Spaghetti-Os remembers Pearl Harbor in the most crass and tasteless way imaginable

Agreed. Many for-profit companies will tweet a simple sentence on such days of commemoration, indicating respect. A smiling cartoon mascot is not the way.

Ah, Pearl Harbor day. The day we get upset about Japan attacking a military base (like you’re supposed to in a war), while ignoring the millions of innocent civilians we dropped nuclear bombs on.

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Yes, but the USA and the Empire of Japan weren’t at war when the military base was attacked.

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Read more.

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Bartenders tend to have trouble with any drink involving flame and a possibly inebriated customer putting one glass in another. It’s stressful and a hassle for them.

Ah yes. That would be Facebook, where people get mad over things that no longer matter and don’t care about things that do matter that they can’t bandwagon. Pearl Harbor is a “tragedy” while nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn’t? People got fired up about Kony except that his main opposition in Uganda was reportedly responsible for over ten times the amount of child soldiers in the same time period, AND the US military had already undertaken actions against him. Really, things like Kony should be the first step to general citizens learning about the horrible things going on in the world, but they don’t want that. They want fetishistic, 24/7 news of the latest school shooting, because that’s something that is close enough that they get to feel bad with the person, but far enough they don’t know anyone related to the incident. Every single time it’s nonstop coverage that glorifies the shooter, and the general public is glued to their TVs for every last detail. THAT is offensive.

So this? In perspective, not really offensive.We have a decent relationship with Japan as the US anyways.

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The Japanese hadn’t yet delivered the declaration of war until after the attack. Perhaps bumbling diplomats, or over eager aviators were to blame.

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A combination of over-eager and overconfident generals and poor command structure. The Japanese high command thought that they could win a decisive battle at Pearl Harbor and sink basically every battleship we had, then roll on into the mainland. As a sneak attack, mind you. That didn’t happen, and the sleeping giant was roused. They vastly underestimated American industrial capacity. Some scholars muse that America’s aid in the war was exaggerated, but I don’t think the soldiers minded that most ammunition for the western front came from America, as England had been half flattened. Plus America had over three times the population at that time anyways- the US is not a small country, in fact we’re the third most populous nation on the planet.

There’s records of the Emperor of Japan telling the generals not to go through with the attack as he knew that Japan couldn’t beat the US in a slugging match, and that if left alone, the US wouldn’t enter the war of its own volition. There’s a bit of scholarly debate on if FDR basically baited Japanese high command into the attack. If Germany managed to finally flatten England so that the only person capable of delivering a surrender was a thirteen year old girl from Ireland, then Germany would’ve only had to have fought on their eastern front, leading to a dramatically different war.

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You obviously underestimate 13-year-old Irish girls. Surrender? Pshaw! :smile:

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Pearl Harbor - a day that will live in infamy. Until the generation it happened to dies out. In ten years you will hear, “Pearl Harbor day? I love pearls!”

As for Spaghetti-os - when I was really little we were pretty poor and usually bought generic food and rarely processed stuff. But I saw the Speghetti-os commercial and had to have some. My mom relented and got a can. They were god awful.

A lot of advertisements lied to me as a kid. I was positive if I had the right pitcher my Kool-aid would talk to me. And I wanted to get Aunt Jemimah syrup for the same reason.

It’s the mascot. It seems incapable of delivering the appropriate emotional response. Locked into the cheerful smile, it seems to be saying. “YAY. I HAVE CASUS BELLI. Now I can start a war without losing stability.”

An altogether inappropriate reaction considering that it’s traditionally a time to remember the USS Arizona, and the thousands of sailors who drowned.

It was the diplomats: they had to hunt-and-peck type the translation which is why the “memo” was delivered 1.5 hours late

So they hadn’t declared war yet; they declared war by committing an act of war. I don’t see how that remotely compares to dropping nuclear bombs on millions of innocent civilians.

“Millions?” Highest estimate I can find is 225,000 people (mostly civilians, but some soldiers) killed by the two nukes, out of at most half a million Japanese civilians killed total during the entire war.

Meanwhile, Imperial Japan killed some seven and a half million civilians in China alone.

Obviously this doesn’t excuse the nukes. We probably didn’t need to use them, and the war-weary desire for a quick end is a pretty weak justification for that kind of body count. On the other hand, it’s better than Imperial Japan murdering and raping their way across China for shits and giggles, so mind who you’re setting up as the Good Guys in your black-and-white world.

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Yeah - as someone else said, the millions figure is way off. We did them a favor by dropping those bombs. Every person able to hold a weapon was preparing to protect the mainland. A traditional assault would have been bloody on both sides, with a much higher casualty rate than what two bombs did, and many more civilians killed.

And after the Japanese’s shenanigans in China, I don’t find much empathy for their casualties from the bombs.

This is even more offensive considering that Chef Boy-ar-dee was a known Mussolini sympathizer.

(OK, probably not, but that canned pasta must be some kind of crime against humanity.)

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Kurt Vonnegut had a brilliant one-word retort to that argument: “Nagasaki.”

That says a lot more about you than the people who were killed in the bombings. Even if you believe both nuclear attacks were conducted out of military necessity for the greater good of mankind, that needn’t diminish one’s empathy for the countless victims who had little or nothing to do with Japanese military policy. How many of the burned, irradiated women and children in either of those cities bore any responsibility for the rape of Nanking?

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I’m wondering why it’s wrong to try and look like an American company or suggest that you support the USA…

“But he did it too” stops being an argument when leaving kindergarden. Two evils don’t turn to something good - especially when those that respond with evil styled themselves as “force of good/freedom” since '45.

Those killed during 9/11 had it coming then because the US Government being a murderous asshat for the last decades? Funny thing is that those 9/11 victims are probably more deserving of their fate than those japanese civilians because they actually voted for their government.

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So - setting aside all the specifics of this part of this war - why is that important? I’ve often wondered about that - when a country decides to go to war with another, it’s basically saying “we’re prepared to keep killing you until you surrender or there’s none of you left”. At that point, what the hell does it matter whether you sent a letter first?

Isn’t it just “let’s take this outside” on an obscene scale? As in, something that immediately marks you as a meathead thug? Getting ready to commit violence isn’t something that should have ceremony attached to it. If you need to defend yourself or your loved ones, get on and bloody do it, but if you’ve got time to wonder about the rules of engagement, you’ve probably still got other options.

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