U. S. NAVY

The Japanese Aggression in the Pacific had curtailed the navy’s supply of hemp for the large ropes that tethered ships. Nylon was not yet used for rope, and the navy provided seeds to Midwest farmers and would purchase their hemp crop. The marijuana was used as a recreational drug by relatively few people then even though there were hundreds of thousands of acres of marijuana growing throughout the Midwest. See {599550} for a similar effort at the time by, the Department of Agriculture.

In 1930, Japan, Britain, and the United States had signed an agreement that submarines would not sink merchant vessels without having first placed passengers and crew in a place of safety. However, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and bombed civilians as well as military and had a pattern of bombing and shelling civilians in China, the U. S. took the position that Japan had abrogated all treaties and therefore abrogated the 1930 treaty. It was more of a symbolic gesture as at the time the American forces were in no shape to attack Japanese merchant shipping though later in the war, it became material. By that time, the Japanese had murdered American prisoners of war on the Bataan Death March and elsewhere and had slaughtered civilians in the Philippines and all the other territories that they invaded. The niceties of the 1930 treaty was one of the first casualties of Japanese aggression.

What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that it shows the role that vengeance played in the support of the war effort. Revenge is a “baser” motive than making the world safe for democracy or preserving freedom or stopping dictators. Yet the political and military leadership did not shy away from revenge as a war aim. Contrast this with later wars. Arguably the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor created a different dimension than existed in the Korean or Vietnam wars. Yet in the War on Terror, the attack of 9-11, created a situation like Pearl Harbor did. Yet President Bush and other political and military leaders had a definite policy of never acknowledging that revenge was a factor, despite the fact that many Americans openly saw this as a major war aim.

This was an official Navy Air Fighiting Tactic named for the flier who invented it, John S. Thach. In WWII the Japanese Zero fighter plane was much superior to the Navy Wildcat, in speed, maneuvrability, and other factors. The Thatch Weave was created to offset that Japanese advantage. It was so effective that despite the superiority ot the Zeros, the ratio of Zero losses to Wildcat losses in arial combat was an incredible 9 to 1. It enabled the U. S. to handle the Japanese fighters until there was a new generation of American fighters came on line.

What is particularly interesting about this quotation is that it shows the role that vengeance played in the support of the war effort. Revenge is a “baser” motive than making the world safe for democracy or preserving freedom or stopping dictators. Yet the political and military leadership did not shy away from revenge as a war aim. Contrast this with later wars. Arguably the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor created a different dimension than existed in the Korean or Vietnam wars. Yet in the War on Terror, the attack of 9-11, created a situation like Pearl Harbor did. Yet President Bush and other political and military leaders had a definite policy of never acknowledging that revenge was a factor, despite the fact that many Americans openly saw this as a major war aim.

The Japanese Aggression in the Pacific had curtailed the navy’s supply of hemp for the large ropes that tethered ships. Nylon was not yet used for rope, and the navy provided seeds to Midwest farmers and would purchase their hemp crop. The marijuana was used as a recreational drug by relatively few people then even though there were hundreds of thousands of acres of marijuana growing throughout the Midwest. See {599550} for a similar effort at the time by, the Department of Agriculture.

In 1930, Japan, Britain, and the United States had signed an agreement that submarines would not sink merchant vessels without having first placed passengers and crew in a place of safety. However, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and bombed civilians as well as military and had a pattern of bombing and shelling civilians in China, the U. S. took the position that Japan had abrogated all treaties and therefore abrogated the 1930 treaty. It was more of a symbolic gesture as at the time the American forces were in no shape to attack Japanese merchant shipping though later in the war, it became material. By that time, the Japanese had murdered American prisoners of war on the Bataan Death March and elsewhere and had slaughtered civilians in the Philippines and all the other territories that they invaded. The niceties of the 1930 treaty was one of the first casualties of Japanese aggression.

This was an official Navy Air Fighiting Tactic named for the flier who invented it, John S. Thach. In WWII the Japanese Zero fighter plane was much superior to the Navy Wildcat, in speed, maneuvrability, and other factors. The Thatch Weave was created to offset that Japanese advantage. It was so effective that despite the superiority ot the Zeros, the ratio of Zero losses to Wildcat losses in arial combat was an incredible 9 to 1. It enabled the U. S. to handle the Japanese fighters until there was a new generation of American fighters came on line.