1941, Pearl Harbor, December 7.
Start on page 7 of this brilliant essay by G. Edward Griffin. And if you really want to study this topic, check out this list of articles on the topic.
The photos above and below are from two Hawaiian newspaper headlines. Here’s the background. It was clear then, and with more and more documented evidence since, that the United States baited Japan into the war. FDR and the US wanted war all along despite their rhetoric to the contrary. Evidence that Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor was facilitated by American military was known back in 1945, publicized in Life Magazine. Yet, today, Americans have bought the myth–that Japan is a terrorizing nation that we have to keep an eye out on, a country whose military that we have to, through the UN and Council on Foreign Relations, disband.
posted here on 12/26/2014, 1945 Life Magazine: Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) Knew Japan Would Attack Pearl Harbor. Reposted here on Monday, 12/5/2016.
1940s, U.S. Census helped the Army round up Japanese Americans. Awful. This reminds me of what the Nazis did with new prisoners to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. Camp commanders told new prisoners that the prison was a labor camp and that they would work there until the war was over. Lied to them about typhus as a rationale for shaving heads and going to the “showers,” a.k.a., gas chambers. But the commanders instructed the new arrivals to write back home telling their families where they were and that they were alright. Many did. And the Nazis used the information to gather up more Jews. I remember one of my earliest purchases on Amazon how I was concerned about giving my personal information online specifically for this reason–that it could be used for something else, something more sinister. So far, so good. Only marketers with their viruses and spam can get a hold of me . . . for now.
Wikipedia argues that European immigration was competing against Japanese immigrants from Hawaii who came over after their contracts there were up.
As the Japanese-American population continued to grow, European Americans on the West Coast resisted the new group, fearing competition and exaggerating the idea of hordes of Asians keen to take over white-owned farmland and businesses. Groups such as the Asiatic Exclusion League, the California Joint Immigration Committee, and the Native Sons of the Golden West organized in response to this “Yellow Peril.” They lobbied successfully to restrict the property and citizenship rights of Japanese immigrants, as similar groups had previously organized against Chinese immigrants.[35] Several laws and treaties attempting to slow immigration from Japan were introduced beginning in the late 19th century. The Immigration Act of 1924, following the example of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, effectively banned all immigration from Japan and other “undesirable” Asian countries.
1942, Battle of Midway, June 4 to June 7.
1942, JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS
Japanese Internment Camps, U.S.
1942, On Japanese internment camps throughout the U.S. under FDR, Gary North explains the non air-brushed horrors:
On April 1, 1942, California announced the order for the arrest and deportation of Japanese citizens in California. They were sent into internment camps — read: concentration camps in Idaho. Here are photos and an accompanying account. Here are other photos.
We all know this story. President Roosevelt signed an executive order on February 19, 1942, authorizing the program. Congress never voted on this. The program was implemented by Secretary of War Henry Stimpson. The only major figure in Washington to oppose this was J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI.
The prisoners were released in early 1945. They were given $10 and a train ticket back home. But they had no homes to go to. Most of their homes had been sold, along with their possessions and businesses, at bargain basement auctions in 1942.
This executive order stayed on the books until February 19, 1976, when Gerald Ford rescinded it. In 1982, the American government issued a formal apology. It made token reparations to survivors of $20,000 each.
This is the airbrushed version. This part of the story could not be hidden from the public. It got into American history textbooks.
More on American Concentration Camps.
1945, August 9, Nagasaki. On Nagasaki, Rockwell makes an interesting point, “The war criminal Truman was a bitter anti-Catholic. It’s why he decided to atom-bomb Nagasaki as well, the Catholic capital of Japan.” Catholic capital in Japan, Nagasaki, is fleshed out in a little more detail here. As evidence of Truman’s anti-catholic views, he boycotted the DNC that nominated Kennedy in 1960. “The Kennedy bandwagon could not be stopped despite the pressure of the combined Congressional leadership, including Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, and of former President Harry S. Truman. Mr. Truman had boycotted this meeting on a charge that the convention had been rigged for Senator Kennedy’s nomination.”
1945, August 6, Hiroshima
1945, Ryan McMaken on the sociopathic narrative assigned to WWII veterans. “The American media and the US Government have cultivated an image of the WWII veteran as a tough guy with no regrets. We have a name for those people. They’re called sociopaths, and much of the WWII narrative is built around them. If one takes the time to talk to the veterans who aren’t filled with bluster, the picture becomes far more complex. This video explores one such situation.”
1945, August 14, eight days after the bombings on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the United States launched a 1000-plane air-raid against Japan.
