Donald Trump surprised the Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi this Thursday at the White House at compare the US attacks against Iran with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II. The joking reference to the most traumatic episode served the US president to defend the offensive against Tehran during a meeting at the White House with Takaichi.
Trump responded this way when a journalist asked him why he had not informed his allies of his military plans. “We didn’t tell anyone because we wanted surprise. Who knows more about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”stated the president in the Oval Office.
Takaichi’s reaction was immediate but he remained silent. The Japanese leader opened her eyes wide and moved in her chair while listening, through an interpreter, to Trump’s allusion to one of the most traumatic episodes in the history between the two countries.
A delicate reference
Japan’s attack on the US naval base Pearl Harborin Hawaii he December 7, 1941 caused the death of 2,390 Americans and, as a consequence, the United States declared war on Japan the next day.
The president Franklin D. Roosevelt He then defined the date as ““a day that will live in infamy”. The war would end after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima y Nagasakiin August 1945, until now the only nuclear attacks used in a war conflict.
The memory of the Second World War It remains a sensitive issue in Japan, a country that for decades has strived to strengthen its alliance with the United States and has tried to leave behind the memory of the conflict. Takaichi has also been linked to nationalist positions in the past and has maintained that Japan waged a defensive war and has apologized excessively to other Asian countries.
US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the Oval Office. / Europa Press/Aaron Schwartz
Defense of the attack on Iran
However, in Trump’s imagination, the comparison served to justify why neither the US nor Israel previously warned their allies before attack Iran on February 28. In his response, he insisted that the objective was to maintain the factor of surprise before the military operation.
During the scene, Takaichi did not respond to the American president’s words. In the images broadcast live, the leader seemed to contain a slight sigh as she changed her position, in a room packed with Japanese and American journalists, where at least one audible gesture of discomfort was also heard among those present.
He American president has defended the attack on Iran claiming that Tehran was about to get a nuclear weapona claim that is not supported by the nuclear watchdog of the HIM nor of the majority of observers. Trump has also called on the Iranians to overthrow their clerical regime, although without formally setting regime change as an official goal.
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