The Bataan Death March v. the Trail of Tears

The War of 1812 almost saw the demise of the nation still known as the United States of America. Miscalculating America's military capabilities, members of Congress initiated the war with the British Empire with an aim to conquering Canada and Florida, if not the entire continent of North America. Towards the end of the war the New England states nearly revolted (see Hartford Convention). After the war was over the U.S. won a single battle, near New Orleans, and that is what we are trained to remember.

General Andrew Jackson, a man noted for his cruelty towards slaves and animals, was credited with winning the Battle of New Orleans. With other friends in high places he compensated for failing to grab Canada by grabbing vast expanses of Native American Indian lands, essentially all of what are now the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Jackson created the Democratic Party, dedicated to the principles of genocide, slavery, and hoodwinking the the common voter, and then got himself elected President of the United States in 1828 and again in 1832.

Back in the state of Georgia the Cherokee Nation had built up a civilization and used the federal court system to defend their property from appropriation by the white racists who ran the state. President John Adams had defended the Cherokee, but Jackson would not. He signed a law "exchanging" Indian national lands east of the Mississippi River for lands to its west. The actual death march of the Cherokee, along the Trail of Tears, took place in 1838, after Jackson was dead and the Choctaw (1831-1833), Seminole (1834), and Creek (1836) had been "removed." About 4000 Cherokee died during their death march, which was accompanied by U.S. Army troops.

Today this is not a "hidden" part of U.S. history. The federal government even established a Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. But it is ignored in the moral calculus of most Americans' thinking.

Compare the Bataan Death March. It too may fade from the memories of most Americans, but from World War II until today its memory is kept alive by our institutions. They need it; it is a lynchpin of the psychology of the American empire (which is mainly an empire of commerce, backed by the U.S. military and administered by puppet leaders of other nations).

In 1898 the U.S. government decided it wanted some of the remaining territory of the Spanish Empire, including the Philippines. The people of the Philippines had almost finished throwing out the Spanish, but the Spanish sold the Philippines to the U.S. anyway after losing the Spanish-American War. The U.S. proceeded to slaughter any Filipino who objected. The sugar plantations were profitable, and Manila provided easy access to China, but brown people were not wanted as American citizens, so they were eventually forced into a "commonwealth." Which is an American word for colony.

When Asian people finally got tired of being bullied by white people and revolted in 1941... Scratch that. Unacceptable to Americans. Try this: General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the U.S. forces in the Philippines, was given the go ahead by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) to attack the Japanese in Formosa (now Taiwan) a couple of weeks before the Battle of Pearl Harbor. But the General was planning to run for President, and did not want to precipitate war with Japan without authorization by Congress (because most Republican voters, until a few days later, were Isolationists).

Anyway, a huge fleet of reinforcements had already left San Diego, heading for Manila, and MacArthur thought the Japanese could be defeated in a few weeks. MacArthur at that time was best known for slaughtering unarmed U.S. veterans who had been protesting in Washington D.C. during the Great Depression, explicitly disobeying the orders of President Hoover.

The great military strategist put his air force on a runway, with the planes as close together as possible. When he heard about Pearl Harbor, he left them that way. The next day Japanese planes came in and destroyed them all, on the ground. MacArthur awoke from his stupor and realized maybe the Japanese were not such bad fighters after all.

They were not, not even the second-rate tier, old men fighters given to General Homma to capture the Philippines. American resistance (the larger part of MacArthur's army consisted of poorly equipped Filipinos. The U.S. was afraid if they were well-equipped they might try for independence) quickly collapsed. The U.S. forces retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, while MacArthur and his staff his out in the safety of the island fortress Corregidor.

MacArthur had no way to supply his troops. He told his superiors who told FDR. The President lied (well, that is what Presidents do best, and FDR was a master of lies) and said reinforcements were on the way. They were not. The troops in Bataan were low on ammunition, and reduced to 3/4 rations, then 1/2 rations, then whatever they could scrounge. The commanders in Bataan begged MacArthur to evacuate the troops or allow them to surrender. FDR said no; he wanted Japanese troops tied down, and to use the tragedy to whip up the American people against the Japanese.

Under orders from FDR, General MacArthur turned tail and ran for Australia (in a submarine) on March 12, 1942. The Japanese army, reinforced, started their final attack on April 3rd. U.S. resistance largely collapsed by the 5th. General King surrendered his troops on April 9.

About 60,000 Filipino troops and 15,000 American troops surrendered. Many were wounded or sick, almost all were starved to near death.

General Homma was prepared for the U.S. surrender. He had established a POW camp at Capas, which ironically had been a U.S. military base. The POWs would gather in Balanga, then march to San Fernando, about 80 miles, and would go the rest of the way by rail.

It was not a good plan, but it was not a bad plan either. Some of the Japanese troops who had just been fighting the Americans purposefully mistreated them, which is a war crime. It is the most common war crime, and a different sort of crime than commanders ordering mass executions of POWs. It is the kind of crime U.S. soldiers committed against American Indians, and against each other all too often in the Civil War. Not respecting POW conventions is to be condemned, no matter which soldiers are committing the crimes.

But consider the state of the POWs at the time of capture. Normal, healthy troops should have had no trouble walking the 80 miles to San Fernando.

In the chaos of war it is hard to say exactly how many troops died after surrendering. Many tried to escape; some succeeded, some were shot while trying to escape (not a war crime).

The high estimate for American (excluding Filipino) deaths is 650; it is unlikely less than 100 died. That may be appalling, but these were sick and starving men who had been betrayed by their own commanders. It is a testament to both the soldiers themselves and the Japanese military that over 14,000 white U.S. troops survived the march. In detailed interviews with the marchers, many reported acts of kindness by their Japanese guards. The Filipinos fared worse, probably because they were discriminated against within the U.S. forces prior to surrender (given inferior equipment and rations). Thousands of Filipinos died during the march, but again over 50,000 lived.

In short, the Bataan March was not a death march for most involved. There was Japanese brutality, but it was mostly ordinary bad soldiering brutality, not an organized slaughter.

The combination surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and propaganda about the Bataan Death March became an excuse for wide range of U.S. atrocities, many of them ordered by FDR himself. The U.S. engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare, which the U.S. had claimed was illegal when the Germans did it during World War I. The U.S. bombed Japanese cities; before the war FDR had condemned nations that bombed cities because, in fact, targeting civilians is a war crime. U.S. soldiers often killed Japanese soldiers that surrendered, particularly in the campaign in which MacArthur recaptured the Philippines. It also led to American citizens of Japanese descent being placed in concentration camps in the U.S. for the duration of the war.

Finally, there was the demand for unconditional surrender (which was unprecedented, and prolonged the war both in Germany and in Asia) and the Atomic Bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are usually rationalized as "saving the lives of American soldiers." But the basic idea of war crimes is that civilians are not to be killed for military advantage. The U.S. could have saved the lives of American soldiers by negotiating a peace with Japan.

I know very few Americans think of the Trail of Tears and the Bataan Death March as related in any way. But they are more than just two sad instances of historic inhumanity. They are a test of how well people are trained to make excuses for the behavior of national governments. They are also a test of racist sentiments.

Note too that the Bataan March involved soldiers, who were moved a short distance to POW camps. The Trail of Tears involved forced removal of civilians, including children who were forced to march over 1000 miles to their new concentration camp. Soldiers are professional killers. The agreement among the world's nations to treat each other's professional killers nicely if captured is a bit difficult for some of the soldiers themselves to comprehend.

The Philippines was granted official (but not real) independence by the U.S. in 1946. They had declared independence, encouraged by the Japanese, on October 14, 1943. Most Filipinos cooperated with the Japanese. Later, after MacArthur reconquered the islands, a legend grew that large numbers of Filipinos guerillas fought the Japanese during the war. In fact very few did. Jose Laurel, President of the Philippines, cooperated closely with the Japanese during the war, as did most upper-class Filipinos. Laurel also ran for President of the Philippines in 1949, but lost to Elpidio Quirino.

Yasukuni Shrine and Arlington National Cemetery

Chinese nationalists get upset when Japanese government figures visit the shrine to Japan's war dead at Yasukuni. China got into a war with Japan over control of Korea in 1894. To everyone else's surprise, Japan won that war. This led to increasing predation on China by other imperialist powers, cumulating in the Chinese trying to defend themselves in what we in the West call the Boxer Rebellion. Japan, the U.S., and a number of other Western powers invaded and established that China was no longer a sovereign nation, despite diplomatic niceties to the contrary.

Japan did establish an independent state in Manchuria (aka Manchukuo), the alternative being Russian dominance there. China descended into bickering regions ruled by warlords. Asserting the Japanese equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, in the 1930's Japan intervened in China proper. The Japanese called it a policing action to restore order to China; the Chinese called it a war of aggression.

By any reasonable measure, the Japanese were invaders and committed war crimes. They should have let the Chinese muddle through their own mess. The Chinese tend to forget their own long history of military aggression (which is why China is the size it is today) and grow outraged when they think of the Japanese invasion. Yasukuni has become a symbol of Japanese militarism for the Chinese.

