Submitted: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was an act of self-defense.

That might have been their reason, however skewed their logic might have been, but be careful with the term self-defense.

Are you also implying it was wrong for the US to block trade...that passive aggressive strategy has been used time and time again by the UN to soften aggressive countries that threaten other nations' sovereignty?

The Japan that entered World War II was still relatively young to diplomacy. Their disgraceful campaigns in China and the South Pacific were born as much of sheer naivete as of economic need (not to mention an inborn, implicit contempt for all things not Japanese). Japan's military leaders actually thought that attacking Pearl Harbor would HUMILIATE the United States to such a degree that the country would back off. I can't help thinking they saw Pearl Harbor as much in terms of a turf war as a genuine invitation to prolonged combat.

US trade restrictions on Japan, such as they were (ALL trade didn't really end until after war actually broke out -- before that, certain Japanese products such as silk were still commonly imported to the United States and Europe) had more to do with stifling Japan's obvious designs on China and Southeast Asia. These were not our ALLIES per se, or else we WOULD have probably leapt to their defense -- certainly as early as 1937. We didn't. It was not considered to be in our best interest. (Let's leave aside the history of the Flying Tigers for the moment.)

The American people in this seven-or-eight-year period that led to Pearl Harbor were still wrestling with the crushing effect of the Depression, and had no interest in fighting a war that was "someone else's business." The war in Europe had been raging full-fledged for over two years already. By many, if not most accounts, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was dying to get into the European conflict, but American public sentiment was completely against it. If the Japanese had NOT attacked Pearl Harbor, who knows how long it might have taken for the United States to get into the war? If at all?

It's been alleged that there was a deliberate miscommunication between the White House and the Imperial Palace immediately before Pearl Harbor (although I wouldn't go so far as to suggest, as some have, that Washington knew Pearl Harbor was going to happen before it did, and let it happen because this was the thing that would finally inflame the American people into WANTING a war. But certainly Roosevelt and company knew that some drastic break with Japan had to happen -- perhaps they believed that simply spurning Japan's offers would lead to a less overt declaration of intent.)

Trivia note: Japan never had a chance. Militarily, they were never competent to face the United States. ONE SINGLE PLANT in America churned out more battleships than was possible for ALL of Japan's plants to build during the length of the entire war. It was an earthshaking folly on Japan's part (only a handful of their military seemed to recognize this), and, again, I think born of a particular navel-gazing naievete about the rest of the world in general.

As for "two-sided" war films, that's rarely been the nature of the genre -- "us vs. them" being the whole point of war itself -- and most of the best I can think of offhand aren't American: the French GRAND ILLUSION, the Japanese THE BURMESE HARP, and the Japanese-American coproduction HELL IN THE PACIFIC (only two characters in the whole thing, sort of a war movie in microcosm.)

Clay G.