真珠湾は欧米列強に追い詰められた日本が止む無く窮鼠猫を噛んだ出来事。ルネッサンスから始まった西欧近代、その産物である西欧帝国主義植民地主義、その一環としての真珠湾攻撃について考えてほしい。 It was obvious that Japan would not attack us unless provoked into it as a rat driven into a corner. [FDR], however, undertook a series of provocative actions . . . with increasing violence until both national pride and national desperation led them to Pearl Harbor. I believe that the verdict of history will show that either [FDR] was wholly ignorant of Japanese psychology . . . or that . . . he was determined to provoke war with Japan as the method of entry. (Hoover, Freedom Betrayed, 824) In the Pacific we bypassed [Japan]. We closed in. You must understand that Japan had an enormous population of nearly 80 million people, crowded into 4 islands. . . . [B]ut they didn't have the basic materials. . . . They feared that if those supplies were cut off, there would be 10 to 12 million people unoccupied in Japan. Their purpose, therefore, in going to war was largely dictated by security. (Douglas MacArthur’s testimony at the 82nd Congress, 1951) Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was ever truly neutral . . . . (British Cabinet Minister Sir Oliver Lyttelton, quoted in The London Times, June 21, 1944) Even contemporary historians could think that “as for [the Japan-U.S. War] . . . Monaco [and] Luxembourg . . . would have taken up arms against the United States on receipt of such a note [i.e., the so-called Hull Note] as the State Department sent the Japanese Government on the eve of Pearl Harbour. (Pal, International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Dissentient Judgment of Justice R. B. Pal, 546) Roosevelt knew that the only way that he could fulfill his secret commitments to Churchill to get us into the war, without openly dishonoring his pledges to the American people to keep us out, was by provoking Germany or Japan to attack. (Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports!, 18)
