From The History of the World, by J. M. Roberts: The American aspiration to non-involvement with the outside world was already clear in 1793, when the troubles of the French revolutionary war led to a Neutrality Proclamation rendering American citizens liable to prosecution in American courts if they took any part in the Anglo-French war. The bias of American policy already expressed in this received its classical formulation in 1796. In the course of Washington's Farewell Address to his "Friends and Fellow-Citizens" as his second term drew to a close, he chose to comment on the objectives and methods which a successful foreign policy should embody, in language to be deeply influential both on later American statesman and on the national psychology. In retrospect, what is now especially striking about Washington's thoughts is their predominantly negative and passive tone...Washington warned his countrymen against assumptions of permanent or special hostility or friendship with any other nation. In all this there was no hint of America's future destiny as a world power (Washington did not even consider other than European relations; America's future Pacific and Asian role was inconceivable in 1796).

From The Outline of History, by H. G. Wells: For two centuries Japan remained outside the main current of history. She lived on in a state of picturesque feudalism enlivened by blood feuds, in which about 5% of the population, the samurai, or fighting men, and the nobles and their families, tyrannized without restraint over the rest of the population. All common men knelt when a noble passed; to display the slightest disrespect was to risk being slashed to death by his samurai. The elect classes lived lives of romantic adventure without one redeeming gleam of novelty; they loved, murdered, and pursued fine points of honor—which probably bored the intelligent ones extremely. We can imagine the wretchedness of a curious mind, tormented by the craving for travel and knowledge, cooped up in these islands of empty romance.

Meanwhile, the great world outside went on to wider visions and new powers. Strange shipping became more frequent, passing the Japanese headlands; sometimes ships were wrecked and sailors brought ashore. Through Deshima, their one link with the outer universe, came warnings that Japan was not keeping pace with the power of the Western world. In 1837 a ship sailed into Yedo Bay flying a strange flag of stripes and stars, and carrying some Japanese sailors she had picked up far adrift in the Pacific. She was driven off by cannon shot. The flag presently reappeared on other ships.

President Fillmore's Letter to the Emperor of Japan: Our great State of California produces about sixty millions of dollars in gold every year, besides silver, quicksilver, precious stones, and many other valuable articles. Japan is also a rich and fertile country, and produces many very valuable articles. Your imperial majesty's subjects are skilled in many of the arts. I am desirous that our two countries should trade with each other, for the benefit both of Japan and the United States.

We know that the ancient laws of your imperial majesty's government do not allow of foreign trade, except with the Chinese and the Dutch; but as the state of the world changes and new governments are formed, it seems to be wise, from time to time, to make new laws...

From With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Stephen B. Oates: The next day, Lincoln received ominous news from Fort Monroe on the Virginia coast. A rebel ironclad, a hulking monster named the Virginia, had steamed out of Norfolk, descended on the Union fleet off Hampton Roads, and rammed and battered the wooden ships as though they were toys. Lincoln held an emergency Cabinet meeting, with some of the Secretaries beset with apocalyptic visions—of the rebel behemoth churning up the Potomac, obliterating McClellan's wooden troopships, shelling Washington and putting the government to flight, and then bombarding the other Northern cities. Lincoln was anxious, too, going repeatedly to his office windows to see if the Virginia were approaching. But late that afternoon came a heartening dispatch: a little Union ironclad called the Monitor, with two guns mounted in a revolving turret, had dueled the Virginia to a draw that day. After the two vessels had bounced shells off one another for several hours, the Virginia had turned around and sailed back to Norfolk. The Virginia was neutralized; the blockade seemed safe for now.

From Of Arms and Men, by Robert L. O'Connell: Although foreign attempts at penetration and reciprocal Japanese awareness of outsiders had increased, the arrival of Matthew Perry's powerful squadron of American warships in 1853 was nonetheless a profound shock to both the Tokugawa Shogunate and its subjects...For over two hundred years Japanese society, culture, and technology had remained crystallized. Suddenly, Perry confronted the Japanese with devices such as the telegraph, the steam locomotive, and, most disturbing of all, massively superior armaments which he used to browbeat the Tokugawa Shogunate into signing a commercial treaty, soon followed by similar agreements with other imperial states. Like other traditional societies thrust into the same predicament, the Japanese were humiliated and fearful of further encroachment. Yet their reaction was quite different. Rather than accept their fate passively, the Japanese almost instinctively set about to redress the military imbalance.

