THE WAR JOKE - Still Funny

 

I believe this was the first American joke of World War Two: holding up a newspaper headline that read "Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor”, the hung-over volunteer in boot camp sadly announced, “I thought Pearl Harbor was a girl!” It's a good joke, and has been since 1942.  And despite holding a ten year lead, the best Japanese gag of the war has largely been forgotten, because somehow many of the Japanese never got the joke themselves. Typical of the humorless sons of Nippon was Lt. Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, who wore the Japanese neo-con mantle long before such right wing ideologies could have been called “neo”.

Kingoro was known for being “… arrogant and insubordinate,” as well as “…ignorant and dangerous” and “a publicity hound”.  And that was the way a Japanese general described him. Robert Butow pointed out in his 1961 book “Tojo and the Coming of War”, that Kingoro “…seemed to reappear on the national scene - whenever crises threatened – like a jack-in-the-box when the lid is released.” And that is actually my favorite image of this Japanese anti-social psychopath, as a jack-in-the-box, popping up to play martial music to drown out the punch line.

 It was Kingoro who helped plan two attempts to overthrow the elected government in 1931. Both attempts failed, and in response the public elected a moderate Prime Minister. So in 1932 Kingoro supported the assassination of that Prime Minister.  In September of 1933 Kingoro help manufacture the Japanese takeover of Manchuria. And it was Kingoro who, during the 1937 infamous “Rape of Nanking”, in China , ordered the attack on the American gun boat Panay, which killed three American sailors and wounded 48 others. That little joke cost the Japanese $2 million in indemnity paid to the United States. 

However it provided yet more proof that many others in Japan did not favor the lunatics like Kingoro. Public pressure forced Kingoro’s recall and the American ambassador to Japan noted that his embassy was deluged by “…people from all walks of life, from high officials, doctors, professors, businessmen down to school children, trying to express their shame, apologies, and regrets” with the Panay sinking. The Ambassador noted that “never before has the fact that there are 'two Japans' been more clearly emphasized.”  There were two Japans, and as the war with China dragged on year after year, the lunatic one remained not amused and un-amusing.

According to the humorless plan of the Japanese ultranationalists, China was supposed to supply workers for Japanese industry.  But instead of a pool of unlimited manpower, China became a swamp, a drain on Japanese resources, both human and industrial. Could the ultra-nationalists like Kingoro Hashimoto have been wrong? By 1940 there was nobody left alive in a position of authority to suggest so. In September the nationalists doubled-down their bet by invading French Indo-China, looking for rubber and oil to support their war in China, which was supposed to have made Japan industrially independent

The American response to this invasion was to cut off all oil shipments to Japan: just not right away. The isolationist United States was the world’s largest oil exporter.  And the American oil companies fought any crimp in their profits tooth and nail. Congress did not approve the embargo until July of 1941, which gave the Japanese time to plan their response. The Japanese navy was burning 2,900 barrels of oil every hour, 11,600 barrels every day. By September their reserves had dropped to 50 million barrels, just about a six month supply.

The Japanese neo-ultra-nationalists now faced a choice. They could admit they had been mega-stupid. Or they could invade the Dutch West Indies, to capture the oil fields on Borneo. To protect the flank of that massive operation, the Japanese were forced to include the invasion of the American protectorate of the Philippines, and that forced them to create something they called Operation Z.

 While Americans were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner on 20 November, 1941, six fast Japanese aircraft carriers and their escorts were taking on a full load of fuel oil - bought from the Americans. On 26 November, they steamed for Oahu.  And in the predawn hours of Sunday, 7 December, 1941 they launched almost 400 aircraft in two waves to attack the naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack sank four battleships, damaged four others, damaged three cruisers, three destroyers and one mine layer, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed 2,402 and wounded 1,282 American servicemen. It was a brutal wake up call for the Americans.  And for Japan the attack was a complete and total failure.

To quote from Ted Mahar, and his article on the History Net, “The Battle That Ignited America” ; “The attack on Pearl Harbor modernized the U.S. Navy in two hours, neutralizing our battleships and forcing us to use the weapon we should have been stressing all along, our carriers, none of which was even damaged, since none was there.  Political wrangling between carrier admirals and battleship admirals could have slowed our retaliation. The Japanese streamlined the discussions.”

But more specifically, as was pointed out by U.S. Air Force Major Patrick Donovan in his 2001 paper “Oil and Logistics in the Pacific War”, “By far, the more surprising target oversight of the Japanese attack was the oil and gas storage tanks. The entire fuel supply for the Pacific Fleet was stored in above-ground tanks on the eastern side of the naval base. These tanks were perfectly visible to the naked eye and, ergo, perfect targets. These tanks were particularly susceptible to enemy action…Even a few bombs dropped amongst the tanks could have started a raging conflagration.

