Pearl Harbor Day 2017

[Mike Kreinhop]

... I don't understand are why Japan decided to attack American soil without declaring war first since they were supposed to be a culture that placed great value in being an honorable people.

The 14-part message that the Japanese ambassador was supposed to deliver to the White House by 1300 was delayed until after 1400 because the message took too long to decrypt. By then the attack on Pearl Harbor had already started and Admiral Yamamoto had no way of knowing the message had not been delivered as planned. While the content of the message didn't really pass as a declaration of war, the fact that the Japanese government issued the message likely meant it knew to comply with the Hague Convention.

[Mike Kreinhop]

If you ever get to Hawaii be sure to visit the Arizona Memorial. It brings everything you knew about Pearl Harbor into focus.
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I lived in Hawaii as a child in the mid-60s, and we used to go to the old Pearl Harbor to fish for barracuda. A lot of the original piers and equipment were still in place and oil was constantly seeping up from whatever was below. I remember seeing the oil on the surface of the water at the Arizona Monument.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Stewie,

I was aware that the US Government had imposed economic sanctions against the Empire of Japan. I can also understand why they may have felt that their existence was being threatened which is why Japan was negotiating with the US Government at the time. The two things I don't understand are why Japan decided to attack American soil without declaring war first since they were supposed to be a culture that placed great value in being an honorable people. Secondly I will never understand why President Roosevelt deliberately withheld military intell from our forces at Pearl Harbor and risked losing so many military assets. I doubt he was concerned with the loss of life, it was probably an acceptable loss in order to gain access to the war and help Europe...particularly the British.

Since we cannot discuss politics here the rest of the story will have to be told elsewhere.

Keith, thank you for posting the reminder.

Among the unmentioned (at least in that article) historical reasons for the sanctions were the unprovoked invasion of China (including the bombing of an American warship), the unprovoked invasion of French Indochina, and the generally barbaric way the Japanese conducted themselves (e.g. Nanking). It is also true that the United States was generally aligned with Britain, and there is no doubt that we wanted to discourage further aggression against the Dutch possessions, Singapore, etc., particularly after Japan formally joined the Axis in 1940.

Attacking without a declaration of war was pretty much the Japanese modus operandi at the time. They started the Russo-Japanese war with an attack on the Russian naval forces in the Far East three hours prior to the declaration of war.