Up to this point Japanese military power had been concentrated exclusively in the hands of a hereditary class of samurai, and it might be expected that this class would have provided the primary impetus for a military renascence. In the main, this did not prove true. In Choshu, as a result of an internal struggle, a group of radical samurai had become the dominant force internally and, at the behest of the eldest local lord, began reorganizing his army under the brilliant leadership of Takasugi Shinsaku. A close student of Western military science, Takasugi was also a violent partisan of the "sonno joi" (revere the emperor, expel the barbarian) movement. With the European example as a reference point, he began recruiting a force without regard to social background and equipping them with the latest Western Minie ball-firing rifles. Still wed to traditional military practice, the Tokugawa samurai sent to put down this well-armed, peasant-based force relied on the bow, the sword, and the tactics of old Japan, and was defeated accordingly.

Note: Meiji is technically the name of the calendrical era (1867–1912) proclaimed the year before. Only posthumously will this Emperor actually assume the name. Since rule by military families is now considered to have been an unfortunate deviation, "restoration" refers more to a return of the country to a previous set of moral principles than the return of the imperial dynasty to power. The Meiji Restoration will accelerate industrialization in Japan, leading its rise as a military power with the slogan "fukoku kyōhei" (Enrich the country, strengthen the military).

From Hirohito: Behind the Myth, by Edward Behr: During the Meiji era, from 1868 to 1912, China was destabilized by a series of revolutions and civil wars, a prey to warlords, unable to establish for long a unified, centralized rule of any kind under the discredited fin de race Ching dynasty that was finally overthrown in 1912. Japan might well have suffered the same fate, but her ruling families, after overthrowing the Shogun, voluntarily surrendered their power to the emperor. "There is no soil within the Empire that does not belong to Him," their memorial read, recalling that "Imperial Power had declined, and military classes usurped power in the recent past. Now that Imperial power is restored, how can we retain possession of land that belongs to the Emperor and govern people who are his subjects? We therefore offer up all our feudal possessions so that a uniform rule may prevail throughout the Empire. Thus the country will be able to rank equally with the other nations of the world."

Without this act of allegiance the Meiji Restoration would have been short-lived, and Japan would not have been able to play an active role on the world scene so soon after emerging from her isolation. It was fear of becoming another China that was behind this statesmanlike impulse, along with the determination to deny the Western powers a monopoly role in the acquisition of Chinese "international concessions." As a comparatively small nation, a cluster of islands close to China, Japan could not stand by and watch Britain consolidate her enclaves along the China coast, France move into Cochin China and Cambodia, and Russia annex part of Chinese Manchuria, without fearing her own integrity. The best defense is offense, which explains why, under Meiji, Japan countered the encroaching Western powers first by extending her influence over Korea, after a lightening war with China, then by providing a huge contingent for the relief of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 (Japanese troops were the only ones who refrained from looting) and, finally, by challenging Russia over Manchuria.

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From Our Country (1885), by the Reverend Josiah Strong: Again, another marked characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon is what may be called an instinct or genius for colonizing. His unequaled energy, his indomitable perseverance, and his personal independence, made him a pioneer. He excels all others in pushing his way into new countries. It was those in whom this tendency was strongest that came to America, and this inherited tendency has been further developed by the westward sweep of successive generations across the continent. So noticeable has this characteristic become that English visitors remark it. Charles Dickens once said that the typical American would hesitate to enter heaven unless assured that he could go further west. ....

It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet today on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressures of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history—the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in his stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it—the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purist Christianity, the highest civilization—have developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth.

From The United States Looking Outward, an 1890 magazine article by influential American military author and theorist, Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan: I am not regretting that we have not the means to meet on terms of equality the great navies of the Old World. I recognize what few at least say, that, despite its great surplus revenue, this country is poor in proportion to its length of seaboard and its exposed points. That which I deplore, and which is a sober, just, and reasonable cause of deep national concern, is that the nation neither has nor cares to have its sea frontiers so defended, and its navy of such power, as shall suffice, with the advantages of our position, to weight seriously when inevitable discussions arise, such as we have recently had about Samoa and Bering Sea, and which may at any moment come up about the Caribbean Sea or the (Panama) canal.

