Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/12/pearl-harbor-day-colonial-pacific-world.html
What’s at stake: So one-sided has been the reporting and history of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, that dozens of “detective” historians have been inspired to correct the record concerning that “Day of Infamy.” These writings are found in OMNI’s nine “Pearl Harbor Day” Anthologies beginning in 2008.
CONTENTS
Alfred W. McCoy, To Govern the Globe. Imperial and Colonial Background.2021.
CHRISTOPHER MCKNIGHT NICHOLS AND CAMERON GIVENS. “What Happened After Pearl Harbor Is a Reminder of the Danger of Stereotypes and Conspiracy Theories.” 2023.
Mark Harmon, Leon Carroll . . . .the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. 2024.
AFSC Defended the Persecuted Japanese in California.
TEXTS
PREVIOUS ANTHOLOGIES
#1: 2008; #2: 2010; #3: 2011; #4: 2012; #5: 2013; #6: 2013; #7: 2019; #8: 2020; #9: 2024.
TEXTS PEARL HARBOR DAY 2024
IMPERIAL AND COLONIAL BACKGROUND LEADING THE JAPAN’S ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR ON DEC. 7, 1941.
Alfred W. McCoy,.To Govern the Globe, 2021. )
In February 1909 the US “Great White Fleet” of sixteen brand-new battleships returned from a fourteen-month voyage around the world. “In response to the forceful rise of Japanese naval power, [President Theodore] Roosevelt had sent the ships of the Atlantic fleet around Cape Horn to show Tokyo that the United States was indeed a Pacific power. . . .vast cheering crowds were stunned by the sheer size of the American armada. For the countless thousands who witnessed the passage of those warships and the millions more who read about them in daily newspapers, this voyage marked America’s arrival as a major military power.” (191).
BIGOTED MYTHS AND LIES TO JUSTIFY PROVOKING AND SUSTAINING WWII IN THE PACIFIC
Robert Fantina. Propaganda, Lies and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies Its Wars. Red Hill P, 2020. PP. 84-88.
US provocation of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor; embargoes on natural resources essential to Japan; US abrogation of the Japanese-American commercial treaty of 1911; censorship; media as a virtual partner with the government in promoting the war;, hiding the harsh reality of war; turning the war into games at home to make it less fearful and more acceptable; films made to show the war and US combatants as heroic; gov. promoting myth of glorious death for country.
Every chapter reveals more aspects of US war promotion. E.g.: “While propaganda is as old as war, it was during the Spanish-American War that newspapers began to have a great influence. . .as a tool to encourage U.S. war-making,” until now “so-called ‘mainstream’ media is little more than a tool in the hands of the government to foster its imperial goals.”
Cindy Sheehan wrote the Introduction. “It is hoped that by recognizing the ‘big lies’ that the U.S. government tells, people will begin to believe them with less ardor and less frequency. This will be the first step toward changing the centuries-long U.S. policy of constant war-making.” –D
CHRISTOPHER MCKNIGHT NICHOLS AND CAMERON GIVENS. “What Happened After Pearl Harbor Is a Reminder of the Danger of Stereotypes and Conspiracy Theories.” lIFE (DECEMBER 7, 2023 ). https://time.com/6343399/pearl-harbor-conspiracies-crises/
. . .After WWI, the accusations only intensified [of treachery of Japanese residents and even citizens] as part of a renewed campaign in California to restrict the rights of Japanese immigrants. Claims spread that Japanese spies were active in the state, Japanese farmers were maneuvering to gain control of its food supply, and Japanese fishermen were scouting harbor defenses—all in preparation for a coming attack.
There were two immediate effects to these racist conspiracy theories.
First, white supremacist groups weaponized the widespread belief in Japanese aliens’ fundamental inability to assimilate to place severe legal restrictions on them. A new California law circumscribed Japanese noncitizens’ ability to own land. Then in 1922, the Supreme Court disqualified them from the right to become U.S. citizens. Finally, in 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed National Origins Act, the most draconian immigration restriction legislation in U.S. history. It banned Japanese people, as aliens ineligible for citizenship after the 1922 court decision, from entering the U.S.
