Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat From Mayflower to Modern by J. Sakai

Author:J. Sakai [Sakai, J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Colonial Period (1600-1775), Central, Social Science, Discrimination, General, United States, Americas (North, Political Science, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Emigration & Immigration, West Indies), South, History
ISBN: 9781894946643
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2014-01-15T06:09:05.805297+00:00

The main focus of Amerika’s military interest had nothing to do with democratic or humanitarian concerns, but with expanding the Empire at the expense of its German and Japanese rivals. Not only was a stronger position over Europe aimed at, but in the Pacific a showdown was sought with Japanese imperialism. In the 1930s both U.S. and Japanese imperialism sought to become the dominant power over Asia. Japan’s 1937 invasion of China (Korea was already a Japanese colony) had upset the Pacific status quo; giant China had long been an imperialist semi-colony, shared uneasily by all the imperialist powers. Japan broke up the club by invading to take all of China for itself. The Roosevelt Administration, the main backer of Chiang Kai-Shek’s corrupt and semi-colonial Kuomintang regime, was committed to a decisive war with Japan from that point on.

Both the U.S. Empire and the Japanese Empire demanded in secret negotiations the partial disarmament of the other and a free hand in exploiting China. The Roosevelt Administration and the British had secretly agreed in mid-1941 for a joint military offensive against Japan, the centerpiece of which was to be a new U.S. strategic bomber force to dominate the Pacific. We know that President Roosevelt’s position was that all-out war in the Pacific was desirable for U.S. interests; his only problem was: “…the question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot…”[297] Political necessities demanded that Roosevelt be able to picture the war as innocent “self defense.”

The New Deal started embargoing strategic war materials — notably scrap iron and petroleum — going to Japan. There was a coordinated Western campaign to deny Japanese imperialism the vital oil, rubber, and iron its war machine needed. With 21 divisions bogged down trying to catch up with the Red Army in China, Japanese imperialism had to either capture these necessary resources in new wars or face collapse. The move was obvious.

To make sure that this shove would work, Roosevelt asked U.S. Admiral Stark to prepare an intelligence assessment of the probable Japanese response. In his memo of July 22, 1941 (over four months before Pearl Harbor), Admiral Stark reassured Roosevelt that Japan would be forced into a “fairly early attack” to seize British Malayan rubber and Dutch Indonesian oil, and that an attack on the U.S. Philippine colony was “certain.”[298]

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