Is the United States, for instance, prepared to allow Germany to acquire the Dutch stronghold of Curacao, fronting the Atlantic outlet of both the canals of Panama and Nicaragua? Is she prepared to acquiesce in any foreign power purchasing from Haiti a naval station on the Windward Passage, through which pass our steamer routes to the Isthmus? Would she acquiesce in a foreign protectorate over the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), that great central station of the Pacific, equidistant from San Francisco, Samoa, and the Marquesas, and an important post on our lines of communication with both Australia and China? ....

The military needs of the Pacific (United) States, as well as their supreme importance to the whole country, are yet a matter of the future, but of a future so near that provision should begin immediately...First, protection of the chief harbors, by fortifications and coast-defense ships, which gives defensive strength, provides security to the community within, and supplies the bases necessary to all military operations. Secondly, naval force, the arm of offensive power, which alone enables a country to extend its influence outward. Thirdly, it should be an inviolable resolution of our national policy, that no foreign state should henceforth acquire a coaling position within three thousand miles of San Francisco, which includes the Hawaiian and Galapagos islands and the coast of Central America.

From A History of Modern Japan, by R. Storry: Future Japanese Ambassador to London, Baron Hayashi, from an internal memo discussing the recent humiliation at the hands of the "Triple" powers: "If new warships are considered necessary we must, at any cost, build them: if the organization of our army is inadequate we must start rectifying it from now; if need be, our entire military system must be changed...

At present Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of nautical power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives, Japan will decide her own fate."

From Living America by Norman C. Lumian: The future of American interests seemed to have become quite uncertain with the ascension of Queen Liliuokalani to the islands' throne. The queen objected to the lease which gave the Yankees control of Pearl Harbor; she also resented their rule of the islands' economy. Within two years after the rise of the somewhat dictatorial "Queen Lil," the few Americans of the islands had had enough of her ways. Led by American Minister John L. Stevens, who was backed by the Secretary of State, they helped start a revolt. Stevens then sought protection for his people and ordered the landing of Marines, who were stationed on a cruiser in Pearl Harbor. Liliuokalani's government soon fell.

Under the leadership of Sanford Dole, the "pineapple king," a new government—operated by the small American minority—was formed. Hawaii then requested, almost immediately, annexation by the United States. Incoming President Grover Cleveland was so enraged by these ruthless tactics that he withdrew the annexation treaty from the Senate. The President was only one of a large number of American anti-imperialists of the time. Cleveland recognized the independence of the island republic in the next year, 1894, and it remained independent until 1898. In that year, pointing to Hawaii's value as a naval base in the Spanish-American War, President McKinley requested, and Congress approved, Hawaii's annexation.

From the essay To the Person Sitting in Darkness, by Mark Twain, published in the 1901 North American Review: Shall we? That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our Civilization tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sell out the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds?

Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully worked—but not enough, in my judgement, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit in Darkness are getting to scarce—too scarce and too shy. And such darkness as is now left is really but an indifferent quality, and not dark enough for the game. The most of these People that Sit in Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or profitable for us. We have been injudicious. The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it—they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization. More—they have begun to examine them. This is not well.

From Dreadnought: A History of the Modern Battleship, by Richard Hough: The importance of this first exchange of fire between modern battleships [Note: Battle of the Yellow Sea] was recognized at once by the two belligerents, and there is evidence that both Russian and Japanese naval architects had decided before the end of 1904 that the 12-inch gun was the only weapon likely to prove decisive in future fleet actions, that the intermediate calibers uselessly absorbed space, weight, and personnel that could be better used for more big guns, and that the "splash" from the smaller shells only served to blanket the target and confuse spotting. ....