“The US Navy had just finished restocking Pearl Harbor to its total capacity of 4.5 million barrels of oil. …The Japanese strategic disregard of the fragile U.S. oil infrastructure in the Pacific was an incredible oversight on their part.”

In other words, the entire raid on Pearl Harbor could have been substituted with a dozen strafing attacks over those fuel tanks with incendiary bullets. Without the oil in those tanks the U.S. Pacific Fleet would have been forced to withdraw to California and Washington State. Hawaii would have been indefensible. And, in the words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the man who won the war in the Pacific, “Had the Japanese destroyed the oil (stored at Pearl Harbor), it would have prolonged the war another two years.”

It displays an underlying truth about the ideological hawks who preach “preemptive strikes” and wars: once the shooting starts they usually prove to be incompetent idiots.  Kingoro Hashimoto was a perfect example. The man who once warned the world, “Watch me, Hashimoto. I am no man to sit still and talk”, was never promoted within the army.  Instead he went into politics. Staying at home after 1941, he survived the war uninjured. He was convicted in 1948 of crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to life in prison.

He thus provided the best Japanese joke of World War Two. Did you hear about the super patriot who sent tens of thousands of young Americans and millions of innocent young Chinese and Japanese to their deaths? He died in his own bed, at 67 years of age, from lung cancer.

- 30 -

THE WAR JOKE - IT WAS ABOUT OIL

I believe this was the first American joke of World War Two: holding up a newspaper headline that read "Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor”, the hung-over volunteer sadly announced, “I thought Pearl Harbor was a girl!” It's a good joke, and has been since 1942.  And despite holding a ten year lead, the best Japanese gag of the war has largely been forgotten, because somehow many of the Japanese never got the joke themselves. Typical of the humorless sons of Nippon was Lt. Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, who wore the Japanese neo-con mantle long before such right wing ideologies could have been called “neo”.

Kingoro was known for being “… arrogant and insubordinate,” as well as “…ignorant and dangerous” and “a publicity hound”.  Sound familiar? And that was the way a Japanese general described him. Robert Butow pointed out in his 1961 book “Tojo and the Coming of War”, that Kingoro “…seemed to reappear on the national scene - whenever crises threatened – like a jack-in-the-box when the lid is released.” And that is actually my favorite image of this Japanese anti-social psychopath, as a jack-in-the-box, popping up to play martial music to drown out the punch line.

It was Kingoro who helped plan an attempted overthrow of the elected government in 1931. After that embarrassing failure the public elected a moderate Prime Minister. So in 1932 Kingoro supported the assassination of that Prime Minister.  In September of 1933 Kingoro help manufacture the Japanese takeover of Manchuria, against his superior's orders. And it was Kingoro who, during the 1937 infamous “Rape of Nanking”, in China , ordered the attack on the American gun boat Panay, which killed three American sailors and wounded 48 others. That little joke cost the Japanese $2 million paid to the United States government. 

However it provided yet more proof that many others in Japan did not favor the lunatics like Kingoro. Public pressure forced Kingoro’s recall and the American ambassador to Japan noted that his embassy was deluged by “…people from all walks of life, from high officials, doctors, professors, businessmen down to school children, trying to express their shame, apologies, and regrets” with the Panay sinking. The Ambassador noted that “never before has the fact that there are 'two Japans' been more clearly emphasized.”  And there were two Japans, and as the war with China dragged on year after year, the compassionate Japan grew even less amused with lunatics like Kingoro.

According to the humorless plan of the Japanese ultranationalists, China was supposed to supply workers for Japanese industry.  But instead of a pool of unlimited manpower, China became a swamp, a drain on Japanese resources, both human and industrial. Could the ultra-nationalists like Kingoro Hashimoto have been wrong?  Clearly they were, but by 1940 there was nobody left alive in a position of authority to suggest so. In September the nationalists doubled-down their bet by invading French IndoChina, looking for natural resources to support their war in China, which was supposed to have made Japan industrially independent

The American response to this invasion was to cut off all oil shipments to Japan: just not right away. We were the world’s largest oil exporter in 1940.  And the American oil companies fought any crimp in their profits tooth and nail. Congress did not approve the embargo until July of 1941, which gave the Japanese time to plan their response. The Japanese navy was burning 2,900 barrels of oil every hour, 11,600 barrels every day. By September their reserves had dropped to 50 million barrels, just about a six month supply.

