"Most Americans don't seem to understand that WWII was an inter-imperial war"

[Antiwar]

Starting at about 42:44- "You're either with US or against US." Does that binary sound familiar?

 

[Antiwar]

Oh look. Another poster who knows absolutely nothing about WW2 but has a definite opinion about it. Why am I not surprised.

This thread is about an interview with a historian.

43:20- " ... The fundamental contradiction was between empire and democracy. Whether you chose Japan or the US you were for empire. In my mind, empire and democracy cannot coexist."

 

[jcgriff2]

I've heard about the brutality of Japanese soldiers during WWII, yes.

Humanity needs stop using violence and stopping using violence to stop violence, as best it can.

Why?

Violence will continue as long as human beings inhabit the Earth.

 

[Antiwar]

Why?

Violence will continue as long as human beings inhabit the Earth.

I'm not interested in backwards conservative thought.

 

[multivita-man]

Japan was quite committed to its Monarchy for a long long time. It is only symbolic now.

No, not really. It existed. People knew about it, but for centuries it had very little say over the affairs of Japan.

You can make the case that the Japanese Monarchy at the time of the 1930's was nothing more than a rational for Imperialism. "We have a Monarch that we cannot even gaze upon. Hence since he is so great that we cannot even gaze upon him, we must conquer in his name." I will buy that. However it does not change the point. Whether a Monarch is actually leading his country or providing a convenient front for the imperialistic intentions of others it amounts to the same thing.....Monarchy at scale as a vehicle for conquest. It just about demands conquest when it scales up to where the Japanese Monarchy was, where the great European Monarchies were in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries etc etc etc.

Again, Japanese monarchy was not like the monarchies or royal families of Europe, which actually did have real power for centuries and made life/death decisions. The Japanese emperor was 'restored' in the 1860s-70s - that period is called the Meiji Restoration by Western historians. But Japan actually became a British-style parliamentary democracy in the late 19th Century -- or at least it tried to become one. It didn't have much experience with Western democracy, so I guess it was more like 'democracy with Japanese characteristics.'

Japan's downfall, though, was that it was, despite being a democracy, a militaristic culture. It had just emerged out of a centuries-old tradition of rule by warlord. Militarism was Japan's identity. Japan initially gave departmental ministers and ministries co-equal powers -- in theory. In reality, Japan's democracy quickly devolved as its economy got bitten hard by deep recessions. The period from 1912 until about 1935 was tumultuous with multiple assassinations and many more assassination attempts. With the rise of ultra nationalism, it was the military and right wing militarists that ultimately had the power - the military, however, used the emperor to gain legitimacy in the eyes of everyone.

 

[multivita-man]

You just proved you really don’t know much about the topic at hand.

Considering there weren't any specific examples other than that vague summation, I find it hard to believe you've got any evidence to the contrary. I purposely avoided getting into the weeds because deciding whether the firebombing of Tokyo and bombing of Hiroshima is more inhumane than Unit 731 and Nanking massacre is a pointless exercise. Just like trying to determine if Japan's enslavement of Korea is worse than America's enslavement of Africans. What's the point?

 

[multivita-man]

~37:30 - 41:00

Mitch: American still often don't understand why Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Moon-Ho: [You'll have to listen for yourself] ... 39:10- The Japanese are the majority of the plantation labor force. When they begin to go out on strike ...

If he's arguing that's why the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he's way, way off base. That's just not at all related.

 

[Antiwar]

If he's arguing that's why the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he's way, way off base. That's just not at all related.

Listen to what he said, first.

 

[multivita-man]

This thread is about an interview with a historian.

A historian who might not be a good one - at least based on one of the segments you quoted. Maybe I misinterpreted it but if he's saying the Japanese bombed pearl harbor because it had to do with Japanese laborers in Hawaii, that's not even remotely accurate.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because the U.S. imposed an oil embargo on Japan, which incensed Japan b/c they needed our resources in order to maintain their war efforts in Asia. They tried to take out the U.S. fleet in the Pacific b/c they intended to take resources from European powers in Asia by force.

