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Comment by ram4jesus | Hacker News Reader

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> The Japanese were baited into War by FDR.

They invaded Manchuria in 1931 and were at war with China and Russia for years prior to Pearl Harbor. You’re blaming that on the U.S.?

As well as Korea, Indochina, Philippines and more. It’s strange people make Japan the victim and forget about all the other countries that don’t have Anime and other nerd pop culture exports

I think he is saying that FDR stopped selling oil to Japan, in such a way that Japan was provoked to attack the US.

That’s why they attacked Pearl Harbor in the first place: to neutralize the US navy threat in the Pacific while seeking for new oil sources down South.

They were at war with many countries, but they weren’t at war with the US specifically up until that point.

And by the way the US sold oil to Japan to profit from their war machine in Russia, Manchuria and China. It wasn’t until the very end that they stopped selling it.

> I think he is saying that FDR stopped selling oil to Japan

Sure, but then maybe don’t start a war with all of Asia. There was a high degree of grandiosity and hubris where they thought the way out of a losing strategy and resources was to double down and go after more

Just wanted to point out that the US profited from selling oil to Japan so they could invade all of Asia, and they profited for a very long time.

The U.S. was also in the middle of a mild economic downturn in the 30s, so while I’m sure in hindsight I wish we would have imposed sanctions sooner, I’m not sure I would have done it differently given the exigencies of the time.

Nobody forced Japan to attack the US. 50-100 years from now people will think exactly as they do now: it was Japan’s stubborn leadership’s fault for refusing to surrender that lead to the destruction of those 2 cities and countless lives lost.

American school teachers critical of America often claim that Japan was "forced" to attack America because America was "blockading oil" to Japan. What they never mention are the facts that Japan wanted oil to fuel their Imperial war machine's invasion of China and conquest of the Pacific, or that the "blockade" of oil constituted little more than the Dutch refusing to surrender the Dutch East Indies oil fields to Japan, and America backing up the Dutch. Japan then attacked the US Navy as a prerequisite to seizing the Dutch East Indies.

In other words, America "forced" Imperial Japan to attack by not rolling over and surrendering the Pacific to Imperial Japan when they 'asked nicely'. Japan was "forced" by nothing more than their own imperial ambitions. Those who think America was in the wrong here are implicitly accepting the legitimacy of Japan's imperialist ambitions.

The war really needed to end. The Japanese military of the time were terrible, they slaughtered and mutilated prisoners of war.

And as others have said, the casualties were on par with a single day of firebombing. If anything those were more of a crime because they did nothing to end the war. But about those there's never any complaints.

Calling a trade embargo baiting someone into war is Japanese colonialism apologism.

Would you also say that unit 731 [1] is a stain on the soul of the Japanese nation?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

People really just get on here and confidently spew absolute nonsense like this

Unlimited war created an environment where our “better angels” were displaced by the warriors who found novel ways to destroy.

The lesson of WW2 is that we can’t fight like that anymore without destroying humanity. And so far, we haven’t.

Could you explain how FDR goaded Japan into attacking the US?

Were they baited into annexing Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and then the rest of China?

I bet there are Chinese and Korean now who think Japan deserved to get nuked a few more times.

None of that makes any sense, but the claim that the Japanese were "baited into war" by FDR is borderline lunatic. The Japanese state was already captured by ultranationalist military officers, and its project of expansionism ongoing, before FDR was even president.

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