But the Japanese (with the exception of a few ultra-right wing nut jobs) say they are just honoring their ancestors. They are not celebrating the age of Japanese imperialism.

Meanwhile, no one seems to get upset about the honoring of America's war dead at the Arlington National Cemetery. Even though more than a few war criminals are buried there, including Americans who fought against various Asian nations including China, the Philippines, Japan, and Vietnam.

Not every soldier is a war criminal. Some are lucky enough to live in times of peace. Others are unlucky enough to be ordered to commit war crimes. But in addition to committing war crimes under orders of Class A war criminals (typically political leaders), some soldiers commit war crimes despite explicit orders against doing so. Such individual war crimes typically are killing civilians and killing prisoners of war. The traditional don't ask, don't tell policy about these extra-legal killings means almost anyone buried at Arlington could be a war criminal.

In the probably-not-a-war-criminal category at Arlington, but worth discussion in the Japan v. China context, we have Claire Lee Chennault. Retired U.S. Air Force Captain Chennault arrived in China in 1937 and began working for the war lord Chiang Kai-shek as chief air force advisor. In 1941 President Roosevelt provided Chennault and Chiang with fighter planes and former U.S. Air Force personnel to fight the Japanese in China. They were flying in China at least as early as November 1941, well before Pearl Harbor, thus showing the U.S. was engaged in an undeclared war. One might ask the Communist Chinese: is Chennault a scoundrel for aiding Chiang Kai-shek, or a hero for fighting the Japanese? In either case, his body lies in grave 873-3-4, Section 2.

From the U.S. war on China aka the Boxer Rebellion, or Yihetuan Movement, we have Vice Admiral Clark H. Woodward, who also served in the Philippine-American War. He is in grave 699-A-B, Section 1. Given the number of soldiers the U.S. sent to attack the Chinese, quite a number of them are likely to be buried at Arlington.

As to the atrocities of the Philippines, several soldiers directly connected to them are buried at Arlington (and given the genocidal nature of the conflict, probably most U.S. soldiers who served there were complicit or participants in war crimes). We have the leader, General Arthur MacArthur himself, in grave 856-A, Section 2. Colonel William Henry Bisbee, who was told not to report his destruction of civilians to his superiors, lies in grave 1872, Section 3. Edwin Glenn, convicted by a courts martial of torturing civilians, suspended from duty for one month, and fined $50, lies in 3103-ES. For more on war crimes by the U.S. in the Philippines see Honor in the Dust.

Harry Truman, who by ordering the atomic bombing of Japan committed the most famous war crime in history, is not burried at Arlington, but likely research would put some of the men who fire bombed Japanese cities in graves there.

Skipping the U.S. war against Korea, which was not without its issues, we have the honoring of the Vietnam War criminals. Among those buried at Arlington is General Creighton Abrams, who supervised the slaughter (and who was a proponent for the war, not someone just carrying out orders), in grave S-33, Section 21.

A thorough search could probably find thousands of soldiers buried at Arlington who gave offense to some nation.

I would argue that the problem is not Americans honoring our war dead, but our failure to hold ourselves to a high standard of accountability. The dead can do no further wrong to anyone, but the living can. Both Japanese and American war criminals shared the belief that what they were doing was right and necessary. We should be clear they were wrong.

But you should not ask people not to visit the graves of their ancestors. The Chinese do it, and the Chinese are not exactly a nation of innocents.

Every responsible person should work to tone down nationalist sentiments that could lead to military conflict. Don't forget the past. Don't dismantle Yasukuni or close Arlington. But work for peace. Because what the Chinese are really complaining about is a past breach of their peace and sovereignty. All nations should pledge to respect each other's sovereignty. All nations should maintain a knowledge of their past crimes to help them stay on a peaceful path.

Agree? Disagree? Comment on this post.

Pearl Harbor, the Cadiz Raid, and War Crimes

Americans are more likely to know the fictional histories of Middle Earth or of Westeros than actual world history. Most, however, have at least a vague idea of the Battle of Pearl Harbor, memorialized every December 7. So too it is hard to miss the story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. But few know of the Raid on Cadiz. When it comes to issues of war and war crimes, you should consider Cadiz along with these other historic events.

The Cadiz Raid of 1587 was part of the struggle between Spain and England (which was partly a religious struggle between the reformed Christian churches and the Roman Catholic Church, which is not important to the context of this essay). Sir Francis Drake can be fairly said to have been a pirate operating under license from Queen Elizabeth I. The Spanish Armada was assembling in a number of ports, preparatory to the invasion of England, following the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots in February 1587, which made a Roman Catholic (and pro-Spain) succession to Elizabeth unlikely. Leading a fleet of only four vessels, Drake surprised the Spanish fleet at Cadiz and destroyed 37 ships in April 1587.

The Raid on Cadiz, in both English and American history, is a glorious moment. The following year Drake and the English navy and a fortuitous storm repelled the Spanish Armada, saving England from the Spanish Inquisition.

But what if you stop and think about whether the Cadiz Raid was right or wrong, or a war crime?

Is building an army or navy the same as actually waging a war of aggression? What if the intent is to wage war? What if the intent is to bully, so obtain some advantage without actually waging the war?

Would the Cadiz raid be legal because the English knew Spain was planning a war? Or was it illegal since negotiations were taking place that might have averted war?

[300 pages of legal and ethical discussion later...] Let's look at some other historical events using our Cadiz decision [(1) it was an act of aggression and war crime, or (2) it was an act of defense, and not a war crime] as a legal precedent.

Fast forward a few hundred years to the Battle of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. First, you need to know some important facts that are not in most U.S. history books, where Pearl Harbor is characterized as a "surprise" attack. The U.S. and Japan were already fighting in China, with the U.S. air force thinly disguised as a volunteer unit under the dictator Chiang Kai-shek. In addition, the U.S. commander in the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur, had been given permission to attack the Japanese, and a large U.S. invasion fleet was steaming towards the Philippines. The U.S. had broken the Japanese cryptographic codes. The declaration of war by Japan, simultaneous with the attack, was no surprise to Cordell Hull or President Franklin Roosevelt. Though it seemed horrific, the actual attack did relatively little damage to the U.S. fleet. The U.S. was in a massive naval construction program, and had over 10 times the industrial capacity of Japan. The good new battle ships at Pearl Harbor had mysteriously sailed out to sea, well away from the battle. The Japanese sank mainly easily replaceable World War I relics.

So, back to your Cadiz choice. Maybe Pearl Harbor was Japan's Cadiz Raid. The Japanese government knew that its plan to drive the White Race out of their Asian colonies was about to lead the U.S., with its astonishing industrial capacity, to initiate a war allowing the U.S. to fulfill its dream of ruling China and Japan (and maybe take Indochina from the French, too). Pearl Harbor was defense. If you believe Francis Drake should be treated as a hero for his Cadiz raid, then you should treat the Japanese fleet as heroes too.

But what the hey, Cadiz was a long time ago, and Drake was a Brit, not an American, so maybe to preserve the "day of infamy" status of Pearl Harbor you want to go with Cadiz was an act of aggression and a war crime, as you already believe Pearl Harbor was. Then if one nation is planning to attack another nation, even a weaker nation sure to lose a war, the small nation has no right to a pre-emptive strike. They have to wait until the big bully starts the war before they can defend themselves. Like in the recent Iraq war: if Saddam Hussein had shot first, he would be a war criminal. Even though his fight with the U.S. was purely defensive, somehow he was still the war criminal.

American Presidents and most citizens actually prefer to toss out logic. America is always right! If we initiate an attack, we are right! If we are attacked and retaliate, we are right! If we kill civilians in ways that are clearly war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, we play the Americans get out of war crimes free card. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's pontificating against aerial bombardments of cities, and calling those actions war crimes, when the U.S. was not yet in World War II, did not mean his later ordering the obliteration of Japanese and German cities was a war crime.

Apparently international law is not really something peacefully agreed upon. As a man who knew something about killing people who disagreed with him once remarked, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." One nation's hero is another nation's pirate. As long as America has chumps stupid enough to buy our bonds, we can keep our guns and our national debt and our freedom from prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Other People's Imperialism: Roosevelt, Hitler and Ho Chi Minh

Americans, the citizens of the United States of America, have a long tradition of anti-imperialism. After all, our 13 original colonies rebelled against the British Empire in 1776 and established a "novus ordo seclorum," in which, in theory at least, all men are created equal.

Hypocrisy, however, was in no shortage among America's founders, who went off a conquering as soon as they got the rabble they whipped up for the Revolution back under control. Jefferson, Jackson and the lot did not consider Native American nations to be real nations, hence there was nothing imperial about taking their land. Nor was there anything imperial about trying to take Canada in 1812, since the Canadians should have had the good sense to toss off the Brits all along.

Well before World War II began the U.S.A. had become one of the great imperialist powers, behind Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, but ahead of Spain, Italy, Germany, and Japan. We ruled the Philippines, Hawaii and Puerto Rico directly, and maintained puppets in many Western Hemisphere nations. Despite that many Americans, including presidents like Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), made good anti-imperialist speeches.

