Remembering Pearl Harbor

The attack of the Japanese army on Pearl Harbor is one of the most replicated episodes of the Second World War. Since then it has passed 81 years. The anniversary seems to be not round, but history lessons are not measured by anniversary. Lessons need to be taught every day. So…

On November 26, 1941, from the island of Iturup (Kuril Islands), in an atmosphere of complete secrecy, the Japanese squadron went towards Hawaii to strike at Pearl Harbor, where the American Pacific Fleet was based. The rest of the Japanese army was also put into a state of military readiness. At this time, the Cabinet of Ministers was headed by Hideki Todzio, who wanted to enlist the full support of the political elite. On November 29, a meeting of eight previous prime ministers was held, at which three of them expressed their doubts about the expediency of the war. In particular, Vakatsuki Raiziro, who believed that it was impossible to plunge Japan into a deliberately losing war for the sake of abstract ideals. Todzio replied that a self -respecting country cannot be done without ideals. As the ideal of that time, the liberation of Asia from the Western colonialists and the creation of the “zone of joint prosperity” under the auspices of Japan were the liberation of the Western colonialists.

December 8 (Japan has already arrived in the eighth, and there was only the seventh in America) the Japanese army struck in several directions at once: it occupied the English settings in China, landed on the British Malay Peninsula, blocked the English naval base in Hong Kong, and made air raids on air bases located in the American Filippins. But the most resonant was the attack on Pearl Harbor, where the Japanese naval aviation destroyed and disabled several ships and several hundred aircraft. It was Pearl Harbor that became the main symbol of the war that had begun, although operations in the English possessions began an hour earlier.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a brilliant military operation, which for some time paralyzed the American fleet. Japan has lost only 29 aircraft and 5 submarines-boats. The human losses of the Japanese amounted to 64 people. American - about three thousand people.

Having received the news of the successful raid on Pearl Harbor, the emperor of Sova changed into the naval uniform and issued a decree: “We, the Emperor of the Great Japan, belonging to the eternal and uninterrupted the mercy of the sky, notify you, the faithful, honest and bold people, that we declare war on America and England ... being in our hay ... being in the hay of our hay ... Divine imperial ancestors, we believe in our faithful, honest and bold people and wish the development of the affairs of the ancestors and the fastest deliverance from the causes of troubles so that the eternal world is established in East Asia, and the light of the empire would still shine. ”

The comments to the decree stated: as a result of the machinations of America and England, the upper threshold of the Japanese Armed Forces was established at a lower level than that of these countries. In addition, the 1924 immigration act, which limited the migration of the Japanese in the United States, was often commemorated for Japan. It is worth noting that the rights of foreigners in Japan were very limited at that time. However, the Japanese newspapers were full of angry walls about the fact that the West "did not respect" Japan. The passionate publicist Tokutomi Soho wrote that Japan has a historical mission: to defeat the Anglo -Saxons and become a light - first for Asia, and then for the whole world. And for this there is all moral grounds, since Japanese values ​​appear in the following order: state, family, individual. And how correct this is than the adopted order in the West - an individual, family, state! In 1943, Tokutomi received the Order of Culture.

Back in 1937, the Japanese army invaded China and firmly stuck there. Now she decided to declare the war half of the world. Hitler was delighted from the entry of Japan into the World War and called the Japanese "a noble people with a story filled with truth and justice." In fact, Japan provided Nazis with a bear’s service. She knocked out the soil from under the feet of American isolationists, who insisted that Europe should deal with its problems itself. Now the Congress unanimously voted for the US entering the coalition of anti -Hitler states. As for Japan, despite the triple pact with Italy and Germany, in this war she actually had no allies - she fought alone, joint operations with the German or Italian army were not carried out. They did not help each other and weapons and military materials.

