The Chosun has a really surprising editorial condemning efforts by left wing Korean politicians who are trying to get the US to apologize for the Taft-Katsura Agreement signed in 1905:
In the secret accord, signed in Tokyo in 1905, the U.S. and Japan acknowledged the latter’s control of the Korean Peninsula and the former’s control of the Philippines. Korea was at the time already in Japanese hands as a result of Japanese victories in wars with both Russia and China. Calling for the U.S. to be held to account for the agreement is tantamount to asserting that it should have intervened on the Korean Peninsula even if that meant risking a war with Japan.
(…)
To blast the U.S. for failing to intervene in one instance and for intervening in another, for not seeing one attack on our sovereignty (by Japan) but seeing another (by North Korea) is tantamount to damning the U.S. if it does and damning it if it doesn’t. While anti-American acts may seem profitable gimmicks for our politicians and America-bashing is rewarded with popular applause, we should also think how such careless accusations make us look in the eyes of the international community.
It is hard to believe that this common sense dare I say, “pro-American” article, came out only a few days after the same paper published this piece of anti-American crap. Both articles are a great example of the love/hate relationship Korea has with the US. The left wing politicians really need to get over obscure history references that have little to do with Korea today. Stop focusing on the past and have a vision for the future. Actually the left wingers do have a vision for the future; unfortunately it involves tearing down the MacArthur statue in Inchon and replacing it with Kim Jong Il’s likeness. When that happens I don’t think anybody will care about the Taft-Katsura Agreement then.
The Japan Times is reporting that the Korean fishermen who were caught fishing in Japanese waters and were boarded by the Japanese Coast Guard, are accusing the Japanese Coast Guard of using excessive force.
Tokyo on Friday dismissed accusations that Japan Coast Guardsmen used excessive force when they boarded a South Korean boat suspected of poaching and roughed up one of its crew members.
“I think they acted correctly,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said when asked if the coast guardsmen had acted unreasonably.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that a member of the fishing boat crew was hospitalized with injuries after he was beaten by Japanese authorities during the confrontation Wednesday.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said the coast guardsmen smashed the glass window on the door to the boat’s wheelhouse after the crew refused to unlock it and shut off the engine.
The order to cut the engine was a “necessary and minimum measure,” Hosoda said. “When the crew resisted, they got into a scuffle.”
South Korean patrol boats were summoned from off the southern city of Ulsan early Wednesday when Japanese patrol boats entered South Korean waters in pursuit of the fishing boat they said had been operating 8 km inside Japanese territorial waters.
The 77-ton eel boat Singpung-ho had refused JCG orders to stop and sailed off with two Japan Coast Guardsmen still on board. Japanese authorities contacted the South Korean Coast Guard, which helped stop the boat.
The similarities between this case and the 2002 subway incident continue. Make accusations of abuse and have pictures taken of you in the hospital to appeal to Korean nationalism to make it look like the big bad foreigners in this case the Japanese are beating down the Koreans again. A proven formula for getting out of trouble.
I would think that breaking the window of the boat to get the Captain to stop the boat would be reasonable since the boat was escaping with the Japanese Coast Guardsmen still on board. Plus when they did get in the cabin I’m sure the Captain wasn’t to helpful and resisted stopping the boat thus leading to the injuries he received. If he would of stopped the boat like he was directed he could of avoided any alledged injuries. He couldn’t do that though because then he would of been caught in Japanese waters.
So it was better to run with the coast guardsmen on board and get back into Korean waters where he knew nothing would happen to him and he could appeal to Korean nationalism against the Japanese, go to the hospital, claim abuse, and I bet he yelled “Dokto is Korea’s” at some point too for added emphasis of his innocence. I hope they make him pay the illegal fishing fine but that is about as likely as someone being arrested in the 2002 subway abduction.
Plunge has put together a great series of posts about the use of atomic weapons against Japan by the US during World War II. Here is a summary of the article:
Dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki ended the war with Japan and saved millions of lives, both Allied and Japanese. The bombing of these two cities forced a surrender that was nearly unfathomable to the military leaders in Japan at the time. If it wasn’t for the atomic bomb, the US likely would have been forced into a long, deadly struggle to end the war with Japan, a struggle that might have been far too long and difficult for the American public to have accepted. While Japan would still have most likely surrendered, in my opinion, it would have been a negotiated surrender that would have meant more war in the future.
Read the entire series that validates the above summary.
My thoughts have always been that World War II was a conflict that was fought with the “Total War” doctrine where the bombing of cities was justifiable to break national will power to gain “Total Victory”. After World War I no total victory was ever achieved which led to World War II. If the Japanese had not surrendered and just negotiated an end to the war who is to say they wouldn’t just rearm and 15 years later start fighting again which would take more lives?
I visited the Atomic Bomb Memorial in Hiroshima 4 years ago and it makes the US look really barbaric for nuking Hiroshima. They parade all the school children into there to indoctrinate them about why the US was wrong for nuking Japan. Seeing the pictures of all the melted bodies on display the kids looked at me like I was some kind of devil. No mention is made at the memorial about the US rational for using nuclear weapons or the mention that Japan started the war to begin with.
After the battles to take Iwo Jima and Okinawa it was becoming very clear that any battle to take over the Japanese home island would cost many American lives. The nuclear bombing was a way to get Japan to surrender without having to endure heavy US casualties. When I was in college I actually debated this point with a Japanese classmate who countered that the US should of nuked a nearby coastline to display the might of the atomic weapon. The display of the power of the atomic weapon would have surely caused the militarists to surrender. That is probably what the Japanese educational system taught him as kid as he toured the A-bomb Memorial. I countered his claim by simply stating that nuking Hiroshima didn’t get the Japanese to surrender. It took two nukes to get Japan to surrender. They didn’t get the message after one nuclear bombing what would have a display of the power of a nuclear bomb have done? Plus the US only had two operational nuclear bombs at the time. They couldn’t afford to expend one on a show of force. I always felt that if the US was so barbaric and just looking to kill people the US could of just as easily nuked Tokyo or Kyoto. Instead the US chose smaller, militarily significant cities to hit. So in short yes it was right to use nuclear weapons in that conflict.
However, this topic gets me thinking to why didn’t the US just nuke Pyongyang and Beijing during the Korean War to break the North Korean and Chinese will to fight. The Korean War wasn’t fought by the “Total War” doctrine which General MacArthur was used to playing by during World War II. The Cold War and the creation of nuclear weapons had made the “Total War” doctrine obsolete because the amount of destruction that would result on both sides would make any war to costly to wage.
General MacArthur couldn’t learn to play by the new “Limited War” Doctrine and was ultimately fired by Harry Truman because of it. The use of nuclear weapons during the Korean War had the possibility of bringing the Russians into the war which the US did not want to have happen. A combined fight against the Chinese and Russians in the mountains of Korea was the wrong war at the wrong time for the US. Preventing World War III was determined to be more important than achieving Total Victory.
History has shown that Truman was right and the “Limited War” doctrine did prevent World War III but the lack of Total Victory during the Korean War continues to cause problems here on the peninsula to this day and probably for many years to come.
