Tag: Japan

Senkaku Islands

Huh?

Where the Hell are these islands?

Easy remedy to that question…..

Japan-China relations - Jingoist jangles | Asia | The Economist

There seems to be a bit of a problem with the oil and gas fields in and around the islands…..everybody wants a slice of that pie…..especially China….

Let me continue the education…..this is the conflict according to Japan…..

China’s maritime adventurism in the East and South China Seas has lately attracted considerable attention. Fifty percent of China’s claimed jurisdictional waters are competing with neighboring countries in the East Asia.2 The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has named People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a maritime power in the 18th Party Congress in 2012 (People’s daily Online in Japanese, November 12 2012), and the PRC challenges Japan, the U.S.A., and the ASEAN countries. What happens in the East China Sea? China takes the maritime offensive against Japan. The authordefines the word “offensive” not only the military means, but also the political, legal, economic, and psychological means to oppress the competitor.3 If so, the Chinese maritime offensive against Japan includes not only the actual maritime conflict in the East China Sea, but also the natural resources demand at the disputed waters, anti-Japan demonstration inside and outside of China, the sovereignty assertion in relevant to historical issues with Japan, CCP’s internal power struggle, and China’s national integration policy.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2019.1626567

The question is what is China’s desire for this region?

China’s recent moves are destabilizing, and Japan clearly stated as much in a newly released defense white paper. In the report, the Japanese government presents the nature of the Chinese challenge to its security — especially to the Senkaku islands — in the strongest terms yet. Chinese authorities are in fact described as “relentlessly” pressing their claims to the islands with ever-increasing levels of maritime activities undermining the status quo. Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono made clear that further intensification of activities might trigger the intervention of Japanese military assets. In response to Japanese concerns, the commander of U.S. military forces in Japan has stated that the United States would help monitor the situation. Every successful step Beijing takes in undermining the status quo around the Senkakus through coercion and force is a direct challenge to the credibility of the U.S.-Japanese alliance and, crucially, to the principles informing the maritime rules-based order centered on the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea. While the United States is not party to this treaty, both China and Japan are, and Abe has clearly articulated why China’s actions around the Senkakus fundamentally undermine the principles enshrined in the convention.

What Is China’s Strategy in the Senkaku Islands?

In recent years the US has been itching for a fight with China…the South China Sea and now the Senkaku Islands……it is so serious that the US has stated that it could send troops to the islands…..

American troops could be sent to disputed islands inthe East China Sea, the head of US forces in Japan said, as the two allies began a high-profile drill amid growing concerns overBeijing’s military activities in the region

“Our arrival today was simply to demonstrate the ability to move a few people, but the same capability could be used to deploy combat troops to defend the Senkaku Islands or respond to other crises and contingencies,” Lieutenant General Kevin Schneider, commander of US Forces Japan,

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3107291/american-troops-could-be-sent-defend-senkaku-islands-us

Just those warmongering words should terrify Americans…they are basically daring China to act…..and the ultimatum could be disastrous…..

Hopefully calmer heads will prevail in January.

Then again those heads may not prevail…….

According to a readout of a call between President-elect Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Suga, Biden recommitted the U.S. to defending the Senkaku Islands as part of the mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Japan:

Biden confirmed that Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty will be applied to the defense of Okinawa Prefecture and the Senkaku Islands. Article 5 stipulates that the U.S. is obliged to defend Japan should its territories come under attack. Former President Barack Obama was the first U.S. leader to declare that the pact applies to the Senkakus.

Biden is reaffirming the position that the Obama administration took in 2014, but that doesn’t make this commitment any wiser or better than it was when it was first made. As a general rule, the U.S. shouldn’t extend its defense commitments to include disputed territories. In this particular case, committing to defend the Senkakus makes even less sense because these are just uninhabited rocks in the ocean. It strains credulity that the U.S. would actually go to war with China for the sake of these rocks, and that makes it more likely that China will test that commitment. The U.S. risks undermining its commitments to treaty allies when it recklessly expands them to include territory that we aren’t going to defend when push comes to shove. Instead of deterring China and protecting a treaty ally, this commitment seems more likely to create an unnecessary flashpoint that could lead to further escalation.

Would You Die for the Senkakus?

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More Space Stuff

My weekend begins with cooler temps and a weary mind from all the manure being spread in the media.

For something different I will will try to educate rather than obfuscate……

I may well be the only blogger that spends more time reading news than on social media body shaming some dickweed in LA……plus I do not see the need for blogs about fashion or make-up……such a self-absorbed society we have become.

