First Taken, Last Released
It must be spooky to those aware of WWII internment when would-be politicians speak today of locking up some other group of people because of their looks, culture, nationality or religion.
Really? Could we make the same mistake? Was George Santayana correct when he wrote more than 100 years ago that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”? Let First Taken fill in missing parts of the internment history as it serves as a memory-jogger.
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Why First Taken-Last Released?
Most Americans whose family histories cover World War II are aware of the taciturn manner in which those of all cultures and nationalities who served or were imprisoned speak of what they experienced. It was as if an entire generation clammed up.
Among those who did speak were a few who wrote the history that we have today of those times, just as journalists today are writing what will be the history that following generations will learn as history.
See: Blogs & Other Words
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75 Years Ago This Fall
The Murky Why Pearl Harbor
The US supplied 80 percent to 90 percent of Japan’s oil supplies to that point. That made it even more necessary from Japan’s standpoint that it expand its holdings in the Southeast Asia region, now to gain access to vital oil supplies in addition to nearly everything else it needed.
In Tokyo, the dysfunction at all levels of Japan’s government became somewhat surreal. The military people apparently felt a need to express their bravado and make macho statements about taking the war to the Americans, even to the point of drawing up plans for an attack on the United States.
The same military leaders who were members of the cabinet took a different stance in face-to-face meetings with their civilian counterparts, emphasizing that military assessments of a Japan war with the United States produced consistent conclusions; Japan would lose, and lose big, probably ending in its destruction. Even they were looking for momma to block them at the precipice.
At the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941, Hirohito, by this point a master of abstruse subtlety and the last to make a direct statement, much less give an order, read one of his father’s poems about praying for peace. Still no direct order from the emperor, considered a demigod at the same time he was commander-in-chief of imperial forces. It could be that he did not want to embarrass himself by giving orders that would not be obeyed.
At that conference, the military part of the government insisted that war was inevitable, so it must be prepared for one it could begin waging by the end of October. That date was important because a winter war would help impair Soviet Union participation on the side of the Western forces—although Japan had a neutrality agreement with the Soviets, it did not trust the giant nation to the north. But, anything that would impair a Soviet army would free the northern China part of Japan’s armed forces to fight in Central China. The conference agreed to simultaneous preparations for war and for peace.
See: Excerpts
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