> months before WW2
What's the definition of WW2 here? US supplied oil and metal to Japan until 1941 [0], 3 years after Japan invaded China [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_attack_o...
What's the definition of WW2 here? US supplied oil and metal to Japan until 1941 [0], 3 years after Japan invaded China [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_attack_o...
https://goo.gl/maps/npoRDeSFHKcXVKjQ6
Bonus story: My dad's uncle was scheduled to get out of the Army on December 8, 1941. He was on a ship from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco. When his ship got the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, his shipped turned right around. He was in the infantry, and he spent the next 3+ years fighting in the Pacific, including storming 4 beaches (e.g. just like storming the beaches of Normandy in the first scene of Saving Private Ryan). His battalion had 250% turnover during the war, and by the end of the conflict, he and 1 other guy were the only original soldiers left.
Bonus bonus story: He told me about a time when the Japanese were shelling US soldiers from the top of a hill with an artillery piece. The artillery was hiding behind some pretty thick trees, and was hard to target, so the US decided to have soldiers run up the hill in a direct attack. I guess it's smarter to charge artillery that's shooting at you if you have no place to hide? Anyway, it was a trap. As most of the soldiers got close to the top of the hill, the Japanese fled. It turned out the Japanese had stuffed the hill with explosives, and they blew that hill up big time. My dad's uncle was towards the rear of the charge, and he got knocked out from the shockwave of the explosion. When he awake, he was buried up to his waist in dirt and surrounded by the body parts of his fellow soldiers. Holy crap :P
Ye gods. That reminds of Felix, a character from the book Armor, by John Steakley.
> It turned out the Japanese had stuffed the hill with explosives
Well, there you go. Nothing is new under the sun. Beneath Hill 60 [0] is a movie about the Allies doing the same thing to the Germans in WWI. The explosion was heard in London, about 250km away. It killed around 10,000 Germans [1], but according to the movie had very little effect on the eventual outcome.
I thought it must have been pretty unique event. Apparently not.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_Hill_60 [1] https://www.military-history.org/articles/world-war-i-hill-6...