Only three months remain until the American presidential election. At similar timings in the past, presidents have not balked at starting wars with a priority on winning reelection. During the 1932 election, Herbert Hoover (a Republican who was unable to cope with the Great Depression of 1929) suffered a historic, crushing defeat in his race against Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat who promoted the “New Deal” program. Roosevelt worked to somehow rebuild the economy after taking office. Thanks to these efforts the economy began recovering in 1933, the year Roosevelt was inaugurated, and he won in 1936 with the highest percentage of the popular vote in a presidential election. But the Great Depression continued afterwards, and Roosevelt was aware that he would not be reelected again if nothing changed. Terumasa Nakanishi of Kyoto University claims that the British intelligence division was scheming to make Roosevelt (who was striving to win his third election in 1940) win the election so that the U.S. can intervene in the war in Europe. After Roosevelt won his third term, he believed he had to create massive demand to overcome the Great Depression and win further elections, and felt that emergency war demand was the most effective way to do this.
When World War II began in Europe in September 1939, Roosevelt took a neutral stance while enacting the Lend-Lease policy to provide weapons in March 1941. This started the supply of vast amounts of military goods to American allies such as the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Republic of China, and was a strategic step for the U.S. to participate in the war.
Roosevelt actually won his third election in 1940 by pledging during his campaign that the U.S. would not join the war in Europe, saying, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” He used the Tripartite Pact of September 1940 to renege on this promise and enter the war. He wanted to force Japan to lash out and open hostilities with the U.S., which he believed would give the U.S. a way to simultaneously fight against Germany in Europe and save the UK.
To that end, Roosevelt stepped up the economic blockade on Japan through measures such as putting a total embargo on scrap iron shipped to Japan in September 1940, followed by a complete ban on oil exports to Japan in August 1941. The Imperial Japanese Navy was scared that it would be unable to operate its combined fleet without oil, and it served a central role in planning the attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor to destroy the fleet before Japan’s oil ran out.
However, because the U.S. had already decrypted the Imperial Japanese Navy codes and Japanese diplomatic codes, Roosevelt was aware of the attack on Pearl Harbor before it happened. Despite this, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, then commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter Short, commander in chief of the U.S. Army’s Hawaiian Department, were not informed about the attack so Japan would remain unaware that its codes had been broken. Newly produced warships and aircraft carriers were moved out of Pearl Harbor before the attack on the pretense of a “special drill,” leaving only old ships like the USS Arizona to serve as targets. To attack the Pearl Harbor base with Type 99 Carrier Bombers (dive bombers) launched from aircraft carriers and carrier-based planes equipped with torpedoes, the Imperial Japanese Navy sunk many vessels using weapons (such as Type 91 torpedoes) that can be launched even in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor, which is just 12 meters deep.
For some reason, many more soldiers were stationed than usual on the USS Arizona on the day of the attack, even though it was a Sunday. The Japanese navy could not wage a torpedo attack because there was another military ship on the ocean side. It bombed the USS Arizona, and at 8:06 a.m. the bombs hit the first and second gun turrets on the starboard side. At 8:10 a.m., this bombing set off a major explosion at the entire powder magazine, located in the bottom of the ship. Four minutes after the attack (some people theorize six minutes), the ammunition depot exploded, opening huge holes on the land side and killing 1,102 soldiers. They account for roughly half of the 2,403 American soldiers who died in action during the Pearl Harbor attack. However, it is unlikely that the boat sank because of an induced explosion at the ammunition depot four minutes after the bombing. Primary and secondary explosions are simultaneous, and I know of no other examples of an ammunition depot explosion caused by fires after some time has passed. It is highly possible that the ammunition depot was blown up on purpose, rather than the explosion being set off by something else. This was based on the thinking that many victims were needed to get the American public, which was strongly against the war, to agree to fight Japan. After the attack, the U.S. used the slogan “Remember Pearl Harbor” to completely change the public opinion and stir up support for the war.
If Japan was to carry out an attack of this sort, I believe it should have been a joint maneuver by the army and navy – although they were on bad terms – under the guidance of the General Staff Headquarters, rather than an operation by the navy alone. Japan should have carried out an operation to occupy Oahu, where Pearl Harbor is located. The Imperial Japanese Navy probably did not attack the docks and oil tanks because there were many civilians in the area. As a result, the majority of the boats sunk in the attack were brought up, repaired at the docks, and returned to the war front. Japan should have destroyed or occupied the docks to prevent this from happening. Next, it should have used the momentum from the Pearl Harbor attack to occupy or destroy the Panama Canal, divide the U.S. between the East and West Coasts, carry out naval bombardments and air raids at cities along the West Coast, and cause major damage in the initial battle to create an opportunity for reconciliation. However, the biggest issue was that Japan continued using the naval and diplomatic codes that had already been decrypted before the war. At the Battle of Midway, which took place in June 1942, the combined fleet’s codes had been deciphered and Japan ended up having to confront the new warships and aircraft carriers that avoided the attack on Pearl Harbor. As history shows, the Imperial Japanese Navy suffered severe losses, but it did not share this information with the army’s General Staff Headquarters. In fact, it boasted about the results of the battle. The army’s codes remained safe and it won a series of victories on mainland China, but the situation worsened afterwards due to the defeat in the Battle of Midway. These failures in information warfare are directly linked to Japan’s ultimate defeat in World War II.
Roosevelt ran once again due to the war emergency in 1944, when the U.S. was starting to believe that it could win the war against Japan. He successfully won a fourth term for the only time in American political history.
