← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · edward gibbon
Thread ID: 16291 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-01-13
2005-01-13 17:43 | User Profile
Many seem to feel if any force rose, or will rise, against America, then this force must not be all bad. I take exception to this thought. I strongly feel I know far more about Japan than most on this forum, and I find many comments to be more than a little immature.
Sneak attacks by the Japanese - from my book:[QUOTE]To the present day many Americans have continued to believe the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor to be treachery unequalled in the annals of mankind. Yet when China, Russia, France, Great Britain and the United States convened to form the United Nations in World War II, their great common bond was being attacked without warning by Japan within the preceding half century. From the sinking of the Chinese troop ship, Kow Shing, in 1894 to December 7, 1941 the knights of Bushido had not bothered to declare war before assaulting the five nations forming the Security Council of the United Nations. The Japanese sneak attack at Port Arthur against Russia in 1904 brought respectful compliments from American cultural icons such as Teddy Roosevelt and the New York Times. [COLOR=Red]On February 13, 1904 the New York Times berated the Czar of Russia: "the point that the Japanese violated international law in going to war without a formal declaration would be of no importance if the Czar had not dignified it in raising it to the Russian people" and added "the practice of initiating war by formal declaration has gone out". Rough Rider Teddy wrote his son on how pleased he was by Japan's stunning duplicity at Port Arthur. His sense of fair play was not affronted. [/COLOR] [/QUOTE]Japan sneaks the French: [QUOTE]French chronicler of wars in Vietnam, Bernard Fall, remembered how Japanese military forces occupying China attacked then French Indo-China without warning in September 1940. Japanese General Nishihara described the attack featuring the bombing of the Haiphong harbor a "dreadful mistake". Fall pointed out this attack was only 15 months prior to Pearl Harbor. The only outside comment this aggression provoked was an editorial in an American newspaper entitled "Who Wants to Die for Dear Old Dong-Dang". Left unstated was Fall's belief that America had failed to learn from France in Asia and elsewhere more than once.[/QUOTE]Don`t forget the British either. [QUOTE]Forgotten by many has been the Japanese attack without warning on the British simultaneously when attacking Pearl Harbor. Towards the end of World War II when the United Nations was being organized, the great common experience for future Security Council members China, Russia, France, Great Britain and the United States was their being attacked without warning by the knights of Bushido within a half century. The American press which has continued to headline German wartime actions as if they occurred within the past few years has completely forgotten the scale of Japanese depravities. The Japanese did not kill many Jews, but they killed many more millions of other races. Yet the American press has ignored their sins.[/QUOTE]Butchering Koreans [QUOTE]The civilized world was getting a lesson in Asiatic warfare, and it was far more savage than they were accustomed to. The beheading of Chinese deserters and the slaughter of non-combatants by Japanese were as natural to Asiatic warfare as marches. When Hideyoshi's warriors invaded Korea some three hundred years earlier, they created as proof of their military prowess a huge pile of human ears which they had sliced off the heads of both prisoners and the dead. Some 38,000 pairs of ears were suitably pickled and stored in the Mimizuka in Kyoto as proof of their ferocity and their valor. Only in recent times has this exhibit of Japanese gallantry been closed to the public. Generations of Japanese students had been inspired by verification of martial prowess of their ancestors.[/QUOTE]Once again the Japanese forget the samurai code. [QUOTE]One might have thought that the presence of Admiral Togo in command should have alerted the Russians. A decade before on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War Togo ordered the sinking of a Chinese troop ship, the Kow Shing, crewed by the British. Perhaps in gratitude for his living in England and his training with the Royal Navy, Togo had lifeboats lowered for the British crew. Then machine guns were turned on struggling Chinese soldiers in the water. Some 1600 Chinese died, a number approaching the American dead at Pearl Harbor. Chinese historians have described this attack as one without a declaration of war.