The Japanese neo-ultra-nationalists now faced a choice. They could admit they had been mega-stupid. Or they could invade the Dutch West Indies, to capture the oil fields on Borneo. To protect the flank of that massive operation, the Japanese were forced to include the invasion of the American protectorate of the Philippines, and that forced them to create something they called Operation Z.

 While Americans were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner on 20 November, 1941, six fast Japanese aircraft carriers and their escorts were taking on a full load of fuel oil - pumped from American wells and sold to them by American capitalists. On 26 November, they steamed for Oahu.  And in the predawn hours of Sunday, 7 December, 1941 they launched almost 400 aircraft in two waves to attack the naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack sank four battleships, damaged four others, damaged three cruisers, three destroyers and one mine layer, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed 2,402 and wounded 1,282 American servicemen. It was a brutal wake up call for the Americans.  And for Japan the attack was a complete and total failure.

To quote from Ted Mahar, and his article on the History Net, “The Battle That Ignited America” ; “The attack on Pearl Harbor modernized the U.S. Navy in two hours, neutralizing our battleships and forcing us to use the weapon we should have been stressing all along, our carriers, none of which was even damaged, since none was there. (In Pearl Harbor).  Political wrangling between carrier admirals and battleship admirals could have slowed our retaliation. The Japanese streamlined the discussions.”

But more specifically, as was pointed out by U.S. Air Force Major Patrick Donovan in his 2001 paper “Oil and Logistics in the Pacific War”, “By far, the more surprising target oversight of the Japanese attack was the oil and gas storage tanks. The entire fuel supply for the Pacific Fleet was stored in above-ground tanks on the eastern side of the naval base. These tanks were perfectly visible to the naked eye and, ergo, perfect targets....Even a few bombs dropped amongst the tanks could have started a raging conflagration.

“The US Navy had just finished restocking Pearl Harbor to its total capacity of 4.5 million barrels of oil. …The Japanese strategic disregard of the fragile U.S. oil infrastructure in the Pacific was an incredible oversight on their part.”

In other words, the entire raid on Pearl Harbor could have been substituted with a dozen strafing attacks with incendiary bullets over those fuel tanks. Without the oil in those tanks the U.S. Pacific Fleet would have been forced to withdraw to California and Washington State. Hawaii would have been indefensible. And, in the words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the man who won the war in the Pacific, “Had the Japanese destroyed the oil (stored at Pearl Harbor), it would have prolonged the war another two years.”

It displays an underlying truth about the ideological hawks who preach “preemptive strikes” and wars: once the shooting starts they usually prove to be incompetent idiots.  Kingoro Hashimoto was a perfect example. The man who once warned the world, “Watch me, Hashimoto. I am no man to sit still and talk”, was never promoted within the army.  Instead he went into politics. Staying at home after 1941, he survived the war uninjured. He was convicted in 1948 of crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to life in prison.

He thus provided the best Japanese joke of World War Two. Did you hear about the super patriot who sent tens of thousands of young Americans and millions of innocent young Chinese and Japanese to their deaths? He died in his own bed, at 67 years of age, from lung cancer.

- 30 

THE WAR JOKE - IT WAS ABOUT OIL

I believe this was the first American joke of World War Two: holding up a newspaper headline that read "Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor”, the hung-over volunteer in boot camp sadly announced, “I thought Pearl Harbor was a girl!” It's a good joke, and has been since 1942.  And despite holding a ten year lead, the best Japanese gag of the war has largely been forgotten, because somehow many of the Japanese never got the joke themselves. Typical of the humorless sons of Nippon was Lt. Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, who wore the Japanese neo-con mantle long before such right wing ideologies could have been called “neo”.

Kingoro was known for being “… arrogant and insubordinate,” as well as “…ignorant and dangerous” and “a publicity hound”.  And that was the way a Japanese general described him. Robert Butow pointed out in his 1961 book “Tojo and the Coming of War”, that Kingoro “…seemed to reappear on the national scene - whenever crises threatened – like a jack-in-the-box when the lid is released.” And that is actually my favorite image of this Japanese anti-social psychopath, as a jack-in-the-box, popping up to play martial music to drown out the punch line.

 It was Kingoro who helped plan two attempts to overthrow the elected government in 1931. Both attempts failed, and in response the public elected a moderate Prime Minister. So in 1932 Kingoro supported the assassination of that Prime Minister.  In September of 1933 Kingoro help manufacture the Japanese takeover of Manchuria. And it was Kingoro who, during the 1937 infamous “Rape of Nanking”, in China , ordered the attack on the American gun boat Panay, which killed three American sailors and wounded 48 others. That little joke cost the Japanese $2 million in indemnity paid to the United States. 

