on why the u.s. was not blameless in the bombing of pearl harbor
First: Is it just me, or is LiveJournal moving really slowly today?
Second: We discussed WWII in History of Modern Asia today. More specifically, we discussed the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the tensions between Japan and the United States that led to this. Our homework for that class (as in, due today) was to watch this film, The Prophecy, which was put together by the TEN-FEET Project in Japan.
The TEN-FEET Project is essentially a project that encouraged Japanese citizens to buy ten feet of film of the bombings and make films, as a way of spreading awareness of what had actually happened there-being as the film footage was confiscated by the U.S. government for upwards of forty years after the bombings.
Anyway, I don't think I'm alone in saying that the worst part of watching videos on YouTube is the comments. Especially if you're watching a film/video that has strong political connotations, there's undoubtedly going to be some asshole making disparaging comments about whatever group is portrayed in the video. It's inevitable. So I don't know why I was surprised to find this comment on the first section of the video:
innocent people? they followed a flawed god-king to their deaths. why waste half a million american lives invading a nation that started the war with an unprovoked attack? the two nuclear weapons that were dropped on japan were well placed, but i would have gone for the nations capital. and they dont start wars anymore, do they?
My response was essentially thus: "If you think that Japan had no reason to attack us, you obviously know nothing about the history of colonialism and political tension between the U.S. and Japan, so shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down."
But it got me thinking, about how little people actually know about the events that led up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The way it's taught in high school classes, it's basically portrayed to be like "SUDDENLY, THE JAPANESE!" But that's not really how it went down, not at all. So, this is a brief history of U.S.-Japan relations.
After the Meiji Restoration and to a degree into the Taishō period, Japan basically made itself into an incredible empire. They expanded, took over East Asian (particularly Chinese) markets, and became an industrial powerhouse in the East Asian theatre. And this was extremely alarming to the Euro-American powers. They were scared shitless of the Japanese empire, and probably with good reason, as Japan was remaking itself into a world player that no one had forseen when they started colonization. For the most part, Euro-American leaders viewed Japan as a threat to their places in the world hierarchy.
So in 1918, after the end of World War I, the Paris Peace Conference happened. At that conference, the League of Nations (later to become the United Nations) was established, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. Though the treaty did have the purpose of preventing war, it also had another purpose: To control and limit Japanese expansion in the East Asian theatre. And of course Japanese leaders saw this as unfair-after all, they had shaped themselves into a powerful nation, and yet they were still being treated as unequal on the world stage.
There was incredible racism towards the Japanese, especially in the United States and abroad-the U.S., particularly, passed immigration laws banning Asian workers from coming to America, and San Fransisco along with other California cities passed legislation requiring Asian students to attend Oriental schools (i.e. segregating them from the white students). Couple that racism with Japan's history of colonialism and perceived uncertainty of their position in the world, and it made for a very volatile situation.
Another contributing factor: Japan brought to the League of Nations a Racial Equality Clause for the Versailles treaty, one that would allow for the equal treatment of Japanese. (It should be noted that this only applied to Japanese citizens; they weren't particularly concerned with the treatment of other Asian nationals, being as Japan still had colonial control of Korea at this time.) But because of biases against Japanese citizens, the clause failed and was eliminated from the final drafting.
Additionally, it's not like the United States and European powers had no interests in East Asia. The US and UK particularly wanted in on the Chinese markets, and if the Chinese markets were under Japanese control, there was no way for them to do that. So they attempted to indoctrinate the Japanese and Chinese traders with "democratic principles", encouraging them no to blindly follow the lead of the government-which is great in theory, except for that the U.S. especially was essentially only doing it to further their own economic standing.
In 1921, the United States passed a new initiative, in an attempt to establish a new world order under U.S. hegemony. This initiative, now called the Washington Treaty System, was essentially a restriction of Japanese growth and participation in the arms race. It held clauses limiting everything from arms production to shipbuilding-one of the clauses, in particular, stated that if the U.S. built five ships in a year, Japan could only build three. Things like that, that essentially made Japan subservient and militarily weaker than the United States.
So at this point, what we have is this: U.S. restrictions on Japanese expansion. Racism against Japanese citizens in the U.S. and abroad. Limitations on Japan's military power. Insecurity about Japan's position in the world. And a general sense of being ganged up on in the League of Nations.
Great combo, am I right?
So Japan had a choice to make. They could either go along with the restrictions and limitations put on them in the League of Nations, or they could ignore them.
So they ignored them.
They took over Manchuria for productive purposes and formed the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a coalition of East Asian countries that felt slighted by the League of Nations. "They're not treating us with respect," Japan said (more or less), "so let's band together and gain their respect."
Japan also turned away from the Washington Treaty System, instead signing the Tripartite Pact in 1940. This pact was an agreement between Japan, fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, that essentially guaranteed military support to any of those three nations in case it was necessary. And another key part of the pact was that Japan would recognize Italy and Germany in the East Asian markets, and Italy and Germany would recognize Japan in their markets. Being as Japan had been searching for legitimacy in the European market for some time now, this opportunity wasn't something they were going to pass up.
However, as a reaction to the signing of the Tripartite Pact, the U.S. put an oil embargo on Japan, forbidding the shipping of oil to the country. And since Japan's industrial power and expansion relied heavily on their oil imports... Well.
And thus, in 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Now, mind you, I'm not saying that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was justifiable. I'm just saying that there was reasoning behind it, and that the U.S. was not exactly blameless in the tensions between the U.S. and Japan preceding the attack.
