Book: T. Roosevelt Quietly OKd Japan's Expansion

OPEN GOVERNMENT -- "Sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor," writes historian James Bradley in yesterday's New York Times. "In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?

Bradley's new book, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, recounts how a secret diplomatic signal sent by Teddy Roosevelt more than a century ago set the stage for Japan's imperial expansion into mainland Asia—and for the tragedies that followed.

In a secret presidential cable to Tokyo, in July 1905, Roosevelt approved the Japanese annexation of Korea and agreed to an “understanding or alliance” among Japan, the United States and Britain “as if the United States were under treaty obligations.” The “as if” was key: Congress was much less interested in North Asia than Roosevelt was, so he came to his agreement with Japan in secret, an unconstitutional act.

To signal his commitment to Tokyo, Roosevelt cut off relations with Korea, turned the American legation in Seoul over to the Japanese military and deleted the word “Korea” from the State Department’s Record of Foreign Relations and placed it under the heading of “Japan.” Roosevelt had assumed that the Japanese would stop at Korea and leave the rest of North Asia to the Americans and the British.

But such a wish clashed with his notion that the Japanese should base their foreign policy on the American model of expansion across North America and, with the taking of Hawaii and the Philippines, into the Pacific. It did not take long for the Japanese to tire of the territorial restrictions placed upon them by their Anglo-American partners.

Comments

[virus classification]

The books are the smartest way of fun, you can learn & enjoy at the same time!!!!!!!

[Garthman]

This guy does not have a clue what he is talking about. I hope no one is so lacking in history to believe this idiot.