Nicole Mones Quotes
Even though Japan and Germany were not formal allies at the time that Japan conquered Shanghai in 1937, still, Frenchtown was an area that Japan could take complete control of - and they did. And it was the locus of nightlife.
Mones, Nicole. "Jazz And The Holocaust Meet In 'Night In Shanghai'." Interview by Rachel Martin. Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR, 23 Mar. 2014.
This speech to over 100,000 people galvanized the Indian nationalists They had been asking the British to change the constitution to give India more independence. Churchill was opposed to any policy that would diminish the British Empire, but needed the Indians as men of India served in the British Army in every major theater of WWII. So instead of saying "No" Churchill held out the possibility but at a later time. He argued that it was inopportune to alter the Constitution in the midst of a world war.
This was very much a minority opinion at the time, and has much historical significance as he was the father of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, 1869-1940, whose appeasement of Germany led to Word War II. . See {585941}.
America, England, Germany and France Many Japanese leaders predicted war between the Great Powers while America and its European Allies did not see the danger as clearly. Shortly after 1936, Hitler began the Second World War. Japan was indeed prepared. Hiranuma became one of the Japanese extremists and after WWII was convicted of war crimes and given a life sentence.
She was referring to the aftermath of the Iraq War.
The Japanese Government was in the control of ardent militarists intent on expanding the Japanese empire. They invaded Manchuria and had designs on China. The League of Nations was very weak, in large part because the United States had not joined when the Senate refused to ratify the treaty. So peace or war In Asia depended on the fascist, military clique that ruled Japan.
The final decision regarding the attack on Pearl Harbor and war with America had to be made. The Emperor Hirohito, Prime Minister Tojo, the full cabinet and leading elder statesmen were invited. Hara attended as one of the latter class. America had instituted an embargo of critical raw material whose end was contingent of Japan withdrawing from the territory that they had invaded and stop their territorial aggression in Asia, an aggression which some Japanese leaders—notably the military—was absolutely necessary to provide for the growing Japanese population and its increasing standard of living. At the time, an embargo was a powerfully effective weapon, which left Japan only two choices: Withdrawal or War. In modern times nations have chosen to endure and evade embargoes rather than be forced into undesirable positions.
Although Emperor Hirohito had the status of a God, and his Prime Minister and Chief of the Military testified that they had never disobeyed the Emperor {587278}, there was a thorough attempt to whitewash the Emperor’s role—{587279}. Few Japanese, even years later would suggest that Hirohito might bear some personal responsibility. The Mayor was one of the few who made the statement of the obvious. He received 181 death threats and he was shot shortly thereafter by a right wing supporter of the Emperor’s.
Chamberlain’s policy was to appease Hitler and Germany to avoid war. Although he did not see Czechoslavkia as a critical British national interest and claimed he had secured peace {585941} , the reality was that he gave Germany room to start its aggression which would engulf all of Europe and much of the world. The British became the only bulwark against Hitler until the Russians stopped the Germans and America entered the war.
At the beginning of the Battle of Britain, it appeared that England would not be able to hold out against Germany. King was asked by Roosevelt to try and persuade British officials that if they sued for peace that they would not turn over the British fleet to the Germans but would convey it to Canada. Such an act would have produced serious retribution by the Germans.
In 1945 a message was sent to Joseph Stalin from the Japanese purportedly authorized by the Emperor asking the Russians to receive a peace envoy to discuss possible terms for a Japanese surrender. A prince of the imperial household was proposed as the emissary. The allies had already agreed and announced that unconditional surrender was the only alternative, but Stalin and the Russian Foreign Office thought that there might be some advantage gained to have the meeting. However there was one problem that the Japanese had never considered. When Stalin told Truman of the initiative, Truman agreed that no one should meet him.
The two were cousins. Wilhelm was a very dominant personality and his cousin quite weak. This quotation shows the tyrannical view of the German Kaiser. The letters were secret but after the execution of the Czar, the Russians released the letters to show the dominant and warlike history of Germany under the Kaiser who was furious that the Russians had made such personal and secret letters public. Russia was involved with the Russo-Japanese war. Both the Russian and German aristocracies had designs on dominating Asia for the memories of the Asian invasions of Europe were still alive.
In the 1920s and 1930s China was in chaos. Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists were officially the government but there was extensive corruption and local “leaders” who fought for control of territories and resources. Chinese were slaughtering each other daily not unlike Bosnia in the 1990s. The Japanese had moved into Manchuria using the pretext that they were saving China by bringing order and security. (In reality they were trying to control additional territory to populate with their rapidly expanding population.) The U.S. opposed the Japanese aggression but privately warned the Chinese Nationalists that they had better get control of the nation. The Nationalists never did. The Japanese expanded into much more of China beginning WWII in Asia. The Nationalists and the communists joined forces to fight the Japanese and after the war, the communists won the allegiance of most of the people. The Chinese government was finally unified, but under the communists.
This was the 14th part of the Japanese reply to a previously made American peace proposal. The Japanese policy was to unite all of Asia into a co-prosperity sphere controlled by Japan where Japan would militarily conquer those Asian countries which did not “voluntarily” want to join. The Japanese were in the process of conquering China and the United States and Britain had embargoed oil and other material to Japan trying to pressure them to withdraw their troops from China and cease Japanese conquest by force. Japan believed that it was their right to conquer and control Asia and it was beneficial to the region, and that the U. S. and Britain had no right to curtail the expansion that Japan required to assure raw materials and other necessities. At the very time that these negotiations were on going, the Japanese fleet was sailing for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack took place the very day this part of the Japanese reply was received.
This statement is perhaps the greatest and most eloquent description of the United States exceptionalism and its behavior in WWII. Such a statement could only come from a non-American.
Nicole Mones (born 1952) is an American novelist and food writer.