ASDF chief urges students to learn about foreign views of WWII

Sunday 25th May, 06:47 AM JST

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netrek at 02:10 PM JST - 26th May

Yeah because we all know how non-aggressive it was to invade China and bomb Pearl Harbor. What a nationalist, revisionist moron.
netrek at 02:41 PM JST - 26th May

ampontan you are very mistaken. The wholesale genocide, destruction and rape of hundreds of thousands to millions of people was not a "wave of liberation". I suppose you believe the inhabitants of the countries Japan invaded (yes it was an unwelcome invasion) were delighted by how the Japanese Imperial Army "helped" them. The people of Korea, Vietnam, The Philippines, China and elsewhere know better.
Seiharinokaze at 03:41 PM JST - 26th May

To yabits:

Here's what MacArthur's biographer, D. Clayton James, had to say about those hearings: "By the time Marshall and the Joint Chiefs were finished, MacArthur's strategic thinking, for the first time in his career, had been torn to shreds not by liberal correspondents or politicians but by the top four officers of the American military establishment.

The above hearings were about MacArthur's views on the Far East centering around the Korean peninsula at the beginning of the Cold War. His strategic thinking was in discord with Truman administration then. It's in this context that his views were torn to shreds. Or do you argue that the Tokyo Trial convened by MacAruther had also been torn to shreds?

So my original question "Is there any reason to deny the testimony?" could not necessarily be answered in the affirmative, I should say.

BTW, why did George Marshall conduct in a way to give a helping hand to CCP without giving any to the Kuomintang government as opposed to what the U.S. used to do during the WW2?

Since Japan did not have its own resources to keep its millions occupied, no one but a supporter of aggression will argue that it is "security" to take them by means of war from other countries.

It only seems as if MacArthur was also a supporter of aggression at least at the time doesn't it?

To sailwind:

Or in other words obtain them by brute force and aggression instead of negotiated trade agreements.

Sorry, Japan tried to negotiate trade agreements with China in 1920's. It's rather the Kuomintang government that, emboldened by the Washington Conference order, began to defy any diplomatic negotiations, even breaking unilaterally the agreements that Japan had concluded with Qing.

And before going to war with the U.S., Japan also tried to negotiate over the unrealistically intransigent Hull note to no avail as you may be aware.

Moderator: All readers back on topic please.
nigelboy at 04:10 PM JST - 26th May

Therefore, I find the use of the quote to somehow equate the securing of resources as some kind of self-defense on Japan's part to be very disingenuous.

I believe it's very difficult to understand Japan's position from a view of today's nationals whose nation had already possessed those resources. May I suggest reading Radhabinod Pal's dissenting judgement of the Tokyo trials which summarizes the brief timeline of events leading up to the Pacific war.

http://homepage3.nifty.com/kadzuwo/history/Hall-content.htm
LFRAgain at 04:14 PM JST - 26th May

sailwind,

Sorry to poke a hole in your theory regarding where Japan got its inspiration for invading the Asian mainland, but the Japanese were expanding into Asia long before the Nazis or Italian fascists even had a resume.

Japan expansion had begun as early at the mid 1800s, with Japanese leaders actively seeking to change isolation policies to reflect the trend of colonial expansion in Asia by Western powers, most noteably Britain, France, The Netherlands, Russia, and to a smaller degree, even the United States, which was plodding across the Pacific, gobbling up islands in its efforts to hop on the Colonizing Bandwagon started by European powers. Japan saw the Western Powers converging on Asia, and seeing China as weak and likely to fall easily to Western predations, they decided to do some expanding themselves, primarily to create a buffer-zone of their own colonies that would keep the West off their doorstep.

The Japanese defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese war and gobbled up huge tracts of territory with the Treaty of Manchuria, gaining Taiwan, in addition to the Liaodong Peninsula. They build upon these gains by kicking the crap out of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, thus securing political dominance over the Korean Peninsula and various territorial gains, including the southern half . They capped these successes of with the complete annexation of Korea to Japan in 1910, ten years before the Nazi Party even had an identity, while Adolph, 21, was living in a hostel and selling postcards for food and rent.

