American navy has blockaded countries all over the world, so it's more true that they closed international waters. Waters were open before America existed. If Americans would actually learn their history they would see that the USA blockade was the reason Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, as the Japanese needed the water to open and thought taking out Pearl Harbour would prevent the US Navy controlling the Pacific. Japan attacked the American base, USA attacked Japanese civilians with nukes.

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dpark an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Waters were open before America existed.

A huge part of the reason sovereign nations built navies was to fight piracy. It’s not really true that waters were open historically.

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an hour ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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mooktakim an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you saying there are no pirates now? US navy has solved all the world's problems? The blockades have killed millions of people, even in the last 30 years. When US sanctioned Iraq after the first war, they killed 500k people every year, and then US invaded Iraq on lies. The world would be safer without the US Navy.

	▲	akkartik an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Your first comment was good but here you're not responding to GP.

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kortilla an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nukes were not a response to Pearl Harbor.

The framing in general of “Japan only took military action and the US sank to attacking civilians” is wrong too. Take a look at what Japan did to the Chinese during that time period if you think they were only attacking military targets.

Japan also invaded an Alaskan island. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/06/07/the-japanese-...

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mooktakim an hour ago | parent [-]

Are you saying USA cared about the Chinese? Japan had already surrendered before US nuked them

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kortilla 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

No, Japan had not surrendered before the bombs. There is no evidence of that in Japanese or western history. Where are you getting that from?

> Are you saying USA cared about the Chinese?

I’m saying it was not beneath Japan to commit horrific atrocities on civilians. You can’t pretend they were some high moral actor that was only performing a military action to defend themselves.

	▲	mooktakim 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Did I say the Japanese were good guys? Everything the Japanese did, UK, USA and other European countries have done worse. They're still doing it. Going back to the original reply, US Navy only benefited the US by screwing over the rest of the world

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_DeadFred_ 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Waters were open before America existed."

The United States formed our Navy because of Islamic Pirate/Slavers causing a lack of open waters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs

"The Barbary threat led directly to the United States founding the United States Navy in March 1794."

	▲	mooktakim 26 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Have you tried reading anything other than Wikipedia
	▲	mooktakim 23 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		US navy literally doing piracy right now taking ships in international waters, destroying boats in Venezuela and Trump admitting to piracy.
	▲	mooktakim 25 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Lol let's not talk about slavery when it comes to the USA

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subroutine an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Why would you post such nonsense given how easy it is these days to determine bullshit? By the time of Pearl Harbor, Japan was formally aligned with Nazi Germany. Japan, Germany, and Italy signed the Tripartite Pact in Sept 1940 creating the Axis alliance. Pearl Harbor happened in Dec 1941, so Japan had been formally tied to Germany for more than a year.

“The American navy closed international waters.” Not in the Pearl Harbor context. Before Pearl Harbor the U.S. was not conducting a naval blockade of Japan that closed international waters. The U.S. cut off Japan from US oil in July 1941. That is not the same thing as the U.S. Navy closing the Pacific.

“The USA blockade was the reason Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.” False. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because it wanted to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet while Japan seized the "Southern Resource Area”, especially oil-rich East Indies, Malaya and other regions in the pacific. The U.S. oil embargo might have played a small factor, but that wasn't a US-only thing; various countries were increasingly unwilling to sell oil and other resources to Nazi-aligned Japan while they were attempting to conquer China and most of the Southeast Pacific.

	▲	mooktakim an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Japan didn't have any problems with USA because USA was not part of allied forces. In fact USA sold weapons to both UK and Germans. USA only joined after Pearl Harbour. Japan attacked because US Navy prevented oil being shipped to Japan, Japan had no other source.