FDR and crew were against British, French, Dutch and Japanese imperialism. Those imperialists prevented U.S. commercial penetration of their domains. It is possible FDR's rhetoric even fooled Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnamese struggle for independence.

Before World War II what we now call Vietnam was divided into three parts [if you must know: Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochin China in the South], but all were essentially one big colony run by the French, who also ran Laos and Cambodia, the whole region being referred to as French Indochina. The French were vicious in their exploitation of Vietnam, killing and starving people to death in numbers that, had the French been Communists, would have got them in big trouble with both yesterday's and today's American propagandists.

Ho Chi Minh, aiming at independence, was dealing with a remarkably complex situation. Although he was a communist, he was also a nationalist whose first goal was to kick the French out. There were also Vietnamese nationalists who were not communists; most allied with Ho, but some saw themselves as future rulers, and so either fought the French separately or even put energy into sabotaging Ho's organization, the Viet Minh. The nationalists bickered among themselves, but there was a lot of bickering in the Viet Minh as well.

Before World War II the French kept alternating governments between conservatives, who had no sympathy at all for the Vietnamese, and socialists, who in theory had sympathy but who nevertheless opposed independence for Vietnam. Ho and his diplomats negotiated with all of them. Ho was willing to accept independence within a French federation. He was a moderate and worldly guy who had lived at times in France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, before setting up his headquarters in southern China.

Where and when World War II began depends on who you ask. Japan started styling itself the America of Asia in the 1930s. Japan was one of the few independent Asian nations, it had a democratic and militaristic government (just like the U.S.), and it asserted its own equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe told the European imperialists to keep their hands off the New World (western hemisphere). But later U.S. presidents grabbed as much territory as they could and frequently sent in the Marines to "restore order," often by appointing a dictator.

Japan told the European imperialists it was time to get out of Asia, and Japanese leaders were very interested in the restoring order game. The most disorderly nation in Asia was China, where a combination of internal weakness and predatory tactics by Europeans and Americans had left a state of chaos characterized by warlord rule, famine, and economic distress. Communists had set up their own Chinese state in the northwest, while in theory Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party "governed" the nation as a whole. To describe the mess in detail is beyond the scope of this essay. The Japanese, on the other hand, had built up industrial and military capabilities sufficient to defeat both China and Russia in earlier wars.

The Japanese went about restoring order in China, meeting the same kind of resistance the U.S. met when restoring order within the Monroe Wall. No American President liked the Japanese out-competing the U.S. in China, but in particular FDR did not like it. The "Delano" side of his family had made its fortune running illegal opium into China, and Roosevelt backed the Open Door Policy, which allowed every imperialist nation to pillage and rape China's economy, as long as new official colonies were not established. Roosevelt berated the Japanese and sometimes even British, French and Dutch colonialism in Asia, but note he did not grant independence to the Philippines, a U.S. colony.

Pretty soon there were 3 major governments of China (many more, if you count the war lords who ran with Chiang but obeyed no one but themselves): the communists, the Japanese puppets (one in Manchuria, one in Coastal China), and the increasingly irrelevant Kuomintang. FDR decided to prop up Chiang, who had married a Christian, American-educated banking princess. Money flowed and ammunition flowed to Chiang, but most of it was diverted by his corrupt cronies or Madam Chiang's family. So FDR sent the U.S. Air Force to fight the Japanese. In order to avoid going to Congress to ask for a declaration of war (the Republican Party was opposed to war back then, and enough Democrats were for peace to kill such a request) the U.S. Air Force in China pretended to be volunteers in the Chinese air force. They were known as the Flying Tigers.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, Adolf Hitler's German army had defeated the French Army. The French fascists, led by Petain, made a deal to rule much of France and all its colonies from Vichy. The Japanese then demanded and got the right to station their troops in Vietnam.

No one was helping Ho and his comrades very much. After Pearl Harbor, Chiang and the Americans were willing to give Ho limited support as long as his ragtag guerillas fought the Japanese. The Russians were too busy with their own problems to help. The Chinese communists provided some training, but they had to fight both Chiang and the Japanese, so their support was minimal.

Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh did the best they could during the war years. They organized a vast underground network and a Provisional Government. The French killed as many Viet patriots as they could, and the Japanese did too. [Many native leaders in the Philippines cooperated with the Japanese, as did Indonesian and Burmese leaders, and in turn these nations were granted independence. It is not clear why that strategy was not followed in Vietnam.]

When FDR died and President Truman vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Vietminh thought the time for Vietnamese independence had finally come. Instead, since the U.S. was busy occupying Japan (a goal of U.S. imperialists from at least 1850), the allied imperialists somehow decided that the Chinese would occupy northern Vietnam and the British would occupy southern Vietnam. They were to ship the Japanese soldiers home, but what would come next?

The French wanted Vietnam back! The Chinese considered keeping North Vietnam, but Chiang could not really spare the troops since he was planning to wipe out the Chinese communists. The Cold War was already on, with the U.S. and British Empires demanding free elections in Eastern Europe (held by the Russians after defeating Hitler) and the Communists demanding free elections in France and Italy, plus the deposing of General Franco from power in Spain. Similarly, free elections were all the rhetorical rage in Vietnam, but just in case the imperialists refused to cooperate, the Viet Minh seized what territory they could, which included most of Tonkin. The local remnants of French fascism not being up to the task of fighting, they encouraged the Japanese, who were now POWs, to fight the Vietnamese independence forces!

To wrap up an already long story, while Ho negotiated with the new government of France organized by Charles de Gaulle, the French got enough material from President Truman to put together an army and reinvade Vietnam. Truman felt that French imperialism was better for the U.S. than Vietnamese independence probably leading to communism.

So the Vietnamese had to fight a long war with the French, and when they won they only got North Vietnam (the deceitful French agreed to nationwide elections, then used an interval of peace to set up a puppet regime in South Vietnam, which the U.S. soon came to equip, finance, and generally pull the strings of).

Sadly, although imperialism has taken on forms different from the colonies of the past, it is still a major part of the world order today. As I write this the French are "helping" African nations by sending in the Foreign Legion again. America has never given up the imperialist game; Barack Obama has approved plans to establish U.S. military bases in almost every country in Africa.

Inside the U.S., the anti-imperialist movement is weaker than it has been at any time since the American Revolution. People just don't care, they don't know the present day facts or the historical facts. American citizens don't understand how imperialism enriches our elite, sucks the blood out of our working class (and even the middle class), and is largely responsible for the impossible-to-pay-back federal debt.

But hey, won't Apple being coming out with a new phone next year? Shouldn't that be what we are focusing our attention on? Or Lady Gaga? Or World of Warcraft?

Were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings War Crimes?

The United States of America exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and over Nagasaki on August 9th. While both cities in Japan hosted military bases, the vast majority of causalities were civilians. An estimated 150,000 died at Hiroshima including 20,000 soldiers and 20,000 Korean laborers. About 80,000 died at Nagasaki, and while military manufacturers were destroyed, relatively few soldiers died there.

One of the most basic ideas of war crimes law is that the purposeful killing of civilians is a war crime. Yet most Americans believe that the atomic bomb use was justified in this case (the only use of atomic bombs other than for testing, ever, in world history.)

The typical American defense against charges of war crime is that it saved the lives of large numbers, potentially millions, of American soldiers who would have died if Japan had been conquered by conventional means. Is it therefore not a war crime to kill civilians if that achieves military objectives like decreasing military casualties? Other, often better, defenses against the war crimes accusation will also be considered here.

Some background information will be useful in this discussion. The war between Japan and the United States began in 1854 when a U.S. fleet of warships under Commodore Perry seized Okinawa and then used the threat of further force to induce the rulers of Japan to end their long commitment to isolation and peace [See Okinawa, Commodore Perry, and the Lew Chew Raid]. Relations varied over the following decades, then disintegrated in the 1930s when the U.S. continued to support the right of itself and European nations to have colonies, economic spheres of influence, and puppet governments in Asia, while denying that Japan should be able to play by the same rules.

Before the war began President Roosevelt gave numerous speeches condemning nations that dropped bombs from warplanes into cities. He demanded that all nations refrain from targeting civilians.

Rather than capitulating to demands from the U.S. that Japan become a third-rate power again, and watching the rapid building of a vastly superior navy, air force, and army in the U.S. in 1940, the Japanese military and the government they controlled decided to gamble on a first strike, which took place at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 [See Pearl Harbor, China, and The Cable].

There is no denying that, before the atomic bombs were dropped, Japan was losing the war. Yet President Harry Truman and most U.S. military leaders did not feel the war was going particularly well. While the U.S. had overwhelming sea and air power, the Japanese had adapted their ground defenses to minimize that advantage. At the Battle of Okinawa alone the U.S. had lost 49,151 soldiers. Estimates of U.S. deaths from conquering Japan started at around 1 million, and that was probably a very conservative number. While nothing compared to the 11 million Communist soldiers who had died fighting Adolf Hitler's army, it was a dismaying number to Americans who were tired of war.

