{"id":61159,"date":"2016-12-07T12:51:14","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T19:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=61159"},"modified":"2016-12-07T12:51:14","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T19:51:14","slug":"many-are-paying-today-for-japans-blunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/12\/07\/many-are-paying-today-for-japans-blunder\/","title":{"rendered":"Many are paying today for Japan\u2019s blunder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Seventy five years ago on December 7, 1941 Imperial Japan committed the biggest blunder in her history. It was an attack Washington welcomed but not openly. The Japanese surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii not only caused Tokyo\u2019s disastrous defeat four years later but also brought the United States out of isolation to begin interfering in the internal affairs of other nations.<\/p>\n

It paved the way for the U.S. to become a global policeman the negative impact of which has been gradually felt to this day in many a country (including Sri Lanka) since the end of World War II.<\/p>\n

In 1941, America was still reeling from effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Her living standards were still behind those of old colonial countries like Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal. At that time American thinking process was to keep out of European wars and not get involved with old colonial countries like England, France and Germany since these countries were fighting among themselves in the past.\u00a0 That meant not meddling with other countries.<\/p>\n

According to American historian\u00a0David Woolner, in June 1939 – three months before England declared war on Germany \u2013 the U.S. Army ranked 19th in the world–smaller than Portugal\u2019s!<\/p>\n

Even the U.S. entry to World War I took place only on April 4, 1917 a year before the conflict ended. That too was a reaction to Germany sinking five U.S. merchant ships.<\/p>\n

Admiral\u00a0Yamamoto Isoroku mastermind of the Pearl Harbour attack initially opposed war with the U.S., mostly out of fear that a prolonged conflict would go badly for Japan. But once the government of Prime Minister Tojo Hideki decided on war, Yamamoto argued that only a surprise attack aimed at crippling U.S. naval forces in the Pacific had any hope of victory. He also predicted that if war with America lasted more than one year, Japan would lose. Japan\u2019s Emperor Hirohito too very reluctantly approved the decision to attack only at the last stage, on December 1, 1941. The attack changed everything. Washington mobilized the country\u2019s population to defeat Japan and provided military assistance to Britain and the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

As Yamamoto (who also died in the war) had feared the turning point in war came in June 1942 in the Battle of Midway which was the decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II.\u00a0 In that battle U.S. Forces sank all four of Japan\u2019s large aircraft carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu \u2013 part of the six-carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbour six months earlier (naval aircraft from the same carriers also participated in the raids on Colombo and Trincomalee in April 1942).<\/p>\n

Despite the defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan in 1945, European colonial powers including Britain, France and the Netherlands, were soon compelled to dismantle their empires due to the devastating economic and political impact of the global conflict.<\/p>\n

The result was the USA becoming the world\u2019s number one military power while the Soviets held the number two position. The U.S. introduced nuclear weapons to the world and also became the No.1 economic power. Within a few years her living standards too became No.1.<\/p>\n

As for Japan she lost her independent political clout, military power and became a virtual vassal state of the U.S.<\/p>\n

Consequently we are faced to today with a U.S. initiated a \u2018New World War\u2019 or as some calls it neo-colonialism in the name of democracy and human rights, when it suits Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janaka Perera Seventy five years ago on December 7, 1941 Imperial Japan committed the biggest blunder in her history. It was an attack Washington welcomed but not openly. The Japanese surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii not only caused Tokyo\u2019s disastrous defeat four years later but also brought the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-janaka-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}