# Pearl Harbor and the Second Amendment -- is this for real? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 13, 2002, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473 "2002-12-13T08:46:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dqa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/21 "2002-12-14T02:24:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by AHunter3 \* > **the US would simply accept that the Pacific belonged to Japan, a strong Pacific-based empire, and that the US, far to the east, had no legitimate business trying to maintain a presence there. The US was not at risk (aside from Hawaii)** Let’s not forget the Philippines. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/22 "2002-12-14T02:27:47Z")
> [@](#): > > the Japanese took and held an island of ours up in Alaska for quite some time. Two islands, actually: Kiska and Attu. ---
**Author:** ![happyheathen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5e925/32.png) [@happyheathen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/happyheathen)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/23 "2002-12-14T02:55:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by k2dave \* > \*\*This is simply not true - the Japanese took and held an island of ours up in Alaska for quite some time. Their supply lines only broke down after we were able to launch an effective counter attact. \*\* We were discussing an invasion of the US mainland - a bit larger of a logistics problem than the 2 islands (which were closer to Japan than they were to L.A.) ---
**Author:** ![Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/24 "2002-12-14T04:26:51Z")
When I saw the title to this thread, I thought “WTF?? Bad Ben Affleck films are constitutionally protected?? Someone’s gotta draw a line somewhere!!!” Then I read the posts on the thread. Oops. From my reading of manny historical novels of the WWII era, my call is that Japan never had any intention of invading the USA (Alaska and Hawaii were not states then, remember?) and just wanted to destroy the US Fleet so they could continue their plans for their “Greater Prosperity Sphere” with little US interference. ---
**Author:** ![I\_am\_Sparticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@I\_am\_Sparticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_am_Sparticus)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/25 "2002-12-14T07:29:48Z")
It was not true then and is not true now that half of the households have guns. Japan launched thousands of ballons into the jet stream designed to drop incendiary bombs over the US and Canada, and a number of them did. Nobody was hurt. ---
**Author:** ![Daoloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@Daoloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daoloth)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/26 "2002-12-14T07:48:52Z")
“When war comes between Japan and the United States, I shall not be content to merely occupying Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and San Francisco. I look forward to dictating the piece of United States in the White House at Washington.” - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto Though, to be fair, he said this before his infamous “Sleeping Giant” quote. ---
**Author:** ![XPav](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/b77776/32.png) [@XPav](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XPav)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/27 "2002-12-14T08:10:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by k2dave \* > \*\*This is simply not true - the Japanese took and held an island of ours up in Alaska for quite some time. Their supply lines only broke down after we were able to launch an effective counter attact. \*\* Keep in mind that the troops on Kiska and Attu weren’t involved in the sort of fighting that would have happened had they invaded even Hawaii. ---
**Author:** ![Fern\_Forest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/71c47a/32.png) [@Fern\_Forest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fern_Forest)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/28 "2002-12-14T10:52:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by I am Sparticus \* > \*\*Japan launched thousands of ballons into the jet stream designed to drop incendiary bombs over the US and Canada, and a number of them did. Nobody was hurt. \*\* Actually it did [kill some Sunday school children and a minister’s wife](http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1091.htm). Dreamlab’s link also mentions this. ---
**Author:** ![Rodd\_Hill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3ab097/32.png) [@Rodd\_Hill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodd_Hill)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/29 "2002-12-14T13:50:04Z")
One of the balloons also shorted out the power lines at Hanford, WA, and stopped the production of plutonium for the atomic bomb for three days. Both the US and Canada had fighter squadrons on standby to shoot down the balloons over water, if possible, and quite a few were intercepted this way. There was concern that the balloons might contain anthrax or chemical agents, as opposed to the relatively harmless incendiaries. ---
**Author:** ![I\_am\_Sparticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@I\_am\_Sparticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_am_Sparticus)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/30 "2002-12-14T19:46:05Z")
Oops. ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/31 "2002-12-14T20:20:56Z")
