We’ve arrived, finally, at the Pacific War — this week, we’ll be charting the course Japan took to war, briefly summarizing the course of said war, and then discussing how the war ended. This topic can be rather dark — after all, we’re talking about a war that killed millions — but it’s an important one for understanding the course Japan is on today, and the background in this episode will be important in future shows on the fall of the Japanese Empire.
Drea, Edward. Japan’s Imperial Army: It’s Rise and Fall, 1853-1945.
Frank, Richard. Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.
Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing the Enemy.
Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan.
Pyle, Kenneth. Japan Rising.
Pyle, Kenneth. The Making of Modern Japan. (Historians are not the most original lot).
The complete text of the Potsdam Declaration is available here.
The complete list of messages related to surrender (from the original Japanese note indicating willingness to surrender to President Truman’s announcement of said surrender) is available here.
You mention at 15:03 in this episode that Germany declared war on the US on Dec 8th.
The US declared war on Japan on Dec 8th, but Roosevelt was unable to pull off declaring war on Germany however much he wanted to. Fortunately, Hitler took it out of American hands by declaring war on the US on Dec 11th (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/11/newsid_3532000/3532401.stm), not Dec 8th. Thank providence for that since if Hitler had played it safe and very reasonably chosen not to honor the Tripartite Pact given Japan initiated their war by attacking first, Roosevelt may not ever have been able to wrangle a declaration against Lindberg’s spiritual homeland and Britain and the Soviets would have been on their own in Europe…with the quite possible eventual result of an Iron Curtain that would have started at the English Channel and a very different world for us.
I know you know all this, well except maybe the date of Germany’s declaration, but I mention it all because my Generation X and those who come after me really have no clue how intensely war averse the US was at the time. Just because we had a war with Japan thrust on us did not automatically mean we would have warred with Germany and Italy, as much as it seems “totally obvious” now. That was Churchill’s great fear. It’s also something you allude to in these episodes but may not emphasize as much as I generally do – that as long as Japan left the Philippines alone, in my view at least the US very likely would not have fought for Britain’s and defeated Holland’s colonial holdings.
No matter how much Roosevelt would have wanted to.
You mention at 15:03 in this episode that Germany declared war on the US on Dec 8th.
The US declared war on Japan on Dec 8th, but Roosevelt was unable to pull off declaring war on Germany however much he wanted to. Fortunately, Hitler took it out of American hands by declaring war on the US on Dec 11th (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/11/newsid_3532000/3532401.stm), not Dec 8th. Thank providence for that since if Hitler had played it safe and very reasonably chosen not to honor the Tripartite Pact given Japan initiated their war by attacking first, Roosevelt may not ever have been able to wrangle a declaration against Lindberg’s spiritual homeland and Britain and the Soviets would have been on their own in Europe…with the quite possible eventual result of an Iron Curtain that would have started at the English Channel and a very different world for us.
I know you know all this, well except maybe the date of Germany’s declaration, but I mention it all because my Generation X and those who come after me really have no clue how intensely war averse the US was at the time. Just because we had a war with Japan thrust on us did not automatically mean we would have warred with Germany and Italy, as much as it seems “totally obvious” now. That was Churchill’s great fear. It’s also something you allude to in these episodes but may not emphasize as much as I generally do – that as long as Japan left the Philippines alone, in my view at least the US very likely would not have fought for Britain’s and defeated Holland’s colonial holdings.
No matter how much Roosevelt would have wanted to.