Politically, President Truman's hands were tied. His predecessor, Democratic Party kingpin President Roosevelt had demanded unconditional surrender from Japan. When the a-bombs were ready Truman repeated that demand in the Potsdam Declaration. The Japanese had always been open to a negotiated peace, even before the war began, but had never been willing to surrender unconditionally. Up until then no nation in Japan's position (still holding its mainland, many Pacific islands the U.S. military had "hopped" over, most of China and all of Korea) had ever been expected to surrender unconditionally. It was against the basic understanding of the laws of nations and what it means to lose a war.

The well-documented Japanese military's position was they would surrender if they could disarm themselves, withdraw their troops from China, and try their own war criminals. The peace faction in Japan, including the Emperor and his civilian advisors and even a significant portion of the military, were willing to surrender with one condition, that the Emperor remain the official sovereign of Japan.

Truman and his advisors (all Democratic Party leaders) were aware that if the bombs worked there would be significant civilian casualties. Their reasoning was simple: they did not want to fight the Japanese in what had always been the honorable method. The war might go on until 1948, or the U.S. might suffer a reversal and never win. Or the citizens of the U.S. might have urged their congressmen to negotiate a peace. For the record, two Republican Party generals, Dwight Eisenhower, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, and Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, were against using the atomic weapons on cities as they correctly believed it would be a dishonor to U.S. military forces.

The disposition of colonies was also a prime consideration. If the U.S. had fought a long war with Japan while the British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire, and other European nations had a chance to rebuild their commerce, the U.S. might not have been able to dominate the world stage in the 1950s and 1960s.

There is no loophole in the official war crimes laws allowing the purposeful killing of civilians. Even collateral damage, the incidental killing of civilians when fighting enemy soldiers, is supposed to be minimized. If you argue that, for instance, it is okay to kill civilians in order to reduce the deaths of one's own soldiers, there is no line that can be reasonably drawn to protect the innocent. Civilians always provide the economic support for soldiers in war, willingly or unwillingly. Wipe out a work force, and no one is around to build tanks. To subscribe to the theory of total warfare is to say that there is no such thing as a war crime.

Is there a permissible level of killed civilians? Killing civilians accidentally is considered a hazard of war, but at some point should it be clear that accidental is really on purpose. If one civilian dies in an engagement where 100 soldiers are killed, that is not good, but unless the civilian was specifically targeted we tend to not see a war crimes. But where do we see a war crime? A ration of 10 to 100? 50 to 100? 200 to 100? At Hiroshima the ratio was closer to 750 to 100, at Nagasaki even higher. A reasonable person can only conclude that the point was to kill massive numbers of civilians, and the military targets at the city merely provided a pretext. U.S. records support that interpretation.

Truman and crew did not honestly subscribe to the theory that the war crimes laws are ridiculous. They prosecuted and executed a few Germans and a lot of Japanese for war crimes after the war. They turned the Rule of Law into the Gruel of Law: the war crimes of victors would not be war crimes, only losing nations had committed war crimes.

An alternative defense is that only aggressor nations should be subject to war crimes law. This position creates much trouble. It is a not always clear which nation is the aggressor. Often two nations or sets of nations are eager for war, and the incident that sets of the war is almost irrelevant, as in World War I or the War of 1812. But again, you need to ask: is it okay to kill women and children, even of an aggressor nation? And when nations have been at war at intervals for centuries, is the aggressor label awarded based on the latest round, or is there some more complex calculus that should be used?

If aggressor nations are the only ones that must obey the rules of war, the whole exercise in war crimes law is probably pointless. Starting a war is itself a violation of the rules of war (although as usual, there are economic acts of war, like blockading a nation, that might justify calling a war defensive, or a war of survival). Having violated that rule, why follow any of the rules, unless they offer some sort of advantage?

Finally, there are racial arguments. U.S. relations with Japan had a huge racist component from the very beginning. Official discrimination against Japanese was a constant of U.S. domestic policy until after World War II. Destroying (perceived) subhuman lives in order to spare (white) human lives was a significant factor in World War II, but it should be no excuse in a war crimes tribunal.

Conclusion. A fair and impartial person should be able to identify the atomic bombing attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. The excuses given for the war crimes should be rejected as based on racism, nationalism, cowardliness, and a criminal mindset. The war criminals responsible should have been tried and sentenced. The organizations the war criminals led should have been disbanded.

Further, the failure to fairly uphold the war crimes laws subsequently led to contempt for those laws by the political and military leaders of the United States of America and their allies.

Pearl Harbor, China, and The Cable

When I was a child (I was born in 1955) the Japanese attack on U.S. military facilities at Pearl Harbor loomed large in my limited view of history. In addition to being of international historic importance, it was of great personal interest to my family.

My father was already in the Marine Corps on December 7, 1941. He had enlisted in Chicago in 1940 and was serving state side at the 2nd Marine Division headquarters. He would later serve in the Signal Corps at Guadalcanal and other Pacific Island battles, where he contracted both malaria and amoebic dysentery. Recovered he met my mother at Pearl Harbor. She had escaped tenant farming by first working in a factory manufacturing military uniforms and then joining the Women Marines. They did not get married until after Mother left the Corps at the end of he war and my father was stationed in California.

Of course I loved the Marine Corps when I was five years old. My father was a Captain, which seemed a grand thing. He had been stationed in Japan when I was younger and had made his own peace with the Japanese. We had a few Japanese art objects in the house, and my prized possessions were the postcards he had sent from Japan. 1960 was a slow year for the Marine Corps. My father had no college education, he did not qualify to move up in the ranks, so they forced him to retire.

How dare the Japanese attack us at Pearl Harbor? Well we showed them, didn't we? That was my childish attitude. To the extent that anyone in America cares about World War II anymore, that is the common attitude. Yet in exploring the history leading up to the Battle of Pearl Harbor, I found that in fact, it's complicated.

The Hawaiian islands had been a bone of contention among the Great Powers since not long after they were discovered by a British Empire naval officer. When the United States finally overthrew the sovereign, native-led government of Hawaii in a complex series of events in the 1890's, it violated a set of treaties solemnly sworn with other great powers, including Japan. The Japanese had been thrown on the world stage by U.S. military aggression in the 1850's, and had quickly emerged as a Pacific, if not global power.

The largest ethnic group in Hawaii when the U.S. grabbed it were the Japanese, with Chinese second, Hawaiian natives third, and American-Hawaiians a distant fourth. By treaty [Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1871 between the Kingdom of Hawaii and Japan] right the Japanese (or France, Germany, or Great Britain) could have fought to throw out the Americans and restore the native Hawaiian government. The Japanese did send one of their modern military vessels there in the hope that the U.S. would honor its treaty obligations. When the U.S. made it clear Japan would have to fight a war to keep Hawaii free, the Japanese backed off. As a result a relatively large number of ethnic Japanese became U.S. subjects. Because of race laws, they were not allowed to travel to California or elsewhere in the U.S. Which is a crime against humanity and another pretext for just war.

U.S.-Japanese relations were not always bad. Both nations joined together to destroy Chinese independence during the Boxer Rebellion. The U.S. allowed Japan to grab Korea in return for not helping the Philippines in their fight for independence against U.S. aggression.

By the 1930s the rivalry was outpacing occasional attempts at friendship. The Japanese realized that after America, France and the British Empire finished digesting China they would come at Japan. They decided if China was to be ruled by warlords and puppet governments, they might as well be Japanese-owned warlords and puppet governments. The U.S. devised a plan for the conquest of China, Korea and Japan called War Plan Orange. The Japanese made their own plans. They studied the successful aggressions of the United States and the British Empire with keen, inquiring minds.

In 1932 the U.S. Navy held war games off Hawaii, simulating a Japanese attack. In the Japanese role "an American aircraft carrier, slipping past picket destroyers northeast of Oahu, attacked Pearl Harbor in a dawn raid and 'sank' the warships anchored there." [William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, page 81]. The Japanese learned the lesson, the U.S. Navy forgot it.

By 1940 the U.S. and other colonial European powers were crippling the Japanese economy with an embargo. Both the U.S. (or at least President Roosevelt) and Japan wanted a triumphant peace and threatened war if they did not get their way.

In 1941 the U.S. was at war with Japan. The fighting took place in China, where U.S. airmen volunteered to fly in an all-American air force nominally under the control of Chiang Kai-shek, whose coalition of war lords was kept loyal with U.S. aid.

Cordell Hull, who was Secretary of State to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, throughout the year warned that State Department sources in Japan confirmed an attack on Pearl Harbor was planned if peace talks failed. Roosevelt and Hull were as determined on war as were the war faction in the Japanese government.

