Quote Originally Posted by Wildor View Post
The proper question should perhaps be: Why did the Empire of Japan attack the United-States.

Embarking on that adventure proved to be it's downfall. As anyone with a brain could foresee at the time.
Well, you're seeing through the lens of hindsight. We remember the great victories, Midway and Iwo Jima and suchlike, but around Pearl Harbor, things were different. The Japanese had been steamrollering across Manchuria and China for a while, and they were regarded as close to unstoppable. Add that overconfidence to the military-controlled government and a culture of fatalism, and you get people who think they can take on anyone and win.

They very nearly did, too. If our aircraft carriers had arrived on schedule to Pearl Harbor, they would have been destroyed as well, and we wouldn't have had any striking capability for quite a while, possibly long enough for Japan to make it too costly for us to attempt an attack. Australians might be speaking Japanese right now if it weren't for a timely storm.