Any way I have been watching the news about space and its exploration…..plus trying to get people to realize the plans that some are making are a violation of a treaty signed years ago….and may be illegal.

The newest news…….start with China…..they will be firing up an asteroid mining bot soon……

Beijing-based private space mining company Origin Space is launching its first ever “space mining robot” in November, IEEE Spectrum reports, on top of a Long March series rocket.

The concept of excavating resources in space is highly controversial. Many scientists have called for the solar system to be protected from such practices — but that hasn’t stopped global superpowers, particularly the US and China, from investigating ways to do so.

It may become a milestone moment in the country’s efforts to make use of space resources — but the robot, dubbed NEO-1, won’t be mining any asteroids itself.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/chinese-startup-space-mining-robot

While Japan is focusing on the moons of Mars and the possibility that human will soon land out there…..

Japan’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission aims to probe and observe Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, collect surface material, and return them to Earth.

MMX is scheduled to launch in 2024 and bring back rocks and other samples, possibly from Phobos, the larger of the two moons, five years later in 2029.

That puts Japan and its space agency JAXA in direct competition with the USA and Europe. The European Space Agency (ESA) and America’s NASA are working on a joint mission to bring back samples from the planet, but that may be two years later in 2031.

Those samples would be collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is on its way there now. The rover will store samples in a process called “sample caching,” and wait until they can be retrieved later. Those would be the first samples returned from Mars.

https://www.dw.com/en/japans-mars-moons-mission-leads-to-human-spaceflight/a-54961901

A few visual aids for those that break out in a rash if they must read…..

There is a treaty already in place……

The rush to Mars reminds me of the 15th century rush to claim the New World and its treasures….but who actually owns what?

This situation will get uglier as the decades go by….and I do not think that it will end well for anyone.

But speaking of Mars.  How will the visitors build their shelters once they arrive?

Of course there is an answer….insect polymer.

A team of researchers are suggesting we could use one of the most common organic polymers on Earth to construct shelters on Mars.

The material, called chitin, is produced and metabolized by most biological organisms and makes up the bulk of the cell walls in fungi, insect exoskeletons, and fish scales.

The team, led by Javier Fernandez from the Singapore University of Technology and Design, attempted to make the material by combining a fiber made from chitin with mineral material that mimic the Martian soil.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-new-technique-build-mars-shelters

Now you know stuff you care nothing about….peace out.

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09 August 1945–1100 Hours

The second and final A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

Thus ending the Second World War.

Ever since there has been a debate on whether the bombs were necessary for the Allies to have won the war……I thoughts are NO.

But most people see it differently…I offer another view…..

At a time when Americans are reassessing so many painful aspects of our nation’s past, it is an opportune moment to have an honest national conversation about our use of nuclear weapons on Japanese cities in August 1945. The fateful decision to inaugurate the nuclear age fundamentally changed the course of modern history, and it continues to threaten our survival. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock warns us, the world is now closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since 1947.

The accepted wisdom in the United States for the last 75 years has been that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later was the only way to end the World War II without an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American and perhaps millions of Japanese lives. Not only did the bombs end the war, the logic goes, they did so in the most humane way possible.

However, the overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/08/06/dropping-atomic-bombs-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-was-unnecessary

Final note…..Americans hatred for the Japanese after WW2 lead to the events of the A-bombs…….and among the Black community were the loudest opponents to the use of these weapons…….

…  missing is the recognition that African-Americans were some of the first in the country to voice concern about or even condemn the bomb, and that Black leftists were some of the first to draw the connections between colonialism, racism, capitalism and war. 

The general American hatred for the Japanese during World War II cannot be overstated. Thanks to the tireless activism of younger Japanese-Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, many Americans now know about the inhumane internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII — less know that Nazi POWs held in American camps were often treated with musical, theatrical, and even movie showings on most nights, set up volleyball leagues with their guards, were invited to dances and other social events, and would even be able to visit shops and restaurants in town that Black American G.I.s could not. Some historians have pointed out that most Americans at the time could differentiate between Nazis and Germans, fascists and Italians — but with Japan, all Japanese people were not only suspect, but by their very nature the enemy. Everything was done to dehumanize Japanese people, from seemingly all major forces of society: 

Early opposition to the atomic bomb came from Black America

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The August Bombings

No this is not a post about the blast that recently hit Beirut, Lebanon……

Some say that these bombings saved lives (still working on that statement) and 75 years ago the Enola Gay flew over Hiroshima and let fly the living Hell that Japan had to live with.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most terrible war crimes ever carried out by imperialism against a defenseless civilian population, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

There is little indication that the anniversary of this criminal act, which introduced humanity to the horrors of mushroom clouds, radiation poisoning and the prospect of global annihilation, will receive any significant official commemoration. Yet, its relevance has never been greater as, behind the backs of the people of the United States and the world, US imperialism is steadily building up a massive nuclear arsenal and pursuing a doctrine of aggressive nuclear war.

