Posted on 12/18/2016 11:53:38 AM PST by Retain Mike
I didn't post the URL, because the article was on the member side, so I copied it entirely.
Interesting perspective. Everyone should remember that the Japanese have never formally apologized for the manifold war crimes & atrocities they committed against the Allies and their Asian neighbors before and during WWII. The genocidal actions are glossed over in their school texts, and there are many in Japan, younger generations included, who feel they did nothing wrong because they were forced into war by the U.S. All bullsh*t, of course.
Thanks.
Well, the Japanese textbooks are telling a (half)-truth there:
- The US embargo on Japan of 1941 WAS in fact an act of (cold) war any way you look at it.
- However, the reason for that embargo by the USA against Japan was Japan’s unprovoked (hot) war against China and elsewhere in Asia.
- FDR was indeed trying to provoke the Japanese so that he could get into the US into the war and save Europe from Hitler (the Pacific being a decidedly second tier theater).
Once the war got going, only about 20% of our war resources went into the Pacific, and that was more than enough to defeat Japan, a second-rate power.
FDR’s main and primary goal was always stopping Hitler, but since Hitler would nto provide a pretext for the US to join that war, their allies in Japan would have to do.
And they did. If they had listened to the Japanese Army’s advice, and left the US alone, Japan might still be in China and Korea.
I have run into American liberals online that believe the same thing.
One has to wonder how much FDR’s European policy was about stopping Hitler and how much about helping Stalin take over as much of Europe as possible. FDR was consistently toeing Stalin’s line on almost any point of contention.
I loved the PI. I found the people to be very warm and friendly; to this day I go out of my way to greet Filipinos that I happen to meet in Tagalog. I couldn't understand then or now how one group of people could be so cruel to them.
Several years later, I got an assignment to Japan. I couldn't look at a Japanese man that I assumed to be in their 40s or 50s and wonder if he was one of those unspeakably monstrous people who lopped off the heads of innocent civilians or our GIs from Bataan. Not surprisingly, I was never able to form any kind of friendship with any Japanese person.
My Dad was also a civilian machinist at Pearl during the bombing. He never talked about it much.
ping for later
About 20 years ago, I read where the libs in Seattle got together and set up a monument to a 12-year-old Japanese girl who was killed when we bombed Hiroshima. Naturally, the opening day was done on the anniversary of the bomb dropping. There was a really weepy “Bad America” tone to the whole article, trying to lay a guilt trip on the rest of us.
I wrote the reporter and asked her when they were going to erect a monument to a 12-year-old Hawaiian girl who was killed in the Pearl Harbor attack.
She wrote back that “she was unaware there were any civilian casualties at Pearl Harbor.”
So help me, I wanted to bang my head against the monitor.
Well, he was committed to forcing Great Britain into divesting her empire after the war, and he hewed his policy to help that come about. That was a tragedy for Britain, and much more so for her former colonies, which were thrown into independence (and decades of indigenous corruption and warfare).
While the British Empire would have eventually devolved, WW2 and its aftermath speeded up the process, much to the detriment of the newly independent countries, for the most part. Most were not yet ready for full independence.
So refusing to sell something to someone is an act of war?
Nonsense.
OK. Let’s remove this from its time context and do it a pure academic exercise.
Country A has been the sole provider of certain crucial elements to Country B, which is completely dependent on these elements for its national security;
Country A has traditionally eschewed foreign meddling, hence it has been providing these elements to Country B for a decade, during which Country B has been engaged in a long draining war against a technologically inferior, but much larger, opponent.
Country A suddenly changes its policy and stops providing these elements to Country B, which has no other source for these elements.
Country B is hence left with two options:
a. Withdraw from its war and lose everything gained thereby, along with its plans for being the dominant power in its region; or
b. Secure those elements from sources that are currently controlled by, or allied with, Country A (which means war with Country A);
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see which course of action is the most likely to be taken by Country B in that scenario. That doesn’t mean that course is morally justified (but I would argue that foreign affairs have always been, and always will be and should be seen as power struggles - bringing subjective “morality” into the equation only clouds one’s judgment), but it does leave Country B very few options - the first one is tantamount to capitulation, while the second one at least seems to offer a chance of victory.
An outsider looking at this scenario will inevitably come to the conclusion that Country A is either:
1- being led by complete morons for not seeing what its sudden embargo on Country A will lead to, or that
2 - Country A in fact wants a war with Country B but does not want to be the first one to declare it. So it has manipulated Country B into starting it.
In which case Country A’s protestations about being unfairly and unprovokedly attacked ring, shall we say, somewhat hollow.
