Yep, America’s got ‘em too…Memories of Pearl Harbor and homegrown historical absolutism

As most Americans and a few Japanese (or should that be reversed?) know, yesterday was the 68th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.   Pearl Harbor once seemed to be one of those few events in history that seemed impervious to my rule about there being no absolutes in history.  The Japanese bombed us so we went to war.  But historians have a way of screwing with even the most sacrosanct of national memories and it should come as no surprise that in the past six decades a few works have sought to, if not challenge then, shall we say, complicate the neat Capra-esque narratives of the Pacific War.

Writing in the New York Times yesterday, author and historian James Bradley, (Flags of Our Fathers and The Imperial Cruise) takes the long view when looking at the origins of conflict in the Pacific, blaming Teddy (not Franklin) Roosevelt for not doing enough to discourage Japanese imperialist ambitions in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War.*

This is territory Mr. Bradley has covered before in The Imperial Cruise, but needless to say all of this TR-bashing and attempts at historical myth-busting  is sitting poorly with those who take a more orthodox view of American history.  Writing in Commentary, executive editor Jonathan Tobin takes Bradley to task, labeling him a “blame America first” revisionist and linking Mr. Bradley, Pearl Harbor, and — because it is Commentary after all — the attacks on 9-11.

Frankly, I agree that blaming TR for Japanese imperialism is a stretch.  If we’re going after US presidents in this regard, TR’s fellow Nobel Laureate Woodrow Wilson should probably get a few whacks as well.  But the origins of Japan’s quest for empire run far deeper than the actions of any single intermediary or American interloper.  Faced with an array of imperialist powers in the late-19th and early-20th centuries and an exquisite worst-case-scenario presented by the Qing Empire on the Asian mainland, Japan took the road of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and embarked on a half-century mission to develop its own colonial empire.   What Asia and the world was unprepared for perhaps was the aggressiveness with which Japan pursued this mission.  Pick your reason why: Japan’s proximity to China, Korea and the rest of Asia; the desire to ‘catch up’ to the other imperial powers like Britain and the United States; a firm belief in a Darwinian world order — not the most ridiculous way for a non-European nation to view the world in the early 20th century by the way — whereby Japan needed to show its strength lest other powers exploit its weakness; and an ideology toward imperial acquisition best summed up as “no zealot like the convert.”

These are all good reasons to let TR off the hook (or at least not to hang him up too high for too long) but that’s not really the route Mr. Tobin chooses to take:

“The idea that our 26th president was in any way responsible for the creation of a Japanese state that viewed the subjugation of the Eastern Hemisphere as a divinely inspired mission for whom any atrocity or deceit was permissible [my emphasis] is utterly devoid of historical truth.”

And now we’re back to Capra and the legacy of cultural — if not racial — essentialism which has always colored discussion of the Pacific War.   This is not to mitigate Japanese aggression in the attack on Pearl Harbor or in any way attempt to justify the barbarity of the Imperial Army in China and other parts of East Asia, but like the attacks of 9-11 to which Mr. Tobin and his writers are so often refer, atrocities and aggression do not happen in a historical vacuum, and learning about the context, origins, and motivations behind aggression — if not especially in the  case of unprovoked aggression — is an important part of understanding an event and its place in history.

An apology to preachers everywhere, but I sometimes wonder if a historian’s job is to simplify that which seems complex while  complicating that which might on the surface appear quite simple.  Part of historical research is to unpack complicated events and study the constituent parts, even when those parts or that process muddies the waters of previously cherished historic narratives.  I may not agree with all of Mr. Bradley’s conclusions, but he has a right to express them without people denigrating his patriotism.

In any case, it’s tough to speak of history in absolute terms, but it’s comforting to know that for all I howl about Chinese absolutists, there are more than a few hanging around the country of my birth.

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*For which TR won a Nobel Prize.  The treaty was signed — by the by — in Portsmouth, NH.  Hey-O! Representing the 6-0-3! Every hick in the house holla at me! Okay…that’s out of my system.

From the archives

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