December 7th, 1941: the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a day that will live in infamy” in his famous speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war against Japan.
That particular epithet – that’s a strong one. And unlike most such epithets, it’s held up. People know it, still.
I mean, sure, slogans like “Remember the Maine!” rallied people at the time, but it’s an historical footnote; “Remember the Alamo!” has more weight, but not because of the attack – it’s because of the hopeless and romanticised defence.
(That it was, push comes to shove, in defence of slavery is important but not relevant to my line of thought here.)
Why was the Pearl Harbour attack somehow that much worse?
It wasn’t that Japan attacked a purely military target in a United States territory. Nothing wrong with that by the rules of war. Certainly nothing infamous about it, either. Within the rules of war, it’s fair play.
It’s not that it was a surprise, even – though it was, and that tends to be what people think of when they hear the phrase. Most people at the time assumed a Japanese Imperial attack would come in the Philippines, not in Hawai’i. But surprise attacks are the meat and gravy of war, and simply good strategy – again, not a source of infamy.
It wasn’t even, really, that they started the war with the attack. That’s kind of how wars tend to go. As a rule, one doesn’t go declare war and then stand around a while giving your enemy a week or two to get their defences in place.
So why were people who were absolutely expecting war – absolutely getting ready for a war – with Japan still so very angry about the way it started? What made a crowd certain that war was inevitable – a crowd that was getting ready for it, whether they liked it or not – go, “oh, that is too goddamn far”?
It was that Japan was literally still negotiating as the bombs fell.
Roosevelt mentions this in his speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war. It’s shallow in the specifics, but it’s explicitly there, in the first minute. He didn’t have to get into the weeds of details; everybody in Congress knew.
The Japanese attack started at 12:48pm Eastern time. The military finally got word sometime after 1:30pm Eastern time. The Japanese ambassador had scheduled a meeting with Secretary of State Hull for 1:45pm, and didn’t show up until 2:05pm, by which time the bombs had been falling for over an hour – and even then, they delivered a statement responding to a previous US position paper delivered on November 26th.
It was harsh, but it was no declaration of war.
The Japanese delegation were literally negotiating as their air force’s bombs fell.
That betrayal – that subterfuge, that backstab – coloured the entire rest of the war in the Pacific, up to and including the decision to use those atomic bombs.
Does that still-negotiating-as-the-bombers-let-fly trick sound like something that just happened this afternoon?
Maybe it should.
Japan’s plan was a quick but heavy knockout blow on a military target, to weaken American forces in the Pacific and force the Americans to accede to their demands in China.
Trump’s plan was apparently also a quick but heavy knockout blow on military targets, to force the Iranians to accede to Trump’s – and Netanyahu’s – demands in the Middle East.
Iran is in no way the 1940s US; Trump’s clown car criminal crowd is in no way the leadership of Imperial Japan. This is not World War II, and since Trump didn’t go nuclear, I don’t think it’s World War III; this is not that kind of projection, so don’t make it into one.
I’m just talking infamy. As far as infamy goes?
Yeah.
I could really see saying this is an act of infamy.
Obviously, that’s the kind of thing Iran would say, no matter what. Aside from that, times have changed. Asymmetrical war, disinformation, irregular warfare as a primary strategy – all those old ideas about war have rather gone by the way side. It’s hard to talk about something as infamous in war these days.
But still. I could see it.
And more importantly… I could see people believing it.
Couldn’t you?
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
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solarbird) wrote2025-07-03 12:06 pm
