Japan 1941 Quotes

“Men of letters were not immune to the Pearl Harbor spell. One of the most distinguished poets of twentieth-century Japan, Saito Mokichi, fifty-nine at the time, recorded in his diary: “The red blood of my old age is now bursting with life! … Hawaii has been attacked!” The thirty-six-year-old novelist Ito Sei wrote in his journal: “A fine deed. The Japanese tactic wonderfully resembles the one employed in the Russo-Japanese War.” Indeed, that war started with Japan’s surprise attack on Russian ships in Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, two days before Japan’s formal declaration of war. Japan won that war. Even those Japanese who had previously disapproved of their country’s expansionism in Asia were excited by Japan’s war with the West. In an instant, the official claim, gradually adopted by the Japanese government over the preceding decade, of liberating Asia from Western encroachment gained legitimacy in their eyes. Until then, the innately self-contradictory nature of fighting an anti-imperialist war for Asia against fellow Asians in China had tormented them. Takeuchi Yoshimi, a thirty-one-year-old Sinologist, now said he and his friends had been mistaken in doubting their leaders’ true intentions:”
― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

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― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

“In the 1930s, a considerable number of Japanese fell to the easy temptation of blaming their social ills on foreign powers while attaching excessive, metaphysical significance to Japan’s nationalism, notching it up to the level of ultranationalism. The veneration of the emperor, who was regarded as a living god and the benevolent patriarch of Japan’s family-state, played a central role in this intensification of Japanese nationalism. Many Japanese claimed that an incomplete nation could be completed by imperialist expansion abroad and militarization at home. And not unlike in Nazi Germany, the fulfillment of old imperialist goals—some no longer viable—became an integral part of the ultranationalist agenda.”
― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

“SUPERFICIAL OBSERVERS ARE QUICK to label as an apologist anyone who tries to explain the unsavory past of his or her country to the outside world. It should be clear in the following pages that justifying Japan’s behavior is the least of my aims in recounting the eight months leading up to the decision to attack Pearl Harbor. To the contrary, Japan’s leaders must be charged with the ultimate responsibility of initiating a war that was preventable and unwinnable. War should have been resisted with much greater vigor and much more patience. To be sure, it is all too easy to adopt an air of moral superiority when indicting those who lived many years ago. Still, that should not stand in the way of a critical evaluation of how and why such an irresponsible war was started. If anything, it is a great historical puzzle begging to be solved. And with the emotional distance that only time can accord, one should be able to look back on this highly emotive period of history with a clearer vision. Unfortunately, clarity does not come easily; so many complexities and paradoxes surrounded the fateful Japanese decision. There is no question that most Japanese leaders, out of either institutional or individual preferences, avoided open conflict among themselves. Their circuitous speech makes the interpretation of records particularly difficult. For most military leaders, any hint of weakness was to be avoided, so speaking decisively and publicly against war was unthinkable, even if they had serious doubts. That is why the same people, depending on the time, place, and occasion, can be seen arguing both for and against the war option. Some supported war at a liaison conference of top government and military leaders, for example, while making their desire to avoid it known to others in private. Many hoped somebody else would express their opinions for them.”
― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

“Whatever their fears about the war’s resolution, most Japanese were inclined to see it as a war of liberation not only for Japan but for the whole of Asia. This was understandable, especially for soldiers. Who would not prefer to believe that one was dying for a meaningful cause, rather than a misguided one? Sure enough, the so-called Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere began with great fanfare as the Western colonial possessions fell one by one to Japanese military advances from late 1941 to early 1942. Almost all the nations in the sphere—including Burma (now Myanmar), British Malaya (Malaysia and Singapore), the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), and the Philippines—had been part of Western colonial empires (though the last was no longer a colony at the time of Japanese invasion). So the Japanese occupiers could conveniently claim that they were finally freeing their oppressed Asian brothers and sisters in order to help them reorganize their societies into a viable cultural, economic, and political bloc under Japan’s leadership. Though cloaked by a veneer of a civilizing mission, however, the sphere was first and foremost about Japanese economic imperialism, meant to strengthen its hold over much of the Southesast and East Asian resources needed for Japan to continue fighting. That need would grow all the more pressing with time. The”
― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

“ON DECEMBER 8, 1941, cinemas and theaters in Japan were made to temporarily suspend their evening performances and broadcast a speech recorded by Prime Minister Tojo Hideki earlier that day. U.S. films—films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which the Japanese relished in easier times—were now officially banned. That night, audiences were confronted with the voice of a leader who hardly resembled Jimmy Stewart. Tojo was a bald and bespectacled man of middle age with no remarkable features other than his mustache. His exaggerated buckteeth existed only in Western caricatures, but he did not look like a senior statesman who had just taken his country to war against a most formidable enemy, and his voice was memorable only for its dullness. He recited the speech, “On Accepting the Great Imperial Command,” with the affected diction of a second-rate stage actor. Our elite Imperial Army and Navy are now fighting a desperate battle. Despite the empire’s every possible effort to salvage it, the peace of the whole of East Asia has collapsed. In the past, the government employed every possible means to normalize U.S.-Japan diplomatic relations. But the United States would not yield an inch on its demands. Quite the opposite. The United States has strengthened its ties with Britain, the Netherlands, and China, demanding unilateral concessions from our Empire, including the complete and unconditional withdrawal of the imperial forces from China, the rejection of the [Japanese puppet] Nanjing government, and the annulment of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. Even in the face of such demands, the Empire persistently strove for a peaceful settlement. But the United States to this day refused to reconsider its position. Should the Empire give in to all its demands, not only would Japan lose its prestige and fail to see the China Incident to its completion, but its very existence would be in peril. Tojo, in his selective explanation of the events leading to Pearl Harbor, insisted that the war Japan had just initiated was a “defensive” war. He faithfully echoed Japan’s deep-seated feelings of persecution, wounded national pride, and yearning for greater recognition, which together might be called, for the want of a better phrase, anti-Westernism. It was a sentimental speech, and it was notable for what was left unsaid.”
― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

“President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress in a measured but determined voice: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” Roosevelt’s cabinet, led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, initially urged the president to present to Congress a comprehensive history of Japan’s international misconduct. Roosevelt decided instead on an accessible five-hundred-word speech so that his message would get through to as many people as possible: The Japanese attack was treacherous, and the United States had to defeat this cowardly enemy, no matter what it took.”
― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy

“for most”
― Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy