Playing with history

[xoxoxoBruce]

Don't think he could have done much different than how it originally played out. '38, we weren't ready, the Army Air Corp was flying WWI leftovers, there was no Armored Division, because we didn't have any armor, to speak of. Industry was just starting to plan how they would ramp up in case of war. If he had jumped into the fray, our remote, thinly maned outposts in the Pacific were in jeopardy, immediately.

But #1, with a bullet, reason? The people didn't want it. The people had been unhappy with WWI and the treatment of the veterans after the war. They wanted no part of a war in far off Europe. Remember that Europe was still half a world away in '38. It was something you'd see in magazines and maybe Pathe News Reels at the movies. You didn't actually know someone that had been there, except Grandpa in WWI, and the immigrants that lived a couple streets over...but you don't talk to them anyway.

The federal government was seeing the handwriting on the wall and gearing up their campaign to convince the people, with the help of Hollywood and the press. I've seen a couple movies that were released in '40 and early '41, that featured Nazi Spies and saboteurs running amok in our factories.

Once we took the hit at Pearl Harbor, the campaign was on, big time, with stories of Japs butchering babies and Krauts driving tanks through schools.

Ted Geisel (Dr Seuss) did an amazing series of political cartoons, ripping the Japs, through the summer of '41. For the months leading up to Pearl Harbor he ridiculed them and warned we'd kick there ass if they started anything. Then the first cartoon after Pearl, he was like, Damn, that hurt, must have been a rock in the sock. But the next cartoon after that was, Oh yeah, well you're really gonna get it now. looking at this stuff in context is interesting.

OK, one more and I'll stop rambling.
During Carters hostage crises in Iran, my brother and I were discussing the ethics of taking civilian hostages. I brought up that even after Pearl Harbor, the Japs in Washington negotiating, were allowed to leave the country.
My mother, after a couple glasses of wine, pipes up, "Well, we threw them right to hell out."
I had to smile.... yeah, no thoughts of jail, no torture, no killing, we threw them right to hell out. That was pre-WWII America. Hardly prepared for what was to come.