The Root Causes of Pearl Harbor Serve as Important Lessons for America Today – DB DAILY UPDATE

BY Greg Updike

NOTE From the Author: On this date last year, I wrote a Lengthy comment on what was the long-term legacy of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  David Blackmon contacted me via email and offered to post it as a standalone article giving attribution to me.  He posted it the next day with his appropriate title “Yalta and Potsdam: Days That Still Live in Infamy”.  That title was and is particularly appropriate because the Pearl Harbor attack was the galvanizing event which thrust the United States into World War II and created the Yalta and Potsdam foreign policy giveaways, the legacy of which still create most of the foreign policy problems America faces today. Here is my next installment on Pearl Harbor which describes why and how it happened: The origins of the Pearl Harbor attack can be traced back to 1853 when the United States essentially forced a feudal Japan to open trade via Commodore Matthew Perry’s squadron of armed ships.  Japan, at that time was very much like much of Europe was centuries before with warlords using the obsolete sword as the primary weapon of war duking it out among their various tribes with little central control.  This forced Japan out of some 250 years of self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world and they opened one port for international trade.  Other nations, including Russia soon followed trading with Japan. Japan’s leadership saw how far they were behind in weaponry and understood they were vulnerable to becoming a dominated colony.  Unlike China and the Philippines and even America’s Native Americans they decided it was far better off to unite and be able to defend their homeland rather than be subjugated under another nation’s rule.

The Root Causes of Pearl Harbor Serve as Important Lessons for America Today – DB DAILY UPDATE