[/QUOTE]The Germans find Japan a perplexing ally. [QUOTE]Further on in this discourse O'Konski reviewed the aid we had furnished Russia and blasted them for not giving us anything in return for $10 billion in lend-lease aid, except verbal abuse. That Russians suffered almost 60 times as many casualties as Americans did not concern him, but he did voice bitterness over the 14,000 planes given to the Russians and noted the bombing of Finland was the only use of those planes he was aware of. As of January 1, 1945 the United States had supplied Russia with over four times as many planes as we had given General MacArthur in the Pacific, and Russia had not volunteered to give us one base to attack Japan and save American lives in the fight against Japan. The great supply route for the Soviets was the North Pacific from the American west coast to Vladivostok where the supply ships were reflagged American freighters. The Germans protested mightily to the Japanese that this resupply effort was hurting the German war effort on the eastern front, but the Japanese blithely replied the tonnage was much smaller than what the Germans claimed and was not war materiel. Colonel Saburo Hayashi writing for the Japanese public in 1951 and without histrionics of apology and vituperation outlined the course of the war for Japan. As a former military attaché in Moscow and chief of the Russian section of the Imperial General Headquarters, Hayashi understood his neighbor. In June 1944 he assumed charge of the Organization and Mobilization Section when the war became very critical. In April 1945 he became Military Secretary to the Minister of War, General Anami, who later committed seppuku after surrendering. His vantage point was at the highest level. [COLOR=Red]He wrote of aid from America to the Soviet Union growing quickly in 1943 and estimated that over 200 planes per month crossed the Bering Strait from America to the Soviet Union. The Japanese further estimated that about 500,000 tons a month, a truly astonishing figure, of machinery and fuel were unloaded in the harbor of Vladivostok from America every month[/COLOR]. The Japanese were never shy about putting their interests paramount. Nor, it should be added, were the Russians all that keen to help American efforts to fight the Japanese. [/QUOTE]A Gestapo man philosophizes upon his Japanese allies. [QUOTE]Former Gestapo attaché to the German Embassy in Tokyo, Joseph Albert Meisinger, accused Matsuoka of informing Stalin of the German plans for attacking Russia. This was the culminating factor for the agreement by the Soviets for the Japanese-Russian neutrality pact which was scrupulously observed by the Russians for over 5 years for their benefit as it protected their eastern flank, but certainly not for their alleged ally, the United States which could have used Soviet territory for bombing bases or shipping ports. One might ask if the Chinese would have appreciated a quicker end to the war in their part of the world. Almost incredible to believe was [COLOR=Red]the other assertion by Meisinger that until Pearl Harbor the German Embassy was not sure if the Japanese would fight on the side of the Axis or the Allies.[/COLOR][/QUOTE]Treatment of American prisoners of war. [QUOTE][COLOR=Red]A comparison between the German and Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners showed some marked differences. Of 235,473 United States and United Kingdom soldiers captured by Germany and Italy only 9,348, some 4 percent, died in captivity. Among the 132,134 Anglo-American prisoners of war held by the Japanese some 35,756 did not survive. This death rate was 27 percent. For the 25,697 men of the American Army captured in May 1942 some 10,957, or over 40 percent, died. [/COLOR] After the war had ended, and the Americans had started to occupy Japan, an American who had been a prisoner of the Japanese complained Americans were too soft in their occupation policy, and the Japanese deserved to be occupied by the Chinese and the Russians.[/QUOTE]I am aware that many will rationalize the Japanese behavior as being caused by American insolence. Yet these beliefs may illustrate why this board does not penetrate the consciousness of the average American, and if these writers tried, they would be a failure.
2005-01-14 04:09 | User Profile
I never said that the Imperial Japanese were honorable. What I said was that the 'allies' alienated Japan, and also, sided with a criminal, Jewish-built state [the Soviet Union] instead of siding with Japan like they should have. That was back in the [B]1930s[/B], long before Pearl Harbor or similar Japanese attacks of that era.
Since the allies alienated Japan and actually tried to choke Japan financially, they should not have been surprised when the Japanese attacked them. That was my point.
2005-01-14 06:04 | User Profile
Franco, you are correct in that we practically [I]forced[/I] Japan to attack. However, once the attack occured, we were in a fight for our very survival and we had to do everything in our power in order to survive.
2005-01-14 08:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Franco]I never said that the Imperial Japanese were honorable. What I said was that the 'allies' alienated Japan, and also, sided with a criminal, Jewish-built state [the Soviet Union] instead of siding with Japan like they should have. That was back in the [B]1930s[/B], long before Pearl Harbor or similar Japanese attacks of that era.
Since the allies alienated Japan and actually tried to choke Japan financially, they should not have been surprised when the Japanese attacked them. That was my point.
-------[/QUOTE]I pretty much agree with that, in fact that is pretty much the WN/paleo conscensus I think. But the Japanese really were a pretty detestable lot in a lot of ways. Its hard to really feel that much sympathy for them. Buchanan sort of typifies this - although he thinks we provoked them, he still hates their cars :lol:
I do though feel sympathy for all the lives of Americans lost in what was for all intents and purposes an unneccesary war, both at the time and later flowing out of the victory of Communism in that region.