Barack Obama: I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.”
“There is no Substitute for Victory” General Douglas MacArthur
Note to Obama: Hirohito did not come down to the Battleship Missouri and sign anything! Rachel Abrams at Weekly Standard Blog points out today:
Apparently your grandfather wasn’t there for the Japanese surrender, and thus didn’t take you on his knee when you were a child to teach you all about it. So here’s a little history lesson: See that guy in the picture signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board the USS Missouri? Well, he’s not the Emperor Hirohito, he’s Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, (see photo below)
My opinion: Any Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces who sends our military into war without a clear goal of, and mandate for, “victory” should be removed and impeached! This is a stab in the back to our military who are drilled and taught that their objective is to defeat the enemy and achieve “victory”.
Wagner Todd Huston at NewsBusters writes today:
It is telling that when Barack Obama pictures “victory” he doesn’t see in his head that famous photo of the U.S. Sailor kissing the pretty girl in Times Square on Victory Day. Instead, what is immediately conjured up in Obama’s mind is the bedraggled figure of a beaten Japanese Emperor groveling at the feet of U.S. military might.
Obama’s sympathy seems to be with the Emperor that governed a nation that tried to viciously take over the entire Pacific Rim and enslave many millions of Asian peoples. It is hard to escape the feeling that Obama’s first thought when the word “victory” is broached is of our enemy, his sympathies with them, not us.
Japanese Surrender Party, Hirohito Not Present!
Identification of personages in the Japanese Delegation on the Battleship Missoure:
Surrender of Japan, Tokyo Bay, 2 September 1945
Japanese representatives on board USS Missouri (BB-63) during the surrender ceremonies, 2 September 1945.
Standing in front are:
Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu (wearing top hat) and General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff.
Behind them are three representatives each of the Foreign Ministry, the Army and the Navy. They include, in middle row, left to right:
Major General Yatsuji Nagai, Army;
Katsuo Okazaki, Foreign Ministry;
Rear Admiral Tadatoshi Tomioka, Navy;
Toshikazu Kase, Foreign Ministry, and
Lieutenant General Suichi Miyakazi, Army.
In the the back row, left to right (not all are visible):
Rear Admiral Ichiro Yokoyama, Navy;
Saburo Ota, Foreign Ministry;
Captain Katsuo Shiba, Navy, and
Colonel Kaziyi Sugita, Army.
(Identities those in second and third rows are from an annotated photograph in Naval Historical Center files.)
Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives.
Tags: barack hussein obama, douglas macarthur, hirohito, impeach obama, japanese surrender, no substitute victory, obama commander in chief, obama muffs history, obama no victory, taliban, victory afghanistan, ww ii
August 2, 2009 at 10:05 am |
> a clear goal of, and mandate for, “victory””
I agree, which is why I have opposed every war since WW2. That was the last war with an achievable goal.
Since Korea, they have all been “political” wars with no militarily achievable goal. Korea, which had an achievable goal, ended up an armistice; we lost Viet Nam and no dominos fell; and I think when we leave Iraq, it too will collapse, and the Taliban will retake Afghanbistan when we leave too.
Today, it is all too true that war is politics by other means. And we know what politics is full of.
June 29, 2010 at 1:01 pm |
[...] was the Japanese Foreign Minister who surrendered to MacArthur. Hirohito was nowhere to be seen on that aircraft carrier [...]