Apparently the Missouri was anchored at the same spot as Perry’s ship.
It’s reminiscent of Hitler forcing the French to sign their surrender in the same railway car that the Germans signed their surrender in WW1, but there is no parallel between that action and the Perry/Missouri events.
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See page 8 at http://books.google.com.au/books?id=1xZ8PXYfHW0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false for a modern Japanese view which supports what I inferred about Perry’s flag at the surrender ceremony being interpreted by Japanese to tell Japan that it must dance to America’s tune as it had from Perry’s time.
It’s interesting that the US complained at various times between Perry and 1941 that Japan was unfair in its trade practices. Talk about the biter bit!
@ MJ1,
Posting random, meaningless pic’s is called spamming. Please don’t do it…
I realize it is your task to monitor us and I‘m sure you know this - but, unfortunately, your notice of MJ1 is really all he wants.
I think he meant me.
I just got a private msg accusing me of being a slobbering preteen. I wish…
I had a couple friends fathers who did the Bataan March.
Grew up surrounded by WW1 And WW2 vets. Began reading history long ago and continue.
I have been to Japan, but choose to live here in the USA.
Condider his insult a badge of honor - you have an objective and open mind.
PM’s are open range for the most part, so if there is anything salty to be said, everyone should confine it to that venue please. blocking of members is allowed in your user cp’s, a useful option. Should troubles persist, the thread will be locked for as long as needed.
I will remind everyone that there are rules here, and all are expected to abide by them, if not the rules of common courtesy. Serious violations of user rules,as well as spam, trolling, etc. may be instantly reported by clicking the triangular icon at the lower left of the offending post.
I hope this will be received in the spirit intended, so everybody can enjoy their time here. ( besides, Sister Knuckles has a whole box of rulers.
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PM’a are public because you need moral help? I did not start this. Have a nice day.
PM’s are not “public” only those sending, and receiving can view them. You may be mistaking the visitor message for the PM. At any rate, as I said, if anyone, anytime, has a bone to pick about something, pick it via PM, not on the boards. Mj, not sure of what you mean by your last post, nor do I care much who if anyone started anything. It all stops now. you all take some time to think about it. This thread is closed for 24 hrs.
Actually I will thank a teacher who may or may not have been a veteran, that part does not matter.
The requirement to humiliate and denigrate a beaten foe has gone back centuries and just leads to further resentment and problems later on. A few thoughtless actions can have far reaching consequences that are often overlooked as catalysts for future conflicts because one side, is so sure they are right and that they can never be wrong.
The ignorance and consideration of them to foreign local customs and traditions, the natives way of life are nothing to the belief that they are bringing a better way of life (they must be as its their way of life), even though it is backed by a show of force or force itself, is only overshadowed by their total disregard for any consequences that happen to them years down the line.
What, exactly, is ‘this’? Who started it? How?
Your simplistic, uninformed, chauvanistic, breast beating American sloganeering is becoming tiresome, as is your childish preference for posting pointless pictures instead of engaging in rational, or even any, discussion.
So far as WWII goes:
The Soviets paid by far the greatest price in blood in fighting the Nazis and made a major contribution to the Pacific war by holding large numbers of Japanese troops against them in Manchuria, and at a critical point by their stunning advance around the time the atomic bombs were dropped which encouraged Japan to surrender to avoid being conquered by the Soviets. Without the Soviets, the Nazis would have triumphed in western to middle Europe and the Pacific war would have been a lot harder for the Allies. And the English speaking Allies might well have been forced to terms with the Axis.
If the British hadn’t fought the Nazis for a couple of years before America overcame its isolationism and was forced into the war by Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s idiotic declaration of war on America, Western Europe and much of eastern Europe, the Baltic states, parts of Scandanavia, the Balkans, North Africa, and who knows what else would have been held by the Nazis. And America could not and would not have dislodged them without the British and especially the Soviet efforts which actually occurred.
The Chinese are customarily overlooked for their contribution to victory over Japan, but without the, albeit somewhat disorganised and erratic and often corrupt, Chinese effort Japan would have been able to deploy considerably more forces in its Pacific thrust and defence.
Not the least of the consequences of the Soviets and Chinese holding Japanese forces in China was that Japanese intentions of invading Australia, in part to deny it to America as a base for what became MacArthur’s thrust from Australia through Papua New Guinea to the Philippines, could not be carried out.
