12-7-11
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor minutes before 8 am on that Day of Infamy in 1941 awoke and galvanized our country. We had been officially “neutral” until that moment, in spite of massive aid flowing from our Atlantic shores to England in the “lend-lease” program. Pearl Harbor was the opening act of a broadly expansive and aggressive plan to expand the Empire of Japan. The raid on Oahu was followed on that same day by attacks on such far-flung places as Singapore, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Midway Island and Hong Kong. The Japanese had gone “all in.”
The history of antagonism between the US and Japan (leading up to the Attack) is long and complex and can’t be looked at in this brief format. The US “spun its wheels” in the Pacific until Jan 1944, when we were finally able to set afloat hundreds of new warships through the Panama Canal. The War in Europe had consumed all our resources until then. When we did go on the offensive in the Central Pacific with the formation of Task Force 58, we went “all in” – forcing the Surrender of Japan a year and a half later.
The Japanese were every bit as aggressive, ruthless and feared in the Eastern Hemisphere as were the Nazis in the Western Hemisphere. The US was the “wild card” in WWII – as a nation of determined people we were underestimated by both the Germans and their Axis counterparts — The Empire of Japan – who pursued their dreams of dominance with a very heavy cost.
Final World War II death estimates (combined civilian and military):
United States 400,000
Germany 4,200,000
Japan 2,350,000
This of course , does not include Europe and Asia and The Mediterranean, and all the other places in the world that lost soldiers and civilians.
THE TOTAL WORLDWIDE LOSS OF LIFE DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO WWII:
48,231,700
Steve