Obama is the Next FDR

[StLucieBengal]

(06-10-2015, 12:59 AM)RICHMONDBENGAL_07 Wrote: Japan was not a friend, in fact they resented us.

The story of the transition from aggression in China in 1937 to the attack on Pearl Harbor is a complex one that includes an alliance with Germany and Italy—the alliance of the nations that believed they were excluded from full membership in the Western imperialist order--and the fall of France. But it is very important to keep in mind that the war in China was central to the Japanese decision to go to war with Britain and America. Since Japan’s generals could not accept the fact that the Japanese imperial army could not defeat Chiang Kai-shek’s and Mao Zedong’s soldiers in an army-versus-army conflict (although they should have understood the problems of pacifying a country with a continental scale), they had to find another explanation for Japan’s inability to achieve victory in China. The answer they came up with was Anglo-American support of China. The way to defeat China was to cut off its supply lines from the West—in other words, move into Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. There were other reasons that the Japanese army decided to move into French Indo-China, and then to attack the American, British and Dutch colonies—but one important reason was to outflank China, to cut off its connections with the allied powers.



The Japanese Empire, 1870-1942

One should keep in mind that it was in fact Japan, not China, that had benefited from these countries’ support. Japan’s primary source of raw materials like petroleum and scrap iron for its war in China, and of high-end technology like machine tools was the United States. In 1938 the United States (57.1 per cent), the United Kingdom and its empire (Malaya, Canada, India, Australia, 20.7 per cent), and the Dutch and Dutch East Indies (8.6 per cent) supplied 86.4 per cent of Japan’s imported war materials. The United States produced 60% of the world’s oil; the Dutch East Indies less than 10%; 55% of Japan’s oil came from the United States, 14% from the Soviet Union, and 10% from the Dutch Indies. I have a photograph of a dinner party held on December 7, 1939, at the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh, at which George T. Ladd, Chairman of United Engineering Foundry Company, entertained Colonel S. Atsumi of the Imperial Japanese Army and his entourage. UEF had built a factory to produce rolling mill machinery in Japan in 1938.
When Japan moved into the French colony in Indo-China in the summer of 1941, the United States responded by freezing Japanese assets in US banks, cutting Japan off from American scrap iron, petroleum, and technology—illustrating Takahashi’s warning about Japan’s dependence on the West. Denied access to US petroleum and iron, Japan had to look elsewhere: British Malaya for iron ore and the Dutch East Indies for oil. This led to the decision to attack Southeast Asia, and the United States bases in the Philippines and Hawaii to protect the Japanese navy’s flank. One mistaken step led inexorably to another, and the Japanese in 1941, while still bogged down in China, went to war with a country that had an industrial capacity nine times theirs—in fact, one American city, Pittsburgh, produced three times more steel than all of Japan did during World War II. Manchuria, envisaged as Japan’s industrial base for war, at the peak of its steel production in 1943, was out-produced by Pittsburgh, by forty times.
Which brings us back to the beginning. The Western imperialist impact on Japan set in motion a series of events: the rise of Japanese nationalism, of Japanese economic and military power, of Japan’s quest for empire, of Japanese emigration to America and elsewhere, and of the Western reaction to all of these things, that led almost a century later to Pearl Harbor. One cannot say that Pearl Harbor was the “inevitable delayed rejoinder” to Perry’s visit of 1853—far from it. In fact, as we have seen, Japan took two basic approaches Japan in its relations with the British and Americans. We have described them as the cooperative and the autarkic approaches. Unfortunately for Japan and the Asia-Pacific, those who advocated an autonomous, independent, militarized approach to dealing with the world won out after 1936, leading Japan into a cataclysmic and vastly destructive war that it was not economically, materially, or technologically equipped to fight. Only after Japan’s defeat in 1945, did its postwar leaders return to the cooperative policies of men like Takahashi

Yes I read all that .... Are we better off with a communist asia.... Or would we have been better off letting Japan and China fight it out and just supply them both ... bolstering our economy and keeping out of wars that did not concern us.

Yes we manipulated Japan and showed them how to be a power, and sold them the means, then we expect them to not use those means? We made the very same mistake on a smaller scale in the middle east. The only differnce is we didn't allow Iran and others to get a massive army. .... We only allowed egypt which was in our pocket.

Now by smashing Japan, we gave room for communism to spread, and now China is building up their navy and working closely with the Russians .... Basically using the UN to block any reform to the region.

I would have rather taken my chances with Japan.... There was no way they were coming our way .... They would have kept russia out of europe by being at their doorstep. Smashing. Japan allowed the soviets to focus on the Middle East and europe.