In what can only be described as The Cable, the War Department (now the Department of Defense) wrote to Douglas MacArthur, war lord of the Philippines: "NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE JAPANESE APPEAR TO BE TERMINATED TO ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES ... THE UNITED STATES DESIRES THAT JAPAN COMMIT THE FIRST OVERT ACT PERIOD THIS POLICY SHOULD NOT, REPEAT NOT, BE CONSTRUED AS RESTRICTING YOU TO A COURSE OF ACTION THAT MIGHT JEOPADIZE YOUR DEFENSE PERIOD"

A reasonable interpretation of The Cable, given the situation, was that MacArthur was being encouraged to attack the Japanese Navy and possibly even its air bases in Formosa (now called Taiwan). In other words, no declaration of war needed if the U.S. started the fighting. MacArthur decided that since Roosevelt and Hull were his political enemies, and he hoped to become President of the United States, this might be a trap and he would wait for a direct order to attack.

He also thought the Japanese were military incompetents who he could easily beat once the war began. He had already been reinforced by the 4th Marines who had retreated from Shanghai. A earlier in December a huge invasion fleet had set out on its way across the Pacific to reinforce MacArthur and join the attack force from Pearl Harbor. With that force the conquest of Formosa, China and even Japan would have been much easier, but the fleet turned back mid-ocean. Roosevelt decided to use it against the German Navy first.

And so brave little Japan took on an industrial giant ten times her size. From a purely military perspective the attack on Pearl Harbor was brilliant. It should also be noted that the attack was purely military, with no bombing of civilian areas. To claim that it was a war crime because a glitch prevented the U.S. from being officially informed in advance would make all kinds of U.S. military attacks on other nations into war crimes, because we have bothered to declare war in only a few instances.

Were the Japanese militarists and capitalists a nasty lot? Certainly, they learned from the best, our American militarists and capitalists. Still, given the desire of U.S. capitalists to take over Asia, I don't see any real choice for the Japanese. They were slated to become part of the U.S. empire, and would have capitulated earlier if they had not adopted a strong warlike stance.

In the end, the blood of the Japanese was spilled so that the Chinese could be free of U.S. and British dominion. The Japanese committed war crimes in China, but they were mainly at the expense of Chiang Kai-shek. When World War II ended it was the Communist regime that finally liberated China from foreign interference. U.S. aid to Chiang just poured into a black hole of corruption, like U.S. aid to Afghanistan today.

It was foreseen. In arguing that Japan should be allowed to "restore order" in China, the Japanese had invoked the threat of a Communist takeover if they failed.

Pearl Harbor galvanized the American people, but only because they had not been paying attention and FDR had no interest in helping them to understand what had happened. Did FDR know about the attack on Pearl Harbor in advance? His own Secretary of State said he did. What FDR did not know was how successful the attack would be.

Cordell Hull's World

I just finished my notes on the Memoirs of Cordell Hull. Thirty-one pages of notes, and that is with a narrow focus, the main issue being Japanese-American relations before World War II. The Memoirs themselves are in two volumes, 1742 pages. This is a guy who wrote tariff bills for Congress, and the prose of his memoirs is every bit as good. If you own an edition of the Memoirs, you own a first edition.

Despite being a Political Science major in college, I don't believe I took note of Cordell Hull until much later. Most famously, Hull was Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of State, and though he left office before President-for-life Roosevelt died, he is America's longest-serving person to hold the office now occupied by Hillary Clinton.

If we are to believe Cordell Hull, he repeatedly warned Roosevelt and the War Department that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor. Long before that, when he was a young lad back in Congress he was the point man for the modern Income Tax. He also was largely responsible for pushing the United States away from high tariffs on imports and towards free trade.

I got the sense that Hull was more important than most of the Presidents of his era. Like all Americans, I have been trained to think of our history in terms of Presidents. Congress may make the laws, but there are way to many members of Congress to even mention in a standard high school U.S. history text. How many biographies of congress members have you read? Typically, only those who later became Presidents.

Cordell Hull was from eastern Tennessee. He served in the Spanish American War. Recall that our ancestors, after having grabbed all the American Indian territories and the north half of Mexico, were not satisfied. They continued to worship their ancestral god, More. So they engineered a war and grabbed Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Cordell Hull saw no action, and so had all the patriotic benefits of volunteering without seeing the gory down side of war.

In Congress, Hull volunteers that he was an anti-social nerd who focused on the budget, tax policy, and tariff schedules. He was a progressive Democrat, but he does not ever mention the racism of his Democratic Party in Dixie as a problem. Aside from his lack of mentioning of civil rights issues, Hull comes across as a racist in innumerable ways in his Memoirs.

Cordell Hull was an early backer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Hull himself was frequently put forward by others as a potential President or Vice-Presidential candidate, so his support for was critical to Roosevelt's gaining of the Democratic Party's nomination as their candidate for President in 1932.

Hull wrote a lot about international cooperation, and received a Nobel Peace Prize for creating the United Nations (even though he describes the organization as having been created to prosecute war, not for peace). When he slathers on the details, however, he reveals himself as thoroughly nationalist, and a subscriber to the idea that only Europeans have the right to colonize and exploit weaker peoples.

The rules of nationalism for Hull were simple. If the U.S. government does it, our motives are pure and whatever it is is a good thing. For instance if we keep the people of the Philippines enslaved, then it is for their benefit. They just are not ready for democracy. When Japan granted the Philippines independence during World War II, it was a heinous self-serving duplicitous Jap crime.

When the Germans rolled their armies through the neutral nations of The Netherlands and Belgium, it was a terrible international crime. When the neutral nation of Iran asked Hull for protection from Britain and Russia during World War II, Hull told them that America's allies were Good, and needed to control Iran for the good of the world. Britain and Russia then invaded Iran and installed a puppet, later to become known as the Shah of Iran. That dictator's mansion was filled with the skeletons of his enemies when the democratic Iranian Revolution finally tossed his ass out.

Amidst the platitudes you can see that while Hitler planned to conquer the world, it was America, following the plans of Hull and Roosevelt and their team, who arranged to inherit it. Roosevelt was a militarist and imperialist strategist and who had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I and who had been tutored by his war-loving uncle President Theodore Roosevelt.

Hitler was not even that much of a problem, and neither was Japan. Roosevelt and Hull used those nations to weaken our ostensible allies, the British Empire, the French Empire, and the Netherlands Empire. The U.S. could have jumped into World War II and helped kick Hitler's ass as soon as Poland was invaded, or when France was invaded, but then the British and French would have continued to rule the world.

America's economic growth spurt in the 1950's is often attributed (by leftists) to the unionization of the work force and consequent growth of the middle-class consumption economy. But it was also based on imperialism. In theory the old colonies of Europe were becoming independent, but in reality they were becoming commercial colonies of the United States as the Brits and French retreated.

Just as the Spanish and Portuguese dominated world commerce in the 1500s, the Dutch (Netherlands) dominated the world in the 1600s. The British Empire took over for the 1700s and 1800s, and took a good 50 years of the 1900s to lose the board to the United States.

Cordell Hull was a great man, but not a very good man. That is the way of most great men. He fought evil when it was German or Japanese, but embraced it when it was American or British or even French.

He was also a good liar, a prerequisite of being a good Secretary of State. Strangely, in his Memoirs he often failed to censor himself, so that he tells you what he actually did in one paragraph, and then puts a diplomatic gloss on his actions in a different paragraph. Doubtless he was lying to himself, and so did not have the perspective to realize that others would be able to tell when he was lying.

Park Geun-hye, Queen Elizabeth, and King James

Park Geun-hye may be the next president of South Korea. Sixty years old this year, she has devoted her life to serving her country, and has never married. She sees herself as a conscious imitator of Queen Elizabeth of England, the famous Virgin Queen. Given that Korea is currently divided into northern and southern nation-states, another historical analogy jumps to mind.

When Elizabeth was Queen of England, Scotland, of north Britain if you will, was an independent nation. When she died in 1603 James VI was King of Scots. His mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had hoped to displace Elizabeth as Queen of England, and instead lost her head. James was distantly related to Elizabeth, and she was his godmother. She left James the English monarchy in her will, and so he became James I of England. Later Scotland and England were officially united as Great Britain.

South Korea was divided from North Korea after the defeat of Japan in World War II. A united Korean nation has been difficult to achieve over the ages. Korea is blessed and cursed by its position between China and Japan. This has helped Korea be one of the leading nations in technology and culture for most of its history. It has also made it a prize highly desired by both the Chinese (including their non-Han Chinese ruling groups, the Mongols and the Manchu) and the Japanese. In addition, it is mountainous, so it has always been easy to break up the country into rival regimes.

At least twice in history the Chinese tried to invade Japan from Korea. In 1905 the Japanese cut a deal with the U.S.: they would not meddle in our colony the Philippines, and we would assent to their incorporating Korea into imperial Japan.

While Koreans during the Japanese colonial period differed on what kind of government they would like to have, and who would head it, they all agreed that Korea should be independent. They knew that after World War I U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had called for the self-governance (national self-determination) of white (race) countries (hence Poland was created out of parts of Germany and Russia), but he did not push for decolonization, or even grant independence to the Philippines or Puerto Rico.