The Japanese were into Imperial expansion long before the Nazis ever came into being. This isn’t Left-Wing propaganda. It’s the historical record.
sailwind at 06:10 PM JST - 26th May

LFRA

Thank you you might not be aware but I know the history quite well. Let me clarify my 'theory'. Japan had established a mini-empire well before Adoph discovered he had better talent at being able to lead a movement of bitter right wing extremists into a National movement than painting post cards. My theory if you call it as such is about Japan in the thirties and the events of the world at that time. Japan prior to the rise of Nazi germany would have never comtemplated force agaisn't the British, French or Dutch colonial possessions in her neck of the woods as if she did she would risk war with Nations that at time were superior in weaponary and technology and most importantly able to re-supply and go on the offensive agaisn't Japan in a short amount of time had she been so foolish to attempt. Japan watched as how the western powers were reacting to Hitler's naked aggression in Europe and how he was appeased at almost every step and could not help but also notice that the British, French, Dutch were a heck of lot more occupied with the looming war in Europe than in defending their eastern possessions with no more than a token presence to deter Japanese aggression. The Japanese also knew the only country that would be able to fill that gap of the greatly weakened western powers in the region would be the United States, eager to maintain her presence and expand her prestige in the Pacific. The Japanese would not want to start a war without not being able to keep and contain the United States on her side of the Pacific as it were. It made no sense to boot out one colonial master in the possessions she coveted just to have the U.S come in and fill the void with her industrial might that Japan could never hope to compete with. I submit that the historical record supports that Japan was emboldened to ever more aggressive acts in the region in the thirties up until the war with the U.S as a direct result of the Nazi rise to power and the western powers lack of resolve in allowing it become a cancer that engulfed the world into a war like never seen before. I stand my assertion that Japan wasn't forced into a war, Japan saw an opportunity to win a war of aggression due to events in the world at that time and took it.
yabits at 09:29 PM JST - 26th May

The ADSF chief forgot to tell those students the most important thing of all with regard to any "learning" of foreign views, and that is to understand your own biases -- what you believe and why. Otherwise, you run the risk of going through life and cherry-picking selective quotes here and there to try to prove something that volumes of data clearly show otherwise.

It is disturbing when people jump onto the Douglas MacArthur-Joe McCarthy school of warped historical perspective, but the good side is that they remain examples for others not to follow.
LFRAgain at 09:28 AM JST - 27th May

Sailwind,

Again, I’d have to take issue with your assessment of Japan’s motivations to go to war. I think we agree on one point, and that is that Japan made the decision to invade its neighbors on its own, not being spurred into action by any one point of aggression on the part of the West. But again, you give Nazi Germany too much credit in its influence over Japan and Japanese resolve to ensure their regional security too little.

The Mukden Incident, in which Japan created a pretext for invading mainland Asia by incorporating what is now Shenyang, China, took place in 1931, seven years before Germany troops ever set foot in Austria, two years before Hitler was named Chancellor. The Nanjing Massacre occurred in December of 1937. The invasion of Austria – March 1938. Nanjing fell with anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 civilian casualties. Austria fell with no resistance following implied threats of invasion from Hitler. To suggest that Japan took cues on ferocity and brutality from European Fascists with regard to military operations is simply mistaken. Japan was ahead of the curve in many respects, particularly when it came to dealing harshly with an enemy that they had been planning to fight since the end of the Meiji Era.

As for what motivated Japan into war, I too agree that it was hardly any aggressive policy of the West, the US in particular, that “pushed” Japan. Japan sought territory in an effort to address a growing, restless population and a need for raw materials to propel economic growth. The best way to do this, it was decided, was to incorporate China, by force if necessary.

Now, you know and I know that the primary reason Japan went to war with the US was because the US opposed Japan’s goal of conquest in China. Yes, the US placed a steel and oil embargo on Japan, but not out of some desire to become masters of Japan, but to punish Japan for its policy of aggression in Eastern China. And it wasn’t as if the Us placed the embargo on a whim. Japan was censured in the League of Nations for breaking treaties with its aggression in China, and rather than honor those promises, it withdrew from the League. The US made the decision that if Japan was going to invade China, it wasn’t going to be with American oil and steel, which is a reasonable response, any way one looks at it. This embargo, in reaction to Japanese aggression, is what prompted Japan to push hard and fast into Asia and surrounding Pacific nations – a quick strike to secure materials, resources, and buffer territory against what would surely be Western opposition to Japan’s military actions.