I have never heard that Japan ever wanted to invade the United States, they bombed Pearl Harbor to end the embargo and to get us out of the way. Hitler did want to attack the United States,and bomb the United States, but I never heard of any plan to invade the United States. I read that Krushcev wanted to attack and invade the United States, but his generals told him their army was not big enough to occupy and fight 100 million armed American citizens in a guerilla war. If Switzerland was bypassed in WW2 because their citizens were armed, why would any country ever consider invading and occupying a land with 100 million armed citizens? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/32 "2002-12-14T20:33:10Z")
> [@](#): > > “When war comes between Japan and the United States, I shall not be content to merely occupying Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and San Francisco. I look forward to dictating the piece of United States in the White House at Washington.” This is not actually what Yamamoto said. [I quoted his actual statement in this thread.]([http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1337781#post1337781](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1337781#post1337781)) and noted the torturous route it took to being quoted. Yamamoto wrote to a pro-military industrialist months before the war _warning_ him that beginning a war with the U.S. was foolish, since the U.S. would never sue for peace. > [@](#): > > Should hostilities break out between Japan and the United States it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philipines or even Hawaii and San Francisco. We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House. I wonder if our politicians who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war have confidence as to the outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices? The industrialist (who favored the war) let several of the Japanese war leaders read the letter. They republished the letter, modified to make it look as though Yamamoto was proclaiming ultimate victory (completely reversing his statements). The U.S. seized on the propaganda piece to use as counter-propaganda. Japan _never_ intended to invade the U.S. and Yamamoto does not appear to have either favored the war or believed it winnable. The Japanese leadership was focused on Southeast Asia and Oceania and believed that inflicting grievous harm on the U.S. fleet would be sufficient to compel the U.S. to go away and leave Japan alone. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/33 "2002-12-14T20:38:07Z")
> [@](#): > > If Switzerland was bypassed in WW2 because their citizens were armed, why would any country ever consider invading and occupying a land with 100 million armed citizens? While Swiss citizens are armed and their mountainous contry makes invasion unpalatable, neither of those facts provided the basic reason why countries respecting Swiss neutrality. Swiss banking, however, had a lot to do with it. There is much more to banking than simply having gold in the vaults and both the Axis and the Allies knew that war would disrupt the banking system in a way to seriously harm their respective war efforts. ---
**Author:** ![Daoloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@Daoloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daoloth)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/34 "2002-12-14T20:50:20Z")
Ah, much thanks **Tomndebb**. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/35 "2002-12-14T23:13:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Susanann \* > \*\* > > If Switzerland was bypassed in WW2 because their citizens were armed, why would any country ever consider invading and occupying a land with 100 million armed citizens? \*\* First, the Swiss citizens weren’t merely armed. They all (the men at least) were trained soldiers, which makes an _enormous_ difference. Second, the geography of Switzerland (essentially mountains) makes an invasion very difficult in any case. Third, there was no particular strategical advantage in invading Switzerland. Last but not least, Germany had an interest in keeping Switzerland out of the war, due to its banking and trading activities, which benefitted Germany a lot. Switzerland was definitely not “bypassed because their citizens were armed”. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/36 "2002-12-14T23:55:33Z")
> [@](#): > > This is simply not true - the Japanese took and held an island of ours up in Alaska for quite some time. Their supply lines only broke down after we were able to launch an effective counter attact. [Look at the map on the top of this page.](http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/bering/) The Aleutian Islands are much closer to Japan than the west coast of the continental US. The North Pacific not only gets quite narrow up towards the Bering Sea, but the distortions in most flat maps also tend to make the distances towards the poles appear greater than they actually are. The islands in question, Attu and Kiska, are pretty close to Japan. IIRC, in Gordon Prange’s Miracle at Midway, it’s mentioned that many Japanese senior commanders opposed the occupation of Midway Island on the grounds that it could not be supported logistically. If they couldn’t logistically support the invasion of Midway, how could they possibly support the invasion of the west coast of the continental United States? ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2002, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/37 "2002-12-15T02:22:21Z")