At 8:15, out of the clear morning sky of August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a US B-29 Superfortress bomber, dropped an atomic bomb, code-named “Little Boy”, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and its quarter of a million people.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/06/pers-a06.html

Some of the last survivors of those dark days are remembering the horror and the hints for tomorrow…..

Jiro Hamasumi’s mother was pregnant with him when the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killing tens of thousands instantly.

Today, at 74, Hamasumi is one of the remaining survivors of the attack pleading with world leaders to abolish nuclear arms.

“Hibakusha want the United States to apologize to us,” Hamasumi told Agence France-Press this week. “But the proof of the apology is nuclear abolition, we’re not after vengeance.”

AFP estimates there are about 136,700 living survivors of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended the second World War in 1945.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/05/after-75-years-last-survivors-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-atomic-bombings-says-nuclear

I have worked for decades to help bring about the end of the “Nuclear Age”….we already have enough weapons to destroy our fellow humans why do we need more nukes?

The horrible experiment still continues today…..experiments that are NOT needed for national defense (the excuse for a continuing program)…..

The “experiment” continued long after the war was over. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific: the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years.

The human and environmental consequences were catastrophic. During the filming of my documentary, The Coming War on China, I chartered a small aircraft and flew to Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls. It was here that the United States exploded the world’s first Hydrogen Bomb. It remains poisoned earth. My shoes registered “unsafe” on my Geiger counter. Palm trees stood in unworldly formations. There were no birds.

Another Hiroshima is Coming…Unless We Stop It Now

The US needs to return to the high ground and work to eliminate nukes from the world’s armories…..these weapons are NOT needed for security.

Only laziness pretends that nukes are the answer to national security.

Form god sake LEARN STUFF before it is too late!

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07 December 1941

Closing Thought–07Dec19

Most Americans will observe this day as the beginning of World War Two….when the Japanese attacked our fleet in Pearl Harbor.

The date is burned into our history but the reasons for it have eluded us and our educational system for over 75 years.

I would like to take you back through our history with the nation of Japan to help explain what and why the attack was necessary…..

To understand Pearl Harbor, Burke took the audience back to 1853-1854 when U.S. Naval Captain Matthew C. Perry sailed to Japan and negotiated the opening of Japanese ports for trade. After more than 200 years of self-imposed isolation, Japan wanted to engage with the rest of the world.  

To compete globally, Japan needed resources—a theme that persistently pushes the narrative of Pearl Harbor to its climax. Iron and coal were key natural resources in the steam era at the end of the 19th century, but were not available in any significance on the Japanese island. Japan needed to look elsewhere.

Japan engaged in war in 1894-5 with China and in 1904-5 with Russia to secure resources. It was a 1905 win against the Russian Navy that shocked the world and alerted the U.S. that they needed to be prepared for a potential war with Japan.

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/complicated-lead-pearl-harbor

In case more reading is needed……https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/your-history-book-needs-help-real-reason-japan-attacked-pearl-harbor-99212

Our biggest problem that allow this attack to succeed was out hubris…

The US knew, in the second half of 1941, that Japan was preparing for war in the western Pacific and south-east Asia. Tokyo needed to secure material for its military operations in China – principally oil, tin, bauxite and rubber. But Washington was never aware of the final details of these plans.

US strategists knew, of course, that a Japanese offensive would chiefly target Dutch and British possessions in south-east Asia, because it was there that the raw materials required to fuel Japan’s imperial ambitions were located. They knew, also, that the US’s military presence in the Philippines would at some point come into the crosshairs. For some time, it had been clear that Japan was war-minded. Emperor Hirohito’s expansionist regime had been beating the war drum in Asia since it had entered Manchuria in 1931, and had begun military operations elsewhere in China in 1937. The world had seen the alacrity with which it had forced a humiliated France to submit to its demands in Indochina in June 1940, and had watched Japan sign the Tripartite Pact on 27 September 1940 with the European fascist aggressor nations, Germany and Italy.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/pearl-harbor-advance-knowledge-conspiracy-theory-debunked-did-america-predict-attack-date-day/

Please take a few moments out of your busy day to remember those that fought on that day…..there are not many of the veterans of that day and that war left for us to turn to and thank.