Nevertheless, as the Japanese started to lose World War II, plans were made for a united Korea (other European colonies in Asia had pretty much the same idea). American rhetoric seemed to favor those plans. But Harry Truman and his advisors did not trust the Japanese enemy, our Russian ally, or the Korean people. Rather than allowing the Japanese soldiers in Korea to ship back to Japan and let the Koreans set up a government, the U.S. decided to encourage the Russians to occupy northern Korea, to make sure the Japanese there were disarmed, while the U.S. did its best to occupy southern Korea and disarm the Japanese who had surrendered there. Frankly, the commonly told U.S. Fairy Tale is not believable. Clearly the Japanese troops in Korea intended to obey their Emperor and abandon Korea; neither U.S. nor Soviet troops were necessary.

Although Koreans almost managed to unite themselves in 1950, through a civil war which the U.S. backed South Korean regime lost, by the end of the Korean War the world again had to recognize two governments in the peninsula.

U.S. troops still occupy South Korea. North Korea is somewhat allied with China. Normally that would encourage an alliance between South Korea and Japan, but the U.S. alliance has replaced.

Park Geun-hye will need to find a James I to reunite the Koreas. Outside forces will pressure her against this. While officially China, Japan, Russia and the United States favor Korean reunification, in reality none of the these nations wants a strong, united Korea for a rival. While the population of a united Korea would only be about 73 million, with 48 million currently in the south and 25 million in the north. That is a tiny number of people compared to China, Japan, Russia, or the U.S., but considerably more than the 60 million of Britain. And Britain used to rule the world, not long ago.

Strangely, to the modern political viewpoint, an arranged marriage might be the best solution for reuniting Korea. Someone from the Park family would marry someone from the Kim family, and the offspring would represent the new united Korea. South Korea has had the benefit of at least a semblance of democratic elections, and the north Korean elite would have to learn the old trick of granting the appearance of self-government without surrendering real power.

I look to a united Korea as splendid member of the family of nations. Both North and South have excellent science establishments. They have the usual human issues to attend to, but they have proven they can contribute to the world. Getting U.S. troops out would help cut the U.S. federal budget deficit, provided they are decommissioned rather than redeployed. While Korea would probably want some sort of self-defense force, the only real defense would be good relations with neighbors.

See also Park Geun-hye at Wikipedia

Roman Catholic Peace Plan of 1941

More history no one wants you to know, because no one comes out looking good.

Cordell Hull, Secretary of State under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his Memoirs recounts the plan proposed by certain American Roman Catholics, and probably vetted by the Vatican, for peace between China, Japan, and the United States [pages 991-994]. This Roman Catholic plan, in my opinion, was not a bad plan, and if adopted would have prevented war between the U.S. and Japan. However, in the context of the overall global Catholic Plan for 1941, it appears to be Catholic diplomacy to help insure they would win the war.

Consider the world broken into five great empires in 1941, each oppressive in its own way. The Catholic Empire is usually equated with Adolf Hitler, or the Nazi Party of Germany, and included basically all of Europe, with influence in much of South America. The Communist Empire was mainly the Soviet Union, running from eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean. By far the largest and most oppressive empire was run by the British, who controlled Great Britain, most of Africa, Australia, Canada, and the Indian subcontinent (now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Burma) and more. The American Empire was confined to the Americas except for the Philippine Islands and Hawaii.

Roman Catholics were making a bid for total global domination, which of course p.o.'d the other empires. Led by Pope Pius XII and Adolf Hitler, having massacred or placed in concentration camps most European atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Protestants (except Lutherans, who were being merged into the Catholic Church in Germany), Catholic armies went plunging into the atheist Soviet Union beginning on June 22, 1941. [See also: Atheist Holocaust]

The Catholics [often called by their political term, Fascists] had long flirted with the government of Japan. Japan was a democracy and not at all Roman Catholic, having repelled Roman Catholic invaders in the late 1500's. However, the government had come to be dominated by a military faction that wanted Japan to copy the other empires by expanding, enabled by a liberal faction that justified expansion by believing they were liberating other Asian nations from domination by Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Netherlands.

Any expansion by Japan could be beneficial to the Catholic military campaign, since it would come at the expense of one of the other empires, with one big old caveat. If America entered the war on the side of the British Empire and the Soviet Empire (who normally were enemies, but were both being attacked by the Catholics), that would make Hitler's job harder.

The Fascist Catholics had a Fifth Column in the United States that had kept the U.S. from declaring war on Germany (and earlier, from aiding the democratic government of Spain when it was attacked by the most Catholic General Franco). Catholic voters were a crucial voting block in the Democratic Party, then the ruling party in the United States. The Catholic Church hierarchy had, on a number of occasions, shown they could influence those voters.

The crew chosen to come up with a peace plan and sell it to the governments of Japan and America consisted of Father Drought, Bishop James Edward Walsh (Superior General of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society) and Postmaster General Frank C. Walker.

The Catholic Peace Plan presented had many dimensions, but the focus was on the old bone China, that had been fought over by international hyenas for over a century. China had been coming under U.S. control due largely to the U.S.-educated Madame Chiang's influence on her husband, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang acted like a dictator, trying to rule through his Kuomintang Party, but in fact he was simply head of a snarling gang of warlords. The Japanese, trying to restore order and prevent a British-American takeover of China, had staged what eventually became an invasion starting in the 1930's. Chiang's number 2 warlord, Wang Ching-wei, had decided to ally himself with the Japanese and actually ruled a larger, more prosperous territory than Chiang did by 1941. The U.S. Marines, who had helped Chiang when they were not to busy helping American capitalists help themselves to China, were already being withdrawn before superior Japanese strength in 1941, but the U.S. air force was already bombing Japanese
troops under the guise of the American Volunteer Group.

The Plan was really simple. Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei would form a joint Chinese government. The Japanese would withdraw their troops and negotiate a peace treaty with the new government. The independence of Manchukuo would be recognized by China and the United States. There would be no large-scale Japanese emigration to China. China would allow for free trade, so U.S. and Japanese commercial interests would be on an equal footing. In addition, the U.S. would end its embargo of Japan.

The immediate problem with the Catholic Plan was that Roosevelt and his crew had long had their eye on the Far East. They already planned go to war with Japan and Germany as soon as the U.S. military was ready. They knew the U.S. economy was ten times as large as Japan's, and they knew the Japanese knew that. Roosevelt could take East Asia when he was ready, as history would prove (although the Japanese fought better and longer than expected).

The Japanese accepted the Catholic Peace Plan. So the Roosevelt-Hull response to the Catholics was to demand that any peace plan had to start with the Japanese removing their troops from both China and Manchukuo. They knew the Japanese would never agree to that.

In the end things worked out well for the Americans, but not for the Catholics or Japanese. Hitler was supposed to have conquered the U.S.S.R. by December 1941, but instead ran into walls of steel in front of Moscow and Stalingrad. The Japanese won the Battle of Pearl Harbor (Hull says the U.S. ambassador to China warned him of the attack plan almost a year in advance: see page 984) even as a large U.S. invasion fleet was steaming across the Pacific towards the Philippines.

America got dominance of Asia. Hull and Roosevelt claimed the U.S. was helping Asian nations against Japanese imperialism, but after winning the war the Asian nations were returned to their European imperialist masters.

In retrospect, no one looks good. Every major player was motivated by greed and willing to use massive violence to achieve their ends. Everyone committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Pope should have been tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, but became increasingly pro-American as Hitler and Mussolini's armies were defeated. Basically, Roman Catholic voters in the U.S. saved his hide, and he was allowed to take up anti-atheism, anti-Communism under the new guise of free-market liberal Catholicism and the Cold War.

Korea, What is Wrong?

The government of North Korea is trying to launch a satellite into orbit. Since by U.S. definition North Korea is evil, it is assumed by our corporate security state apparatus and their loyal followers that the launch is just a practice for an offensive, inter-continental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

A little bit of historical review may put the matter in perspective. Despite having an advanced civilization, Korea has always been caught between two more powerful advanced civilizations, those of China and Japan. After the U.S. went on a bullying expedition to Japan in 1854 [See Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan] the Japanese decided they had to modernize or be swallowed up like other Asian nations had been by imperialistic predators.

By then the predators were carving up their rival China, and so Japan took advantage of Chinese weakness to regain "stewardship" [my word choice] over Korea. This took three steps. After Japan won the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, China granted clear independence to Korea. Then Japan won the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and Japan made Korea a protectorate. The U.S. went along with that because we had just massacred about 2 million people in the Philippine Islands and did not want an increasingly powerful Japan taking advantage of the situation there to gain control of U.S. sugar plantations there. [See U.S. Conquest of the Philippines]

Of course all along most Koreans wanted an independent nation, and multiple underground independence organizations existed. When World War II came along they became particularly hopeful. Their hopes were inflated by promises from the Allies that after Japan was defeated Korea would at last take its place among the world's independent nations.

After the Democratic Party of the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and the Japanese surrendered unconditionally (they had been trying to surrender conditionally for months), the Japanese military prepared to return to Japan from Korea and Manchukuo (Manchuria). The Korean independence organizations began talking about how a new Korea would be run. U.S. commercial interests, the Pentagon and Harry Truman did not see it that way. U.S. troops were rushed in, ostensibly to accept the surrender of the Japanese troops in Korea. Because Russian troops had been fighting in Manchuria, just north of Korea, the U.S. agreed that they could temporarily occupy the northern half of Korea.

