Mike's Blog

100 Years of History

Melquiades aint got nothing on Toshikazu Kase.

Today's Saturday Profile in the Times focuses on the 100-year old Kase, a former Japanese diplomat posted to the Washington D.C. embassy before and up until the Pearl Harbor attack. Kase recalls several fascinating memories during his interview, including ones like this:

"A very unfortunate situation prevailed at our embassy in Washington on that gray day," he said in an interview, seated in a leather easy chair, his legs swathed in a blanket, his voice reedy thin but his memory clear. Embassy officers, he recalled 62 years later, "went out drinking" and ignored instructions to decode and deliver a cable from Tokyo.

"The instruction was to deliver the ultimatum one hour in advance of the commencement of the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor," he said. "Whether that would have freed us from the sneak attack curse, well, that is a good question for historians."

As the next paragraph points out, had the embassy officials not gone out boozing, an ultimatum with a one hour deadline doesn't cut it in terms of a declaration of war. And had the cable been relayed, it probably wouldn't have altered much. But it's an interesting hypothetical nonetheless. Why else study history if not for these hypotheticals?

Check out the article if you're looking for some anecdotes and analysis on Japanese history and politics. I don't agree with a lot of what Kase offers, but his views are interesting all the same. This passage, however, is why i decided to link up the article.

Mr. Kase traces his conversion to supporting the alliance with the United States to that morning on the hot deck of the Missouri. Like many Japanese, Mr. Kase was moved by the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

"Here is the victor announcing the verdict to the prostrate enemy," he wrote later in his memoirs of the speech by the supreme commander of the allied powers. "He can impose a humiliating penalty if he so desires. And yet he pleads for freedom, tolerance and justice. For me, who expected the worst humiliation, this was a complete surprise. I was thrilled beyond words, spellbound, thunderstruck."

Now without offering a ringing endorsement of Douglas MacArthur, I don't think I need to point out the vast chasm between the Admiral's call for "freedom, tolerance, justice," in the aftermath of the most devastating war this world has ever seen, and George Bush's call to "smoke them out of their holes," bring back "evildoers," "dead or alive" and offer "infinite justice." Annihalating (further annihalating) Afghanistan in reaction to an attack by 19 guys, none of whom were from Afghanistan, was an act of vengenance, not justice. The wisdom lies in understanding the difference.

Posted by mike at November 8, 2003 04:56 PM