Gemba says he feels 'deep emotion' about Pearl Harbor

This reconstruction minister is too young to adjust his own thoughts to the standards set to conventional politicians. He's younger than Edano. And don't let the MOFA pull the wools over you. They're sneaky, stinky rats--as always.

About the radar, thought their HQ on base said it was B-17's?

They did, but the radar operators caught flak anyway for not being able to tell the difference between a flight of B-17's and a full Japanese attack force. When you're looking at a rudimentary CRT, details like the number of targets detected are extremely hard to figure out.

tmarie, then Japan would have to pay all of Americas military families from WWII. Most got to their battle stations, their was return fire. Unlike the Atomic bomb victims they had a chance. If it would not of been for a single bomb, the Arizona would of been fixed and sent out quickly. The death toll would of been cut in half.

I thought the fired on it hitting in the conning tower and sinking it. The Americans have found a sub in the harbor entrance with damage to its conning tower. About the radar, thought their HQ on base said it was B-17's?

To be fair, the submarine the U.S.S. Ward attacked hadn't "attacked" anything yet. It was just a sub where there shouldn't be one - and even then the Ward wasn't sure what they had because the minisub was so much smaller than your typical fleet boat.

The newly established radar station on the island detected a big blob of planes, but lacked the definition of today's radar. It really WAS just a blob. Unfortunately, they were expecting a flight of B17's from the mainland that day and assumed they were early. The radar operators took a lot of flak over the mistake, though there really wasn't much they could have done differently with the expected B17's coming in.

Fadamor, not sure if 24 hours would of been enough. They were not expecting an attack and even the Ward submarine attack did not wake them up. Anyhow the war was done oh 66 plus years ago. The people in it are either dead or in nursing homes. My mum took me out to the wood shed for some of my posts. She being right and reminding me of what the Japanese troops were really like. The Japanese never apologized to us and what they did was very very bad. So today you have this Japanese minister feels "deep emotion" about Pearl Harbor, am positive it was indigestion caused by the consumption of NATTO and whale meat.

Patrick is correct. Gordon Prange wrote an excellent book on the Pearl Harbor attack titled "At Dawn We Slept". He was able to access documents from both the U.S. and Japan shortly after the war in order to piece-together a detailed description of the views and actions on BOTH sides of the Pacific leading up to the attack and the reasons why things happened the way they did. Yet even he wasn't given access to things that were still classified at the time. Items declassified in the years subsequent to the publication of his book reveal that SOME of his conclusions would have been different had he been given access to the newly declassified data.

Yuri is also correct. Even if the Japanese Embassy had not delayed the delivery of the war declaration and had delivered it just prior to the attack - as intended - the U.S. still would not have been able to mount any sort of Hawaiian defense in time. The timing was planned so that the attack would occur only minutes after the declaration of war was handed to U.S. officials. Washington would have had to send a telegram, then have the telegram delivered to the base commanders before the defenses could be activated. It IS a puzzle as to why neither the submarine piers, nor the oil tank farm were targeted during the attack. The shipyard WAS attacked, but they appeared to concentrate on the ships in drydock, rather than the drydock facilities themselves. This lapse in the attack allowed the U.S. to send out their submarine fleet virtually unscathed and the shipyard was able to perform some amazing repairs in record time only months after the attack. The intact oil farm meant that the surviving ships didn't have to wait until tankers from the mainland arrived before they could disperse.

Neither side has a monopoly on still-secret information related to innumerable war-related issues from the 1930 and 1940s. Some things we will probably never know.

What I do know, though, is that people in both countries in the 21st century can access so much of the known information about the war that was not possible but a decade or so ago. People can study and form their own opinions. What is printed in school textbooks is not the only interpretation of history young people should experience.

Well the Japanese government screwed up the declaration of war. The airmen and sailors were told they were at war. They did nothing wrong and the damage to the civilians was mostly caused by improper fusing of anti aircraft rounds. A lot of American anger is the embarrassment of being caught with their pants down. If the DOW was delivered in Washington on the 6th of December nothing would change. Perhaps it would of been worse with 1/2 the battleships at sea and the Japanese would of destroyed the Oil storage and dry docks forcing they back to San Diego.

What I'd like to hear accompanying Gemba's 'deep emotion' is his desire for all Japanese young and old to know the true account of what happened that day, if anything else to try and prevent it from happening again.

