I'm handing out some free red pills on this "infamous" 80th anniversary:
-FDR was informed about the attack on Pearl Harbor well in advance but just let it happen because he was in bed with Stalin, and he'd let his whole state apparatus get infested with hordes of commie roaches. Conveniently, all the most important assets like aircraft carriers were off on a training exercise that day. He repeatedly snubbed requests from Japanese diplomats for a meeting in the preceding days.
-Japan definitely overplayed their hand, it must be said. Who knows what political landscape we'd be living in if they'd simply declared an end to their imperial ambitions and settled for the territories they held at the time.
-The atomic bombs had basically nothing to do with Japan's surrender years later. The US had already razed 58 large cities with plain old fire over the summer of '45. What difference would razing 2 more cities with special fire that also causes cancer make in that situation? Japan surrendered because Stalin declared war and threatened their western border while they were entirely deployed in the south and east. All they were hoping for was something better than an unconditional surrender. Good thing they sided with US.
-WWII was nothing like the comfy morality tale they sell normies in high school.
-At least we got anime, which is now one of the last remaining beacons of western civilization.
Edit: I'm glad this generated some friction. My mind isn't changed, but my thanks to everyone who brought differing opinions.
It gets on my nerves ever time this comes around that people still push that long debunked conspiracy. And while its true that Roosevelt and a lot of the high command had been told there was a strong possibility that AN attack would come somewhere (the US Navy knew that Kido Butai was gone pretty much the moment it left Yokohama), but almost all intel said that the most likely target would be the Philippines.
After all, who would be dumb enough to try and sail all the way across the Pacific, hit a target, and then sail all the way back across, and do it without getting caught on the way in and back out?
And worse, there is absolutely no excuse to be that way other than willful ignorance and/or politically or ideologically charged retardation.
We have the collective knowledge of humanity at our finger tips, and access to information from alternative points of view with dozens of experts or self-taught historians talking about the matter. And yet some people chose to be the way of OP. sigh
Also, on the note of OP:
How about the fact that one plane with one bomb wiped out an entire city? Every other city they destroyed took hundreds of planes dropping thousands of bombs. You can see an air fleet like that coming. You can HEAR it coming. One plane can easily slip past every defense you have. And now that one plane can destroy EVERYTHING by itself. Which was the moment that finally snapped a lot of the Japanese high command out of their zeal and showed them just what kind of power they had fucked with, and now it wanted them to die. And even then, you STILL had a not insignificant amount of the Japanese military screaming "Death before dishonor!"
"It wanted them to die" is a bit strong. Based on what I've read, they would have very much preferred for Japan to surrender. The war department even considered demonstrating the bomb to intimidate Japan, but ultimately decided the risk of US POWs being moved to the test site was too high.
True, but like another thread in this topic said, there is an issue of perception vs. reality. The reality was that the War Department was hesitant to actually nuke Japan. But as far as the Japanese were concerned, one moment Hiroshima was there, and the next it was gone, and it took them hours to even figure out what the hell happened. And as far as the Japanese were concerned, the US had just Thanos-Snapped an entire city with literally no warning. What conclusion are they supposed to draw other than "If we dont surrender, they will kill every last one of us!"