＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
<Addition on 3/19/2022> Ukrainian President Zelensky’s call for support by using the “attack on Pearl Harbor” as an example in the U.S. Congress on 3/16 is completely misguided and a misrecognition of history.
President Zelensky asked members of the U.S. Congress to “remember that the United States was attacked from the air and innocent civilians were killed,” citing the World War II attacks on Pearl Harbor and the simultaneous terrorist attacks in which the United States was attacked.
Some protested on the Internet, saying, “As a Japanese, I am displeased and very disappointed that the attack on Pearl Harbor was mentioned alongside 9/11,” “I doubt the insight of Japanese politicians to allow him to address the Japanese Congress,” and “The attack on Pearl Harbor did not target civilians, so it is inappropriate to talk about it as being similar to 9/11. It is natural that some people protested on the Internet.
In addition to the substantive ultimatum “Hull Note,” the U.S. knew through code breaking that there would be an “attack on Pearl Harbor,” and it was an attack on a military base, not a civilian target.
The U.S. claim that they were “cheated by Japan” was “propaganda” (“fake” as it is often called today) to inflame anti-Japanese sentiment among Americans.
I believe that the Japanese government should clearly protest against President Zelensky’s erroneous historical perceptions before his March 23 speech to the Diet in Japan.
I recently came across a book by American soldier and politician Hamilton Fish (1888-1991) titled “Roosevelt’s Responsibility for Starting the War: Testimony of the Man the President Fears Most.”
I have always had doubts about the Pacific War, which is taught in school history classes as “a war of aggression caused by militaristic Japan and its military’s out-of-control actions. Japan still bears the stigma of being an “aggressor” and a “defeated country,” and is still being demanded by China and Korea to apologize and compensate for the war. The Japanese people themselves hold a “self-deprecating view of history（「自虐史観」）,” and despise their own country and its people at every opportunity.
This book is an “eye-opening” and “true historical testimony”. Moreover, it is highly credible because it is “testimony from an American’s own people, so to speak,” who was a Republican Congressman at the same time as President Roosevelt (a Democrat). He, like most Americans, was disillusioned by the bitter experience of World War I, in which many young Americans lost their lives on the battlefields of Europe. He came to the view (“Monroeism”) that we should not be involved in a European war like World War II.
However, President Roosevelt had received a request to enter the war from British Prime Minister Churchill, who was fighting Germany, and was not pleased with Japan’s monopoly of interests in China (his maternal family had made a fortune through trade, including opium, with China), and wanted to strike Japan, He wanted to beat Japan , and he had ambitions to split world hegemony with Stalin, so he planned to start a war between Japan and the United States.
As a result, while Japan was still trying to continue peace negotiations, the “Hull Note,” an “ultimatum” containing unreasonable demands on Japan, was issued. This ultimatum was intended to provoke Japan into starting a war. The “Hull Note” was like a “declaration of war,” but President Roosevelt kept this “ultimatum” from Congress.
President Roosevelt took advantage of Japan’s delay in handing over the “Notice of Declaration of War” due to the negligence of the clerical staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and used it to propagandize against Japan and to raise the war spirits of the American people by claiming that” the attack on Pearl Harbor was a trick by Japan before the declaration of war”. However, the U.S. had already deciphered the secret telegrams of the “attack on Pearl Harbor” and the coded telegrams of the “notice of declaration of war,” so President Roosevelt left his fellow servicemen at Pearl Harbor to die.
At the beginning of the war, Senator Fish was not informed of the “Hull Note” and even made a speech in favor of the President’s war speech. However, he later learned of the existence of the “Hull Note” and was ashamed of his pro-war speech. I believe this is what led him to write this book.