Christian scholars say no war

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Bradford DeLong wrote:
>
>>  The fascist clique ruling Japan were really weird and really nasty. For
>>  example, who else--bogged down in a long-term war in China--would decide
>>  that the thing to do was to get themselves into a war with Britain and
>>  the U.S., then the world's two superpowers?
>
>I thought their reasoning was fairly straightforward -- that war with the
>US was inevitable, so it was better done as early and decisively as
>possible, when they were they most prepared and the US was the least, so
>as to give them 6 free months to build up the best possible defensive
>position.  It might well have been the wrong calculation in grand
>strategic terms, and they certainly underestimated the US's fighting will
>and power, but it doesn't seem fundamentally irrational, the sign of
>minds that can't be reasoned with.
>
>Michael

*****   VJ Day: Remembering the Pacific War

Stephen R. Shalom

...The United States, along with Britain and the Netherlands, placed 
a total embargo on oil to Japan, leaving it with no alternative 
sources. To Japanese leaders war to seize its own supplies of oil 
seemed essential. But Japanese officials calculated that an attack on 
the oil-rich East Indies would necessarily involve them in a war with 
the United States. In this estimation they were correct, for U.S. 
officials had determined to go to Congress for a declaration of war 
not just if U.S. colonies were attacked, but if those of Britain or 
the Netherlands were either.[45] In these circumstances Tokyo 
concluded that it made sense to try to strike the first blow....

[45]  Stimson & Bundy, p. 390; Raymond A. Esthus, "President 
Roosevelt's Commitment to Britain to Intervene in a Pacific War," 
Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 50, no. 1, 1963, pp. 32-34.

<http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/polisci/faculty/ssvjday.htm>   *****
-- 
Yoshie

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