12. Racism & Arrogance
The Americans held some pretty racist and ignorant views against the Japanese, causing them to greatly underestimate them. This is one of the biggest reasons America was so unprepared when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Americans assumed that the Japanese were behind in technological advances and many newspapers and magazines portrayed them in a horrible light. They also assumed that the Japanese weren’t very skilled aviators, which eventually led them to being quite vulnerable when the Japanese did attack.