 

[Antiwar]

An interesting tidbit from Wikipedia:

In 1938, following an appeal by President Roosevelt, U.S. companies stopped providing Japan with implements of war.

Attack on Pearl Harbor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Antiwar]

A historian who might not be a good one - at least based on one of the segments you quoted. Maybe I misinterpreted it but if he's saying the Japanese bombed pearl harbor because it had to do with Japanese laborers in Hawaii, that's not even remotely accurate.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because the U.S. imposed an oil embargo on Japan, which incensed Japan b/c they needed our resources in order to maintain their war efforts in Asia. They tried to take out the U.S. fleet in the Pacific b/c they intended to take resources from European powers in Asia by force.

Watch the video. It's very interesting.

 

[multivita-man]

Watch the video. It's very interesting.

Okay, so I did watch that segment, admittedly not the entire video.

Not quite as outrageous as I had initially assumed but I still think he's maybe over-emphasizing the pan-Asian movement a bit much. I do agree with the concern the U.S. had toward the Philippines and other Asia-Pacific territories under its dominion. Japan's conquest of China put us on notice that Japan had an elite military and the ambition to match its growing military capabilities.

 

[Mithrae]

There are always bad people, but the scope of what the Germans and the Japanese did was part of the plan, not just some rogue savages.

Of course when it's "our side" committing atrocities our politicians, educators and many journalists and historians will first ignore the facts, then deny them, then downplay them and as a last resort sideline them as 'rogue actors,' 'collateral damage,' 'isolated incidents'... again and again again, as with isolated incident after isolated incident of American police killing unarmed black people and facing little if any consequence. As suggested in what I quoted, the British atrocities in Kenya were known (and ignored/denied/downplayed/sidelined) in the highest levels of government both at the time and in the decades since; it was part of the plan, as these things usually are, or at least inevitable and predictable consequences of those plans.

It may be true that there are some cultural differences, some sense of the White Man's Burden which makes Western or Anglophone countries a little more squeamish and prone to hiding these truths from ourselves - I really don't know enough about other cultures and histories to comment on that - or perhaps more likely something about wealthy countries which makes citizens less accustomed to violence and death. But what is clear is that our histories are so thoroughly blood-soaked as to make it little more than idle masturbation to argue about whether or not some other countries' were even worse.

For another example, the American genocide against Cambodia:

The ostensible targets of the bombings were North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front (“Viet Cong”) troops stationed in Cambodia and, later, KR rebels. However, it is indisputable that there was also total disregard for civilian life. In 1970, President Richard Nixon issued orders to National Security Advisor (and later Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger:

They have got to go in there and I mean really go in. I don’t want the gunships, I want the helicopter ships. I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?​

Kissinger relayed these orders to his military assistant, Gen. Alexander Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

Nixon and the Cambodian Genocide

The genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge began forty years ago this month. Their rise to power was inseparable from US intervention.

www.jacobinmag.com

 

[Tigerace117]

Of course when it's "our side" committing atrocities our politicians, educators and many journalists and historians will first ignore the facts, then deny them, then downplay them and as a last resort sideline them as 'rogue actors,' 'collateral damage,' 'isolated incidents'... again and again again, as with isolated incident after isolated incident of American police killing unarmed black people and facing little if any consequence. As suggested in what I quoted, the British atrocities in Kenya were known (and ignored/denied/downplayed/sidelined) in the highest levels of government both at the time and in the decades since; it was part of the plan, as these things usually are, or at least inevitable and predictable consequences of those plans.

It may be true that there are some cultural differences, some sense of the White Man's Burden which makes Western or Anglophone countries a little more squeamish and prone to hiding these truths from ourselves - I really don't know enough about other cultures and histories to comment on that - or perhaps more likely something about wealthy countries which makes citizens less accustomed to violence and death. But what is clear is that our histories are so thoroughly blood-soaked as to make it little more than idle masturbation to argue about whether or not some other countries' were even worse.

