WASHINGTON President Donald Trump drew a parallel on Thursday between US strikes on Iran and Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, as he defended the war he launched against Tehran while meeting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington.
“We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” Trump replied when a journalist asked why he had not told allies about his war plans.
“You believe in surprise, I think much more so than us.”
Takaichi’s eyes widened and she shifted in her chair as Trump, seated beside her in the Oval Office, evoked the moment that drew the US into World War Two.
The Japanese attack on the US naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, killed 2,390 Americans. The US declared war on Japan the next day, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt calling it “a date which will live in infamy.”
