A reluctant enemy
2011-12-07 16:40:41.421801+00 by
Dan Lyke
1 comments
Worth reading, especially today: NY Times: A Reluctant Enemy, a short look at Japan's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of the Pearl Harbor attacks:
And yet even in the final weeks of peace, Yamamoto continued to urge that the wiser course was not to fight the United States at all. “We must not start a war with so little a chance of success,” he told Admiral Nagano. He recommended abrogating the Tripartite Pact and pulling Japanese troops out of China. Finally, he hoped that the emperor would intervene with a “sacred decision” against war. But the emperor remained silent.
Via MeFi.
[ related topics:
History Architecture
]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2011-12-08 21:16:15.285796+00 by:
petronius
From Pearl harbor to Hiroshima, the Japanese completed 8 full-sized aircraft carriers. In the same time frame, the US built 25. Which pretty much sums up the war. As to the Pacific War being one of Attrition, I'm not so sure. The attrition is where the agressor keeps hitting his head on a barrier that yields but eventually rebuilds. In the Pacific, once the US got to an island the Japanese couldn't reinforce it, and they had no choice but surrender or fighting to the last man, and we kept whittling them down. In the meantime, their refusal to capitulate made the atomic raids inevitable, since they never showed any desire to give up.