However it provided yet more proof that many others in Japan did not favor the lunatics like Kingoro. Public pressure forced Kingoro’s recall and the American ambassador to Japan noted that his embassy was deluged by “…people from all walks of life, from high officials, doctors, professors, businessmen down to school children, trying to express their shame, apologies, and regrets” with the Panay sinking. The Ambassador noted that “never before has the fact that there are 'two Japans' been more clearly emphasized.”  There were two Japans, and as the war with China dragged on year after year, the lunatic one remained not amused nor un-amusing.

According to the humorless plan of the Japanese ultranationalists, China was supposed to supply workers for Japanese industry.  But instead of a pool of unlimited manpower, China became a swamp, a drain on Japanese resources, both human and industrial. Could the ultra-nationalists like Kingoro Hashimoto have been wrong? By 1940 there was nobody left alive in a position of authority to suggest so. In September the nationalists doubled-down their bet by invading French Indo-China, looking for natural resources to support their war in China, which was supposed to have made Japan industrially independent

The American response to this invasion was to cut off all oil shipments to Japan: just not right away. We were the world’s largest oil exporter.  And the American oil companies fought any crimp in their profits tooth and nail. Congress did not approve the embargo until July of 1941, which gave the Japanese time to plan their response. The Japanese navy was burning 2,900 barrels of oil every hour, 11,600 barrels every day. By September their reserves had dropped to 50 million barrels, just about a six month supply.

The Japanese neo-ultra-nationalists now faced a choice. They could admit they had been mega-stupid. Or they could invade the Dutch West Indies, to capture the oil fields on Borneo. To protect the flank of that massive operation, the Japanese were forced to include the invasion of the American protectorate of the Philippines, and that forced them to create something they called Operation Z.

 While Americans were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner on 20 November, 1941, six fast Japanese aircraft carriers and their escorts were taking on a full load of fuel oil. On 26 November, they steamed for Oahu.  And in the predawn hours of Sunday, 7 December, 1941 they launched almost 400 aircraft in two waves to attack the naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack sank four battleships, damaged four others, damaged three cruisers, three destroyers and one mine layer, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed 2,402 and wounded 1,282 American servicemen. It was a brutal wake up call for the Americans.  And for Japan the attack was a complete and total failure.

To quote from Ted Mahar, and his article on the History Net, “The Battle That Ignited America” ; “The attack on Pearl Harbor modernized the U.S. Navy in two hours, neutralizing our battleships and forcing us to use the weapon we should have been stressing all along, our carriers, none of which was even damaged, since none was there.  Political wrangling between carrier admirals and battleship admirals could have slowed our retaliation. The Japanese streamlined the discussions.”

But more specifically, as was pointed out by U.S. Air Force Major Patrick Donovan in his 2001 paper “Oil and Logistics in the Pacific War”, “By far, the more surprising target oversight of the Japanese attack was the oil and gas storage tanks. The entire fuel supply for the Pacific Fleet was stored in above-ground tanks on the eastern side of the naval base. These tanks were perfectly visible to the naked eye and, ergo, perfect targets. These tanks were particularly susceptible to enemy action…Even a few bombs dropped amongst the tanks could have started a raging conflagration.

“The US Navy had just finished restocking Pearl Harbor to its total capacity of 4.5 million barrels of oil. …The Japanese strategic disregard of the fragile U.S. oil infrastructure in the Pacific was an incredible oversight on their part.”

In other words, the entire raid on Pearl Harbor could have been substituted with a dozen strafing attacks over those fuel tanks with incendiary bullets. Without the oil in those tanks the U.S. Pacific Fleet would have been forced to withdraw to California and Washington State. Hawaii would have been indefensible. And, in the words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the man who won the war in the Pacific, “Had the Japanese destroyed the oil (stored at Pearl Harbor), it would have prolonged the war another two years.”

It displays an underlying truth about the ideological hawks who preach “preemptive strikes” and wars: once the shooting starts they usually prove to be incompetent idiots.  Kingoro Hashimoto was a perfect example. The man who once warned the world, “Watch me, Hashimoto. I am no man to sit still and talk”, was never promoted within the army.  Instead he went into politics. Staying at home after 1941, he survived the war uninjured. He was convicted in 1948 of crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to life in prison.

He thus provided the best Japanese joke of World War Two. Did you hear about the super patriot who sent tens of thousands of young Americans and millions of innocent young Chinese and Japanese to their deaths? He died in his own bed, at 67 years of age, from lung cancer.

