OMNI
“PEARL HARBOR DAY,” COLONIAL PACIFIC WORLD WAR II
NEWSLETTER #7, December 7, 2015 (2008-2015).
Compiled by Dick Bennett.
Another in OMNI’s US NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
DAYS series for a Culture of
Nonviolent, Positive Peace (for more information see below). The year 2015 will see the end of new
newsletters, but the seven years of their compiling has provided a large
archive of materials.
What’s at stake: On this December 7, 2010, let us
grieve over yet another war of horrific slaughter and mass murder. Let us not
celebrate the so-called “victory” of WWII in the Pacific, mutually a War Without Mercy, as John Dower
entitles his book. Rather, let us celebrate with a loud and concerted voice the
banning of war in the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the United Nations
Charter of 1945, and the International Criminal Court’s decision to prosecute
crimes of aggression in 2010.
--Dick
Pearl Harbor Newsletters Nos. 1-6 at end
OMNI’s Newsletters, Index, Blog at end
Pearl Harbor Day, Colonial Pacific WWII
Newsletter #7,
December 7, 2014
Dick, Pearl
Harbor No Unprovoked Stab in the Back
Robert Higgs, Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl
Harbor
Dick,
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Remembers
Pearl Harbor
Books Reviewed
in Colonial Pacific WWII Newsletters
Dick:
Pearl Harbor No Unprovoked Stab in the Back Treachery, But Part of US Colonial
Conflict with Japan
OMNI is part of the
international peace, justice, and ecology movement. These newsletters contribute to the
movement’s efforts to understand the causes of wars in order to prevent
them. A close study of the origins of
WWII in the Pacific, uncontaminated by the myths and propaganda generated by
jingoism, ignorance, racism, and fear, strengthens enormously our critical
thinking and skepticism toward all US leaders’ calls to war. See the Newsletters “US
US WESTWARD IMPERIALISM,
PACIFIC OCEAN, EAST ASIA, TPP NEWSLETTER #17, July 13, 2015.
Hiroshima-Nagasaki Remembrance, AUGUST
9, 2015
Roland Worth, Jr. in No Choice But War: The United States Embargo
Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific (McFarland, 1995) finds much to blame
in both countries for causing World War II in the Pacific. He expresses no sympathy for Japanese
militarism, ruthless aggression, and mass killing. But he also shows “the pivotal role of the
U.S.-led economic embargo in pushing Japan over the edge into overt
hostilities against the West. In other
words the U.S. decision to embargo 90 percent of Japan’s petroleum and
two-thirds or more of its trade led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941.” “It was not just a
matter of Japanese imperialism; the misjudged American response [of total
embargo] sealed off the possibility of a peaceful solution or even of ‘hot cold
war’” and pushed the Japanese “beyond the point of no return” (ix-x).
During the past two decades, the official, patriotic,
illusory enthusiasm for US wars that led to more wars—virtually permanent war-has
received significant deflation. The US wars were not inevitable and as we have
seen have been disastrous. You and I now have a well-substantiated history that
can lead to peace. Our task on Pearl Harbor
Day and on all war-making National DAYS is to make that history known to the
next generations of young people.
How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked
Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor
By Robert Higgs | Posted: Mon. May 1, 2006. Also published in The Freeman.
By Robert Higgs | Posted: Mon. May 1, 2006. Also published in The Freeman.
An excerpt follows; for the full
article see Newsletter #6
Accordingly,
the Roosevelt administration, while curtly dismissing Japanese diplomatic
overtures to harmonize relations, imposed a series of increasingly stringent
economic sanctions on Japan. In 1939 the United States terminated the 1911
commercial treaty with Japan. “On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export
Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of
essential defense materials.” Under this authority, “[o]n July 31, exports of
aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel
scrap were restricted.” Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an
embargo, effective October 16, “on all exports of scrap iron and steel to
destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.”
Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt “froze Japanese assets in the United
States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective
end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as
still were in commercial flow to Japan.”[2] The British
and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in
southeast Asia.
An Untenable Position
Roosevelt and his subordinates knew they were putting Japan in an
untenable position and that the Japanese government might well try to escape
the stranglehold by going to war. Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code,
the Americans knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda
had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: “Commercial and
economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the
United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot
endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must
take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas.”[3]
ON DECEMBER 7, 2015, THE ARKANSAS
DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE REMEMBERS PEARL HARBOR DECEMBER 7, 1941, YET AGAIN AS AN
INSPIRATION FOR US IMPERIALISM AND MILITARISM.
By Dick Bennett
Editorial: “Remember Pearl Harbor: Nation
Must Continue Its Vigilance.” Why?
Because, as editorial writers for 74 years have repeated, the evil Japanese on
Dec. 7, 1941 “launched the United States into World War II.” And why?
“Japan’s leaders had been making imperialistic moves for nearly a
decade,” while the “United States forces in the Pacific stood as one of it last
remaining deterrents.” So that’s why the
US had been acquiring bases across the Pacific ever since 1893 (Hawaii), 1898
(Guam), and the Philippines (1899)? No
imperialism in that saith our editorialist.
Then imperialist Japan attacked the
US. But the result was ultimately
fortunate, beams the editorialist, for it taught the US “to never letting an
enemy take advantage of such an opportunity again.” We learned that “We--as a nation and as
individuals—must keep our guard up.” So
that’s why we have ten carrier attack groups sailing the globe and at least 800
military bases on foreign soil? Japanese
imperialism bad, US good, saith our editorialist.
