Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

204 • PEARL HARBOR
This law was amended in June 1998. The old law allowed each
member of the Self-Defense Forces to make a judgment concerning
the use of firearms, but the amended law stipulates that each member
can use firearms on the orders of a superior officer. The law was
amended again in December 2001, going hand-in-hand with the enactment
of the special anti-terrorism legislation (October 2001) to
support the U.S. military attack against Afghanistan in response to a
series of terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September
2001. The amended law allowed the Self-Defense Forces to participate
in the Peace Keeping Forces (PKF) operations and eased the
standard of use of firearms by the members of Self-Defense Forces.
Despite such major amendments, the Japanese government did not
abandon the observation of the five conditions that were placed on
SDF involvement in peacekeeping activities. Consequently, it is practically
impossible for the Self-Defense Forces to directly participate
in the PKF operations.
PEARL HARBOR. On 7 December 1941, some 400 Japanese carrierbased
torpedo bombers launched an attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet
at Pearl Harbor. They sank five of the fleet’s six best battleships,
damaged numerous lesser vessels, and destroyed more than threequarters
of the fleet’s 230 planes. Nearly 2,330 American military
personnel were killed. American naval power in the Pacific was crippled.
Seen from a purely tactical viewpoint, the attack on Pearl Harbor
was a resounding success.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was accompanied by attacks on Western
positions throughout the Far East. Within days of Pearl Harbor,
two British battleships—the Prince of Wales and the Repulse—had
been sunk. Within weeks, Hong Kong had fallen to Japanese invaders.
Soon thereafter, Malaya and then Singapore were in Japanese
hands. Resistance to the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies, Burma,
and Ceylon collapsed in early 1942. The Philippines fell to Japanese
troops within six months of Pearl Harbor.
The state of panic that gripped the United States in the immediate
aftermath of Pearl Harbor was soon replaced by a grim determination
to roll back the marauding Japanese forces. This determination was
fed in large part by the perception that Japan had not only violated international
law but also basic tenets of decency in launching the at-