We cannot let their sacrifice and the debt we owe them to die in history by an uncaring nation.

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Closing Thought–20Aug19

Economics

How many of you, my readers, believe that China is holding our debt?

Let me correct this erroneous thinking….

It is NOT China but Japan that owns the most Treasury notes……that craps on so many talking points.

Japan surpassed China as the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities in June.

Japan has added about $21 billion since May, making its holdings the largest since October, 2016. Japan now holds $1.12 trillion Treasurys, and China has $1.11 trillion, a $2 billion increase from the month earlier, according to U.S. Treasury department data.

China has been a less aggressive buyer of the U.S. sovereign debt, and market players have speculated that one action it could take in the trade war with the U.S. is to lighten up on its U.S. holdings. But there are no signs that is happening, according to traders.

The U.K. is the third-largest holder with $342.3 billion, up from $323.1 billion a month earlier.

(CNBC)

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Closing Thought–09Aug19

It is 11:56 am……09 August 1945…..”Bock’s Car” is making its way through the skies of East Asia on its way to its date with destiny.

The “Fat Man” destroys Nagasaki

The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called “Bock’s Car,” after its usual commander, Frederick Bock, took off from Tinian Island under the command of Maj. Charles W. Sweeney. Nagasaki was a shipbuilding center, the very industry intended for destruction. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city. The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The hills that surrounded the city did a better job of containing the destructive force, but the number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 (exact figures are impossible, the blast having obliterated bodies and disintegrated records).

History and explanation of the bombs will help my readers grasp this event…..https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-100452

But why Nagasaki?

By May of 1945 an exhausted and overrun Germany had surrendered. The war in Europe was over. The United States, aided by Great Britain, moved closer and closer to Japan. Massive suicide attacks by the Japanese caused great losses to the Pacific Fleet, but did not deter its drive.

Japan, thinking the Soviet Union was a friendly neutral in the war in the Pacific, submitted unofficial peace feelers to the United States through them. The Soviet Union, secretly wanting to join the war against Japan, suppressed the feelers. Ironically, the Japanese military made it impossible to pursue peace directly, as they arrested or killed anybody who tried to extend official peace offerings. As it was, these unofficial feelers were completely unacceptable to the U.S. as they merely made vague offering to return conquered territories in exchange for peace.

The big strategic question was how to force Japan’s surrender.

Japan’s major cities had been fire-bombed almost nightly. The islands were blockaded and the Japanese Navy had been destroyed. Planning for a massive invasion by Allied forces was underway. But was that the best answer? The cost in lives for both Allied forces and Japanese civilians would be heavy.

Harry S. Truman had just become the U.S. Presidency following Franklin Roosevelt’s death. The United States wanted the Soviet Union to enter the war, but was concerned that it would dominate too much of East Asia if the war dragged on. There were two atomic bombs available. Truman made a quick decision: drop both bombs as soon as possible, allowing a short time between missions for Japanese surrender.

(atomic archives)

We have been having a small debate here on IST on whether the bombs were necessary…..my thought is they were not necessary…

Here is an argument against dropping the bombs…..

Few issues in American history – perhaps only slavery itself – are as charged as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Was it necessary? Merely posing the question provokes indignation, even rage. Witness the hysterical shouting down of the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit that simply dared discuss the question fifty years after the act. Today, another eleven years on, Americans still have trouble coming to terms with the truth about the bombs.

But anger is not argument. Hysteria is not history. The decision to drop the bomb has been laundered through the American myth-making machine into everything from self-preservation by the Americans to concern for the Japanese themselves-as if incinerating two hundred thousand human beings in a second was somehow an act of moral largesse.

https://www.commondreams.org/views06/0806-25.htm

The thought is that the bombs were necessary to end the war that had taken so much of society….but did it?

Arguments against the bombings usually take a moral tack. That whatever the ends, it’s never right to intentionally vaporize women and children. But in recent years an entire new argument has emerged: Bomb or no bomb, the war would have ended anyway.

Below, some things you may not have known about the momentous events of August 1945.

Did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki really end the war?

As I have written we here on IST have been having a small debate…so I need to include this debate from the BBC….

