Pacific Theater Quotes
Truman had just told Stalin about the new technology. Stalin had actually already known something about it as the result of Soviet espionage in the United States.
He was assessing him with the demagogue Huey Long and determining that MacArthur was more dangerous, This was based on his brutal suppression of the Veterans who protested and camped in Washington to get the Bonus that Congress had promised them from WWI but would not appropriate the money, MacArthur’s huge ego and ambition, and his penchant for self-promotion. FDR did not at the time know of course that MacArthur would disobey his orders and almost start WWIII later by attacking China in the Korean War. President Truman fired MacArthur. See {638721} for the way FDR tried to handle him. In 2014, historian Mark Perry, would use this quotation as the title of his biography of MacArthur.
The bombing of Tokyo to which she referred, killed over 100,000 Japanese in a single raid, more than each of the two atomic bombs. However, those who, in hindsight, raise the issue of the morality of using the atomic bombs, say nothing about the firebombing. The graphic is of Dr. Libby when she was working with Enrico Fermi to create the first nuclear chain reaction to prove the feasibility of a nuclear bomb. She was the only female on the team.
This statement caused great consternation. NcNutt did try to explain that he was speaking personally and not for the Government, but there was a small proportion of America who had concluded that all Japanese should be killed. Such an concept which was unthinkable 5 years earlier was considered as a result of several factors: The Japanese had murdered many American prisoners of war. Killed millions of civilians throughout Asia including doing medical and weapons experiments on live human beings. They had practiced torture, compulsory prostitution and mass rape of conquered territories. At the same time, the Germans had tried to exterminate all the Jews and, with some Japanese help, did kill two-thirds. The concept of genocide had been introduced to Americans as the concentration camps were liberated. And American casualties in the Pacific had been heavy. Vengeance was desired by many. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Americans never considered genocide seriously.
After the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson drafted the Declaration of War that President Roosevelt would ask Congress to vote for. However, there was a small but very vocal group of extreme Republican conservatives who opposed assisting England against Hitler and saw German and Italian Fascism as positive forces. They would oppose any administration declaration of war against Germany and Italy who had not yet attacked any American facilities. The President realized that German and Italy had a Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan, and when we declared war against Japan, would have to ally with Japan or reneg on their treaty. So FDR removed Germany and Italy from the Declaration and Congress just declared war against Germany. In the next days, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the de facto situation was as Stimson had drafted it, but FDR had not given the right wing American Fascist sympathizers any issue to criticize the administration.
In 1930, Japan, Britain, and the United States had signed an agreement that submarines would not sink merchant vessels without having first placed passengers and crew in a place of safety. However, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and bombed civilians as well as military and had a pattern of bombing and shelling civilians in China, the U. S. took the position that Japan had abrogated all treaties and therefore abrogated the 1930 treaty. It was more of a symbolic gesture as at the time the American forces were in no shape to attack Japanese merchant shipping though later in the war, it became material. By that time, the Japanese had murdered American prisoners of war on the Bataan Death March and elsewhere and had slaughtered civilians in the Philippines and all the other territories that they invaded. The niceties of the 1930 treaty was one of the first casualties of Japanese aggression.
