By Mathew Maavak
"Tell me what Zero hour is?" The voice from Tokyo replied softly: "Zero hour is December 8" - December 7 in the United States - "at Pearl Harbor."
That US Signal Corps intercept of Nov 29, 1941 never quite reached ground zero at Pearl Harbor along with a precise warning. Many knew what was coming. Imperial Japan's diplomatic code - Purple - was already cracked and decoding machines called Magic were already sent to London, Philippines and Singapore. The conspicuous exception was Honolulu, where Tokyo, in fact, maintained a consulate.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt badly wanted to take his nation to war. According to the historian William Manchester, who served in the Pacific theatre, FDR wanted to spare the next generation of Americans of a "hopeless confrontation with a hostile, totalitarian world."
The totalitarian model, managed by Teutonic managers, was working well in Europe. Its metaphor was Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) and German workers were enjoying the fruits of Nazi industry. Fascists, from Britain to Hungary, and even in the United States, had the same vision, and one can find echoes of them in the Nation Europa, a Nazi publication many would like to forget. Even before the Nazis steamrolled over Europe, they were ready to give up their undesirables. Eventually they did, up the chimney, through the konzentrationslagers and Zyklon-Bs; the cumulative industrial genius of the Krupps, IG Farbens and Thyssens.
On the other side of the Atlantic, lay another model, the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It too was working, lumbering away for a dialectical future and a chaotic infosphere - the hallmarks of innovation and democracy.
Both the Fuhrer and President Rosenfeld were elected and both faced the same problem - major financiers and industrialists, who did not discriminate when it came to money. In fact, the Second World War would not have occurred if the Allied Control Commission, established by the Treaty of Versailles, had done its job of dismantling the German military-industrial complex. But that would have disrupted the profit flows of European fat cats, and US "isolationists" whom they were propping.
Hitler played his cards carefully. Roosevelt waited to bait. It is perhaps easier to take your nation to another "war to end all wars" than mess around with people who can elevate the science of murder into an industrial art. Six million deaths in concentration camps in six years? Gees, when you read too much of Chomsky and references to the (most) "genocidal nation," you might be tempted to think that GI Joe was the Buchenwald commander and the root cause of our global problems lies in the "usual two." Fact is, the usual two produces the finest - and most chaotic - infosphere.
If that was one of FDR's offshoot legacies, so be it.
For a while, though, the Fuhrer refused to take the bait, despite provocations like shoot-on-sight convoys, lend-lease, and the supply of munitions during the Battle of Britain.
Roosevelt persisted, and found another way to take the United States to war. Imperial Japan had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on Sept 27, 1940, and the road to Berlin could now be reached via Tokyo.
Provocations and counter-provocations followed in a classic Game Theory scenario. Each Japanese incursion further south was met with brinkmanship and sanctions from Washington. It is an axiom that military might and incursions are a sure hedge against a nasty surprise from the other side. For the Japanese, things were containable until the Dutch, who, still held Djakarta despite losing their own land to the Nazis, imposed oil sanctions.
As William Manchester writes:
Virtually every drum of gas and oil fueling the (Japanese) army's tanks and planes had to be imported. Worse, the Japanese navy, which, until now had counseled patience, but which consumed four hundred tons of oil an hour, joined the army in calling for war. Without Dutch petroleum the country could hold out for a few months, no more.
You would think the Dutch would be crazy to provoke Japan, which had already occupied French Indochina after signing a treaty with the Vichy government. They were way too near for comfort.
But it looked like Japan was the one troubled most. Peace overtures, pretty much reasonable, by Prime Minister Prince Konoe were rebuffed. He eventually stepped down in favor of General Hideki Tojo, a thug who had operated independently of Tokyo when he was in charge of Manchuria's Kwangtung Army.
This did not deter Japanese diplomats from diffusing an impending war up till the last minute. They were soundly ignored because the prize lay in Berlin. Tokyo was the route.
This was the power of energy geopolitics and it exploded into the Day of Infamy. On Dec 7 1941, before the sun rose, its favored sons scrambled into Nakajima, Aichi, and Mitsubishi planes from the Akagi's flight deck. Their passage immortalized Kahuku Point, Kolekole Pass, Schofield’s barracks, Hickham airfield...and the Arizona.
While the United States would be shocked out of isolation. Winston Churchill, who had dispatched the Prince of Wales and Repulse to their doom in the waters off Malaya, not to mention the people inland, was delighted.
It was a jolly good show at the expense of millions of lives. In war-time photos, Old Pig-eyes could be seen peering at distant battles, a cigar sticking out approvingly at the sight of death.
The Fuhrer did take the bait.
Was it worth it? Well, it bought us time, till today. Would you and I be reflecting on this, possibly in different ways, if not for Roosevelt's decision? I just scanned a post-war RAF Airman's Service and Paybook before writing this piece. It belongs my father, meaning he was once a British subject.
Churchill fought hard to keep that colonial status quo. On the hierarchy of priorities, so much was spent by one man on such a monumentally selfish cause when he could have broken the inter-war cozy relationship between British and German industries. Despite the Nuremberg trials, the Krupps, Thyssens and Farbens escaped relatively unscathed. Hitler was dead; so was Roosevelt but I wonder what he would have done if he had lived another two years.
Would he have smashed the European cartel? While Royal Nazi sympathizers were left virtually unmolested by Churchill, FDR was already doing something on home soil.
On Oct 20, 1942, the US government seized the Union Banking Corp under Trading With the Enemy Act. The director was Prescott Bush, grandfather of the current president.
Now, the grandson has pinned his troops down in a region that supplies over half of the world's energy needs. Potential for conflict? Well, there is another Eastern nation hungry for oil, and it is already pulling Southeast Asia into its zone of hegemony...
What I am worried about is the emergence of another Tripartite Pact, from the same power zones, and the lack of a new FDR to deal with it. I don't think that day is far off, having observed some subtle maneuvers at close quarters. Didn't some capitals have forebodings, or even foreknowledge of the new Pearl Harbor - 9/11?
But today is Dec 7, and before signing off, I leave you with two impressions of Pearl Harbor.
One is of tranquility. The native Hawaiians had christened it Wai Momi, the Water of Pearl during a time when innocence wasn't raped enough to be a monster of mass slaughter. A time of clearer waters and conscience, when pearls were sought for their beauty in their natural environs. There are echoes of Eden in that name, during a time and phase that now, only linger in the mists of memory.
The other was the experience of Lt Wilmer E. Gallaher, a survivor of Pearl Harbor, when his bomber nosedived for the final charge on the Akagi during the Battle of Midway. As it exploded, he exulted:
"Arizona, I remember you!"
Kuala Lumpur, 7am, Dec 7 2005
Copyright@ Mathew Maavak 2005
Note: Some of the quoted historical references are taken from William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness
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