![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/rising-sun-300x169.jpg\")
\nImperial Japanese Battle Ensign<\/p>\n
\nImperial Japanese Battle Ensign<\/p>\n
Welcome back our very own Veritas Omnia Vincit, Delta Whiskies and Whiskettes. I for one have missed his annoyingly rational and well written screed. ‘Specially when he’s right. Anyway, he’s back from wherever he went to, and he didn’t come empty handed.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen some pathetic ramblings of late that suggest the US embargo of Japan in July of 1941 gave the Japanese a legitimate reason to attack the United States.<\/p>\n
If you bump into one of these people who believe this, do me a favor and set them straight.<\/p>\n
The embargo was enacted in 1941 as an attempt to restrain Japanese aggression into China and ultimately the rest of Asia. In 1937 the Japanese invaded China, by December they reached Nanjing and murdered some 200,000 Chinese civilians…the Japanese negotiated with the US but refused to leave China. The embargo was enacted as a result of the failure of those negotiations. The Japanese then decided they would wipe out the US fleet and force the US to a peace treaty because the fleet protecting the west coast and Pacific possessions would be gone.<\/p>\n
We in the US are far from perfect in our history and our present, but I’m fucking tired of apologists for murderous regimes trying to paint every historical component of our past to some nefarious US plot to destroy the world.<\/p>\n
The Japanese made their choices in the late 30s we reacted to their choices and then the Japanese made other choices. None of that is the fault of the United States. The Japanese are entirely responsible for deciding to enlarge the conflict from China to the US. The Japanese signed with Italy and Germany prior to the embargo, they signed a non-aggression pact with Russia as well the US reacting to those moves by Japan is not justification for Japan’s murder of Chinese civilians or for Japan’s surprise attack of US military personnel on December 7th, 1941. It might be an explanation, but Japan’s initial decisions to invade their neighbor was the triggering event for all that happened over the next eight years.<\/p>\n
There are of course definitive histories out there that anyone can read, but here’s a link to a basic timeline that effectively covers the reality of the events as they transpired.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n