But before the end of 1904, Japanese plans were complete for their own first all-big-gun ships (Satsuma, above), and it was later discovered, with considerable astonishment, that the first of these was actually laid down at the navy yard at Kure in March 1905, some three months before Tsushima was fought, and long before the keel plate of the Dreadnought herself was laid at Portsmouth. Until 1905, only light craft had been built by the Japanese themselves, all their battleships having been constructed in foreign yards. The gun-power of this revolutionary battleship was...12-inch guns, in four pairs arranged in four double and four single turrets: with a total big-gun armament three times heavier than that of any existing battleship, and with a broadside 50 percent more powerful. Her speed of 20 knots was also at least two knots higher than that of the fastest battleship afloat. Only in her armor belt, of nine inches, did she fail to match up to Cuniberti's ldeal.

In fact the Japanese Aki (above) was beset with all manner of constructional difficulties and hindrances, and was not completed until 19121, when the Dreadnought had become a commonplace among the great naval powers. Nor was she, finally, a pure Dreadnought type. Within three months of her being laid down, Japan was victorious, and close to bankruptcy. There was delay in delivery of her machinery from America, and only four 12-inch guns could finally be found for her. In place of the eight 12-inch (guns) in her beam turrets, the Japanese therefore substituted twelve 10-inch guns; giving the Aki a most formidable total armament, while lacking the fundamental ordnance uniformity which was the main strength and whole raison d'etre of the Dreadnought type.

From The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy: While naval experts were impressed by Admiral Togo's fleet when it destroyed the Russian ships at the decisive battle of Tsushima, it was the general bearing of Japanese society which struck other observers. The surprise strike at Port Arthur (a habit begun in the 1894 China conflict, and revived in 1941) was applauded in the West, as was the enthusiasm of Japanese nationalist opinion for an outright victory, whatever the cost.

More remarkable still seemed the performance of Japanese officers and men in the battles around Port Arthur and Mukden, where tens of thousands of soldiers were lost as they charged across minefields, over barbed wire, and through a hail of machine-gun fire before conquering the Russian trenches. The samurai spirit, it seemed, could secure battlefield victories with the bayonet in the age of mass industrialized warfare. If, as all the contemporary military experts concluded, moral and discipline were still vital prerequisites of national power, Japan was rich in those resources.

Even then, however, Japan was not a full-fledged Great Power. Japan had been fortunate to have fought an even more backward China and a czarist Russia which was militarily top-heavy and disadvantaged by the immense distance between St. Petersburg and the Far East. Furthermore, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 had allowed it to fight on its home ground without interference from third powers. Its navy had relied upon British-built battleships; its army upon Krupp guns. Most important of all, it had found the immense cost of the war impossible to finance from its own resources and yet had been able to rely upon loans floated in the United States and Britain.

As it turned out, Japan was close to bankruptcy by the end of 1905, when the peace negotiations with Russia got under way. That may not have been obvious to the Tokyo public, which reacted furiously to the relatively light terms with which the Russians escaped the final settlement. Nevertheless, with victory confirmed, Japan's armed forces glorified and admired, its economy able to recover, and its status as a Great Power (albeit a regional one) admitted by all, Japan had come of age. No one could do anything significant in the Far East without considering its response; but whether it could expand further without provoking reaction from the more established Great Powers was not at all clear.

From Hirohito: The War Years, by Paul Manning: Both the Japanese army and the Emperor regarded with pride their remarkable military defeat of Russia in 1905; it had brought honor and prestige to the nation and to the Emperor. But it was this victory that, in a historical perspective, really started Japan on the road to war with the United States a decade later. The attack on the Russian Asiatic Fleet at Port Arthur in 1905 was made without warning, a prologue to the attack to be made 36 years later at Pearl Harbor. Emperor Meiji, Hirohito's grandfather, sent his torpedo boats in a surprise attack. The ships they did not sink were bottled up inside the harbor, and two days later Meiji issued his Rescript declaring war on Russia. He accused Russia of threatening Japan's plans for expansion. (Similarly, in Hirohito's Imperial Rescript declaring war on the United States two days after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, he blamed the United States and China for imperiling the existence of the Japanese Empire.) ....

