The Lit-Ideas UK and EU contingent while not recently outspoken on the
matter at least assumes the underlying angst of Germany's WWII attempt to
create a Europe united under his dictatorial rule. The EU has been
attempting a peaceful alternative ever since. With De Gaulle they have
sought to get past all that WWII ugliness and get on with perfecting a
united, peaceful, Europe.
But over here on the West Coast of the U.S., especially those of us who
might also be Marines, there has been an ongoing interest in the Pacific
portion of World War II. Roosevelt went along with Churchill's "Europe
First" approach, but the U.S. had been outraged by Japan's "sneak attack"
upon Pearl Harbor - American soil; which forced Roosevelt to invest a bit
more in the Pacific part of the war than he might have wanted to.
I recall reading about it while it was still going on, cutting battle maps
out of newspapers and pasting them in scrap books. At some point, I decided
to join the Marine Corps - it seemed the proper West Coast thing to do, and
I was in Japan (on the way to Korea) early in 1953, a mere eight years after
the Japanese surrender, and found no remaining evidence of the fanaticism
that inspired Japanese soldiers to fix bayonets, shout Banzai and rush
against Marine Corps' machine guns. Perhaps as has been the case in Europe,
Japan wishes to get past the ugliness of the past, become entrepreneurs,
make cars and other things and merely get rich.
But recently I've learned that there are Japanese historians for which World
War II is still. They continue to relive the battles of the Pacific war. I
began in Volume one of Ian W. Toll's Pacific Crucible, War at Sea in the
Pacific, 1941-1942. I discovered reference to Japanese revisionist
historians and Toll's reference to what he calls the "ground-breaking work
of Anthony Tully and John Lundstrom, the Shattered Sword: The Untold Story
of the Battle of Midway: The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway. I
stopped reading Toll's and began reading Tully and Lundtrom; which, thanks
to Amazon's Kindle, I was able to do almost immediately.
Japanese historians have had the benefit of the memoires and other records
of surviving Japanese military leaders. Tully and Lundstrom in turn have
looked critically at the resulting Japanese historians conclusions. The
Shattered Sword is a rather long work that examines the Battle of Midway
from the Japanese point of view. The Shattered Sword is well-written and
suspenseful. Vice Admiral Nagumo was commander of the strike force sent by
Yamamoto to trick the cowardly Americans into coming out to fight. Nagumo
hasn't fared well in earlier histories, but Tully and Lundstrom treat him
better than they do Yamamoto.
Hitler was sneered at by some of his patrician generals (behind his back of
course) for being a mere corporal and of no important background. The same
thing could be said of Stalin, and it is interesting that something like
that could also be said of Yamamoto who ran in a dictatorial fashion the
naval portion of the Japanese war. Stalin and Hitler could have their
enemies killed. Yamamoto couldn't do that, but he could always get his way
by threatening to resign.
And then almost everyone everywhere was making assumptions based upon
primitive ideas of heredity and race. Hitler's ideas are well known, but
the Japanese had similar ideas. They up to and during WWII believed, most
of them, that they were the master race and were destined to rule the world.
A fatal consequent belief in regard to their defeat at Midway, was their
belief in the inferiority and cowardice of Americans. Yamamoto sought to
trick the American navy into showing up at Midway where he would catch them
by surprise and destroy their Aircraft Carriers, something he had not
forgiven Nagumo for failing to do at Pearl Harbor. Neither Yamamoto, nor
anyone else in authority could conceive of a Nimitz, spoiling for a fight,
already at Midway waiting for them.
Of course we Americans continue to give our potential adversaries reason to
underestimate us. We were isolationists before World War One, and after
that War we became isolationists again. If Yamamoto hadn't attacked us at
Pearl Harbor we might very well never have interfered with anything the
Japanese were doing in South-east Asia or China. And if Hitler hadn't
declare War on the U.S., it is doubtful that the U.S. would have been
anything more than a supplier of equipment to the Allies. But as Churchill
famously said, "I knew you would fight. I read about your Civil War."
Having also read about our Civil War, I see a lot of similarity between the
Japanese soldier's vaunted courage and that of the American Southern
soldier. The Japanese had their "Banzai," and other frightening yells, but
our Southerners had their Rebel Yell before them. And since our Civil War,
doesn't it seem that we have more Southerners than "Northerners" (and
everywhere else-ers) enter the fighting portions of our military. I was the
only Californian, for example in my Boot Camp platoon.
Lawrence