The conspiracy theories also helped to brand all things “Japanese” as a permanent security liability in the eyes of both military and civilian intelligence organizations, which increasingly surveilled people of Japanese descent—regardless of citizenship—on the basis of race alone.
Two decades later, the legacies of this history were unmistakable in the response to the Pearl Harbor attacks on Dec. 7. Renewed conspiracies—alleging an imminent second strike on the U.S. mainland and the Japanese fifth column preparing for it—created enormous political pressure, helping push Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 9066. FDR and the U.S. government, affirmed by the Supreme Court, abridged and overturned basic civil rights protections to authorize the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans. The deep roots of the response were evident for all to see. . . .
In a turbulent world, it is imperative that Americans confront and learn from this history, resist impulsive rapid reactions, and better separate legitimate security concerns from those manufactured by longstanding bigotry and conspiratorial thinking. Failing to do so will harm national security, as well as threaten core American values and rights, such as equal protection and due process for all citizens and residents.
Mark Harmon, Leon Carroll. Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. 2024.
Putting the spotlight on the battle of intelligence that beget one of the most devastating days in American history, this is the kind of history that reshapes what you thought you knew.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“A fast-paced debut…Espionage buffs will savor this vibrant account.” — Publishers Weekly
A U.S. naval counterintelligence officer working to safeguard Pearl Harbor; a Japanese spy ordered to Hawaii to gather information on the American fleet. On December 7, 1941, their hidden stories are exposed by a morning of bloodshed that would change the world forever. Scrutinizing long-buried historical documents, NCIS star Mark Harmon and co-author Leon Carroll, a former NCIS Special Agent, have brought forth a true-life NCIS story of deception, discovery, and danger.
Hawaii, 1941. War clouds with Japan are gathering and the islands of Hawaii have become battlegrounds of spies, intelligence agents, and military officials – with the island’s residents caught between them. Toiling in the shadows are Douglas Wada, the only Japanese American agent in naval intelligence, and Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese spy sent to Pearl Harbor to gather information on the U.S. fleet.
Douglas Wada’s experiences in his native Honolulu include posing undercover as a newspaper reporter, translating wiretaps on the Japanese Consulate, and interrogating America’s first captured POW of World War II, a submarine officer found on the beach. Takeo Yoshikawa is a Japanese spy operating as a junior diplomat with the consulate who is collecting vital information that goes straight to Admiral Yamamoto. Their dueling stories anchor Ghosts of Honolulu’s gripping depiction of the world-changing cat and mouse games played between Japanese and US military intelligence agents (and a mercenary Nazi) in Hawaii before the outbreak of the second world war.
Also caught in the upheaval are Honolulu’s innocent residents – including Douglas Wada’s father – who endure the war’s anti-Japanese fervor and a cadre of intelligence professionals who must prevent Hawaii from adopting the same destructive mass internments as California.
Ghosts of Honolulu depicts the incredible high stakes game of naval intelligence and the need to define what is real and what only appears to be real.
QUAKERS’ AFSC (12-4-21) DEFENDED THE INTERNED JAPANESE
Opposing the internment of Japanese-Americans: Dec. 7 marks the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the attack, the U.S. government forced more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes into internment camps. Prejudice against Japanese, and against all Asiatics, was so deeply ingrained in US foreign policy and the public, that few citizens spoke out against the blatant violation of Japanese civil liberties. One exception were the Quakers, whose AFSC was one of the few organizations that publicly opposed the enormous human rights violation. –D
Contents #8 December 7, 2020
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/12/pearl-harbor-day-colonial-pacific-world.html
Hamilton Fish. FDR, The Other Side of the Coin: How We Were Tricked into World War II. 1976.
Robert C. Aldridge. December 7, 1941: The Attack On Pearl Harbor. 2010.
OMNI Pearl Harbor Newsletters #1-8