Nice. (sarcasm) But if you want to prevent such incidents from happening again, simply "knowing" what happened on December 7, 1941 accomplishes nothing. What needs to be "known" are events and circumstances that lead up to that day which most Americans are clueless to so let it dumbed it down to the masses to "We were attacked for no reason!!". It worked for FDR and is still working today.

Genkigonzo, JT didn't write it. It was written elsewhere and distributed by the Associated Press, of which JT is a subscribing news service. I suppose you could give JT kudos for deciding to run THIS particular AP release over the dozens of others that AP releases every day.

I have to laugh at their copyright disclaimer at the bottom, though. It seems they left something off:

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Considering that the AP's entire BUSINESS is built on subscribers being able to redistribute the AP's work, methinks they forgot the part at the end that says "without written permission from the Associated Press".

About the meat of the article, I have to wonder if this is another one of those Japanese things where something is ambiguously said, but the meaning is clear to a native speaker. That's one of the harder aspects I've found in trying to learn the language. The direct translation may be having "deep emotion" but the full meaning actually means more? Perhaps a native speaker can weigh-in on this possibility?

Well done to JT for acknowledging the one-sided view of history displayed in Japan.

The anniversary typically gets little attention in Japan as authorities don’t want to highlight the country’s past military aggression.

Japan does however commemorate the atomic bombings by the U.S. of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 that came just before Japan surrendered.

Says all you need to know about Japan's ability to look itself squarely in the eye and come to terms with its past. And from someone who lost relatives in the war in the Pacific and had others as Japanese POW's, Gemba can keep his meaningless "Deep Emotion". It is as worthless as any other Japanese pronouncement, because it lacks any true moral under-pinning and real support by the populace.

Gemba probably feels shame and embarrassment for his ancestors' collossal mistake in bombing Pearl Harbor. 　

Is ridiculous to hear this from a minister.

Yappari minshuto !

So... an apology perhaps? Maybe some cash for the families?? Nah!! Play the victim and discuss Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

Sure the emotions is 'deep and pain'! An asian country has bombed an American harbour for a single morning 70 years ago, she has to pay 'the price' until maybe forever! Pearl harbour was raided twice but the tonage of bombs dropped were no where to compare with the Luftwaffe dropped over London,Warsaw,Stalingrad...etc.

me too, I just came from gemba... I am tired heh hehhh

Admiral Robert Theobald who was in Pearl Harbor during the attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy says:

"Diplomatically, President Roosevelt's strategy of forcing Japan to war by unremitting and ever-increasing diplomatic-economic pressure, and by simultaneously holding our Fleet in Hawaii as an invitation to surprise attack, was a complete success."

http://stopnwo.com/docs3/pearl_harbor.txt

He should say, -OK, we are SORRY about that-, and make it clear. Using the usual ambiguity, we never know if he is sorry or sad that Japan didn't win the war, or want to hide what Japan did.

Was it the same "deep emotion" I witnessed when I visited the AZ memorial? Two Japanese gentlemen were laughing inside the memorial.

It's pretty shocking to see the differences in how Germany and Japan have schooled the younger generations about the war. Germans are educated about their country's guilt so that it won't happen again. Japanese textbooks are so ambiguous that I've been told by more than one young Japanese they thought they fought on the side of the Americans against Hitler!

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and guess that the emotion he feels is generally one of regret (hopefully over the loss of life and past mistakes by both nations, not that it ended up with Japan's defeat or something like that). It's gotten more coverage than usual given that it's the 70th anniversary of the attack (on the 7th, US time), but the article is of course bang on that Japan's aggression gets little to no attention or space in history teaching as opposed to aggression and/or attacks on Japan (for whatever reason).

What I'd like to hear accompanying Gemba's 'deep emotion' is his desire for all Japanese young and old to know the true account of what happened that day, if anything else to try and prevent it from happening again. Burying Japan's aggressive half while playing up situations in which it was the victim only brings about the wrong kind of nationalism in the wrong kind of people.

Deep emotion? That really doesn't say anything.

His emotion he is feeling is thank god the Americans don't keep asking us to apologize over and over again like the Koreans do.

In 2009 German Chancellor Angela Merkel was present in Gdansk for ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland, for which she apologized (again).

Marked contrast between that and Gemba's so-called "deep emotion".

Which emotion does he feel?