World War II

1796 Pages·1997·32.35 MB·English

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FEEDING THE TIN FISH
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(A COMIC LOOK AT WORLD WAR II)
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
1. My coldblooded intent here is to characterize the period of our 2d world war as what it was. It was a convulsion of helplessness
beyond anything humankind had to that point experienced. I will attempt to forego sympathy and access the affect of helpless people
on the various sinking ships at sea –torpedoed or whatever, waiting for their collective fate to engulf them– merely to assist in
depicting the general helplessness experienced during such a spasm of fate.
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“They fight and fight and fight; they are fighting now,
they fought before, and they’ll fight in the future....
So you see, you can say anything about world history....
Except one thing, that is. It cannot be said that world
history is reasonable.”
— Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevski
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND
“Fiddle-dee-dee, war, war, war,
I get so bored I could scream!”
—Scarlet O’Hara
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1798
The Alien Enemy Act of the US Congress legalized summary arrest and imprisonment of citizens of foreign
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powers at war with the United States of America. This 1798 act is not so strange, in a nation which permitted
human slavery. This 1798 act would prove useful 143 years later, in 1942 after we had unlegalized our slavery,
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when Peru desired to get rid of its Japanese-Peruvian citizens. Basing its actions on the principle that the
Government of Japan, like many national governments, recognizes the jus sanguinis “you belong to us until
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you die” concept of citizenship and basing its actions on the white Peruvian government’s desire to rid itself
of as many non-white citizens as possible (since these little yellow people might conceivably ally themselves
with the despised Peruvian Indians whom the Peruvian government desired to oppress), the US government
officials pretended to believe the self-serving lies they were told by their Peruvian contacts: that these Japanese
in Peru were a group of patriotic males of military years who had already served in the Japanese armed forces
and were probably reserve officers in disguise –working in their Peruvian cover occupations such as chicken
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ranch laborers and bazaar shopkeepers making the equivalent of $9. per week and waiting to provide military
intelligence to Jap subs offshore– the Japanese-Peruvians were rounded up and shipped to the United States.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service intentionally refrained from issuing visas so that the presence of
these people in the USA, although they were being brought here to be held in our concentration camp, would
be de facto illegal and undocumented. When these people were brought to the ships in Peru, their baggage was
confiscated and they were strip-searched and any excess cash on their persons was “confiscated.” When a ship
would arrive in the port of San Diego CA from Peru, the INS would rent a special blacked-out train and
transport its prisoners to a former CCC camp in Kenedy TX which had been converted into a concentration
2. This act is to be found on page 577 of UNITED STATES STATUTES AT LARGE, Volume I (Boston MA: Little, Brown, 1861).
We don’t have to make any secret of this stuff, it just hides in plain sight.
3. Today we note, interestingly, that Peru has a Japanese-Peruvian President. That probably means there is no race hatred there.
4. I came across this concept of citizenship in regard to Iranian-Americans. It is a scheme according to which there can be no such
thing as a citizen’s renunciation of citizenship and according to which there can be no such thing as a person with joint citizenship.
During the regime of Shahanshah Pahlavi, our friend sent SAVAK assassination squads to the USA from time to time to murder
American citizens on American soil, and our FBI wasn’t interested. The enemies the Shah was having murdered had been born in
Iran, as far as our ally the Government of Iran was concerned that meant these people were Iranian citizens and that made it
impossible for them to be US citizens, and so you see it wasn’t any of our business.
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camp by the addition of watchtowers and barbed wire fences. During their years in camp the prisoners could
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work for $0. an hour. Camp records indicate that it cost us about $0. a day to feed our prisoners.
This program continued through 1943 and 1944, as shipload after shipload of people were kidnapped in Peru
and brought under guard to the port of San Diego. In 1946 all these Mongoloids were officially cleared any
suspicion of having been alien enemies, but of course Peru refused to discuss the possibility of taking them
back and of course Japan was not of interest and of course the US Government, wary of assuming an
obligation, refused to give its kidnapped hostages any documentation of their status here. Their status was
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changed from “alien enemy” to “nonresident alien” and so of course anything they could earn over $1. per
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day was subject to a 30% federal withholding tax. –And it all began in 1798, a period during which slavery
made a whole lot of sense to a whole lot of free Americans.
WORLD WAR II
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?
— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.
LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
5. I once had a friend, Hans Theodore Zink, who had been born a US citizen but had been taken to Germany by his parents, and had
taken the first opportunity he could find to desert from the German Army at the age of 18 and surrender to the American Army in
Europe, and who finished out the war as the Geneva Convention representative at one of these concentration camps. After WWII,
since as well as being a US citizen by birth and as well as being utterly innocent of any wrongdoing he was also a white man, it was
easy for him to obtain papers.
6. Necessarily, all this info is sketchy and does not do justice to the details of the various experiences, which are elaborate. I’m just
trying here to give a general picture of a government of a democracy, in which nobody gives a good God Damn for anyone’s rights.
You can read C. Harvey Gardiner’s PAWNS IN A TRIANGLE OF HATE: THE PERUVIAN JAPANESE AND THE UNITED STATES
(Seattle WA: U of Washington P, 1981) for yourself, if this sort of material is of interest to you.
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1892
September 8, Thursday: The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, as published in Youth’s Companion, was to be recited
by our nation’s schoolchildren while facing the flag and saluting it by the uplifting of a stiff right hand (this
part of the ceremony would, for some reason, be discontinued during World War II :-).
