Before Japan and the United States began fighting in 1941, Americans thought Japanese technology was so primitive that the Japanese simply couldn’t compete. In reality, the Japanese Zero was so advanced that few American fighter planes survived.
The ignorance was mutual. The doctrine among Japanese militarists was that Americans were materialists — so used to luxuries, so soft, they couldn’t sustain a fight for six months.
Almost all the pre-war thinking proved wrong. Military strategy starts with sociology and anthropology, and the ignorance that led to that war would border on the unbelievable — except that the ignorance that led to the current war is equally spectacular.
It’s important to remember that not everyone in Tokyo and Washington in the 1930s was stupid or willfully ignorant. But the voices of people who understood other cultures were drowned out by the voices of the loud and willfully ignorant.
I wish more Americans read history.
Rondald Spector wrote the standard one-volume history of the Pacific War. His obituary was in The New York Times the other day.
• Source: Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun; New York: Free Press, 1984.
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