For another example, the American genocide against Cambodia:

The ostensible targets of the bombings were North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front (“Viet Cong”) troops stationed in Cambodia and, later, KR rebels. However, it is indisputable that there was also total disregard for civilian life. In 1970, President Richard Nixon issued orders to National Security Advisor (and later Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger:

They have got to go in there and I mean really go in. I don’t want the gunships, I want the helicopter ships. I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?​

Kissinger relayed these orders to his military assistant, Gen. Alexander Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

Nixon and the Cambodian Genocide

The genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge began forty years ago this month. Their rise to power was inseparable from US intervention.

www.jacobinmag.com

First off, Jacobin isn’t a credible source, so if that’s where you got the delusion that we committed “genocide” in Cambodia....that says a lot.

Secondly, carrying out a bombing campaign without regard for civilian casualties does not qualify as “genocide”. If it did, the US would have committed “genocide” against Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Thirdly, British atrocities in Kenya paled in comparison to the atrocities the Japanese committed.....basically anywhere they went. The Japanese killed exponentially more in Nanking ALONE than the British killed during the entire Mau Mau uprising.

 

[multivita-man]

For another example, the American genocide against Cambodia:

The ostensible targets of the bombings were North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front (“Viet Cong”) troops stationed in Cambodia and, later, KR rebels. However, it is indisputable that there was also total disregard for civilian life. In 1970, President Richard Nixon issued orders to National Security Advisor (and later Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger:

They have got to go in there and I mean really go in. I don’t want the gunships, I want the helicopter ships. I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?​

Kissinger relayed these orders to his military assistant, Gen. Alexander Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

Nixon and the Cambodian Genocide

The genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge began forty years ago this month. Their rise to power was inseparable from US intervention.

www.jacobinmag.com

I don't know if I'd call the American bombings of Laos and Cambodia genocide - that was not at all that intent. It was to attack the troops and supply lines that were weaving in and out of Vietnam and neighboring countries. In fact both Laos and Cambodia were led by pro-US regimes, to the extent we could call them 'pro-US' I guess.

Not that what we did there was nice - it still caused a lot of destruction and killed lots of people. You can still see the bomb craters in the hills of Laos today. In fact, as that article says, it ended up destabilizing two pro-US governments and turning the population of both countries decidedly against us. Ironically, two 'dominoes' fell into communist hands, not simply because the commies won but because of our total disregard of anything and anyone beyond our own immediate interests.

 

[jnug]

Okay, so I did watch that segment, admittedly not the entire video.

Not quite as outrageous as I had initially assumed but I still think he's maybe over-emphasizing the pan-Asian movement a bit much. I do agree with the concern the U.S. had toward the Philippines and other Asia-Pacific territories under its dominion. Japan's conquest of China put us on notice that Japan had an elite military and the ambition to match its growing military capabilities.

I tend to agree with you here having watched most of the video. The "historian" makes some rather simplistic comments about Imperialism generally, then about the United States and White Supremacy globally and then neatly injects complete nonsense like his claim about the Japanese rational for attacking Pearl Harbor. Our purchase of the Philippines did not compel Japan into war with us either.

Jung uses the Philippines and United States involvement in it as his linchpin to the rest of his arguments and he is just wrong. He needs to find some useful purposes for what is obviously a fertile mind.

The United States had been buying up territory from the European Imperialists for decades. Most of this country was PURCHASED, little of it from the Native Americans that inhabited it. Teddy R knew a deal when he saw one and the Philippines for $20M was a heck of a good deal. A case can be made that it was serendipitous to the extent that we got there through the Spanish American War, all of four months long. You can say that the Spanish American War helped Spain realize that this business of Empire ia all great until its not any longer and then its a really expensive business to be in. That is a lesson the Brits eventually learned as they went broke trying to maintain their far flung empire and ultimately realized that their Empire was too far flung and that ready solutions for extrication were hard to come by. The United States presented itself as a ready buyer for a colony on the cheap and walla....Spain is out of the Philippines.

