...but not a real surprise either. According to Geo. Yoshinaga in the Rafu Shimpo, a local headline warned "Japanese May Attack Over Weekend" one week before the actual attack. It reflects a certain tension of the threat of attack. To say that it was a total surprise is, no doubt, a lie. Maybe the exact hour was a surprise, but, it looks like both sides were ready for war, and waiting for a beginning.

In hindsight, only Japan could have made the first attack, and the US could only wait. The US outgunned Japan, and victory, while not assured, was in the US's favor. Lack of support for US intervention prevented the US from making the first move. Japan made the first move, hoping to demoralize the US, and hoping to energize their military.

Likewise, in hindsight, the nuclear bombing of Japan, while not inevitable, was likely. The true effects of nuclear war were unknown, and the only way to find out, and present a demonstrable threat to the USSR, was to bomb a population. The idea that it was "necessary to stop the war" is absurd - the Japanese military was decimated, and the population already starving. They were in no condition to fight much longer.

If the players were different, I think the actions would still be substantially the same.

IMHO, history may repeat itself. With each war, we come one step closer to justifying the wide scale deployment of biochemical weapons.

is that there may be a resurgence of anti-japanese american sentiments....

I'm really afraid that this movie doesn't address the cultural ideologies that triggered many americans to punish the japanese american citizens living in the US...

I hope that the issue of racism caused by pearl harbor towards asian americans is addressed in this movie,

but i doubt it..

already i watched on tv today some historians saying that the movie basically

portrayed the war as a giant video game where things and bombs explode

randomely,

one historian on tv said that even the timeline was wrong in the movie....

that's pretty important....

and yet the movie makers didn't really care to portray truth, more just like the "fun" that war can be if one makes a high budget movie about it.

z