Looking at the global situation over the past few months, I believe we must recognize that a war has started between the U.S. and China. Modern warfare does not involve using weapons to steal control of the seas and air and occupy territory. Instead, viruses and biological weapons are utilized to ruin the enemy. The novel coronavirus – which is said to have been released from a biological weapons research lab in Wuhan, China – has spread across the world in the blink of an eye. As of August 2, there are 18,226,600 cases and 692,420 deaths around the globe. With these numbers, we can say we are in the midst of World War III.
It is curious that the deaths per one million people are 100 times larger in white countries than in yellow countries. The case fatality rates are also several times higher in white countries. According to the data from August 14, the countries with the top 10 numbers of deaths per one million people are Belgium (854), Peru (657), Spain (612), the UK (601), Italy (583), Chili (538), the U.S. (514), Brazil (496), France (465), and Mexico (423). Six of these are white, European/North American nations, while the other four are white/mixed-race countries in South America. In comparison, let us look at the deaths per one million people in three Asian countries: three in China (fatality rate of 5.5%), six in South Korea (2.1%), and eight in Japan (2.1%). I cannot fully abandon my suspicion that this virus was developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, using racial DNA differences to create a biological weapon that is 10 times more fatal for white people.
As of August 2, 158,365 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. This is 2.7 times greater than the number of American soldiers killed in the eight years of the Vietnam War, and also exceeds the number killed in action during World War I. Today the deaths among Japanese and South Korean people – who have similar DNA to Chinese people – are 100 times lower than this, but Japan would likely be in dire straits if future research made it possible to identify slight DNA differences in Japan and China, and develop a virus that is a biological weapon with a higher fatality rate in Japan.
In recent years, China is flagrantly taking expansionism-based actions with no regard for human rights. From one to two million people have been put into camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, simply because they might be Muslim Uyghurs. China is also harshly oppressing members of the Falun Gong, a new religious movement, by arresting them without warrants and sending them to concentration camps. People say that an organ harvesting business is underway; if it is confirmed that one of these prisoners matches with a patient who needs an organ, such as their blood type, the prisoner is executed at once to harvest and transplant their organs.
Hong Kong was handed over by the UK to China in 1997 with the condition of maintaining the “one country, two systems” principle for 50 years. However, China has broken this pledge in less than 25 years, half of the promised time. The Hong Kong national security law, which has jurisdiction over people in overseas countries like Japan and the U.S., was enacted this June. Many participants in the protests asking to maintain the “one country, two systems” principle have been arrested and detained.
DIAMOND online ran an article on August 5 entitled, “The U.S. Effectively Sends China a Declaration of War.” It said, “China is actually acting in ways that suggest it is trying to steal the Senkaku Islands” from Japan.
The article reads:
Rather than counting how many times China is intruding into our territorial waters, Japan should send a warning to vessels that violate these territorial waters. We should then sink any ships that do not abide by these warnings, which would likely prevent any further violations. In other words, China is a threat to Japan’s national security. We must warn ships and aircraft that are transgressing into our territorial waters and airspace and attack those that do not obey. This would prevent such intrusions in the future.
The question is, how will the U.S. deal with China? The American presidential election will take place this year, and right now public onion polls show that Democrat Joe Biden has a 15% lead over Trump. However, we cannot rely on these results because few Trump supporters honestly answer that they want him to win. I think Trump will use all of the inherent power of his current role with the aim of winning reelection. Around one month before the November election, I think the U.S. may take military action to overthrow President Xi Jinping, who is striving to become the emperor of China and has abolished the term limit of two terms (10 years) for chairman of the Communist Party of China. The U.S. would do this in such a way that China could not mount a counterattack. Specifically, I think the U.S. will attack a military base with an airstrip that China has willfully built by reclaiming reefs in the international waters of the South China Sea. Three hours before the attack, it will announce that personnel should evacuate. Then, it will use B-1 supersonic variable-sweep wing, strategic bombers and F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft (which are the strongest in the world) with ballistic missiles and other weapons to destroy the base, leaving no trace behind. This would win Trump the election by clearly showing he is a decisive and courageous president. Due to the attack, Xi would likely have to step down after the traditional limit of two terms (10 years) under pressure from senior party members.
China could not strike back if the U.S. attacked its base. Of course the international public opinion would be on the side of the U.S., even if it preemptively removed a base illegally built in international waters by China, which did not abide by the warning to remove the base. But more than anything, American military power is more than twice as strong as China’s. This used to be a difference of 50 or 100 times, but it steadily shrunk to 10 or five times, and presently the U.S. has about double the military power of China. China could not strike the U.S. today, but I think the two countries could be military rivals in the next few years, and that China could outstrip the U.S. at some point in the future. It is highly probable that Trump will decide now is the only time to take action.
Since the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was passed on June 30, the Trump administration has been stepping up its pressure on China. The U.S. sent two carrier strike groups to the South China Sea in July, centered on the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan. These include aircraft carriers and other defense vessels, namely carrier-based aircraft and multiple escort vessels in the skies, as well as nuclear attack submarines in the ocean. The movement of these two carrier strike groups signifies that the U.S. has moved from the phase of simple intimidation to war preparation. If there is just one aircraft carrier, bombing its deck means its airplanes have nowhere to return to after taking off. This is why two or more carriers are always dispatched when there is the chance of actual combat. I suspect that Xi feels very threatened right now. If Trump attacks China too quickly, his approval rating may actually fall, so he would likely take action one or two weeks before the election. Just like Roosevelt, presidents will start wars to win reelection. This applies to Trump as well, and I am confident that he will overcome his 15% lag and gain victory in the election.
August 15 (Saturday), 11:00 a.m.