For years debate has raged over whether the US was right to drop two atomic bombs on Japan during the final weeks of the Second World War. The first bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, resulted in a death toll of around 135,000. The second, which hit Nagasaki on 9 August, killed at least 50,000 people (and according to some estimates, as many as 74,000 died). But was the US justified? We put the question to two History Extra readers…

https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/atomic-bomb-hiroshima-nagasaki-justified-us-debate-bombs-death-toll-japan-how-many-died-nuclear/

And that is the way it was…09Aug1945

Stay tuned for the post on the Nuremberg Trials.

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Manchurian Offensive

We here on IST have had a bit of a discussion on the Second World War and the acts that were undertaken to end it. Basically we were discussing whether the bombs dropped were necessary.

The entry of the USSR into the war in the Pacific made Japan think that their position was hopeless was brought up….I thought I would look into that event and what were the repercussions.

At one minute past midnight on 9 Aug 1945, or 61 minutes after the declaration of war, Soviet troops organized in three fronts poured into Japanese-occupied northeastern China, a region also known by its historical name of Manchuria. Northeastern China had been governed by the Japanese-sponsored puppet regime of Manchukuo since 1932. The Soviet troops were of the Far Eastern Command under the overall command of Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, who devised a giant pincer movement against the unprepared Japanese troops. In Vasilevsky’s plan, the Transbaikal Front under Marshal R. Y. Malinovsky was to attack from the west across the Inner Mongolian desert and over the Greater Khingan mountain range, with Mukden (Shenyang), Liaoning Province, China as the primary target; the attached 36th Army was to break off after the initial invasion and head toward Harbin and Qiqihar to meet the 2nd Far East Front. The 2nd Far East Front under General M. A. Purkayev attacked in the center largely in a support role only, with the primary objectives of securing Harbin and Qiqihar, upon the successful completion of which, the front was to move toward the port of Lushunkou (Russian: Port-Artur; Anglicized: Port Arthur) of the city of Dalian, Liaoning Province after the 1st Far East Front completed its primary objectives. Finally, from the east over the Lesser Khingan mountain range, the 1st Far East Front under Marshal K. A. Meretskov was to capture the cities in east, including Changchun; its secondary objective was to cut off Japanese escape routes into Korea, and its tertiary objective was to invade and occupy northern Korea. In total, 1,577,725 men in 89 divisions with the support of 3,704 tanks, 1,852 self-propelled guns, 27,086 artillery pieces, and 3,721 aircraft were utilized in the invasion.

https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=167

But why did the USSR feel it necessary to enter into the War in the Pacific?

The Second World War was an unparalleled calamity for the Soviet Union. As many as 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died as a result of the conflict that started with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and ended with the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

Consumed by this existential struggle along its western border, the Soviet Union was a comparatively minor factor in the Pacific War until the very end. Yet Moscow’s timely intervention in the war against Japan allowed it to expand its influence along the Pacific Rim.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/revealed-why-the-soviet-unions-entry-the-pacific-war-matters-13628

09 August 1945 was a Day of Destiny for the world.

If you, my reader, has an opinion on this historical event please feel free to join in the conversation.

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06 August 1945

The time is 0815 hrs!

And the Atomic Age begins!

74 years ago today the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima…..and for the first time a theory became a weapon and a new age had begun.

President Harry S Truman, announcing the news from the cruiser, USS Augusta, in the mid-Atlantic, said the device was more than 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date.

An accurate assessment of the damage caused has so far been impossible due to a huge cloud of impenetrable dust covering the target. Hiroshima is one of the chief supply depots for the Japanese army.

The bomb was dropped from an American B-29 Superfortress, known as Enola Gay, at 0815 local time. The plane’s crew say they saw a column of smoke rising and intense fires springing up.

Now as the world marks the release of this weapon of destruction a Declaration has been issued…

Around the world today, we see self-centered nationalism in ascendance, tensions heightened by international exclusivity and rivalry, with nuclear disarmament at a standstill. What are we to make of these global phenomena? Having undergone two world wars, our elders pursued an ideal — a world beyond war. They undertook to construct a system of international cooperation. Should we not now recall and, for human survival, strive for that ideal world? I ask this especially of you, the youth who have never known war but will lead the future. For this purpose, I ask you to listen carefully to the hibakusha of Aug. 6, 1945.

