AR's take on WW2 w/Japan?

[Backlighting]

I don't recall seeing anything she wrote about the U.S. going to war with Japan. I know she opposed us entering the fight with Germany though. Would appreciate any references to her writings on the subject. Thanks in advance.

-J

[Mark]

Long before the Pearl Harbor attack, Germany, Japan and Italy had signed a mutual defense treaty called the Tripartite Pact. War against one was war against all. That's why FDR was so eager to get Japan to attack the U.S. Germany wasn't going to do it.

[Reidy]

In "'Extremism' or The Art of Smearing" (in CUI) Rand cagily suggests that she opposed entry but doesn't quite say so. The article uses "isolationism" as an example of an anti-concept that muddled the debate in the years before the US went to war.

I once asked about her opinions of the war at an ARI presentation. Berliner replied that indeed she did want to stay out, thinking (perhaps correctly and in any event not alone) that Germany and the USSR would weaken each other to the point where domestic insurrection or minimum foreign intervention would destroy both. One effect of American entry was to turn things decisively in the USSR's favor and give it an empire in eastern Europe.

Would the attack on Pearl Harbor have changed her mind? I think the conspiracy theories are as silly as the ones about 9-11 (which are for the most part a knockoff of the Pearl Harbor stories), but the US had acted provocatively with an oil embargo and covert intervention in China. As far as I know she never talked about this publicly.

[Backlighting]

I find it difficult to believe she did not support retaliation with Japan after they bombed Pearl Harbor.

They initiated the force. Our response was justified.

[Wolf DeVoon]

I find it difficult to believe she did not support retaliation with Japan after they bombed Pearl Harbor.

They initiated the force. Our response was justified.

Total U.S. deaths, Asia–Pacific Theater: 108,504

Japanese military losses were 2,120,000 including 1,740,000 in the war from 1937 to 1945 and 380,000 POW deaths after the surrender. Estimates for Japanese civilian losses range from 500,000 to 1,000,000 dead. The lower figure of 500,000 includes those deaths during the war caused by allied bombing and the fighting on Okinawa. The higher estimate of 1,000,000 includes additional post war deaths of persons injured in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and excess deaths due to adverse post war conditions. [Wikipedia]

So, lemme think, we killed ~3 million people, justified "response" of 30-to-1.

Nagasaki damn straight, they had it coming, all those women and children!

[BaalChatzaf]

So, lemme think, we killed 3 million people, on justified retaliation of 30-to-1.

One thing led to another.

[Wolf DeVoon]

One thing led to another.

war humor

[Mark]

In "'Extremism' or The Art of Smearing" (in CUI) Rand cagily suggests that she opposed entry but doesn't quite say so. The article uses "isolationism" as an example of an anti-concept that muddled the debate in the years before the US went to war.

That part of Rand's essay is quoted here, and she is not cagy.

About dropping atom bombs on Japan, it killed at least 11 American POWs, including two men who later died of acute radiation poisoning. From "Remembering Normand Brissette" by David Rubin:

On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, Brissette, a 19-year-old Navy airman from Lowell, was one of 11 American POWs being held at Chugoku Military Police Headquarters in the center of Hiroshima. All were members of Air Force B-24 or Navy dive-bomber crews who had been captured after parachuting when their planes were shot down by Japanese anti-aircraft fire on July 28.

The prison was about 1,300 feet from ground zero. ...

Most of the American POWs must have perished almost instantly, but Brissette and another man, Air Force Sergeant Ralph Neal, didn’t die at once. They suffered severe radiation burns and were somehow moved to a different location, where other American POWs futilely tried to look after them. Brissette and Neal survived in torment for 13 days and died on Aug. 19.

Even today, most Americans are unaware that American POWs were also victims of the atomic bombs.

...

For at least 35 years after the war ended, these Hiroshima POW deaths were kept secret by the US government. Not even immediate family members were informed how their loved ones died. It wasn’t until the 1980′s that researchers using the Freedom of Information Act began to uncover the stories of these atomic ”friendly fire” victims.

[syrakusos]

That is not very deep thinking, LV. The array of facts must include the US military intervention in China. Read about the Flying Tigers, mercenaries hired by Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, whose husband modeled himself after Hitler and Mussolini. The Italians were training his air force with disastrous results, which is why Soong May-ling came to the US to find other resources.

I find it difficult to believe she did not support retaliation with Japan after they bombed Pearl Harbor.

They initiated the force. Our response was justified.

Can you steal from a thief? Hawaii was an independent kingdom before the US annexed it, no different than taking the kingdom of Denmark. Maybe the people in Hawaii would have preferred Japan over America - a bad choice I would argue, but no one asked them. Similarly, we all know that the US took the Philippines from Spain and began crushing revolts. The American army had little revolts of its own as Irish Catholic soldiers objected to executing Filipino priests who supported independence.

Moreover, while the attack on Pearl Harbor could not be kept secret, the exact extent of the damages was. The US government feared that the American people would capitulate if they knew. Immediately following Pearl Harbor, Time magazine speculated that the US was going to counter-strike from our bases in the Philippines. Think of how Japan viewed those bases - and how the US would have viewed Japanese bases in Venezuela.

Dresden: If two wrongs do not make a right, how many do?

Consider Operation Keelhaul in which America forcibly relocated refugees back into lands occupied by the Russians.

War is seldom about right and wrong except that each side claims that it is right and accuses the other of being wrong.

[Selene]

The US won the only nuclear war in recorded history.

Since then we barely have a 50% winning percentage.

Starting to look like the damn French who are what? "0" for forever?

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

The US won the only nuclear war in recorded history.