Then the Russians and U.S. each decided that instead of allowing the Koreans to govern themselves in a unified country, the occupiers would pick winners and losers among the political groups in the regions they occupied. Korea was divided in half, which none of the Korean nationalists liked. But Korean communists got control of the north, and U.S. puppets got control of the south. Moderate, pro-democracy groups were shunted aside in both the north and the south.

When the Russians and Americans finally withdrew their troops, the communists in the north decided to re-unite the country. They easily won a civil war with the fascists in South Korea. But that was politically unacceptable to Harry Truman. The U.S. invaded South Korea. We had the blessings of the United Nations, but then again the U.N. had been set up to further the agendas of the U.S., and the French and British empires.

The Viceroy of Japan, Douglas MacArthur, had the Koreans whipped, but made the mistake of moving to invade China to re-establish war lord Chiang Kai-Shek as its, well, war lord. The Chinese reminded Douglas that white people don't automatically win wars (MacArthur had executed a couple of Japanese generals as war criminals for the crime of having defeated him in battle back in World War II.) After a lot of people died, the U.S. ended up with just half of Korea. The Chinese withdrew from North Korea, but the U.S. occupiers stayed.

So you have to ask yourself, even if you are an American, who is in the wrong here? The foreign invaders, the Americans, or the natives? Are North Koreans, or Koreans of any kind, sitting armed to the teeth on America's borders? I know of none. But U.S. troops, armed to the teeth, sit on North Korea's border. Has Korea ever invaded the United States? No, but the United States has invaded Korea.

I admit the communists have made a mess of the situation, but then they were put in a very weird situation. Their country was torn asunder, and most communist soldiers and party members were killed by U.S. troops during the Korean War. In the south communists and even non-communists who did not walk right were simply rounded up and slaughtered. So Kim Il-sung and a bunch of idiots started bossing Koreans around. They had to allocate a disproportionate share of their economy to defending their southern border. There was nothing inherent in communism that led the nation to economic disaster. China's Communist Party has proven that communism can develop an economy just fine.

So Kim Jong-un is now supreme leader. Maybe, instead of being just an idiot with an inheritance, he is smarter than we think. Maybe with his advisors they can figure out a way to make North Korea livable. My point would be that the U.S. has no business there. Let the Koreans in the south work out their future with the Koreans in the north as best they can.

As to nuclear weapons, again I remind you that only one political party on earth has ever used them, and that party, the Democratic Party, used them against large numbers of civilians living in two urban areas. If there were a world government interested in justice and peace (I don't think the U.N. constitutes such a government), its priority would be to take atomic weapons away from the U.S. first. And send all U.S. troops home. And try Barack Obama, George W. Bush and their crews for war crimes.

See also: The U.S. Conquest of Korea

Unfair China

Hating the Chinese has become as American as apple pie. It unites Democrats, Republicans, independents, and even more than one Green Party member I have talked too.

But, we are asked to pretend, we are not prejudiced against Chinese people. It is the Chinese (communist) government's economic policies that are driving us, the best, sweetest, and least prejudiced people on earth, we Americans, to do battle with the Chinese.

All we demand is fairness. We just want some stability. We don't want to work hard for our pay. We are not used to it. So the Yuan (or Renminbi, if you use the more modern term for Chinese money) has to float. And it has to float upward against the American dollar. It has to make American goods cheaper in China, and Chinese goods more expensive in the U.S. Like an iPod, iPad or Mac could possibly be more expensive.

A quick recap the history of relations between the United States of America and China is in order. China was the wealthiest and most civilized nation in the world in when English settlers first started grabbing land in what is now the U.S.A. in 1607. On the other hand, the Chinese ruling class were mostly complacent and uninterested in modernization. Viewing (correctly) Europeans as predator-pirates, the Chinese allowed only limited intercourse during the 17th and 18th centuries. Americans started trading with China while we were still part of the British empire, but the trading was trivial to the Chinese.

In the early 1800's the imperial nations began seeing China as a great prize to be devoured, but its government was still strong enough to repel the predators. U.S. trade with China increased, and U.S. merchants participated in the illegal opium trade. That is where the Delano side of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got their fortune (the Forbes fortune, too.) The Chinese government clamped down on opium, which was destroying Chinese culture and its economy. Parliament, the device by which a small number of British voters bullied half the world, resulted in the launching of the Opium Wars by Britain, which China lost. Britain got Hong Kong and America and other nations got the right to "free trade" with China.

The Chinese next resisted being gobbled up by America and friends with the Boxer Rebellion. The U.S., Japan, Britain, France, Russia and Germany ganged up on China and essentially got control of the Chinese government. Eventually the Chinese people rebelled, overthrew the monarchy, and formed a Republic. But America and friends preferred a weak China, and so backed a number of warlords, most notably Chiang Kai-shek.

Starting in the 1920's Japan, which had been more successful at resisting U.S., British and Russian bullying, decided that the only way Japan and all Asia would not get gobbled up would be by Japan taking the leadership of Asia. The Chinese warlords sponsored by the Euro-American imperialists did not like that idea. The Japanese, unfortunately, resorted to force to install modern, enlightened (capitalist), pro-Japanese regimes in China. This eventually led to open, declared war between the U.S. and Japan. Chiang Kai-shek's warlords also fought Japan, as did a new Chinese government set up in north-west China by the Communist Party.

America won the war, but not before Japan had encouraged most east Asian nations to declare independence. The Philippines declared independence from the U.S., Vietnam from France, Indonesia from the Netherlands, and Burma and India from Britain.

As the Japanese withdrew from the mainland, a civil war erupted between the Communist Party and the U.S. financed warlord Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese won the civil war, but by then the Chinese economy was totally wrecked. In a mere 100 years China had gone from still being one of the wealthiest nations in the world to being one of the poorest. Chiang, helped by America, moved China's silver and gold, as well as what was portable of its industries, to the island of Taiwan, where he set up a dictatorship protected by the U.S. navy.

It took the Chinese decades to rebuild their nation. The U.S. refused to trade and pretended Chiang still ruled China. Although Nixon made peace in the 1970's, only in the 1990's did the Chinese start to have sustantial trade with the U.S. The U.S. gave the Chinese no breaks. We treated trade as a form of economic warfare, extracting as much from the Chinese in return for whatever modern technology we were willing to export to them.

So what do the Chinese owe the U.S. What is the standard of fairness that should apply to this situation?

Here's what I think: Americans have not been being screwed by the Chinese. We have been being screwed by Americans, by our own capitalists and their political subsidiaries. They want to direct our anger at the Chinese when it should be directed at ourselves and our economic lords.

So now the exchange rate of the yuan does not float against the dollar, and we buy more from China than they buy from us. First of all, as former Secretary of State Cordell Hull used to pontificate, global free trade can't be balanced on a bilateral (2-nation basis). Goods flow in all directions. China does not have a trade surplus with every nation. Because the U.S. economy is now so consumer oriented, we suck the blood of the entire world. China is just the assembly point, where quick hard-working hands turn raw goods and parts from the global economy into crap that you buy at Walmart because you don't have the good sense to save and invest your money.

If the yuan floated, then China would have a small lower trade surplus with the U.S. They would not take in so many billions of U.S. dollars. They would not buy so many U.S. government bonds to get rid of those dollars. The interest rates on bonds would go up, and the federal government would be stuck paying a lot more interest. So the national deficit would get worse, unless government spending were cut back further. In any case, that won't be good for the U.S. economy.

The way to balance things out with China is for the U.S. to compete on a fair basis, rather than whining and asking for special treatment. We could also increase import duties, which would lower demand for Chinese goods and help the U.S. Treasury. We could teach our children math and engineering and business practices instead of English, Art, and Film Studies.

Oh, things are pretty fair already. We could compete. But our American capital has been concentrated in the hands of a very few people because we no longer have meaningful taxes on inheritances and capital gains. This wealthy elite has become very lazy. They do the easy thing, aided by a bunch of well-paid technocrats, advisors, and lawyers. They invest in China or developing nations when they could invest in the U.S.

I just don't get how we can blame the Chinese for Steve Jobs and crew's failure to invest in the U.S. We don't even have to destroy America the Beautiful to create new factories. There is plenty of empty factory space in Detroit and other American cities.

Let's renovate those empty factories, and stop blaming the Chinese for our problems. I think the success of the Chinese is a great thing for humanity. They are a very civilized people, so far. If they become the number 1 economy in the world again, it will probably make the world a better place.

Deliberately Forgetting History

In his Memoirs former U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote:

"Japan violently and fraudulently misrepresented the idea of the Monroe Doctrine, deliberately forgetting that that doctrine did not give us the right to conquer and occupy or dominate sections of the Western Hemisphere or close them off to the trade of other nations. And she ignored the basic concept of the Monroe Doctrine, which was to preserve the security and independence of the nations in the Western Hemisphere. Also, the Monroe Doctrine was designed to prevent foreign nations from making conquests in this Hemisphere, whereas the Far East was being threatened by no foreign nation whatever." [page 282]

As an example of corporate security state thinking, this is perfect. Cordell was writing about the situation in 1933 and afterwards [the Memoirs were published in 1948]. This same type of thinking infects America today and applies to such perceived enemy states as Iran, Pakistan, Palestine and Somalia, or any others that may arise.

