From: [REDACTED] at [hprnd.rose.hp.com] (Steve Kao)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,talk.bizarre,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Gun licenses
Date: 12 Nov 1993 18:38:00 GMT

Leo P Reilly ([r--il--y] at [cats.ucsc.edu]) wrote:
> And, BTW, if the Japanese had not had the bad sense to stop with the
> bombing at Pearl Harbor and attacked San Diego and San Pedro first,
> the British might have had to bail us out!  The entire Pacific fleet
> was a ripe apple for the picking at the time and it was only our
> good luck that kept us from eating sushi earlier than the 1980's.

Apparently, the Japanese did consider such an attack in 1941.  The
following is from "Tillamook Guerillas, Defenders of the Oregon Coast,"
_Soldier_of_Fortune_, vol. 15, no.1, January 1990.  All typos are mine.

"A Japanese intelligence study prepared in the summer of 1941 considered
a number of factors in evaluating the viability of an all-out attack on
the West Coast.  Tokyo wanted to know if they could pull it off; and if
they pulled it off, could they keep what they'd won?  This intelligence
study recommended *against* attempting an invasion for several specific
reasons, to wit: although U.S. military forces were known to be weak and
spread very thin, invading forces would be at the end of a long and
potentially vulnerable supply line - and they were already very much
involved in China.  But the pivotal consideration was that they could
not hope to control or even hold the territoryy they might occupy;
because muchh of the populationn was _not_ located in metropolis
centers, and becauuse they judged Americans to be by nature too
undisciplined to possibly be controlled by a central invading authority.
And not only were Americans disinclined to be ruled by someone they
didn't choose, most Americans, especially in the West, _were_armed_and_
_probably_would_fight_."

- Steve Kao