Foreign Pool Report #7 Takaichi reaction to Pearl Harbor remark

Earlier in the Oval, when President Trump was answering the question about why he didn't notify allies about his intentions to strike Iran, he said, "well, 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, ok?"

"Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor, ok? Right? He's asking me--no, you believe in surprise, 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 is no longer a surprise, right?"

When President Trump likened the U.S. element of surprise to Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Prime Minister Takaichi viscerally reacted, her eyes widening and her smile disappearing as she leaned back, drawing her hands in, clearly taken aback by the sudden mention of Pearl Harbor.

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Mineko Tokito Abe

Senior Washington Reporter

The Yomiuri Shimbun

General Bureau of the Americas

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