates of Moscow, literally at the first. subway station. So it seemed that they would take Russia. Meanwhile, the Japanese had done two things. They had invaded China again a second time in 1937, and they had half of what is now China under Japanese control in addition to South and North, what is now South and North Korea. And remember that the European colonial powers, the Netherlands and France, had ceased to exist as independent countries, so their colonial possessions in the Pacific, specifically the breadbasket of Asia in the Mekong Delta of Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, were no longer under

Starting point is 00:02:37 independent French control, and the Japanese had absorbed them. But more importantly, what is now Indonesia then called the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch had control of these islands, they were very rich in oil, the Shell, Dutch Shell Oil Company. had substantial oil wells on there, and the Japanese wanted to absorb those. It was that context that they attacked us. We didn't attack them. We knew that war was coming. We wanted to deter them by beefing up the Philippines and moving the headquarters of the 7th Fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, which Franklin Roosevelt had done. Why did they attack? They said that they did not want to attack. They were in the process of

Starting point is 00:03:22 negotiating a peace settlement. They said that we had cut off their oil exports. And we had, because we had no other mechanism to convince them to get out of China. It was not their territory. To get out of Korea, to get out of Southeast Asia, and to not absorb the Dutch East India. They had refused on all of those accounts and said, yet we will find a peaceful solution as they planned the attack. The attack happened at 7 in the morning deliberately on a Sunday morning when people were either at church or still asleep from Saturday night parting, and they came out of the rising sun, two waves, and they destroyed four battleships and injured, or I don't want to say injured, they were inanimate objects, but they disabled four that sunk to the shallow bottom of Pearl Harbor.

Starting point is 00:04:18 the three carriers, the Saratoga, the Lexington, and the Enterprise were not there. That was a gift because had they been, we would have had no naval air power in the Pacific. The other thing to remember about this attack, they did not order a third strike. Had they done that, they could have wiped out the oil, refinery tanks, aviation fuel, and naval fuel for a year. They did not hit the machine repair shops, and they didn't mop up and completely destroy all of the aircraft or ships. And the battleships that they did take out were of World War I vintage. So, in other words, these ships had they steamed out of Pearl Harbor and met six carriers over 300 planes on the high seas, they may have been sunk very easily on the high seas, and we would have lost 2,400 Americans, but perhaps 10,000.

Starting point is 00:05:23 So it was a dramatic wake-up call to us, and we did declare war the next day on Japan, and then Germany and Italy, and their allies declared war on us, as did Japan, on December 11th. A couple of final thoughts about Pearl Harbor. Don't believe a lot of the revisionism that has occurred. The United States did not provoke Japan, number one. Japan provoked the United States by attacking at a time of peace, thinking, can you imagine this, that they would so injure us, and we were so disarmed, our army was about the size of Portugal when the war broke out in Europe, and their fleet in the Pacific was much larger than our fleet in the Pacific, but they thought that we would get into a fetal position

Starting point is 00:06:15 and beg they felt for a peace because we had not entered on the side of our ally Britain, and Britain was the only allied power other than the Soviet Union that they worried about. The second thing is Admiral Yamamoto was often made into a folk hero, sort of an intellectual, an artistist who was reluctantly going to war. He said, well, you know, I can raise havoc for six months, but I can't promising anything, you know, or sometimes it's attributed to Yamamoto, sometimes to Nagumo, sometimes it's made up. But the phrase, I've awakened a sleeping dragon. I can't account for what he'll do when he's active, meaning the United States would be mobilized. But Yamamoto had said to the military government in Tokyo, if you don't let me attack Pearl Harbor,

Starting point is 00:07:08 I'm going to resign. And this is the only solution to our problem is a military one, to shock these Americans, and they're weak, they're decadent. Yamamoto had been to the United States. General Tojo had been to the United States. Their foreign minister had been an exchange student in Oregon. So they thought that we, having acquaintance with the United States, were decadent, coming out of the Depression, not a serious people.

Starting point is 00:07:35 and they made a serious miscalculation. Another myth about Pearl Harbor is that the Japanese were somehow victimized, that they really didn't want to go to war. No, no, no, no, no. They were the most vicious of all the belligerents in some sense. If you use a simple calculation, what was the size of one of the belligerents' armies and how many people did they kill

Starting point is 00:08:04 and how many people did they lose? If you look at the Japanese Imperial Navy and Army, and given its size and given the number of belligerents, combatants that lost and civilians versus how many they killed, they were more lethal than either the Russians on our side or the Germans on the other side. About two and a half million Japanese were killed. They killed 16 to 20 million people in China.

Starting point is 00:08:32 civilians and combatants. They killed probably another three to four million people in Asia, whether that's the Burma campaign or Southeast Asia or the Philippines. And then in addition in the Pacific and allied troops, Australians, British, Americans, they probably killed another three to 400,000 minimum. The Japanese military was the most vicious and the most lethal force in some sense in World War II in a strictly military sense. It was a vicious force, and only the bravery of the United States military stopped it, and that effort began at Pearl Harbor when Japan, for no reason, attacked us, and we reacted accordingly and made them pay for one of the stupidest blunders in the history of the Japanese nation. Thank you very much, Victor Davis-Hanson, for the Daily Signal.

Starting point is 00:09:32 you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.

The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: America Didn’t Provoke Japan—Here’s What Really Led to Pearl Harbor

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