From: slkg9733@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Steven L. Kellmeyer)
Subject: Re: The Russo-Japanese War (part 2)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 03:47:00 GMT

miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:

>fsars@acad3.alaska.edu (Allen R Sparks) writes:

>>In article <1992Aug17.145824.10478@acuson.com>, miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:
>>> 	Another possibility may simply be that arrogant samurai military men
>>> 	can't think of anything except military aggression, regardless of whether
>>> 	it makes any sense.
>>> 
>>> 	- Michael Goldman

>	The plans for attacking the US began being taught and discussed in
>	the Japanese war college in the mid-twenties, predating Hitler's
>	Germany.  The "Great White Fleet" was sent to Japan by President
>	Teddy Roosevelt partly with the idea of intimidating the Japanese
>	so that they would honor the territorial integrity of China.  While
>	TR had been very pro-Japanese in the beginning of the R-J war, by the
>	end, he was becoming concerned with Japanese expansionist policy.
>	The situation between the US and Japan by the 20's was such that there
>	was a book written in 1926 by Bywater outlining the "coming war" in
>	great detail and with considerable accuracy.  That book was discussed
>	in this group earlier.

>	The whole point of the London Naval Treaties was to limit the
>	arms of potential belligerents, including Japan and the US.  The
>	US position was that they needed greater limits because they had
>	_two_ oceans to defend against aggressors while Japan only had one.
>	The implication was clearly that Japan was a threat.  That the US
>	didn't build up to their quota, while Japan cheated on hers was more
>	an issue of money - the US wanted to save it, while Japan wanted
>	ships with which to acquire it..

>	One of the things I learned in reading about the R-J war was that
>	most of the popular treatments about the beginning of WWII in the
>	Pacific start much too late.  Beginning with the 1930s is waaaay
>	too late to get any sort of understanding of the origins.  By that
>	time, things had been moving towards war for quite some time
>	and only picked up momentum in terms of territorial acquisition
>	but not in general thrust of Japanese expansion.

>	This invalidates, for me, most of the discussion of whether Japan was
>	"tricked" into attacking the US by FDR.  The Japanese in command were
>	simply going along the course that had been started in 1868, and
>	accelerated in the R-J war.  The crises of the 1930s were a matter of
>	when the war would begin, not if.

>	- Michael Goldman

>-- 
>"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
>exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban

Ain't that the truth, Abba.  Noticed your thread, and thought I'd throw in
a side bit of info, in case you didn't already know it.  Seems the Japanese
petitioned the League of Nations to remove a part of their charter which
referred to Asians as "inferior races".  The League refused.  The Japanese
left the League shortly thereafter.  For an excellent overview of the 
Pacific war as a race war, read John Dwyer's "War without Mercy" - it
changed the way I looked at the whole theatre of operations.  Combine his
evidence with what we already know about biology-as-destiny in the Third
Reich, and the whole damn thing gets very scary in a radically new way.

Steve Kellmeyer