PicoBlog

The common comparison over the last weeks has been between 10/7 and 9/11. Here, we’ve been talking about the atom bomb and WWII. I think the most relevant comparison to 10/7 is also WWII, in Pearl Harbor.

Both were surprise military attacks intended not as terrorism but acts of war. Hawaii, however, was not even American national territory in 1942 but rather a conquered colonial territory. In addition, the population of the U.S. in 1941 was 133 million, 15 times that of Israel today.

The death toll from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was 2403, of which only 68 were civilian. The current round number settled on for 10/7 is 1200, nearly all civilian. In an attack against military facilities, designed to destroy naval military assets, not to maximize wanton civilian death, the Japanese exacted a death toll only twice as large as that on 10/7, from a populace 15 times greater than Israel's.

In response to that attack, seeking unconditional surrender comparable to Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas (and victory over Japan did destroy the prewar regime), the U.S. prosecuted a total war, not exempting civilian populations (as did all parties in the war), both at sea and from the air. It waged that war for just short of 3 years and nine months, during which, in the Pacific Theater only, stemming from an originating death toll of 2403, up to 4 million Japanese lost their lives, including between half to one million civilians.

In the final island-hopping amphibious invasion, of Okinawa (not Japanese territory but a conquered colonial territory, like Hawaii), intended to serve as a staging area for an American invasion of mainland Japan, perhaps 150 thousand third-party Okinawans died, more than the combined military deaths of the Japanese and U.S. forces.

Some historical perspective.

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