And that was your daily dose of thrilling Euro-Asian history provided by me! Hoorah.
Second: We discussed WWII in History of Modern Asia today. More specifically, we discussed the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the tensions between Japan and the United States that led to this. Our homework for that class (as in, due today) was to watch this film, The Prophecy, which was put together by the TEN-FEET Project in Japan.
The TEN-FEET Project is essentially a project that encouraged Japanese citizens to buy ten feet of film of the bombings and make films, as a way of spreading awareness of what had actually happened there-being as the film footage was confiscated by the U.S. government for upwards of forty years after the bombings.
Anyway, I don't think I'm alone in saying that the worst part of watching videos on YouTube is the comments. Especially if you're watching a film/video that has strong political connotations, there's undoubtedly going to be some asshole making disparaging comments about whatever group is portrayed in the video. It's inevitable. So I don't know why I was surprised to find this comment on the first section of the video:
innocent people? they followed a flawed god-king to their deaths. why waste half a million american lives invading a nation that started the war with an unprovoked attack? the two nuclear weapons that were dropped on japan were well placed, but i would have gone for the nations capital. and they dont start wars anymore, do they?
My response was essentially thus: "If you think that Japan had no reason to attack us, you obviously know nothing about the history of colonialism and political tension between the U.S. and Japan, so shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down."
But it got me thinking, about how little people actually know about the events that led up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The way it's taught in high school classes, it's basically portrayed to be like "SUDDENLY, THE JAPANESE!" But that's not really how it went down, not at all. So, this is a brief history of U.S.-Japan relations.
After the Meiji Restoration and to a degree into the Taishō period, Japan basically made itself into an incredible empire. They expanded, took over East Asian (particularly Chinese) markets, and became an industrial powerhouse in the East Asian theatre. And this was extremely alarming to the Euro-American powers. They were scared shitless of the Japanese empire, and probably with good reason, as Japan was remaking itself into a world player that no one had forseen when they started colonization. For the most part, Euro-American leaders viewed Japan as a threat to their places in the world hierarchy.
So in 1918, after the end of World War I, the Paris Peace Conference happened. At that conference, the League of Nations (later to become the United Nations) was established, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. Though the treaty did have the purpose of preventing war, it also had another purpose: To control and limit Japanese expansion in the East Asian theatre. And of course Japanese leaders saw this as unfair-after all, they had shaped themselves into a powerful nation, and yet they were still being treated as unequal on the world stage.
There was incredible racism towards the Japanese, especially in the United States and abroad-the U.S., particularly, passed immigration laws banning Asian workers from coming to America, and San Fransisco along with other California cities passed legislation requiring Asian students to attend Oriental schools (i.e. segregating them from the white students). Couple that racism with Japan's history of colonialism and perceived uncertainty of their position in the world, and it made for a very volatile situation.
Another contributing factor: Japan brought to the League of Nations a Racial Equality Clause for the Versailles treaty, one that would allow for the equal treatment of Japanese. (It should be noted that this only applied to Japanese citizens; they weren't particularly concerned with the treatment of other Asian nationals, being as Japan still had colonial control of Korea at this time.) But because of biases against Japanese citizens, the clause failed and was eliminated from the final drafting.
Additionally, it's not like the United States and European powers had no interests in East Asia. The US and UK particularly wanted in on the Chinese markets, and if the Chinese markets were under Japanese control, there was no way for them to do that. So they attempted to indoctrinate the Japanese and Chinese traders with "democratic principles", encouraging them no to blindly follow the lead of the government-which is great in theory, except for that the U.S. especially was essentially only doing it to further their own economic standing.
In 1921, the United States passed a new initiative, in an attempt to establish a new world order under U.S. hegemony. This initiative, now called the Washington Treaty System, was essentially a restriction of Japanese growth and participation in the arms race. It held clauses limiting everything from arms production to shipbuilding-one of the clauses, in particular, stated that if the U.S. built five ships in a year, Japan could only build three. Things like that, that essentially made Japan subservient and militarily weaker than the United States.
So at this point, what we have is this: U.S. restrictions on Japanese expansion. Racism against Japanese citizens in the U.S. and abroad. Limitations on Japan's military power. Insecurity about Japan's position in the world. And a general sense of being ganged up on in the League of Nations.
Great combo, am I right?
So Japan had a choice to make. They could either go along with the restrictions and limitations put on them in the League of Nations, or they could ignore them.
So they ignored them.
They took over Manchuria for productive purposes and formed the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a coalition of East Asian countries that felt slighted by the League of Nations. "They're not treating us with respect," Japan said (more or less), "so let's band together and gain their respect."
Japan also turned away from the Washington Treaty System, instead signing the Tripartite Pact in 1940. This pact was an agreement between Japan, fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, that essentially guaranteed military support to any of those three nations in case it was necessary. And another key part of the pact was that Japan would recognize Italy and Germany in the East Asian markets, and Italy and Germany would recognize Japan in their markets. Being as Japan had been searching for legitimacy in the European market for some time now, this opportunity wasn't something they were going to pass up.
However, as a reaction to the signing of the Tripartite Pact, the U.S. put an oil embargo on Japan, forbidding the shipping of oil to the country. And since Japan's industrial power and expansion relied heavily on their oil imports... Well.
And thus, in 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Now, mind you, I'm not saying that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was justifiable. I'm just saying that there was reasoning behind it, and that the U.S. was not exactly blameless in the tensions between the U.S. and Japan preceding the attack.
And that was your daily dose of thrilling Euro-Asian history provided by me! Hoorah.