Nobody with any wide and serious understanding of WWII, which you seem to lack, would deny that America’s involvement was the tipping point in favour of the Allies, primarily because of America’s massive industrial capacity which apart from equipping its own forces also fed the British Commonwealth and the Soviets with materiel to enable them to fight the Nazis and Japanese.
Nor would anybody with any wide and serious understanding of WWII denigrate the sacrifice of American service people, but nor would anyone with that wide and serious understanding pursue your line of attributing the world’s current freedom from fascism exclusively to America.
To the extent that the American flag and the simplistic slogan in your last post represents the freedom from fascism which veterans of WWII secured, you are perfectly correct. Except that, in simple numbers, the veterans who lived, and vastly more service people and even more civilians who died, in that pursuit were Soviets and Chinese.
So, as a man committed to honouring the service of veterans in defence of the freedom from WWII fascism which we now enjoy, why don’t you put up WWII Soviet and Chinese flags with suitable slogans acknowledging the fact that their dead and veterans are the ones who, at least as much as any Americans who served, allow you to put up your chauvanistic little pictures expressing contempt for everyone who isn’t one of the small proportion of ignorant Americans whose arrogant contempt for the rest of the world give the rest of your fine and intelligent countrymen a bad name?
Or would you rather just put up another pointless picture or a line of zzzzzzzzzzzzzz or some other equally infantile response which demonstrates you inability to participate meaningfully in a discussion of history?
We in the US, and I don’t especially like referring to us as just Americans - America includes all of N., Central, and S. America - are largely taught from birth that our country is the center of the known universe.
It is good for us to be proud of our country, but unfortunately most of our citizens know only what they are taught in our schools, and that is very limited.
Relatively few read or study anything objective about the rest of the world and its history. They certainly don’t try to connect the threads of how all actions of all countries influence all of us.
This limited view is seen across all generations but, I think, is especially prevalent in the “Greatest Generation” (those who experiences WWII) and the “baby boomers” (those born of the “Greatest Generation”). For the most part, I believe, their view of world history comes entirely from the media of the time - which was very narrow in its perspective.
Historians have long known that most veterans of WWII base their views almost entirely on the newspaper, radio and magazine headlines of the time. Of course these headlines were subject to censorship and are, at best, misleading and rarely give the large picture.
This even applies to veterans of later conflicts - visit any VFW or American Legion and listen to the “war stories” told. If you know history you know that a lot of what they say is BS. They believe their stories, they have told them for so long and so many times, they are now truth to them. But this has always been the case and since they are veterans they are rarely questioned. I cannot count the letters I have written to newspaper reporters who write articles using these veterans as sources and never check to verify their stories.
A good example of this is several threads on various sites about the first Sergeant Major of the US Army (SMA), William O. Wooldrige, who died and was honored last week. This man was the subject of a Senate investigation and, with several others (including one Brig. Gen), was central in a ring of corruption going back, possibly, to WWII and certainly during VN. By his own testimony he was involved in this and made a great deal of money. Most authorities believe he was allowed to retire “for the good of the service” and keep his benefits and thereby did not implicated other more higher ranking soldiers.
This is in line with a report of an Army CID investigation which revealed that in 1943 Wooldrige was convicted by Courts Martial of theft and had at least twice gone AWOL. All this was not in the records that were presented to the board which recommended him for SMA. The General who was largely responsible for this omission was even named.
Yet still soldiers from this era hold him up as an example for the US Army’s NCO Corps. Because of his war record (he was part of the Normandy landings and fought across Europe) they refuse to hear the truth - because if he was not the hero they were led to believe he was then what other memories they have might be false?
This historical ignorance is also seen in the last few generations, who are taught practically nothing of world history. Text books are closely monitored by people representing various ethnic, political, cultural and religious groups - anything they don’t agree with doesn’t get in the books. Then, truthfully, there is a lot of history, all of it can’t be taught in the time allotted.
Even in college history is not stressed and is often structured to support the professors views. The books the students use are dictated by the professor and are sure to support him; and students are not encouraged to read further.
All of this applies, I think, to every country in the world. Each country elevates their own place in history.
So our arrogance is of our own making and will not change until all people become more historically educated and I don’t ever see that happening. People absolutely believe what they want and no amount of facts are going to change their minds, like I said - if this thing is wrong then what else is wrong?
I was told a long time ago that if you always consider that at least 60% of all people are stupid, and 90% of the rest are apathetic, everything will make more sense.
“History is, by and large, a record of what people did, not of what they failed to do.” Edward Carr
I don’t have any experience of the US education system but if that is the way it works it doesn’t, as we say down here, make the US Robinson Crusoe (in case you don’t use this phrase, translation = alone).