“No, we do not let our enemies define how
we will live. These truths remain
self-evident: that all men are created equal. . . .” “Those word are at the heart and soul of what
it means to be an American. We shall be
free.” By maintaining a fighting stance
as nation and individuals. The truths of
course do not apply to others, not to all
men (and women and children). So
that’s why we could send wave after wave of B-52s to bomb the Vietnamese not only
the enemy North but also and mainly the ally South with a ferocity and
brutality only known before by other US bombings by “flying fortresses” during
WWII, in both wars carpet bombings that guaranteed almost total destruction
using high explosives, napalm, and cluster bombs? Well,
yes, because we are “freedom-loving people” who “have stood against our enemies
and laid their lives on the line. The
people of our U.S. Armed Forces continue to do it today all over the globe in
defense of liberty.”
That’s why we remember Pearl Harbor and “recognize
the sacrifices of the past and the need for vigilance for all time to come.”
Such sentiments are reinforced in an
ostensible news report written by Jake Sandlin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on the same day: “Spotlight on Hoga at Today’s Ceremony.” (The USS Hoga tugboat, veteran of Pearl
Harbor, has been brought to Little Rock’s Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum. The ceremony was its public debut.) You may find the report tedious after the
editorial. “The [attack on Pearl Harbor]
led to the U.S. entering World War II.”
What came first, the Japanese attack or the US/Japanese colonial war?
The
U.S.-led economic embargo of 90 percent of Japan’s petroleum and two-thirds or
more of its trade, according to several historians, led directly to the attack
on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Never mind, Arkansas’ Secretary of State
Mark Martin suggests, for “’It is imperative that this generation and others to
follow know what happened on Dec. 7, 1941.’”
What’s that? “’It is of utmost
importance that they understand that freedom has a price. Pearl Harbor remains a somber historical
marker for us as Americans.’” ”Freedom”
compels the US nation and its inhabitants to support the US armed forces in
invading and occupying, sailing warships and building military bases “all over
the globe”? Freedom for? Shopping (if you have the money)? Freedom without the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution guaranteeing freedom as Mr. Snowden showed?
Visit the Maritime Museum to see not only
the USS Hoga but to celebrate also the USS Razorback submarine, which was “present
in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, for the official Japanese surrender.”
References:
Appy,
Christian. American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity. Viking, 2015.
Greenwald,
Glenn. No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. Metropolitan, 2014.
Vine,
David. Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. Henry Holt, 2015.
Worth, Roland, Jr. No
Choice But War: The United States Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of War
in the Pacific. McFarland, 1995.
Books
reviewed or significantly referenced in Newsletters 1-6 (number at end of each
entry identifies the newsletter in which the review appeared).
James
Bradley. The Imperial Cruise: The Secret History of Empire and War (2).
F. Hilary Conroy, Sophie Quinn-Judge. West Across the
Pacific: American Involvement in East
Asia from 1898 to the
Vietnam War (5)
Percy Greaves
Jr. Pearl
Harbor: The Seeds and Fruit of Infamy.
(6)
Saburo
Ienaga. Pacific War, 1931-1945. (6)
Stephen
Kinzer. Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime
Change from Hawaii to Iraq (3)
Change from Hawaii to Iraq (3)
George
Morgenstern. Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War. (6)
David Swanson. War
Is a Lie. (2)
Charles
Tansill. Back Door to War: The Roosevelt
Foreign Policy 1933-1945. (6)
George
Victor. The Pearl Harbor Myth:
Rethinking the Unthinkable. (6)
Andrew A. Wiest, Gregory Louis Mattson. The Pacific War: Campaigns of World
War II.
[I have not read the
book and could not find a review, but one brief
reference I ran across suggested
their support of the thesis that the US and
Japan were mutually antagonistic. –Dick]
Edward Wood,
Jr. Worshipping
the Myths of World War II, Reflections on
America’s Dedication to War. (2)
America’s Dedication to War. (2)
Roland Worth
Jr. The
United States Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of
War in the Pacific (2, 3).
War in the Pacific (2, 3).
Previous Newsletters 1-6
Contents of #1 2008
Dick: US
History of Wars of Aggression Includes WWII in the Pacific
Contents of #2 2010
Dick: Review of David Swanson’s War Is a Lie
Contents #3 2011
Dick: US Empire and WWII in Pacific
Wikianswers
Wiest and
Mattson
Chomsky: Backgrounds
Revolutionary
Work
Contents #4 2012
Dick: No Choice But War
Maslin Reviews
Bradley
TomDispatch/Klare: It Wasn’t Al-Qaeda, It’s China
Cyber Pearl Harbor ?
Climate Pearl Harbor ?
Contents #5 March 23, 2013
Dick, Japan
and US: Giving and Asking Forgiveness
Conroy, et al.,
West Across the Pacific, Revisionist Account
Contents Colonial WWII in the Pacific
Begins, “Pearl Harbor Day,” #6 December
7, 2013
Ienaga, Pacific War, 1931-1945 (2010, 2 Reviews)
George Victor, Pearl Harbor Myth (2007)
Robert Higgs,
US Economic Warfare Provoked Attack
(essay 2012)
Greaves, Seeds.
. .of Infamy
Tansill, Back Door to War
Morgenstern, Secret War
For research
purposes, specific subjects can be located in the following alphabetized index,
and searched on the blog using the search box. The search box is located
in the upper left corner of the webpage.
Newsletter Index: http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/
Newsletter Index: http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/
(479)
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END PEARL HARBOR NEWSLETTER #7 2015
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