People and nations are alike in certain ways. Both start off happy just to be alive. Most live modest lives and are content to be left alone. But some want more. They see what others have and strive for the top, often to their ruin.
Take Japan. When I was young I admired Japanese art and wondered how such a beautiful country could have managed to get two atomic bombs dropped on it. Of course I knew about Pearl Harbor, but why did a small country like Japan provoke a colossus like the U.S into war. My father's oil tanker had been sunk by a pair of Japanese torpedoes in the war so he had given the matter some thought. All I retained of his explanation was that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor because the US had stopped selling oil to Japan.
An embargo on oil was part of Japan's frustration with the U.S., but it went further back. For centuries Japan had been content to isolate itself from the rest of the world while the shoguns fought each other for control of the country. Then in 1853, the US sent a fleet to Tokyo to open Japan to the West. Japan said ok, rapidly industrialized, and trounced China and Russia in short wars with its new army and navy.
Japan wanted colonies like the western nations, and took over Taiwan, Korea and half of Sakhalin Island from Russia to boot. Japan tried democracy for a few years but soon gave power to the nationalists who wanted to take over all of Asia. The West watched nervously as Japan invaded China and occupied several Pacific islands.
When the Japanese kicked the French out of Vietnam, the US and Britain, on this day in 1941, cut off oil exports to Japan. Sanctions often have unintended consequences. No one expected Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. But Japan saw the oil embargo as a threat to its existence. Japan was counting on America's strong isolationist tendency to keep the the country neutral. It counted wrong. Many thousands of deaths later, Japan was in ruins. But it came back. Democracy is working, and even my father forgave Japan enough to buy a Honda.
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| Empire is messy |
I would've liked to had you as my high school history teacher; you put everything in a nutshell so I, (and presumably) all the rest of the class could understand things more readily. Brevity really is your (well, one of them) best suit. Thanks, man.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the additions to my knowledge of Japan!
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