Fall Equinox 2009 and 1941 Thoughts
September 21, 2009
by William P. Meyers

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An equinox is not as dramatic of an event as as a solstice. The earth's axis of rotation defines a plane that is perpendicular to the sun, so day and night are equal in length. The day before is not much different than the day after the equinox. In the Southern Hemisphere spring is coming; in the Northern, fall begins and winter approaches. It has happened a few billion times before. It should hold no surprises.

In the fall of 1941 desperate men in Japan were pleading for peace and preparing for war. Some radicals in the Japanese Army wanted to fight the European races, as represented by Great Britain, the United States, Russia and the Netherlands, so badly they ignored the realities of the world. But most of the Japanese Navy command, and even much of the Army, knew that the chances of winning a war with the United States were quite slim. Yet war seemed to be coming towards them. The U.S. wanted to control China through its puppet government under Chiang Kai-shek. The U.S. had made the Philippines a colony; the British continued to enslave India, Burma, Malaysia, and Hong Kong; the Netherlands was fighting against an independence movement in the what is now Indonesia.

The Japanese made peace offer after peace offer. Whenever they agreed to a U.S. condition for peace, the U.S. would make new conditions. U.S. military strategists wanted the peace talks to continue until the U.S. military machine was fully ready to crush Japan. It was simply a matter of time because the U.S. had about ten times the industrial capacity of Japan. In addition, the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands cut off Japan's supply of oil. If the war was delayed until mid-1942, the Japanese would be sitting ducks. The Roosevelt administration (and remember FDR was already planning to make himself President-for-life by breaking the 3rd term tradition) was eager to follow in the footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt, one of the architects of the butchering of 2 million people in the Philippines. President Franklin Roosevelt was assembling a mighty war fleet at Pearl Harbor on Oahu. Each week it sailed out to confront any Japanese fleet that might be to the southeast. At the beginning of December a massive U.S. fleet also set sail for the Philippines, the probable launching point for an attack on the Chinese mainland, Taiwan (then a Japanese colony) or Japan itself.

Against the advice of his military, using Secretary of State Cordell Hull, at the beginning of December Roosevelt informed the Japanese that there was no chance of peace. The only thing left was the timing of the beginning of hostilities.

Desperate men in Japan had devised a plan to defend themselves, and their fellow Asians, from the Euro-American predators. They would attempt to destroy the U.S. aggressor's invasion armada in a pre-emptive strike. They trained their carrier-based fighter-bombers in new techniques. They sent six aircraft carriers over a dangerous northern sea route that they hoped would avoid detection by the U.S. fleet in Hawaii. Meanwhile, the U.S. military told its top commanders in Asia, General MacArthur in the Philippines and General Short in Hawaii, to be prepared for hostilities. The U.S. assumed the Japanese would attack the Philippines first, because their main early war aim would be access to oil fields south of the Philippines. MacArthur's instructions said, "The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act. This policy should not, repeat not, be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize your defense." [John Toland, The Rising Sun, The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, volume 1, page 220.]

Well, Japan did commit the first overt act. They sank much of the U.S. fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor. They liberated the Philippines from its colonial yoke, and proceeded to liberate Indonesia as well. In the end, it is true, the pre-war Japanese analysis came to pass. With a larger population and overwhelming industrial capacity, the U.S. quickly built fleets far larger than the one sunk at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese could not build ships fast enough to replace those sunk by the unrestricted submarine warfare that America used. The U.S. War Plan Orange, the decades long-planned invasion of Japan that would also effectively make China and Korea U.S. colonies, was working out well.

And then came the biggest surprise of all. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. In a flash of energy the United States surpassed Great Britain as the most powerful, and most evil, nation on earth.

And thus our modern era began. The understanding of nature by the great scientists of the world was used to create hell on earth by the Democratic Party of the United States, as led by President Harry Truman.

I do not know what will happen this fall that is not just the continuance of a known trend. We know Barack Obama will continue the war against Afghanistan. Probably the economy of the world, and of the United States, will continue to recover from the debacle of 2008. The environment, overall, will continue to deteriorate as human consumption rises. But I cannot assure you that some secret plans are not leading us towards a new disaster. I can only hope that people's deepening understanding of Nature will lead to a greater respect for nature and for our fellow human beings than many people have displayed in the past.