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND
YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
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1904
When entomologist G.W. Kirkaldy provided species descriptions for a series of insects whose names all ended
in “-chisme” (pronounced “kiss me”), the guy must have been terminally horny, for among his species names
are such as Polychisme, Marichisme and Dollischisme.
By means of a surprise attack of undeclared war, the Japanese destroyed a Russian naval group at Port Arthur,
and invaded Korea. (Battle of Port Arthur, Russo-Japanese war. Heads up, this is an alert of things to come.
Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it — and things that happen the first time as
tragedy, tend to happen the second time as farce. :-)
WORLD WAR II
Chestnut blight from Japan was detected in the New York City area, with the first reported case at the Bronx
Zoological Park. It is thought the fungal pathogen, Cryphonectria parasitica, arrived with importation of
Asian chestnut trees in 1890. This disease quickly advanced to destroy nearly the entire native population of
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American Chestnut, until that time the largest of eastern trees and one of the most significant forest dominants
in the Eastern mixed mesophytic association. Rupp indicates that the pathogen arrived in 1895 amid a
shipment of Chinese chestnut trees that would eventually be planted at the newly founded New York Botanical
Garden. Rupp also calculated the loss in lumber alone at $400 billion.
PLANTS
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE
INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN
SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.
World War II “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1908
Dr. David Fairchild of the US Department of Agriculture gave cherry saplings to boys from each District of
Columbia school to plant in their schoolyard for the observance of Arbor Day. In closing his Arbor Day lecture,
Dr. Fairchild for the first time expressed an appeal that the “Speedway” (the present day corridor of
Independence Avenue SW, in West Potomac Park) be transformed into a “Field of Cherries.” In attendance
was Eliza Scidmore, whom Dr. Fairchild characterized as a great authority on Japan.
The Swiss discovered that only 55% of their men without a regular exercise program were likely to come up
to military entrance standards. Japanese military doctors doing research on the island of Okinawa established
that the karate students there were physically more fit than Okinawans in general. Because of studies such as
these, various governments around the world would begin to sponsor physical training in public schools — but
Japan would not be in the forefront of this effort. Although in England the professional wrestler Sada Kazu
Uyenishi was teaching soldiers at Aldershot and Shorncliffe Camp, the Japanese officer caste was not
interested in encouraging their enlisted men to become experts at karate, possibly because when struck by an
officer (as frequently did happen), such soldiers might be tempted to strike back, and might get the upper hand.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote that he regarded a war between the USA and Japan as an inevitability.
“We have the Philippines and they need the Philippines,” he reasoned plausibly.
Sooner or later, the Japanese will try to bolster up their power
by another war. Unfortunately for us, we have what they want
most, the Philippines.... When it comes, we will win over Japan,
but it will be one of the most disastrous conflicts the world
has ever seen.
(Hey, gentle reader, I got a question for ’ya. A guy who believes stuff like the above — exactly how hard
is he going to work to preserve the peace? Is struggling to preserve world peace going to be his locofocus?
–Or, instead, is said wiseass going to be carefully manipulating and fine-tuning and sharp-penciling the
conditions under which this inevitable foreseen war is to begin in order to reassure himself as to the conditions
under which said grand-powers world-historical struggle will come to its completion? In particular: is he likely
to be caught napping, after a number of decades of such grand scheming, by one or another “sneak attack”?
Seriously, now.)
WORLD WAR II
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
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1909
February 6, Saturday: Scherzo fantastique op.3 for orchestra by Igor Stravinsky was performed for the initial time, in
St. Petersburg. An interested ballet impressario named Sergei Dyaghilev was in the audience.
Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to the Daily News about “Flying Machines in War.” Military leaders had assured
him that airplanes and dirigibles would never be used for purposes of mass destruction –dropping aerial bombs
on enemy population centers full of civilians– and nevertheless, he was insisting that if ever there was a time
to call the Liberal government to dissociate itself from the prospect of such a prospective crime against
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humanity, it was the present.
He foresaw that there was a crying need for a treaty among all “civilized” nations against the use of the new
flying machines for a new sort of mass destruction.
WORLD WAR II
ATOMIC BOMBS
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
7. It was during this year that the 1st flight was being accomplished, by Louis Blériot in a monoplane with a 25-horsepower motor,
across the international barrier known as the English Channel. It is almost as if this Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace were already
capable of imagining Coventry, and London under the Blitz, and Dresden and Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Twin
Towers of New York City. Wrap your mind around that!
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1915
R.J. Reynolds’s chewing tobacco manufacturing company in Winston, North Carolina had developed a line of
pipe tobaccos, and had in 1913 introduced the first American blend cigarette, known as “Camel.” By his death
in 1918 of a pancreatic cancer that hypothetically might now be linked to a lifetime of chewing tobacco,
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Reynolds would have brought economic development in North Carolina. By this year, however, 14 states had
banned cigarettes while others enacted control regulations. The taxes on tobacco products had increased, and
the government had broken up a trade cartel. An advertising campaign began for a new brand of cigarettes,
made of a very much milder than usual mixture of American and Turkish tobacco:
(By 1927 such prohibitions against tobacco would have been rescinded in all states because income from taxes
upon tobacco products had rendered our government a full-profit participant in this aspect of the drug trade.)
8. R.J. Reynolds had four children one of whom was either murdered or a suicide, one of whom died of a stomach cancer that may
have been smoking-related, and two of whom definitively died because of smoking.
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