@Greater Good
"Others have said it, but I gotta repeat:
Before Pearl Harbor, America was still slowly gearing up to help Britain fight Germany.
Afterwards, we're building warships in a couple of days and the employment rate skyrockets.2
As per Sir Laurence Olivier, the narrator of the TV documentary series "The World At War": post-Japan's surrender, American troops went home to the only country to emerge out of WWII in profit; it had more oil/coal than it could burn, more steel & other metals than it could manufacture with, more ships, planes, tanks, guns & ammunition than it could use (thus the creation of the US Armed Forces as we know it today), and more food than it could eat & more money than it could spend.
Indeed, the US had manpower almost in surplus, to the extent that employers were virtually fighting with each other to recruit now ex-military men to their workforces (certainly to accomodate the vast expansion industrially, commercially & financially).
The US also had secrets to keep them busy for decades to come; and not just refinements & replacements to their exising atomic bombs: captured Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Me-262s to reverse-engineer, to give their upcoming planes jet engines. Captured V-1s to reverse-engineer (I've seen photos of American versions, 'JB-2s'), which ultimately evolved into the Cruise Missiles we know today. Captured V-2 rockets, to say nothing of the ultimate prize: ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wehrner von Braun - without his engine designs, the Mercury, nay, Apollo missions, thus Armstrong's 'One Small Step For Man' would never have happened.
In Japan attacking Pearl Harbour, did they not only organise, but re-created the US beyond all recognition, ultimately making it the only superpower today. And along with Hiroshima & Nagasaki then, has Cling(to delusion)man's argument now, been completely vapourised.
Skatepunk
"@ Anon-e-moose
Who's the lady in the bikini? :) "
She's Natsuki Kuga, from the anime series "My-HiME":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natsuki_Kuga
A lethal shot, and even controls a mecha wolf with huge flank cannons.
