Okay, they didn't care... Did they think they would get away with it? Don't they know that the more oppression they will need to win the harder we and the entire world will fight them? ***
I'm a Second World War buff and I understand Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union - the man was insane. However, the most insane move throughout the war was the attack on Pearl Harbour. America was cutting off Japan's Oil but Japan had much of China occupied and the smartest thing would have been for them to have stopped advancing until other opportunities arose.
Admiral Yamamoto argued this point but his protests were ignored by the Generals in Tokyo. The Admiral's point was that even if they smashed America's pacific fleet they did not have the population to put into the uniforms they'd need to conquer and occupy the USA.
Yamamoto was well aware of the households in America that have guns and knew that the attack on Pearl would lead to the USA coming into the war and to Japan's defeat. This wasn't a possibility or a probability but a certainty since the USA would have to suffer a TOTAL defeat.
The more you think about it, the more you wonder what was wrong with their heads. They would have to fight street to street across the entire nation leaving battle hardened troops in every suburb of every city and in every town and there just isn't that many Japanese.
A lot has been written about this and the 'samurai' thinking of Tojo and the Army elite in Tokyo. What has been established is that their fanaticism blinded them to the consideration of failure - they just didn't consider it.
The same stupidity was in the USA military during the Cuban missile crisis and throughout the cold war. They honestly believed that there could be a winner in an all-out nuclear war between the USA and the USSR. Some of the assertions and beliefs of this time defied logic and any semblance of logic.
Of course, things went wrong when Kennedy was shot. Americans should have taken to the streets and demanded that all records be made public and that those on the Warren Commission be made accountable. To be told that all records on Oswald would be sealed for 75 years was a slap in the face of democracy and a clear message to the world that the USA had a two tiered justice system.
In the end, any country or system that can't be criticised is in a state of decay and the same insanity as shown by the Japanese war planners and the Cold War Generals is alive and well in Washington today.
***Edited by lefty on 3/25/08 due to rule #2 in the TVNL guidelines, which can be found
here.