Jung would be on firmer ground claiming that Americans do not like fighting with the tenants over something Americans actually "own" in their own minds. It should be clear at this point that while TR thought he got himself a deal for $20M he did in fact bite off more than he should have tried to bite off as he had bought himself into an ugly, ugly war with the Filipinos who at that point had all they could take from foreigners colonizing their way into their homeland or buying their way into it. By the time we were done trying to make TR's deal pay off, we had turned a veritable paradise into a wasteland of colonial war. 4,200 Americans, 20,000 Filipino combatants and at least 200,000 citizens died and a space with some of the most beautiful structures and idilic landscapes in all Southeast Asia was laid waste. While the logic of owning a veritable paradise for a country dedicated to making a $buck$ seemed a natch to TR, the Philippines ain't the Caribbean one result being that we ourselves were now "far flung".

It was in many respects a giant TR fugg up but it had nothing to do with American Global White Supremacy. It was the Brits that played the Global White Supremacy game for the literal sake of white supremacy and acquisition of resources they themselves did not have but needed.

The basic mistake Jung makes is in misinterpreting what Capitalism means to Americans both domestically and internationally. I could easily see him saying something like "Isn't Capitalism just an economic structure?"

 

[Questerr]

Video link is in #6.

Starting from 1:00- "The United States was, has always been, and continues to be an empire rooted in white supremacy."

Woo doggies, this historian doesn't mess around.

Does that mean America should have surrendered after being attacked by the Japanese?

 

[Questerr]

Interesting...

While Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crime trials, those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments.[6] The Americans coopted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program, much as they had done with German researchers in Operation Paperclip.[7] Chinese accounts were largely dismissed as communist propaganda.[8]​

Unit 731 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That sounds like the USA was indeed "approaching" Unit 731 in terms of objectives, 'progress' and excusing/turning a blind eye to atrocities.

The US was reprehensible for using that knowledge gained afterwards, but the US itself never ejected came close to the atrocities committed by 731.

 

[Questerr]

~37:30 - 41:00

Mitch: American still often don't understand why Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Moon-Ho: [You'll have to listen for yourself] ... 39:10- The Japanese are the majority of the plantation labor force. When they begin to go out on strike ...

Japan bombing Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with working conditions on plantations in Hawaii. It was to neutralize the US Navy and prevent them from stopping Japan’s militarist imperialist conquest of the East Indies. Full stop.

 

[Questerr]

An interesting tidbit from Wikipedia:

In 1938, following an appeal by President Roosevelt, U.S. companies stopped providing Japan with implements of war.

Attack on Pearl Harbor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Do you believe the US should have continued giving Japan war materials while they were actively engaged in militarist conquest and atrocities in China?

 

[Antiwar]

America supplies war weapons. Warring happens. I wonder if there's any connection.

 

[Questerr]

America supplies war weapons. Warring happens. I wonder if there's any connection.

Should America have continued trading Japan with war making materials (which were NOT weapons but instead resources and fuel) while Japan was involved in a militarist conquest with atrocities in China?

 

[Tigerace117]

America supplies war weapons. Warring happens. I wonder if there's any connection.

So the US should have let Japan conquer and enslave the Chinese people? Why?

China needed help. The US provided that help, against what was an ACTUAL brutal, fascist dictatorship.

 

[Antiwar]

So the US should have let Japan conquer and enslave the Chinese people? Why?

China needed help. The US provided that help, against what was an ACTUAL brutal, fascist dictatorship.

Can you see any connection between supplying weapons and weapons being misused?

 

[Tigerace117]

Can you see any connection between supplying weapons and weapons being misused?

Yes, but the weapons supplied to China weren’t “misused” which kinda makes that a meaningless hypothetical.