Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-104.51.53.50-20150415225527/@comment-26168103-20150504085613

Roadside Picnic wrote: I don't think it's explicitly Anti-American, but I do think it's uncanny they only use German and Japanese ships. Japanese ships alone I could see but when they start using foreign ships and only exclusively German ones...that's two axis nations mind you, and none from the US, none from Britain, none from France (Imagine the French "Terrible" meeting Shimakaze lol), I can't help but think they might be...favouring them for a reason. if you look at it even further back to the reason WHY Japan decided to go to war (an irrational decision considering Japan's overstretching and US's industrial might back then in 1941), it was because they needed resources and a place to sell their goods and the US is the one who gave them sanctions, leading to economical stuffocation of Imperial Japan.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to impose an embargo on U.S. oil exports (which the Japanese economy was critically dependent on), which was meant to deter Japan from expanding their empire, actually has a opposite effect and made Japan launch a desperate attack on South East Asia, which was controlled by the British and the Dutch (who needs the resources there to continue their war effort to resist Germany's advance in Europe). By mid-1941 Japanese leaders believed that war with the United States was inevitable and that it was imperative to seize the East Indies, which offered a substitute for dependency on American oil.

U.S. attempts to deter Japanese expansion via the imposition of harsh economic sanctions, redeployment of the U.S. Fleet from southern California to Pearl Harbor, and the dispatch of B-17 long-range bombers to the Philippines all failed because the US insisted that Japan evacuate both Indochina and China as the price for a restoration of U.S. trade. America demanded, in effect, that Japan abandon its empire, and, by extension, its aspiration to become a great power, and submit to the economic dominion of America - something obviously no self-respecting Japanese leader could accept.

all in all, the root problem lies on both sides. the US for being an asshole, the Japanese for their honor (and not considering diplomatic solution besides war). and if you look at it from that point of view, obviously Japan holds US responsible for making them fight a war that they know they wouldn't win if it takes too long. it's either a do or die decision for them, which is given to them by the late President Roosevelt.

copied from : http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/summary.cfm?q=905