Trump Invokes Pearl Harbor Standing Next to Japanese PM: “Who Knows Better About Surprise Than Japan?”
President Donald Trump invoked the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor while standing beside Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at a White House press conference Thursday, in response to a question about why the U.S. did not warn allies before attacking Iran.
A Japanese reporter asked Trump why he did not inform allies in Europe and Asia — including Japan — before launching strikes on Iran, saying “We Japanese citizens are very confused.”
Trump responded: “One thing you don’t want to signal too much. You know, when we go in, we went in very hard and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay, why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”
Trump then continued: “I think much more so than us. And we had a surprise and we did, and because of that surprise, we knocked out the first two days, we probably knocked out 50% of what we, and much more than we anticipated doing. So if I go and tell everybody about it, there’s no longer a surprise.”
Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, was in Washington for her first official visit to the White House. She had arrived bearing a gift of 250 cherry trees and seeking to strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance amid the Iran war. Trump made the Pearl Harbor remark to the press corps — not directly to Takaichi — but she was standing beside him as the president compared his unauthorized war to Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on a U.S. military base that killed 2,403 Americans and drew the United States into World War II.
The remark also sidestepped the substance of the question: why the president launched a war without notifying Congress or U.S. allies. Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Congress Thursday for $200 billion in additional funding for the Iran war. The ODNI’s own worldwide threat assessment found Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.
The U.S.-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of Pacific security and has been for 80 years. Japan hosts 54,000 U.S. troops. It’s America’s most important ally in containing China. Trump is actively asking Takaichi to send Japanese naval vessels to the Strait of Hormuz to help with his Iran war. He needs her.
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