russia to send warships to iraq, page-44

So what is it that Disney, the Pentagon and crew are trying to hide behind the love story and multi-million-dollar special effects?

First of all, for the US government, big business and the military, the Second World War wasn't a "a war against fascism". It was a war among the imperialist powers to re-divide the world's riches.

In the Pacific, that meant a war with Japan for control of the natural resources, labour and markets of Asia.

Blood for oil

It must be remembered that Japan wasn't the only brutal colonial power in Asia. Britain ruled India and Hong Kong with an iron fist. France dominated Southeast Asia.

The United States had taken possession of the Philippines, Guam and other Pacific islands during the Spanish-American War. From 1900 onward, Washington bloodily suppressed continual uprisings by the Filipino people. And then there was Hawaii itself, the site of Pearl Harbour — robbed from its Indigenous inhabitants by US gunboat diplomacy.

The war between Japan and the United States had its roots in the imperialist re-division of the world that took place after the First World War ended. At that time Washington became the senior partner in the US-
British-Japanese alliance that dominated China.

In the book A Political History of Japanese Capitalism, Jon Halliday writes about the agreement signed at a 1921 Washington conference on China: "The imperialist powers who gathered at Washington all agreed on one thing: that they should continue to plunder China and exploit the Chinese people."

But Japan's ruling class and military caste chaffed in the role of "junior partner" assigned to them by the Western imperialists — especially after the Great Depression took hold. Following the capitalist law of "expand or die", Japan came into open conflict with US-British domination of the region and of China in particular.

As Japanese exports grew to the detriment of the Western powers, and as the Japanese army clashed with the US-backed Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-
shek in China, Washington hit back with tariffs and racist laws banning Asian immigration and property ownership.

"The United States began seriously to squeeze Japan in July 1940 when it introduced a licensing system for certain US exports to that country. The two crucial items, crude oil and scrap iron, were added to the list after Japan occupied Northern Indochina in September 1940", writes Halliday.

A full embargo followed on July 26, 1941. "The American embargo, particularly on oil, severely limited Japan's ability to manoeuvre", Halliday explained. "Much of Japanese diplomacy prior to December 1941 was
taken up with trying to secure supplies of oil... Prior to Pearl Harbour, Japan had only about 18 months' supply.

"In November 1941, when the talks with Washington were already well advanced, Japan proposed universal non-discrimination in commercial relations in the Pacific area, including China, if this principle were adopted throughout the world. To the United States... this was
'unthinkable'. Japan was, on the whole, eager to reach a settlement and offered considerable concessions to this end".

Halliday concludes that "America could certainly have reached a temporary settlement within the framework of an imperialist carve-up which gave Japan slightly more than it had been granted in Washington in 1921-22.

It was America which turned down the Japanese proposal for a summit meeting between Premier Konoe and Roosevelt in autumn 1941. And it was US Secretary of Sate Cordell Hull's outright rejection of Japan's proposals of November 7, 1941, which brought negotiations to a halt".

"We were likely to be attacked"

US imperialism, Copeland writes in Expanding Empire manoeuvred Japan into "firing the first shot" so that Washington would appear to be waging a defensive war. This was vital, since anti-war sentiment remained strong at home.

Copeland refers to a revealing document first published in the 1947 book President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War by historian Charles A Beard.

It's a excerpt from the diary of Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Henry L Stimson, dated November 25, 1941 — - about two weeks before the Pearl Harbour attack.

"Then at 12 o'clock we went to the White House, where we were until nearly half past one", Stimson wrote. "At the meeting were Hull, Knox, Marshall,
Stark and myself. There the President... brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what should we do.

"The question was how much we should manoeuvre them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."

So the political and military leaders in Washington, especially after they moved to choke off Japan's lifeline of oil, knew the attack was coming. It was, after all, the pretext they were hoping for to extend US military and economic control in Asia.

But no warning was given to the sailors at Pearl Harbour.