Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Remember Pearl Harbor today, and remember further that it was your own damned fault:
The conflict is generally understood to have started with the Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on the morning of December 7. But the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact is marking the 70th anniversary of the raid in Tokyo on Thursday to discuss America’s “responsibility” for the war.
“The ultimate goal of the association is to explain the true facts of history, especially when it comes to major events, such as the causes of the Pacific War,” Hiromichi Moteki, secretary general of the society, told The Daily Telegraph.
“For this event, the main point is to show that the responsibility for the war was not Japan’s, but America’s,” he said.
The society’s primary aims are to promote its own understanding of history, with its scholars claiming the Nanjing Masacre is a fabrication of the Chinese government, that no women were forced into sexual slavery as “comfort women” for Japan’s troops in the 1930s and 1940s and that the violent subjugation of the Korean peninsula was in the best interests of the local population.
“The US started the war by imposing an economic blockade on Japan, working with Britain and Holland,” Moteki said, adding that documents signed by Franklin Roosevelt in July 1941 – five months before Pearl Harbor – authorising the creation of the Flying Tigers fighter unit in China will be presented at the conference as proof of Washington’s aggression.
So there.
I have seen this sort of argument before, about how Japan had no choice but to lash out if it wished to avoid strangulation by Anglo-American hegemony. One book I read, called Flyboys if I am not mistaken, opened with an argument that the Japanese simply wished to assert their position as a Power. Looking about at the other world Powers (i.e., us), they saw a pattern of imperial conquest, so, logically, decided to adopt the same scheme. Thus, they were shocked, shocked, when we reacted so violently to their expansionism. Couldn’t we all just be friendly elites?
Of course, there will always be those on the fringe who think such things. What worries me is that, as our Civilization collapses ever further in moral and intellectual decay, we will lose the will and the wits to argue them down or, perhaps more appropriately, laugh them off.
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December 7, 2011 at 2:37 pm
the gripping hand
Isn’t modern society wonderful, when thoughtful historians from alternate realities can achieve fame and fortune in this reality, even when their history is clearly not supported by facts? Does he forget the long-running invasion of China and Manchuria that prompted the sanctions? The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. And I read Flyboys – awful book, just awful.
December 7, 2011 at 4:00 pm
rbj
Remember a few years ago when the Smithsonian tried to put on an exhibit of the nuking of Japan, essentially absolving Japan of any blame for Pearl Harbor, and criticizing the US for dropping the atomic bombs?
December 7, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Robbo
I do remember that. I have a vague recollection that they either yanked it or modified it after the flap brewed up. Never actually saw it myself.
December 7, 2011 at 4:52 pm
rbj
Did see the exhibit, it was very much changed. Got to tour part of the Enola Gay. And Truman was right to drop both bombs, especially after experiencing the horrors of WWI personally.
December 7, 2011 at 6:27 pm
NOVA Curmudgeon
Luckily the exhibit is gone. Only a part of history was discussed and only part of the Enola gay was on display. The Enola Gay in its entirety can now bee seen at the Udvar Hazy Center minus the history lesson.
December 8, 2011 at 8:55 pm
The triumph of dullness | Zoopraxiscope
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