There are examples outside the USA which don’t reflect well on the education systems of other countries, from the sanitised and distorted view of China and WWII presented in Japan to the even more bizarre and further removed from fact period around the 1980s down here where some secondary school textbooks and teaching programs referred to our soldiers as, and I kid you not, ‘harm workers’.
I think it’s the same everywhere.
Down here what I flippantly refer to as ‘the fascist press’, being the Murdoch / News Limited newspapers and their ilk can always be relied upon to present a local line not all that far removed from the simplistic chauvinism I challenged in MJ1’s posts.
The articles in those papers often provide the talking points for talkback radio and the the shockjocks who passionately express opinions about matters upon which they are hopelessly ill-or-un-informed to encourage even more passionate and uninformed responses from their ignorant audience.
A recent example which annoyed me is the spectacularly uninformed commentary inspired by the recent anniversary of the main Darwin bombing in February 1942, which was repeatedly and, I thought conceitedly and disrespectfully, referred to as ‘Australia’s Pearl Harbor’ which was not a term I recall hearing before. Maybe I missed something that the fascist and even non-fascist press and shock jocks got onto, but although the same Japanese carrier forces and planes were involved as in Hawaii I don’t think that about 250 deaths and the loss of some minor ships and damage to a pretty primitive frontier township to reinforce the invasion of Timor rank in any way with the damage inflicted on Pearl Harbor in reinforcing the Japanese assaults on Singapore, the Philippines, and the Netherlands East Indies and, more importantly, the significance of Pearl Harbor in bringing the US into the war and what happened to Japan from then on. Or maybe I missed the bits where Australia designed and built Superfortresses; captured Tinian etc; Curtis Le May was actually an Australian commander using Australian planes to subjugate Japan; and Australia built the atom bomb.
I am not denigrating my own country by these comments, but I do denigrate the idiots who lack the knowledge to put the bombing of Darwin into its proper perspective in the whole scheme of WWII, which is that it was very, very small beer compared to what happened elsewhere. Although considerably more than happened to the US mainland from Japanese assaults, even including jetstream balloons setting fire to the odd tree in Oregon.
A good example of this is several threads on various sites about the first Sergeant Major of the US Army (SMA), William O. Wooldrige, who died and was honored last week. This man was the subject of a Senate investigation and, with several others (including one Brig. Gen), was central in a ring of corruption going back, possibly, to WWII and certainly during VN. By his own testimony he was involved in this and made a great deal of money. Most authorities believe he was allowed to retire “for the good of the service” and keep his benefits and thereby did not implicated other more higher ranking soldiers.
This is in line with a report of an Army CID investigation which revealed that in 1943 Wooldrige was convicted by Courts Martial of theft and had at least twice gone AWOL. All this was not in the records that were presented to the board which recommended him for SMA. The General who was largely responsible for this omission was even named.
Yet still soldiers from this era hold him up as an example for the US Army’s NCO Corps. Because of his war record (he was part of the Normandy landings and fought across Europe) they refuse to hear the truth - because if he was not the hero they were led to believe he was then what other memories they have might be false?
Interesting.
Not something I knew about but I’ll be interested to follow it up.
It opens up a much bigger topic about financial corruption in war, whether from simple looting of the enemy forces or civilians on any ground over which armies move, to more sophisticated manipulation of finances or diversion of money from its intended sources. Then there are the black market opportunities of occupation forces in Germany or Japan, or the forces in Korea and Vietnam which although not occupation forces were still relatively well supplied with tradeable goods. I doubt that the average grunts got much opportunity for such things unless they stumbled on a cache of hidden Nazi gold in a remote salt mine, but quartermasters, paymasters and their ilk were well placed to profit from the black market. As were pilots and aircrew, and perhaps to a lesser extent ships’ captains and their crews, who could move assets and money.
I have heard anecdotes, invariably unable to be verified, of thefts and frauds by US officers or NCOs in WWII and Vietnam which set them up handsomely in civilian life, but I wonder if they’re just myths or at best based on a handful of real cases.
This historical ignorance is also seen in the last few generations, who are taught practically nothing of world history. Text books are closely monitored by people representing various ethnic, political, cultural and religious groups - anything they don’t agree with doesn’t get in the books. Then, truthfully, there is a lot of history, all of it can’t be taught in the time allotted.
I don’t think there is any subject here which looks at world history, nor is it probably one which could be taught in the modern education system run by managers who are to education what accountants are to car production.
