Quote:
Originally Posted by LookingForAChange
I've been listening to pure and unbiased views from people such as Khalid Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan. All I'm saying is the U.S./West has a long history of trying to elevate their own importance, demonize others, and paint themselves as saints. So forgive me if I take a lot what I read from Americans with a grain of salt.
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Your readings from Khalid Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan are not "pure and unbiased", not by a long shot. Neither man is a historian, or even close to one. Both have specific political and religious aims, which they aggressively pursue. NO ONE has a "pure and unbiased" view, and your characterization of two men whose espoused views are exactly the opposite of that shows your own extreme bias.
Talk about demonizing others and painting themselves as saints, LOL!
IF you are really interested in understanding WWII, of which at this point I am skeptical, try reading A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II by Gerhard L. Weinberg
It is dry dry dry but EXTREMELY well researched and supported. It is also very looooong. If you actually read it, it'll be awhile before you're back here with questions.
For the Pacific Theater, we usually lump that in with the WWII, but in truth that was an ongoing conflict between Japan and most of the rest of Asia, but specifically China, which started well before the war in Europe. It is called the
Second Sino-Japanese War - the first having occurred in 1894.
Officially the dates for the 2nd Sino-Japanese war are 1937-1945. But to my way of thinking it REALLY started in 1931 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. That "officially" ended in 1932, but the Japanese did not leave the area and conflict was ongoing in the form of rebellions and guerrilla activity against the puppet government they set up there. Basically the Japanese had been fighting a war in China for 10 years before they bombed Pearl Harbor.
I don't know what they were thinking, to go and start a war on two fronts - except I think by this time the generals and their military junta that were in charge had started drinking their own Koolaid, and had begun to believe, at some level, that they really WERE the kind of supermen who could pull this off.
When the Japanese invaded China (again) in 1937, the Russians ALSO invaded. I don't know if that was somehow coordinated or not, but it did leave China - who was not at all in any kind of shape for a war on one front, let alone two, being still in turmoil from their own civil war - fighting a war on two fronts.
I don't know of one book that completely covers the political aspects, roots, and consequences of this conflict - maybe reading histories of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam specific to the time frame starting about 1850 might be your best bet. You basically had two very insular societies - Japan, who only agreed to trade with the West at cannon-point, and which was based on and still strongly influenced by the feudal Samurai culture - and China, long under the influence of various forms of Confucianism, with a bureaucracy grown stratified and rigid over the centuries and a culture that, for all its richness, strikes me as stultified and restricted.
Both cultures viewed themselves as the center of the world, and had done for centuries. Both had been in conflict for hundreds of years, with various incursions by one against the other, and against their neighbors. If you really want to understand the roots of conflict in the region that lead to Japan's involvement in WWII, you have a LOT of reading to do.
Some books that will give you a detailed look at some specific parts of the Second Sino-Japanese war include
- Rays of the Rising Sun, Volume 1: Japan's Asian Allies 1931-45, China and Manchukuo by Philip Jowett
- The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
- The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 by John Willard Toland
- The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-38: Complicating the Picture edited by Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi
- Historiographical Essay: The China-Japan War, 1931-1945
Author(s): David M. GordonSource: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 137-182
- Flags of Our Fathers by James D. Bradley
I wonder if you are actually interested in understanding the roots of WWII so much as you are in having your preconceived notions confirmed. I wonder if you are open-minded enough to do some actual reading outside of Nation of Islam propaganda.
Your religious and even political views are yours to have and to hold; but if you want to know about a subject, you don't go to religious or political leaders to learn about it. You ESPECIALLY don't go to religio-political leaders who have an agenda and a drum to beat. You go to outside sources.
In the case of trying to understand the roots of WWII, you turn to both history and personal accounts. There are going to be conflicts, if you read widely enough. There are always conflicts - that is what starts wars to begin with. That is the condition of being human.
The condition of being human is also to struggle against these conflicts and to try to reach a true understanding of other human beings. This cannot be done without compassion and trust, and it cannot be done by restricting yourself to one point of view that has an agenda to push - an agenda that springs from a history of abuse and racism and is burdened by that truth, but has not - yet - managed to overcome that burden so that it may look outside of itself with compassion and trust on the rest of the human beings who co-occupy this planet. That kind of anger overshadows compassion and destroys trust. However empowering that kind of anger may feel, and however justified its roots may be, it destroys the ability to move forward and take true power over one's condition.
I, as a Buddhist, look to Buddhist leaders when I have questions about life, ethics, morality, and the human condition, and how I can fit into the world and become a builder of society and relationships.
But when I want to know about history or how things are in the world, I do not go to Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama or Pema Chodron to learn those things. I go to historians and others who study and interpret society and I read or hear what they have to say; I look for the accounts of people who lived through those times; and I do this through the lens of understanding that people can be telling the truth without full understanding; that people have different points of view which may conflict, and still be telling THEIR truth. I can take in Thich Nhat Hanh's experiences of the Vietnam War without thinking he has the whole, unvarnished, unbiased truth, and that anyone in conflict with his experiences must be a devil of a liar.
If you want to understand, that is a hard and long path, and you will never ever reach the end of it. But it is my belief that it is the most thrilling journey a human being can take, and it NEVER ENDS!
But if all you want to do is have your preconceptions confirmed - well, then you're not going to take that first step on the path to understanding. Maybe you're not ready for it. At least, not yet.
Heck, maybe I am misunderstanding your motivations for starting this thread. It's not like someone died and left me a perfect understanding of every living human being.
Either way, I wish you well on your journey.
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