A woman who was five then has written this poem:

Little sister with a bowl cut / head spraying blood

embraced by Mother / turned raging Asura

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190805/p2g/00m/0na/104000c

For years I have read and written about the possibility that this weapon may have not been needed……now the American Conservative has written an article on this attack…..

August 6 usually doesn’t make headlines in America. But mark the day by what absence demonstrates: On the 72nd anniversary of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and some 140,000 non-combatants, there is no call for reflection in the United States.

In an era when pundits routinely worry about America’s loss of moral standing because of an offish, ill-mannered president, the only nation in history to employ a weapon of mass destruction on an epic scale, against an undefended civilian population, otherwise shrugs off the significance of an act of immorality.

But it is August 6, and so let us talk about Hiroshima.

Don’t Whitewash the Hiroshima Bombing

With the rise of nuclear desires the possibility of something horrible could be unleashed but let us hope that this series of destructive power should never be used on humans again.

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Remember Pearl Harbor

Today is 07 December the day in 1941 when the forces of the empire of Japan attacked our naval fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii…..a day we remember….the day our Greatest Generation went to war.

Too many people know the day but not the situation…..and the old professor is here to help…..too many blow the day off and that is just wrong…….

First some myths about Pearl Harbor…..https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-pearl-harbor/2011/11/23/gIQAbdKrLO_story.html

Why did Japan do it? Doing nothing is a viable strategic option, and oftentimes a good one. Imperial Japan would have been far better off had it forgone the attack on Pearl Harbor and confined its operations to the Western Pacific. Had Tokyo exercised some forbearance, it may have avoided rousing the “sleeping giant” that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto reputedly said he feared so much. And even if it did awaken the American giant, it would have avoided filling him with what Yamamoto called a “terrible resolve” to crush Japan. Think about it:

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-japan-failed-pearl-harbor-18638

Japan was clever to come up with this tactic, right?

Well not really they got the idea from the Brits…….

Through the dark skies came waves of aircraft lumbering under the weight of the torpedoes they carried. The date was November 11, 1940, the place was the southern Italian port of Taranto, and the battle that ensued that night was the prelude to the Japanese raid at Pearl Harbor .

In the fall of 1940, Britain was in trouble. France had fallen, Nazi Germany ruled Western Europe, and the British Empire stood alone. To make matters worse, Mussolini’s Italy had entered the war. Though weaker than Germany or Japan, Italy had a priceless advantage: it was situated in the middle of the Mediterranean, athwart the sea routes to the Suez Canal and the vital island of Malta, which the British needed to supply as a thorn in Axis supply routes to North Africa. To avoid Italian naval and air forces, British convoys would have to forgo the direct route into the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, and sail all the way around Africa to come up through the Suez Canal.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/revealed-where-japan-got-idea-pearl-harbor-37952

More history for my reader…..1941 was not the first attack on Pearl…..yep it was attacked 9 years earlier……

No American military engagement has undergone more post-mortems than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Between 1941 and 1946, various departments of the U.S. government conducted nine official inquiries. A tenth inquiry was held as recently as 1995, when the Department of Defense re-examined the culpability placed on Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short for a lack of preparedness prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The investigation, issued as the Dorn Report, absolved Kimmel and Short of responsibility for the devastation caused by the attack and recommended posthumously restoring Kimmel and Short to the ranks they held prior to the attack.

https://www.military.com/navy/pearl-harbor-first-attack.html

There are other facts that are not as well known as the actual attack….and I can fill in the blanks for my readers……

The deadly surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, launched without a declaration of war, made 7 December 1941 “a date which will live in infamy”, declared President Franklin D Roosevelt. Early that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese planes sank or damaged 21 warships and destroyed more than 150 planes on nearby airfields; more than 2,000 Americans lost their lives.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/pearl-harbor-facts-date-live-infamy-franklin-roosevelt-japan-surprise-attack-americans/

Finally a perspective from someone who was actually on the ground in Pearl for the attack……

About 7:45 a.m., through the crackle and buzz of interference, gunnery and anti-aircraft officer Benny Mott was jolted by pilots’ voices rising with alarm over the radio transmitter aboard the USSEnterprise. They were shouting to one another.

“Hey, did you see that army plane shooting at me?”

“That’s no army plane! That’s a Japanese plane! Look at the red circles on his wings!”

https://www.history.com/news/pearl-harbor-1941-from-a-sailors-perspective

Where World War One made the world we know today……World War Two solidified America’s world leadership.

If you are going to Remember Pearl Harbor then know all the history not just the nit-picked stuff!

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!