- 30 -

BIRTH OF THE SAMURAI - Government on the Cheap

I would like to remind you of what happened when the Emperor Kammu decided that the government of Japan had become too expensive. He replaced the educated bureaucrats trained for the job since youth with private contractors who did the work in exchange for a cut in their taxes. The contractors then hired a new bunch of underpaid bureaucrats to actually do the work, and they were called samurai. As was to be expected, eventually the samurai evolved into the masters, and the two most powerful samurai families divided Japan between them; the Taira and the Minamoto. The Minamoto were the puppet masters, marrying their daughters to the powerless Emperors, and pulling the strings. The Taira clan frowned upon such pointless subtly. But between them they had turned the Emperors into expensive house pets. And then in 1180 the competition between the two families broke out into open warfare.

“So, Barzini will move against you first. He'll set up a meeting with someone that you absolutely trust, guaranteeing your safety. And at that meeting, you'll be assassinated.” (Don Corleone, The Godfather”)

The final break came on 21 March, 1180 when Kiyomori Taira had his 2 year old grandson, Antoku, declared Emperor. The godfather of his clan, Kiyomori was described as “arrogant, evil, ruthless" and consumed by his hatred for the Minamoto. But actually many of the lesser samurai families did not trust Kiyomori, either. Sensing an opportunity, Yorimasa Minamoto encouraged Prince Mochihito, who had just been disenfranchised, to call for an uprising to make himself emperor, which he did on 5 May. The Prince also made an appeal to that most Japanese of institutions, the warrior Buddhist monks.  But only those from the temple of Miidera answered his call. And the other samurai families also hesitated. Infuriated, Kiyomori issued a warrant for the rebellious Prince’s arrest and sent an army to take him into custody.

“You're taking this very personal. Tom, this is business and this man is taking it very, very personal.” (Sonny Corleone “The Godfather”)

While the Minamoto clan was gathering, Yorimasa and the Prince fell back on their stronghold around the old Imperial city of Kyoto. They took a stand at the Buddhist temple of Byodoin, on the banks of the river Ujii. To protect their retreat the Miridera monks began tearing apart the bridge over the Ujii as the Taira army advanced, firing flights of arrows to disrupt the work.

This was when a samurai named Tamjima Gochiin stepped forward to defend the bridge, using only his naginata. This was a long thin wooden pole, with a curved blade (usually sharpened bamboo) along one end. As the Taira army fired flights of arrows at Tamjima, he used his naginata to bat the arrows away. He went down in Japanese legend as “Tajima the arrow-cutter”. But still the other monks on the bridge held back.

 “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.” (Peter Clemenza. “The Godfather”)

Suddenly one of the monks ran forward and pushed up next to Tajima. He was Jomyo Meishu. According to the legend, “With his naginata he mows down five of the enemy, but with the sixth the naginata snaps asunder…flinging it away, he draws his (sword)…cutting down eight men; but as he brought down the ninth...the blade snapped at the hilt and fell with a splash into the water beneath. Then, seizing his (dagger), which was the only weapon he had left, he plied it as one in a death fury.”

“Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever.” (Michael Corleone “The Godfather”)

But the defense of the bridge was being outflanked by mounted Tiara warriors who drove their horses into the river and let them swim to the opposite shore. The Minamoto had few men watching the banks and it took only a handful of Tiara horsemen to undercut the bridge defense. The Minamoto were driven back into the temple. And that was when Yorimasa Minamoto, who had organized the entire rebellion, did something that would change Japanese life for the next 700 years.

“Look how they massacred my boy.” (Don Corleone “The Godfather”).

Faced with the defeat of his army, as the triumphant Tiara were slaughtering monks in the temple’s Phoenix Hall, Yorimasa knelt on a pillow and committed seppuku, literally opening his own belly with a left to right sweep of his sword. His servant then finished the job by immediately removing Yorimasa’s head, thus ending his agony. The servant then tied the head to a rock and threw it into the Ujii River. The Prince was quickly captured and put to death. And that should have put an end to the rebellion. But two things altered the balance.

The first was that Yoritomo Minamoto took over leadership of his defeated family, and secondly the winner, Kiyomori Taira,  took ill and died in the spring of 1181. The new leaders of the Taira family were far weaker. Sensing this, the other samurai families eventually sided with the Minamoto. The war would continue for five long and bloody years and end with the complete destruction of the Taira family line. With Minamoto dominance the government of Japan fell under the absolute control of the samurai. And their ultimate hero became Yorimasa, and his final act of defiance, held up as an example of noble behavior for generations of Japanese.

“Blood is a big expense.” (Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo. (The Godfather”)

- 30 -