The above scenario describes EXACTLY what the relationship between Japan and the US was leading to the Pearl Harbor attack. FDR provoked that attack (although he was sure that the Japanese would strike the Phillippinnes, not Hawaii).
History is written by the winners, of course, but that fact is that the “trigger” that started the war in the Pacific was in fact armed (if not pulled) at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as much as in Tokyo.
Them’s the historical facts. Perhaps disenchanting, perhaps embarrassing, perhaps inconvenient - but TRUE.
Japan had a number of other countries it could have bought oil from if it had not already ticked them off by being a bunch of murderous SOBs.
When people refuse to do business with you because you are a murderous SOB it is not their fault. It is yours.
And that is the FACT JACK!
Once again you are allowing your views of “morality” (hence: emotion) cloud your judgment so that the point I am making is sailing right over your head.
I’ll try it again: FDR knew he was provoking a war with Japan when the US imposed its embargo.
We may agree that this was a good and necessary thing because allowing Japan to turn Asia into its colony was against our interests (which of course IT WAS), and that the US HAD to join the war in Europe - some way, any way - in order to stop Hitler (which, on balance, I would agree with);
but it also leads to the conclusion that FDR had American blood on his hands at Pearl Harbor.
The US was not an innocent that was the victim of a “dastardly attack” at Pearl Harbor; the US knowingly chose to push Japan into attacking us, then exploited to the max the happenstance of that attack being made on American soil ahead of an actual declaration of war for purely propaganda purposes.
Hence FDR’s immortal speech to Congress on December 8 1941 sounds a little bit hollow in retrospect.
When the war ended, Gen. MacArthur gave Col. Ishi and is butches a pass for being tried as war criminals as long as all his data was turned over to the US Army's Chemical warfare Corps.
Also, as the war ended, Tokyo sent all POW camps a message to kill all their prisoners before the allied armies could liberate them. The Great Raid [30 January 1945] on the POW camp at Cabanatuan, Luzon, Philippines was conducted by the 6th Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Filipino guerrillas. The raid liberated 522 prisoners, including Bataan Death March prisoners. Only 2 Rangers were killed, 4 Rangers wounded, and 2 prisoners died from complications of their captivity. Between 530 to 1,000 Imperial troops were killed and 4 tanks knocked out. The 2005 movie, The Great Raid, faithfully documents this operation.
Regarding Unit 731 - The other part of the reason why the US gave these war criminals a “pass” was that Col Ishi (who I believe later on became the 2-star Inspector General of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces after the war) withheld their biological weapons from elements in the Army that wanted to use them against Americans.
A terrible monster he was, yes, but pretty smart - he knew that if he did release these weapons to be used against the US he would be greasing the end of a rope when the war ended. Instead he kept making up excuses why the biological weapons were not ready when he was asked to provide them.
Like it or not that decision likely saved some American soldiers’ lives. MacArthur was a pragmatic man, and giving them a pass in light of the above (plus the turning over of all their data) was a bargain that was his to make. Not popular in China, to be sure, but who of us today has the moral authority to question him, who was “on the ground”?
War is a dirty business, and lots of decisions are made that look suspect when viewed with rose-colored 20-20 glassesfrom the comfort of a wealthy nation that is at peace.
The Great Raid was quite a movie. That was the first one I saw Dale Dye’s name listed on the credits as a consultant.
I have a 2,000+ word essay and four letters extracted from that about dropping the atomic bombs. I have included chemical warfare and the certain fate of our prisoners in the essay.
The Japanese had drafted able citizens 17-60 years old into the Peoples Volunteer Corps and Home Defense Units to assume infrastructure duties of army units and stay behind invaders for suicide missions using light weapons, biological agents, and explosives. Civilian soldiers were to stay behind advancing Americans to infuse pathogens into food and waters sources, to release infected animals and insects into American compounds, and to infect themselves with choleras and plaque germs.
I have a 2,000+ word essay and four letters extracted from it on the subject of dropping the atomic bombs. The following passages from it come to mind.
Because their own searing combat memories penetrated current realities, Harry Truman, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall would pursue any alternatives rather than procure countless American deaths in protracted ground campaigns following amphibious assaults matching the D-Day landings.
The Greatest Generation and their parents would have been enraged to discover a cabal had ignored the nuclear option for ending the war simply to indulge some incestuous moral orthodoxy.
All able Japanese citizens served as soldiers or as civilian militia (17-60) and awaited the decision of the Empire’s ruling oligarchy. With such a national unity committed to waging a savage total war, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
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