World War II

"A date which will live in infamy"

Attack on Pearl Harbor

I shall try my best to make this section more brief, and I should like to preface this by saying that no part of this section is a defense of the empirial Japanese military. Rather, it is an exploration of the ways in which the United States utilized propaganda cause more people to enlist into being soldiers. It has long been propogated that the Japanese military commenced their attack on Pearl Harbor as a way of deterring the United States from entering the war in the Pacific. This is a somewhat disingenuous claim. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of American feeling towards the war at the time knows that most citizens were not interested in joining the war in either theater anyway. Instead viewing the conflicts as a problem for the people living in the area to solve. So, why then would the Japanese military decide to deploy any sort of deterrent upon a nation, that already had no plans to enter the conflict? The answer is simple: they wouldn't. The Japanese military at the time was running out of the raw materials to feed their war machine, and needed to find a source for more. Unfortunately for them, the best source of the materials needed, was required going through or into the at the time American territory of the Philippines. Seeing as invading such a territory would inevitably bring the U.S. into the war anyway, and the entire U.S. Pacific naval force was docked together in the same place, they decided to try and slow the response time of the Americans by bombing the fleet.

However, it is easy to see how this view of the attack does not easily transfer into war propoganda. Not quite like claiming they did it to try and break the spirit of the American people. Or as a statement that Americans are either incapable or unwilling to protect their homeland. In an honor culture, protecting what is yours is big. Showing weakness, that you can be pushed around is a death sentence. So it would make sense to design your propoganda around the idea that the Japanese meant this as an act of disrespect, as opposed to an act done in fear of your immediate military response.