Arnold wanted as big a finale as possible, hoping that USASTAF could hit the Tokyo area in a 1,000-plane mission: the Twentieth Air Force had put up 853 B-29’s and 79 fighters on 1 August, and Arnold thought the number could be rounded out by calling on Doolittle’s Eighth Air Force. Spaatz still wanted to drop the third atom bomb on Tokyo but thought that battered city a poor target for conventional bombing; instead, he proposed to divide his forces between seven targets. Arnold was apologetic about the unfortunate mixup on the 11th and, accepting Spaatz’ amendment, assured him that his orders had been “coordinated with my superiors all the way to the top.” The teleconference ended with a fervid “Thank God” from Spaatz. Kennedy had the Okinawa strips tied up with other operations so that Doolittle was unable to send out his VHB’s. From the Marianas, 449 B-29’s went out for a daylight strike on the 14th, and that night, with top officers standing by at Washington and Guam for a last-minute cancellation, 372 more were airborne. Seven planes dispatched on special bombing missions by the 509th Group brought the number of B-20’s to 828, and with 186 fighter escorts dispatched, USASTAF passed Arnold’s goal with a total of 1,014 aircraft. There were no losses, and before the last B-29 returned President Truman announced the unconditional surrender of Japan.
This was the largest bombing raid in history. Yet, many timelines of World War II do not even list this event as having occurred.
1945, September, 2: Japan surrenders.
1945, October 24: United Nations is created.
Map of the Pacific Naval Battles during WWII.
1945, Kobe Bombings, five months prior to the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Great movie, Grave of the Fireflies, 1988 animated film. It is set during the American fire-bombing of Kobe.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north330.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north26.html
This list is also detailed: http://www.garynorth.com/public/11904.cfm
1950-1953, Korean War.
1951, Truman relieves General MacArthur of his duties . . . in a ceremony on Wake Island.
In perhaps the most famous civilian-military confrontation in the history of the United States, President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command of the U.S. forces in Korea. The firing of MacArthur set off a brief uproar among the American public, but Truman remained committed to keeping the conflict in Korea a “limited war.”
Problems with the flamboyant and egotistical General MacArthur had been brewing for months. In the early days of the war in Korea (which began in June 1950), the general had devised some brilliant strategies and military maneuvers that helped save South Korea from falling to the invading forces of communist North Korea. As U.S. and United Nations forces turned the tide of battle in Korea, MacArthur argued for a policy of pushing into North Korea to completely defeat the communist forces. Truman went along with this plan, but worried that the communist government of the People’s Republic of China might take the invasion as a hostile act and intervene in the conflict. In October 1950, MacArthur met with Truman and assured him that the chances of a Chinese intervention were slim. Then, in November and December 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed into North Korea and flung themselves against the American lines, driving the U.S. troops back into South Korea. MacArthur then asked for permission to bomb communist China and use Nationalist Chinese forces from Taiwan against the People’s Republic of China. Truman flatly refused these requests and a very public argument began to develop between the two men.
Posted Saturday, October 28, 2023. Princes of the Yen: Japan’s Central Bankers and the Transformation of the Economy, Richard A. Werner, 2003. Thanks to this post by Richard Poe.
ARTICLES
1. “The Looting of Asia: Japan, the U.S., and Stolen Gold,” Chalmers Johnson, 2003.
If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4 percent chance of not surviving the war; the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30 percent.
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BOOKS
1. Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of WWII, Laurence Rees, 2001.
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DOCUMENTARIES
1. Horror in the East, Part I and Part II is a damning indictment of the cruelty by the Japanese soldiers during WWII. No wonder the U.S. decided to drop a bomb on them. They were quite vicious. I am not justifying the mass murder of 200,000 Japanese men, women, and children at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the Japanese were an imperial force that needed to be dealt with as they raped their way through Asian countries. Oh, my God.
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This was good. The Nisei are Americans born in Japanese immigrants. This was a very good documentary, narrated by Walter Cronkite. A good question was raised. Cronkite points out that the axis was Germany, Italy, and Japan. Why were only Japanese Americans arrested and schlepped off to concentration or internment camps? At the 7:15 mark, Cronkite explains that only a curfew was imposed on Germans and Italians on the west coast. Cronkite said that there were a total of 112,000 Japanese interned, what he called prisoners of war. Internment lasted from 1942 to 1945, but the internment camp at Santa Anita lasted only 7 months of 1942. Wikipedia explains that the “other Los Angeles County camp selected was the Pomona assembly center at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona, California.” Apparently, a riot at the Santa Anita camp caused its closure, and the Japanese were moved from sunny southern California to a Wyoming internment camp, called Heart Mtn. Interpretive Center, on Hwy 14, half way between Cody and Powell, Wyoming. What a change in topography and temperatures. All of Wyoming is extremely windy; nothing but vacant plains. Different kind of living altogether.
Thanks to Charles Burris [09/12/2020] for this video.
San Gabriel Tutor 