Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (244652)	4/5/2008 4:37:19 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793834

I've tried to find the approximate strength of the American forces before Pearl Harbor, but can't find the number so far...I had heard it was under 300,000 for all services but would like some proof of that. Nonetheless, from the day after Pearl Harbor until the end of the War. 16+ Million men and women who had served to protect America is an AMAZING number, when we stop to think of it. 16.1 million The number of U.S. armed forces personnel who served in World War II between Dec. 1, 1941, and Dec. 31, 1946. See Table 523 at <http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-03.html> And the parallels to then and now are more than interesting...they are scary to contemplate if we have the wrong President for the next 4 years.... users.bigpond.com Japan was aware that America had neglected its own defences The American naval building program was viewed with deep suspicion by the Japanese who appreciated that the United States Navy would eventually replace theirs as the most powerful navy in the Pacific region. A powerful American fleet in the Pacific would jeopardise Japan's plans to seize American, British and Dutch colonial possessions in South-East Asia. Japan's military leaders decided that Japan must seize its target countries in South-East Asia before the United States could rebuild its navy. Japan's greatest fighting admiral during World War II, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, had taken careful note of America's enormous industrial strength during two tours of duty in the United States. He had also noted that successive American governments had starved the defence forces of adequate funding. In planning his sneak attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Yamamoto was very conscious of the fact that America had neglected to maintain its fleet in top fighting condition. In a letter to a friend before he launched his attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto wrote: I shall run wild for the first six months or a year, but I have no confidence for the second and third years. Yamamoto astutely realised that it would take the United States at least a year to gather its full military strength after two decades of neglect of its armed forces.* This realisation coloured his strategic planning, and influenced his two major preoccupations: the destruction of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and the placing of a Japanese steel noose around Hawaii so as to put 2,200 miles of unbroken ocean between America's likely naval strength in 1943 and Japan's eastern defensive perimeter anchored in Hawaii. * In fact, it would take almost two years before this happened.