3 - The Barnes Review

PAGE 48 the barnes review MAY/JUNE
greatest villainies ever perpetrated on the
American people and FDR was its chief
architect, engineer and provocateur.
Because Japan regarded Russia as a
mortal and historic enemy, she considered
the 1905 Portsmouth Treaty—brokered by
Teddy Roosevelt to end the Russo-Japan -
ese war—as having prevented her from
achieving a complete victory over Russia. 23
Further, ever since Japan had been forced
to end her isolation, literally with a gun to
her head, Russia, and later the Soviet Un -
ion remained the greatest threat to her
security. 24 In fact, “fear of Russian expansion
into Manchuria and Korea still haunted
Japan’s leaders” late into the 1930s. 25
Roosevelt, without question, had to know
the menace with which Nippon regarded
Stalin’s communist dictatorship. Our Am -
bassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, who was a
school chum of FDR’s from Groton and
Harvard would have kept his president
fully informed on such matters. 26 And yet,
Roosevelt thumbed his nose at this potential
threat to Japanese security, and the
certain reaction it would generate, by formally
recognizing the Soviets on November
16, 1933. 27 In so doing he made it abundantly
clear that America had al ready chosen
sides against Japan. Par ti ally, to curry
Stalin’s favor and prove his loy alty to his
communist friends, FDR demonstrated
that he was a stand-up guy, willing to do
anything necessary to force America into a
war with Japan.
Had Roosevelt been the teeniest bit
truthful with the people who so willingly
surrendered up their very lives, well placed
efforts might have been taken to avoid the
cataclysmic events that became known as
the War with Japan. But even if we agree
that by 1940 war was inevitable, with the
aggressive militarists in power in Japan (in
America, England and the USSR also) and
with all compromise seemingly out of the
question, couldn’t we have better trained
and supported our fighting men to face the
ordeal they were to undergo? 28 Undoubt -
edly we could have, but, alas, in Roosevelt,
the Americans had found the god and government
they were willing to pay any price
for ... even when it meant giving up their
sons to the great Moloch from Campobello.
What is more, ours was no mere flirtation.
The American voters confirmed their odd
fascination with the dark side by sending
FDR to the White House for four separate
terms. Even in 1940 and 1944, en dorsing
wickedness was easier than counting the
cost.
Actually, FDR’s problem in 1940 was the
realization that he would have a difficult, if
not impossible, task explaining to
American mothers and wives exactly how
and why he intended to use up their loved
ones. So, he did what he did best: manipulated
and concealed the truth, promising
with icy, ruthless deceit: “I have said this
before, but I shall say it again and again
and again: Your boys are not going to be
sent into any foreign wars.” 29 Based on the
savagery of the five years that followed and
the number of coffins he filled, can there be
any question that Roosevelt was either a
deluded god or simply a callused, deceptive
old bugger who exposed American Marines,
sailors and airmen to the slashing and
bloody ordeal in the Pacific that would
slaughter them in the thousands? It is not
without reason that Professor Erik von
Kuehnelt-Leddihn described FDR as “one
of the most dynamic gravediggers of the
Western World.” 30 But, just to make certain
he got total national commitment, he
warmed up with 3,500 Pearl Harbor casualties.
Without flinching, he coldly condemned
to death and disabling injury all
personnel who happened to be aboard any
ship in harbor or on base that morning. In
one furious act of mass murder he was able
to silence his America First opposition, lift
America out of the depression, 31 ingratiate
himself to his co-conspirators, Stalin and
Churchill, and ensure that Congress would
give him the declaration of war he lusted
after.
How many lives might have been
spared if our young Marines and
sailors in the Pacific had known that they
faced an enemy who would fight to the
death or kill himself rather than surrender
because they believed captives were eta or
sub-human? Or, that Japanese commanders
who traced their heritage to samurai
ancestors would open their bellies in ritual
seppaku in the face of capture as a matter
of personal, family and national honor?
Would knowledge that the Japanese warrior
eagerly courted honorable death have
made the kamikazes at the Battle of Leyte
Gulf and mass civilian suicides on Saipan
less of the heart stopping events to us than
they were? It appears that America’s fighting
men in the Pacific were kept on the
same level of need to know as had been
their erstwhile commanders at Pearl
Harbor. As history has recorded, Adm.
Husband E. Kimmel and Gen. Walter C.
Short were sacrificed when FDR engineered
destruction of their commands, and
with it their careers, on December 7th. But,
as we are reminded in the 1995 Mel Gibson
movie Braveheart: “History is written by
those who hang heroes.”
Apparently we had amassed consider-
able intelligence about the German commanders
but what, and when, were Ameri -
can field and fleet commanders in the Pa -
cific told about Gen. Hyakutake on Gua -
dalcanal? Adm. Shibasaki on Tarawa? Gen.
Kuribayashi on Iwo Jima? Gen. Ushijima
on Okinawa? Might our battle plans to
take those mighty bastions by amphibious
assault have been different had our own
commanders known the real stuff the
defenders were made of rather than the
caricatures they had been pedaled by
Hollywood and the weekly “slicks”? For
example, might it have been important for
our fighting men to know that the Japan -
ese soldier was not the weak-eyed, bucktoothed,
simian midget as most Americans
came to regard him. 32 Rather, as experience
was to prove, he was a tough, re -
sourceful, well trained and disciplined
member of a military tradition that was
ferocious in the extreme. Examples of this
ferocity were abundant and known to anyone
with a marginal interest in Japan’s history.
For example, in 1333, when Taka toki,
the last shogun of the Hojo Regency, lost a
power struggle to the Minamoto and
Ashikaga clans, he and 870 of his vassals
and generals committed seppaku. 33 Again,
when Togo Shigechika failed to capture an
enemy fortress, he despaired and allowed
himself to be buried alive, fully armored,
and mounted on his horse, “swearing
ghostly vengeance on his enemies.” 34 In
1702, 47 ronin, 35 having avenged the seppaku
of their liege lord, Asano, by killing
Kira, the man responsible for Asano’s
death, and placing his severed head on
their master’s grave, were condemned to
death and committed seppaku en masse. 36
Mili tary suicide remained a staple of
Japanese history throughout World War II,
and after, with the seppaku deaths of Gen.
Tanaka and Field Marshal Sugiyama, both
of whom committed suicide after Japan’s
unconditional surrender. 37 ❖
FOOTNOTES
1 Nitobe 8.
2 This attempt at prior restraint of expression
brought a blistering retort from preeminent historian
Charles Beard: “Translated into precise
English, this means that the Foundation and
Council do not want journalists or any other persons
to examine too closely and criticize the official
propaganda and the official statements relative
to ‘our basic aims and activities’ during
World War II.” From dust jacket of Charles
Callan Tansill’s Back Door to War: Roosevelt
Foreign Policy 1933-1941.
3 Ibid. ix.
4 Hall 347.
5 Gen. Marshall, Roosevelt’s chief of staff,
could not have been too surprised because he