So, in a sense, yes, the West did prompt Japan into acting more aggressively in the region. But only because Japan began the aggression in Eastern China with an invasion.
apecNetworks at 12:07 PM JST - 27th May

At one point, I had read every significant book/article pertaining to Japan (in English), and was trained to actually use it professionally - this never happened. However, the issue brought up by Air Self-Defense Force chief Gen Toshio Tamogami can be argued successfully, but not the mainstream US intelligensia perspective. The War in the Pacific, to analyze completely, is similar to the movie,"Rashamon", where the "truth" is held by several perspective - they are all correct and they are all different. For someone in US academics, it is like trying to get at the truth of the Vietnam War w/out using/reading the Pentagon Papers - that perspective is RARELY revealed. "That" perspective is not revealed in the US completely. Also, the perspectives are different from the European participants as well as all the groups involved in the Asia-Pacific. The "truth" is generally "classified".
Seiharinokaze at 04:28 PM JST - 27th May

Japan getting aggressive in Manchuria in 1931 had nothing to do with Nazis. As John V.A. MacMurray argued, it was the collapse of "international accord" advocated by the Washington Conference that stalemated the internationally cooperative policies of the then Japanese government trying to solve issues with China and consequently let the Japanese army override Tokyo and take an aggressive action by themselves in Manchuria.

China was in a state of civil war with each fact trying to take initiative under the flag of anti-imperialism. Their nationalism based on anti-imperialism was so intensified to reject any requirement for international accord. Japan however tried to stick to the spirit of the conference in 1920's. China had no ear to such a spirit with anti-Japan rhetoric and even violence on Japanese along with boycott of Japanese goods getting rampant whereas U.S failed to lead in any productive way the bilaterally cooperative regime she had advocated. It in effect drove Japan into isolation. That's Japan's perspective on the days before the Mukden Incident.

Refer to How the Peace Was Lost: The 1935 Memorandum "Developments Affecting American Policy in the Far East," Prepared for the State Department by John Van Antwerp MacMurray. Waldron, Arthur, ed., 1991: Hoover Institution Press.
sailwind at 09:45 PM JST - 27th May

LFRA

Brilliant post. I had to step back from my euro-centric view, well done and agreed. On the basic points we are in agreement just from just a different angle, thank you for your objective view of history a pleasure to read your opinion on this.....and have to say to your credit, without a political agenda behind your conclusions.
LFRAgain at 09:21 AM JST - 28th May

Sailwind,

Thank you as well. I think yabits put it well in saying that in order to truly understand history, we must understand our own biases, be they political or cultural, and make every effort to un-filter, if you will, what we see.

I think you, I, and a great many others here who enjoy the occasional WWII history debate, try, but it's a daunting task. As yabits pointed out, there are literally reams of information out there to sift through that give a much more accurate perspective of what went on during those truly chaotic times. And even after sifting through the data, there’s still the one perspective that we may never know, and that’s the simple human element. What were the historical figures of that time, major and minor, really thinking and feeling with every decision they made (or didn’t make)? Hard to say, so all we have to go with is what observers and dedicated researchers transcribe for future generations.

I think apecNetworks hits it on the head when he compared the interpretation of history to Akira Kurosawa’s film “Rashamon.” There are many different perspectives to what happens in our lives, each of them entirely honest and true to their respective viewers. Somewhere in between those disparate views is a sort of grudging patchwork that we must cobble together into something that makes sense on the broader canvas. Again, no easy task, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Thanks to you and everyone else here for an interesting read.
apecNetworks at 10:53 AM JST - 28th May

Correction

The movie is, "Rashomon". Darn, this a terrible mistake.
apecNetworks at 11:33 AM JST - 28th May

To LFRAgain:

Thank you for the "thumbs up".
vultor at 06:06 AM JST - 31st May

Finally, a spec of dignity and humanity in japanese politics! I say start kids off with Nanking, a little Bataan and then move them to Unit 731. That ought to knock their socks off!