After nine months of war, both Japan and Russia were looking for peace. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate, and peace terms were arranged. Korea was given to Japan, as was Port Arthur, the Kwantung Peninsula, and all railroad rights in southern Manchuria. Because there were no war reparations to be paid by Russia, which the Japanese people had been expecting—they had put up with many privations to support this war—there were riots in all major industrial Japanese cities. Calm descended after Emperor Meiji assured his people that the benefits to Japan would, in time, be immense. "This was only the first step in the building of a vast Japanese Empire," he declared.

Lieutenant Douglas MacArthur and his father, Major General Arthur MacArthur, were US Army observers of this war. When they returned by way of Tokyo, both observed that "the future and very existence of America is irrevocably intertwined with Asia and its island outposts." General Arthur MacArthur also made the observation that Japan's imperialistic ambitions posed "the central problem of the Pacific."

From Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946, W. A. Harriman and J. Abel: Late that summer the Harriman's sailed for Japan...The terms of the Portsmouth settlement...had provoked a great popular outcry in Japan. There was rioting in the streets, tinged with anti-Americanism, because President Roosevelt had initiated the Portsmouth negotiations, which seemed to many Japanese a sell-out. Averell, then thirteen years old, never forgot the explosive character of the demonstrations. The house of one government minister was burned to the ground, although he escaped by climbing over the back fence. Young Averell was thrilled at the sight of Japanese soldiers encamped on the lawn of the American legation compound to guard the minister, Lloyd Griscomb, and his guests, the Harriman family. Earlier than most Americans, Averell learned that the Japanese were not necessarily a submissive people.

From Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), by Vladimir Lenin: Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capitalism is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

From The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, by Chow Tse-tung: The May Fourth Movement was a thoroughly anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary movement. Young students acted as its pioneers. The Chinese working class went up on the political stage, and functioned as the main force in the later period of the movement. Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu and other intellectuals directed and promoted the development of the movement, and played leading roles in it. On the local level, future Communist Party leader Mao Zedong rallied opposition against Hunan's warlord Chang Ching-yao.

The May Fourth Movement covered more than 20 provinces and over 100 cities of the country. It had a broader popular foundation than the Revolution of 1911. Its great contribution lay in arousing the people's consciousness and preparing for the unity of the revolutionary forces. The May Fourth Movement promoted the spreading of Marxism in China, and prepared the ideological foundation for the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party. The October Revolution pointed out the direction for the Chinese revolution. The May Fourth Movement, which took place after the October Socialist Revolution, was a part of the world's Proletarian Revolution.

From A History of Russia, by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky: The great Civil War in Russia was complicated by Allied intervention, by the war between the Soviet Government and Poland, and by bids for national independence on the part of a number of peoples of the former Romanovs who were not Great Russians. The intervention began in 1918 and involved fourteen countries; the Japanese in particular sent a sizable force into Russia—over 60,000 men. Great Britain dispatched altogether some 40,000 troops, France and Greece two divisions each, and the United States about 10,000 men, while Italy and other countries—except for the peculiar case of the Czechs—sent smaller, and often merely token, forces.

The Allies originally wanted to prevent the Germans from seizing war material in such ports as Archangel and Murmansk, as well as to observe the situation, while the Japanese wanted to exploit the opportunities presented in the Far East by the collapse of Russian power. Japanese troops occupied the Russian part of the island of Sakhalin and much of Siberia east of Lake Baikal. Detachments of American, British, French, and Italian followed the Japanese into Siberia, while other Allied troops landed...in northern European Russia, as well as in southern ports such as Odessa, occupied by the French, and Batum, occupied by the British.

Allied forces assumed a hostile attitude toward the Soviet government, blockaded the Soviet coastline from October 1919 to January 1920, and often helped White movements by providing military supplies—such as some British tanks for Denikin's army—and by the very presence and protection. But they often avoided actual fighting. This fruitless intervention ended in 1920 with the departure of Allied troops, except that the Japanese stayed in the Maritime Provinces of the Russian Far East until 1922 and in the Russian part of Sakhalin until 1925.

From The Gathering Storm, by Winston Churchill: The United States made it clear to Britain that the continuance of her alliance with Japan, to which the Japanese had punctiliously conformed, would constitute a barrier in Anglo-American relations. Accordingly, this alliance was brought to an end. The annulment caused a profound impression in Japan, and was viewed as the spurning of an Asiatic Power by the Western World. Many links were sundered which might afterwards have proved of decisive value to peace. At the same time, Japan could console herself with the fact that the downfall of Germany and Russia had, for a time, raised her to the third place among the world's naval powers, and certainly to the highest rank.

