PEARL HARBOR (Hawaii) – December 7, 1941
US Navy officials reported earlier today that a number of Navy warships in the American settlement of Pearl Harbor were suddenly discovered to be sinking. Unnamed sources blamed the incident on a training exercise being conducted by the Japanese Navy nearby.
In Tokyo, Japanese officials said while some civilian fishing boats were in the area, they were unaware of any unusual activity. They repeated their commitment to the peace process, and said that any violence was the direct result of continued American aggression. They emphasized that only peaceful negotiations based on a US acceptance of Japan’s leading role in Asia could reduce the tensions between the countries, and called for an international inquiry.
US President Roosevelt, who leads the hard-line Democratic Party, accused the Japanese Navy of a deliberate “sneak attack” on the American fleet. He said thousands of American soldiers had been killed on “a day that will live in infamy.” There was no independent confirmation of those figures, which respected Japanese sources say are greatly exaggerated.
Because of the belligerent tone of the right-wing American President’s remarks, many Japanese consider him to be a war criminal.
The region, in which the US has built hundreds of illegal settlements since its unilateral annexation of Hawaii, has been a flash point since US Admiral Perry’s visit to Japan in 1853, which some Japanese consider to have been a defilement of holy Japanese soil by an uncivilized foreigner.
Japanese civilians have repeatedly called for spontaneous “days of rage” to protest the intrusion by the American military, which is in violation of international law.
Since Perry’s visit, more than 120 million Japanese have died, many of them children, and more than 73 typhoons and 213 earthquakes have struck Japan. No earthquakes were recorded in the US.
** CORRECTION ** The original article said that “No earthquakes were recorded in the US.” In fact, in 1906 there was a serious earthquake in San Francisco, a settlement in California (annexed from Mexico). At the time, San Francisco had a large Asian population and many of the victims were Japanese.