The absence of such a useful but vague subject is probably not a consequence of anything much more than the malign influence of the educational bureaucracy (i.e. intelligent but uninspired people called managers who aren’t and probably couldn’t be teachers yet who determine what teachers should teach so that it can be measured by people who aren’t teachers to see whether or not the bureaucrats get their bonuses for statistically improving teaching to decide which schools get money for improving on the tests – which some teachers manipulate by ensuring that dumb kids don’t do the tests, which suggests that some teachers should become managers) .
All of this applies, I think, to every country in the world. Each country elevates their own place in history.
Definitely.
It would be unrealistic to expect anything else.
So our arrogance is of our own making and will not change until all people become more historically educated and I don’t ever see that happening
I’d suggest that the arrogance the US has displayed in various events over the past century and a half, and Britain for much of the same period and much earlier (including colonising eastern parts of what is now the USA) and the colonial expansion of other European countries during the same or earlier periods, was not a consequence of the lack of historical education of the masses but of the acquisition of the power by the elites to make their conquests possible.
Unless, as is entirely possible, China stuffs it up by another event like the Cultural Revolution, China will in the not too distant future be the nation expressing arrogance acquired through superior power.
When we look at the history of the world and the way China was exploited and mistreated in the past couple of centuries by the West, notably but far from exclusively the British, we had better hope that the sort of nationalistic triumphalism and contempt for other nations expressed by MJ1 is not emulated by China. But, given the way the West has treated China in the past and the way China looks likely to dominate the future, if I was running China I’d be looking to give MJ1 some respect for the Chinese flag.
An unnecessary insult? I don’t think it was an insult at all. The real insult was being defeated by the fat and lazy Americans that the Japanese didn’t think would have the will to fight. The real insult was the plethora of American warships that were that very day sitting in Tokyo Bay flying their victory pennants. The real insult was the technical expertise that exploded not one, but two nuclear bombs over two Japanese cities. A littlg flag flown by Admiral Perry many years earlier now an insult? Spare me.
Laconia
If Perrys flag was not there to rub salt in the wounds and show that the US has been pulling the strings for Japan since the US forced open trade then why was it there.
What purpose did having a flag nearly 100 years old serve other than to remind the Japanese that the US forced them to enter the outside world instead of keep to their isolationism. It was not of the current style lacking some important stars so just what was it there for?
You add another real insult in your post by not mentioning any other nation than the US that contributed to the defeat of the Japanese. Typical of many international (but English language based) forums where US citizens forget that they are not the only people in the world.
As you don’t think it was an insult, could you explain why it was there? Especially when it had nothing to do with the hostilities concluded at that point?
You seem to be confusing modern fat Americans with the lean men who fought WWII, in all nations.
As for not having the will to fight, could you point to contemporary Japanese documents which express that view as a war strategy as distinct from, say, 1) Yamamoto’s and others’ recognition of the superior industrial and military capacity of the US which would defeat Japan in a long war and 2) Japan’s ‘strategy’ of taking ground and hoping that the Allies would allow Japan to hold it?
I was under the misapprehension that these ships were there to recognise the surrender, not to deliver an insult. Could you point to contemporary American documents which demonstrate that the purpose of those ships was to insult Japan?
That expertise was not by any means exclusively American, nor were the bombs developed to insult Japan but to conquer Germany. However, if I have misunderstood the history on that, I welcome your detailed correction.
So, why was this precious relic dragged half way around the world and displayed so that the surrendering Japanese faced it? Was it a celebration of Japan’s independence in the face of Perry’s American gunboat diplomacy to drag Japan into trade with America for America’s benefit? Spare me!
The Japanese atrocities in China certainly seem reprehensible. However, European nations were doing rather nasty things to the Chinese from the 1800s onwards. Why should European nations be given a pass on their behavior towards the Chinese? I don’t see how one can be objective and decry Japanese treatment of the Chinese while ignoring the activities of other western nations.
If you consider Perry’s flag a big insult fine. I just think in the whole scheme of things one such flag flying was no big deal. Of course the U.S. was an imperialist power in the Pacific, that cannot be denied.
As for your second statement, while others were “in the fight” and we were grateful that they were, by and large it was an American show. Of all the naval ships in the Pacific zone of battle, how many were U.S. warships and how many were Allied? I’d bet that 90 to 95 percent were American. And I’d bet that the greatest amount of other weapons of war (material and soldies/sailors) were either American or American produced. I’m not trying to arrogant here, just trying to be factual.