Although the Washington Naval Agreement prescribed a lower ratio of strength in capital ships for Japan than for Britain and the United States (5:5:3), the quota assigned to her was well up to her building and financial capacity for a good many years, and she watched with attentive eye the two leading naval Powers cutting each other down far below what their resources would have permitted and what their responsibilities entailed. Thus, both in Europe and in Asia, conditions were swiftly created by the victorious Allies which, in the name of peace, cleared the way for the renewal of war.

From a story in the English-language periodical Japan Weekly Chronicle, (1922) concerning a meeting of the Japanese Cabinet Council:

One of the Ministers asked whether ordinary people would understand Professor Einstein's lectures on the theory of relativity. Mr. Kamada, Minister of Education, rather rashly said of course they would. Dr. Okano, Minister of Justice, contradicted Mr. Kamada, saying that they would never understand. Mr. Arai, Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, was rather sorry for Mr. Kamada, so he said that they would understand vaguely. The headstrong Minister of Justice insisted that there could be no midway between understanding and not understanding. If they understood, they understood clearly. If they did not understand, they did not understand at all.

A chill fell on the company. Mr. Baba, the tactful director of the Legislation Bureau, said that they could understand if they made efforts. Their efforts would be useless, persisted the Minister of Justice. He had himself ordered a book on the theory of relativity when the theory was first introduced into Japan last year and tried to study it. On the first page he found higher mathematics, and he had to shut the book for the present. When the members of the Imperial Academy were invited to dinner at the Hama detached palace, he had mentioned the problem to Dr. Tanakadate Aikitsu, who was seated next to him.

Dr. Fujisawa Rikitaio (an authority on mathematics), overhearing their discussion, said that in America they were collecting popular explanations of the theory, offering an enormous prize. Such being the case, Dr. Fujisawa said, it was wiser not to begin study at once. He supported Dr. Okano's opinion. Hearing this elaborate explanation, Mr. Baba, director of the Legislation Bureau, decided to eschew Einstein for the time being.

From Civilization, Past and Present, in Three Volumes by Wallbank and Taylor: In 1929 and 1930 the liberal prime minister, Hamaguchi, sought with relatively little success to meet the Depression. He also followed a conciliatory policy toward China and was willing to cooperate in disarmament proposals—aims bitterly opposed by the militaristic clique. Shot in November 1930, the prime minister died the following spring. This assassination was a tragedy from which Japanese liberalism never recovered in the decade before the Second World War. Japan's recovery from the Depression began in earnest at the end of 1931 when it went off the gold standard, thus producing a significant growth in exports and production.

A new group of ultra-nationalistic and militaristic leaders came into power, with the cooperation of party politicians, bureaucrats, and the great industrial families. In contrast to the personal dictatorships in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, however, Japan was dominated by a military clique, which terrorized the civilian members of the government. Scoffing ar democracy and peace, these leaders plotted to shelve parliamentary government in Tokyo and to use force on the mainland of China to secure essential raw materials and markets for goods, to spread the "superior" Japanese culture throughout Asia, and to find space for Japan's overcrowded population. This "beneficial mission" was known as the New Order in Asia.

From Twentieth Century History, by Tony Howarth: The invasion of Manchuria had two important side effects—putting aside for a moment its dreadful revelation that the League was powerless in the face a determined aggressor. First, it raised the prestige of the Japanese Army. Second, it made it possible for the Army to pressure the Japanese government to undertake a policy of armed expansion.

From Europe: 1914–1939, by F. Lee Burns and Mary Elizabeth Seldon: By 1931...Japan had acquired or claimed in Manchuria rights the effect of which was to restrict the exercise of Chinese sovereignty in a manner and to a degree quite exceptional. She governed the leased territory of Kwantung, exercising therein what amounted to practically full sovereignty. Through the medium of the South Manchuria Railway, she administered the railway zones, including several towns and important parts of populous cities such as Mukden and Changchun. In these areas she controlled the police, taxes, education, and public utilities. She maintained armed forces in certain parts of the country—the army of Kwantung in the leased territory, railway guards in the railway zones, and consular police in the various districts. ....