The attack on the two cities was nuclear. The war was largely a blood and guts thing won by dying and shot up grunts. Besides most of the damage on Japan was done by non-nuclear weapons. Mostly by fire bombs. The Japanese were very obliging in building their houses from sticks and paper. They burn very nicely.

Ba'al Chatzaf.

[Selene]

The US won the only nuclear war in recorded history.

The attack on the two cities was nuclear. The war was largely a blood and guts thing won by dying and shot up grunts. Besides most of the damage on Japan was done by non-nuclear weapons. Mostly by fire bombs. The Japanese were very obliging in building their houses from sticks and paper. They burn very nicely.

Ba'al Chatzaf.

Correct.

Like the British destruction of Dresden, the firebombing of Japanese cities by Curtis Le May's later Vietnam concept of bombing them back into the stone age was employed.

The fact that no one had the balls to level Hanoi and turn it into a smoking hole on the planet, leveling the three (3) passes between China and N. Vietnam, turning them into a glass sluce and end the resupply of the North, is MacNamara's and Westmoreland's soul burying guilt that they should take to their graves.

Despicable incompetency which apparently has become standard operating procedure for the current "civil service general corps" which is also getting to bear a resemblance to the despicable French officer corps.

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

Despicable incompetency which apparently has become standard operating procedure for the current "civil service general corps" which is also getting to bear a resemblance to the despicable French officer corps.

A...

The French are selling used FALN rifles for under a hundred dollars. Buy one. It has only been dropped once.

Also the French army watch are set permanently to 11:05

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Backlighting]

That is not very deep thinking, LV. The array of facts must include the US military intervention in China. Read about the Flying Tigers, mercenaries hired by Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, whose husband modeled himself after Hitler and Mussolini. The Italians were training his air force with disastrous results, which is why Soong May-ling came to the US to find other resources.

I find it difficult to believe she did not support retaliation with Japan after they bombed Pearl Harbor.

They initiated the force. Our response was justified.

Can you steal from a thief? Hawaii was an independent kingdom before the US annexed it, no different than taking the kingdom of Denmark. Maybe the people in Hawaii would have preferred Japan over America - a bad choice I would argue, but no one asked them. Similarly, we all know that the US took the Philippines from Spain and began crushing revolts. The American army had little revolts of its own as Irish Catholic soldiers objected to executing Filipino priests who supported independence.

Moreover, while the attack on Pearl Harbor could not be kept secret, the exact extent of the damages was. The US government feared that the American people would capitulate if they knew. Immediately following Pearl Harbor, Time magazine speculated that the US was going to counter-strike from our bases in the Philippines. Think of how Japan viewed those bases - and how the US would have viewed Japanese bases in Venezuela.

Dresden: If two wrongs do not make a right, how many do?

Consider Operation Keelhaul in which America forcibly relocated refugees back into lands occupied by the Russians.

War is seldom about right and wrong except that each side claims that it is right and accuses the other of being wrong.

I hear you Michael but sometime all that is needed to get "deep" (enough) with one's thinking is a trowel. A shovel may be overkill.

[BaalChatzaf]

Long before the Pearl Harbor attack, Germany, Japan and Italy had signed a mutual defense treaty called the Tripartite Pact. War against one was war against all. That's why FDR was so eager to get Japan to attack the U.S. Germany wasn't going to do it.

The Dec 8 th declaration of war in Congress was upon the Empire of Japan, not Germany.

The U.S. did not declare war on Germany until Germany declared war on the U.S. which was on Dec 11.

Had Hitler held off the U.S. could not have legally attacked Germany.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Mark]

I didn't say that Congress declared war on Germany. Because of the Tripartite Pact, FDR knew that declaring war on Japan would result in the Axis declaring War on the U.S.

Addressing the last post by Las Vegas ...

Argument by analogy is useful only when there's a real argument to back it up. Michael began his last post by referring to shallow thinking and then immediately explained what he meant. Just what does Las Vegas mean?

Las Vegas writes that "Japan had initiated the force" when in fact vis-a-vis Japan it was the U.S. that had. Before Pearl Harbor FDR had, illegally, waged war with Japan in China, and he did it by allying with a Chinese dictator. Americans should have retaliated against the Roosevelt administration instead of Japan.

Las Vegas claims that Rand must have supported retaliation against Japan despite Rand's abundant statements that the U.S. should not have entered WWII, which of course declaring war against Japan did.

As Michael points out, Hawaii wasn’t legitimately part of the U.S.

Michael mentions Operation Keelhaul "in which America forcibly relocated refugees back into lands occupied by the Russians." You can read about Operation Keelhaul and other little known facts about the aftermath of the Normandy invasion in these articles:

Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced Repatriation

by Julius Epstein.

Review in World Affairs Brief by Joel Skousen.

Other Losses

by James Bacque. Reviewed by Stephen Ambrose.

The mass starvation of Germans, 1945-1950

Review of James Bacque’s Crimes and Mercies.

Behind An Eye for an Eye

by John Sack. Lola Potok was a serial liar. (Amazon reviews)

The Secret Betrayal

by Nikolai Tolstoy. Reviewed by Charles Lutton.

FDR helped cover up the Katyn Forest massacre

He didn’t want to annoy Stalin.

Stalin’s War of Extermination

by Joachim Hoffmann. This was our ally? (Amazon reviews)

Poles Review Postwar Treatment of Germans

Solomon Morel fled to Israel and now lives in Tel Aviv. By Craig Whitney, NYT.

　

[Backlighting]

Mark,

Your comments are appreciated & thanks for the links-nice work.

I find WWll quite interesting.

Had one uncle in the Philippines and another in France during that time..I conversed with them about it, yrs. later, of course.

-J