> [@](#): > > ## \*If Switzerland was bypassed in WW2 because their citizens were armed, why would any country ever consider invading and occupying a land with 100 million armed citizens? > > Originally posted by tomndebb \* > \*\*While Swiss citizens are armed and their mountainous contry makes invasion unpalatable, neither of those facts provided the basic reason why countries respecting Swiss neutrality. > > Swiss banking, however, had a lot to do with it. There is much more to banking than simply having gold in the vaults and both the Axis and the Allies knew that war would disrupt the banking system in a way to seriously harm their respective war efforts. \*\* If you want to know the real basic reasons why Switzerland was bypassed, read these books that I own : "Target Switzerland-Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War 2 " by Stephen P. Halbrook and “Total Resistance- Swiss Army Guide to Gurerrilla Warfare and Underground Operations” by Major H. Von Dach Any time armed citizens resist, it is a handful. When 100 million armed citizens resist, no army is large enough to occupy it. * * * Here is a quote from Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook’s book: [http://i2i.org/Publications/IP/Other/Target\_Switzerland.htm](http://i2i.org/Publications/IP/Other/Target_Switzerland.htm) “In World War II, the Swiss had defenses no other country had. Let’s begin with the rifle in every home combined with the Alpine terrain. When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German soldiers, a Swiss replied: shoot twice and go home. Switzerland also had a decentralized, direct democracy which could not be surrendered to a foreign enemy by a political elite. Some governments surrendered to Hitler without resistance based on the decision of a king or dictator; this was institutionally impossible in Switzerland. If an ordinary Swiss citizen was told that the Federal President–a relatively powerless official–had surrendered the country, the citizen might not even know the president’s name, and would have held any “surrender” order in contempt.” "When Hitler came to power in 1933, the Swiss feared an invasion and began military preparations like no other European nation. On Hitler’s 1938 “Anchluss” or annexation of Austria, the Swiss Parliament declared that the Swiss were prepared to defend themselves “to the last drop of their blood.” When the Fuehrer attacked Poland in 1939, Swiss General Guisan ordered the citizen army to resist any attack to the last cartridge. After Denmark and Norway fell in 1940, Guisan and the Federal Council gave the order to the populace: Aggressively attack invaders; act on your own initiative; regard any surrender broadcast or announcement as enemy propaganda; resist to the end. This was published as a message to the Swiss and a warning to the Germans; surrender was impossible, even if ordered by the government, for the prior order mandated that any “surrender” be treated as an enemy lie. When the Germany army, the Wehrmacht, attacked Belgium and Holland, it feigned preparations for attack through Switzerland. Like actors on a giant movie set, divisions moved toward the Swiss border by day, only to sneak back again by night and repeat the ruse the next day. Both the Swiss and the French were tricked into thinking that concentrations of troops were massing to attack through Switzerland and into France. Swiss border troops nervously awaited an assault each time the clock approached the hour, for the Germans were punctual in lauching attacks on the hour. When France collapsed, detailed Nazi invasion plans with names like “Case Switzerland” and “Operation Tannenbaum” were prepared for the German General Staff. They only awaited the Fuehrer’s nod. Threatened with attack from German and Italian forces from all sides, General Guisan devised the strategy of a delaying stand at the border, and a concentration of Swiss forces in the rugged and impassable Alps. This chosen place of engagement was called the Réduit national, meaning a national fort within a fort. German tanks and planes, Panzers and Luftwaffe, would be ineffective there. A fifth of the Swiss people, 850,000 out of the 4.2 million population, was under arms and mobilized. Most men were in the citizens army, and boys and old men with rifles constituted the Home Guard. Many women served in the civil defense and the anti-aircraft defense. Nazi invasion plans for 1941 were postponed to devote all forces to Operation Barbarossa, the attack on Russia. The Swiss would have their turn in due time. Hitler banned the play William Tell. He called the Swiss “the most despicable and wretched people, mortal enemies of the new Germany”; in the same breath he fumed that all Jews must be expelled from Europe. His plan to annihilate the Jews would have faced a special obstacle in Switzerland, where every Swiss Jew (like every other citizen) had a rifle in his home. In the heroic Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943, Jews demonstrated how genocide could be resisted with only a few pistols and rifles. Hitler boasted that he would liquidate “the rubbish of small nations” and would be “the Butcher of the Swiss.” But the dictator was more comfortable with liquidating unarmed peoples and was dissuaded from invading Switzerland. There was no Holocaust on Swiss soil." [http://i2i.org/Publications/IP/Other/Target\_Switzerland.htm](http://i2i.org/Publications/IP/Other/Target_Switzerland.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2002, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473/38 "2002-12-15T02:39:48Z")
One woman with a 5-shot bolt action rifle rifle, Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko, killed 309 invading Germans. [http://soviet-awards.addr.com/digest/pavlichenko/pavlichenko1.htm](http://soviet-awards.addr.com/digest/pavlichenko/pavlichenko1.htm) Could, would, any of you men do better than a girl? if America was invaded? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pearl-harbor-and-the-second-amendment-is-this-for-real/142473.md?page=1)