In 1931 various efforts were made to settle the questions outstanding between Japan and China by the normal method of diplomatic negotiations. Nevertheless, the tension between Chinese and Japanese in Manchuria continued to grow, while a movement of opinion in Japan began to advocate the settlement of all outstanding questions by the resort to force if necessary. That the group advocating a resort to force ultimately gained the ascendancy in Japan is made abundantly clear by (subsequent) events...

From There's a War to be Won: The United States Army in World War II, by Geoffrey Perret: Franklin Roosevelt had assumed the role of Commander in Chief with a plenitude of spirit that was rare among presidents. He'd collected naval prints since boyhood and been Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Military matters did not make him uneasy or seem beyond his natural grasp. On the contrary, he eased into the part, and in his naval cape he seemed only half civilian at heart. He had few qualms about rejecting military advice. Following the Munich Conference in 1938, his calls on Congress for thousands of airplanes were a rejection of the demands from Arnold and the General Staff for balanced military forces. "Building new barracks in Wyoming," he said dismissively, "would not scare Hitler."

The next year he had thrust himself into the heart of military decision making by ordering the Army-Navy Joint Board to report directly to him. This allowed him to circumvent his isolationist secretary of war, Harry Woodring. It also drew the bond between the armed forces and the president closer than at any time since the Civil War. He exercised his powers freely. In the summer of 1940 he moved the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, to the alarm of the Navy. He forced the Army to sell much of its arms and ammunition to the British. He ordered the Air Corps to split plane production fifty-fifty with the British.

In July 1941, over strong objections from the Joint Board, he had ordered an oil embargo against Japan. By recalling MacArthur to active duty and appointing him to command all Army forces in the Far East, he had undercut the War Department's position that the Philippines were not worth fighting for. At the same time, he was dubious about the need to create a big army.

From Khrushchev Remembers, by Nikita Khrushchev: I believe the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 was historically inevitable, given the circumstances of the time, and that in the final analysis it was profitable for the Soviet Union. It was like a gambit in chess: if we hadn't made that move, the war would have started earlier, much to our disadvantage. It was very hard for us—as Communists, as anti-fascists—to accept the idea of joining forces with Germany. It was difficult enough for us to accept the paradox ourselves.

For their part, the Germans too were using the treaty as a maneuver to win time. Their idea was to divide and conquer the nations which had united against Germany in World War I and which might unite against Germany again. Hitler wanted to deal with his adversaries one at a time. He was convinced that Germany had been defeated in World war I because he tried to fight on two fronts at once. The treaty he signed with us was his way of trying to limit the coming war to one front.

From Code-Name Down-Fall, by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar: Of all the Japanese military leaders, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, was perhaps the most aware of the quality and the industrial capacity of the enemy he would face if Japan went to war with the United States. He had been a member of the advisory team that accompanied Navy Minister Tomasaburo Kato to the 1921–1922 naval conference in Washington, DC. He had also studied English at Harvard University and later served as Japanese naval attaché in Washington. As a result of his firsthand exposure to the US potential for war, Yamamoto remained a part of the "Treaty Faction" throughout the 1920s and 1930s, believing that Japan could never match the United States in resources and that it was perilous to underestimate the American willingness to do battle, as many of his peers were prone to do.

But in January 1941, with Japan unalterably committed to a war with the United States, Yamamoto, a fervent gambler, heeded his instinct for high-risk moves and conceived the idea of a preemptive attack on the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor. He believed that the attack would be made 30 minutes after the declaration of war with the United States. Yamamoto studied the successful November 1940 attack, by a single British carrier with 21 Swordfish torpedo planes, which smashed the Italian fleet in harbor at Taranto. He then convened a small, select group of naval aviation officers to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor and organized the massive strike force that would carry out the attack. Yamamoto believed that if he could destroy the US Fleet's battleships and aircraft carriers, there would be no interference with Japanese offensive actions in the Pacific for six months. The carrier pilots of the strike force trained intensively, attacking targets in Kagoshima Bay on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, which resembled Pearl Harbor.