Without in any way excusing Japanese militarism, lack of democracy, war crimes or crimes against humanity from that period, I want to focus on the American side of the war and peace equation.

In case you need a refresher, James Monroe was President when he issued his annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823, part of which came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. It basically said we would not interfere in European affairs, and expected the Europeans to keep their noses out of North and South America. At the time, however, many nations in the Americas, including Canada, were still European colonies.

Hull's interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is questionable, but then the Doctrine may be seen to have evolved over time. He says the doctrine "was designed to prevent foreign nations from making conquests." However, it does not seem to have been designed to prevent the United States of America from making conquests. Between 1823 and 1833 the U.S.A. conquered: a variety of Native American Indian nations; northern Mexico (now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California); Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. In addition we invaded various North and South American nations on a regular basis, and did our best to set up puppet governments in those that were nominally independent.

So really what Hull could have said, had be been franker, was that a Japanese Monroe Doctrine in East Asia was feared to be exactly like the actual practice of the U.S. under the Monroe Doctrine. Elsewhere in his Memoirs, Hull claimed to be a keen scholar of American history. He served (but did not fight) in the Spanish American war. So it was Hull that was deliberately forgetting.

Adding color, consider the source of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt family fortune [Roosevelt was President while Hull was Secretary of State. His uncle Theodore was the genocidal maniac who presided over the Philippines genocide]. On the Delano side it came from illegally running opium into China [See Warren Delano]. When China tried to stop the opium trade the result was the Opium Wars. Did the U.S. side with China against Britain in those wars? No. Britain grabbed Hong Kong and both the U.S. and Britain rewarded themselves with the de facto commercial overlordship of China. The U.S. even invaded China during the Boxer Uprising. U.S. gunboats ran up and down Chinese rivers bossing Chinamen around during the early 20th century, and were still there in 1933.

Hull was doing the classic "do as I say, not as I do" dance. He did not object to American, British, Dutch, or French colonies in East Asia. They already existed, and the horrendous treatment of the native peoples by those powers were of no concern to Hull.

It seems long ago now, but in 1933 two incidents in particular were fresh in Japanese memory. One was the U.S. conquest of the Philippines. Not the cowardly surrender of the Spanish garrison during the Spanish-American war, but the genocidal war against Philippine independence. The lesson some Japanese took from the Philippines was that Americans would kill hundreds of thousands of Asians to prevent democracy and self-determination of nations.

The other lesson was in treaty breaking. Hull says the Japanese don't honor their treaties. Putting aside the stretch of broken treaties made with Native Americans, there was the annexation of Hawaii. The U.S., France, Great Britain, and Japan had all signed a treaty saying that none of them would grab Hawaii, so that it would remain an independent nation. The U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898. At the time the Japanese were the largest ethnic group living in the islands.

So it was the United States government that taught Japan that treaties are a convenience, to be scrapped when inconvenient.

Getting back to the Monroe Doctrine, a close look shows that the U.S. promises not to meddle in the affairs of nations outside of the Western hemisphere. It says we will recognize de facto governments. That means we won't try to overthrow governments, even if we don't like them.

Deliberately forgetting that policy, lately we have interfered in Palestine, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia.

Americans like to think that ours is an exceptional nation. If that means excepting ourselves from the ordinary rules of ethics and international law, we are correct.

Note that today's news that the U.S. attacked a Pakistan border outpost shows that my analysis in U.S. Close to War with Pakistan [April 23, 2011] was and is, sadly, correct.

Where Have All the Robots Gone? Or, Nuclear Crock Pots

Nuclear power plants were never a very good idea. Take an atomic bomb, marry it to a crock pot, and the progeny are nuclear power plants. Imagine a crock pot with over a million welds. Iit only takes one weld poorly done to recreate Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. That, of course, is just the danger of the ordinary operation of a nuclear fission reactor. Add an earthquake, a terrorist attack, or just the Homer Simpson that dwells in all human beings, and you have a little list of catastophic initiators.

Some new not very good ideas have been revealed by the incidents at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. Like placing backup generators where they can be knocked out by flood waters. The worst, however, is storing "spent" uranium and plutonium fuel rods in big stacks next to each other in pools of water. Which reminds us that 60 years after nuclear reactors began to be built, there is no safe system in place to store the nuclear waste. But don't let that stop progress.

One problem in getting the reactors and the massed pools of used fuel rods under control is the susceptibility of humans to radiation poisoning. Which leads me to ask: where are the robots when you need them? Japan is the world leader in robotics. They have factories filled with robots and robotic pets in people's homes. So why no robots that can go and take a peak inside the storage pools and the reactor buildings? Why no robotic helicopters to help in a crisis? All that is need, really, to avert disaster is a nice clean pool filled with boron salts and water and a robot or two that can pluck out a few fuel rods and space them out at nice safe distances, preferably in such an emergency back up pool.

Strangely, atomic bombs are actually safer than nuclear power plants. They are designed so that the fissionable materials are kept far enough apart that they don't react with each other, not until the bomb is detonated.

I don't think nuclear power can be made safe. We just can't anticipate everything that can go wrong. With all due respect to nuclear engineers and scientists, your pride has gotten in the way of your analytic abilities. Sure you are clever, but you can't dodge Murphy's Law forever. The only safe uranium is unmined uranium.

On the other hand, let's hear a round of applause for the brave workers who are risking their lives trying to salvage the situation.

If you have not already done so, be sure to write President Obama and tell him to shut American reactors down. Don't use email, that won't make the point. Send a snail mail letter to:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20500

If you pretend to be a "progressive Democrat," you should add the administration's continuing support for building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. to your list of reasons to stop delaying the inevitable. Change your voter registration to Green Party as soon as you can.

No Nukes, No War, No Service

Ever since working as a paralegal on the WPPSS debacle I have been resolutely against the building and operating of nuclear power plants, including the development of fusion reactors (current reactors use nuclear fission). WPPSS, Washington Public Power Supply System, planned to build 5 nuclear power plants back in the 1970s and 80s. Fortunately they screwed up so badly that only 1 plant was actually built, although 2 others were started. The result was an economic disaster (and the consequent litigation, hence my employment). Between that, the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl nuclear emission disasters you would have thought nuclear power plants would would be dead, finis, not on the table. But there are two powers in the universe greater than the atom: human stupidity and greed.

President Barack Obama has been a supporter of building more nuclear power plants in the United States. His excuse is the need to cut back on greenhouse gases. Campaign donations to the Democratic Party grease those skids too. So far even the Japanese disaster has not altered Obama's mind. I'm writing him a letter. Close the damned things down as soon as possible. Don't wait for an earthquake.

There will be a power shortage if the world turns off its nuclear plants. Some will want to burn more fossil fuels to make up the difference. I think people should turn off a lot of unnecessary stuff. Turn off the entire military establishment of every nation, for starts. Turn off all air conditioning. Limit heating in winter to what is really essential. Walk or bike to work.

We can't stop earthquakes or hurricanes, but we can stop war. The U.S. has been the worst military offender since it became the biggest military power after World War II. We do need a military. We need about 10,000 trained men to protect us from the Canadians, and another 10,000 to protect us from the Mexicans. Or we could just merge our three nations into one big happy family, and just keep a cadre of officers trained at the military academies in the remote case that we need to ramp up to protect us from some other nation.

My Democratic Party friends, rather than leaving the party because it is a war crimes organization (an organization that has repeatedly ordered war crimes to be committed) want to defend Barack Obama and crew against the Tea Party and Republican Party. No thanks. It will only take the Tea Party two to four years to destroy the American Economy as we know it if they come to power. That is not my favored scenario. I'd like to see the Green Party or its equivalent in charge of governance. But as far as getting rid of the military and nuclear power plants, letting the Tea Party unleash anarchy on the land is a better bet.

Meanwhile, I want to express my deepest sympathies for the people of Japan, particularly those harmed in the recent tragedy. Until 1850 the Japanese militarists were content to stay isolated on their islands and abuse their own peasants. After the U.S. invaded Okinawa and Japan, they decided they rather liked the American modern style and did their best to imitate our society. Despite imitation being flattery, this imitation eventually involved cutting into America's ability to rape and pillage Asia, so FDR ordered the crushing of Japan (which started well before Pearl Harbor, with U.S. attacks on Japanese and Chinese troops stationed). After World War II the Japanese gave up on military power but still aspired to industrial power, and had quite a run. The recent earthquake would have happened just the same no matter what the human course of history, and seaside villages would have been just as drowned. But the nuclear tragedy is a purely human tragedy, built of human stupidity and arrogance that many Japanese bought into. Hopefully when the dead are buried and memorialized the next step the Japanese people will take will be to close all their nuclear plants.