Japan began a war against the United States, Great Britain and its allies, being doomed to defeat. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a brilliant military operation, but it was also evidence of strategic meadow. The population of Japan was doubled by the American one. Territory - 15 times, GNP - by 11.8, and per capita income in America exceeded Japanese by 18 times. On the smelting of cast iron and steel, America was 12 times ahead of Japan, by the tonnage of the merchant fleet - five, for the production of aircraft - at five, in the production of coal - at 9.3, in oil - 527 times. During the war years, the gap in the main economic and military indicators has become even more.

In the world, few people believed that with a colossal difference in economic potentials, Japan, which stuck in China, would dare to open another front. However, the logic of the Japanese elite turned out to be completely different, considerations of the practical property played a secondary role in it. By and large, she considered people to be her main resource and believed that their spirit was able to create a miracle in confrontation with the soulless West. In its utopian policy, the Japanese government was guided not by statistics, but by completely different considerations. It believed in its own propaganda: the spirit above the body, the Japanese spirit is above the spirit of any other countries, and therefore Japan is waiting for an inevitable victory.

Takamura Kotaro, the famous poet and chairman of the poetic section of the Writing Union of the Service of Japan, composed:

Remember: month December, eighth.
The history of the world begins a new countdown.
The power of the Anglo -Saxons melts and melts -
East Asia, land and sea.
Melting and melting a tiny island
Japan, which lies in the east, behind the sea.
Power Nippon - again the power of the gods
Led by the deity-guard.
Seed robbers - Australia, America, England -
We deprive them of the authorities.
Our power - in truth, draws power.
East Asia - return it to her. No more.
The neighboring countries-they will get stuck from hunger.
The claws and teeth of enemies - we will tear out with the root.
Star and young, man and woman -
Get up, like one, pour the military force.
We will fight - until the terrible enemy exists.
Remember the line of the history of the world:
Month December, eighth.

The enthusiasm for human -defending poetry, the use of a verse as a force converting the world to establish a “new order”, were universal for the totalitarianism of that time - whether Nazi Germany, socialist USSR or imperial Japan.

The most realistically thinking Japanese military believed that the country was defeated, but could not do anything not only with an exalted people, but also with their own ideas about the proper. Admiral Nagano said: Japan will lose this war, but if the country does not fight, it will lose its “spirit”, and the country with such a loss has no future. Historians usually characterize a similar way of thinking as “adventurous”. And indeed: Japan lost this war with colossal losses: three million people (about 4% of the population). The losses of the US Army - a country that carried the main burden in the war with Japan - amounted to 100 thousand people.

The Japanese spirit soared high, the soldiers courageously died for their homeland and the emperor, experts developed a new overturn. On November 3, 1944, the first combat balloon was launched, which had 10 meters in a diameter. Three bombs were attached to the ball: fragmentation (15 kg) and two incendiary (6 kg each). 10 thousand such balloons made from super -strength Japanese handmade paper and glued with environmentally friendly jelly from the connight plant were manufactured. It was assumed that the Western inkjet current would convey balls to America, where they will fall in random order and cause huge damage. It is believed that about 10% of the balls really flew to the United States. As for the damage that they inflicted, five people died. The teacher and four of her students arranged a picnic in the forest. Noticing a balloon stuck in the branches of the tree, they began to feel it out of curiosity and died from the explosion.

Thus ended one of the most idiotic operations of the Second World War. The balloons are planned as a super -weapon turned out to be a soap bubble. For two years, 60 thousand people worked over this grandiose project. At the same time, 150 thousand Americans worked as part of the Manhattan project, which soon led to the creation of an atomic bomb.

After the war, all the forces of Japan were given to economic construction, that is, they were used not for destruction, but for creation. Having redirected their knowledge and energy from the production of military products to the production of peaceful products, the country managed to carry out what the military man failed: to become a country in which a person to live well, and thereby earned respect all over the world. Since the 1960s, they started talking about the Japanese "economic miracle." But in fact, the Japanese did not perform any miracles - they just worked hard and hard to make their country prosperous. This required time that the nation spent on a radical increase in the educational level and the development of science, which ultimately explains the success of the country. The most important of them is the largest life expectancy in the world.

Alexander Meshcheryakov, Professor Ikvia NIU HSE