Home Satire A Date That Will Live Forever in Infamy
Home Satire A Date That Will Live Forever in Infamy

A Date That Will Live Forever in Infamy

Naval Base Bombed, Shinto Worshipers Fear Backlash - New York Times - December 8 1941

A day after planes passed over their peaceful village on the way to attack the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, local fishermen are still picking up the pieces.

"I don't know what any of this is about," a man who would only give his name as Paji said, holding the remains of a net which he had used to earn a living. "All I know is that the killing has to stop."

In Washington, government officials urged the public to stay calm and not to jump to any conclusions warning that such reactions might play into the hands of the militant extremists responsible for the attack.

Early copies of President Roosevelt's upcoming speech to Congress likewise warn the American public of the dangers of overreaction.

"We are not at war with Japan," it says. "We are at war with a tiny handful of extremists who are attempting to drag the Japanese people into a conflict. But we must keep a cool head and not allow them to win by provoking a war. We will defeat this enemy, but we will do it by not fighting them."

A profile has emerged of at least one of these attackers. Hideki Nakamura, a graduate of Harvard and a talented oboe player, was shot down and captured. Nothing in his background, which included playing for the Harvard squash team, would have lead anyone to conclude that he was capable of such a thing.

KATANA, a local civil rights organization partly funded by Japan's war propaganda office, has warned that American foreign policy is responsible for the radicalization of such young men like Nakamura.

"What made this man hate America so much that he wanted to bomb it?" a spokeswoman for KATANA asked. "How did America fail him? And how can we win him back?"

Nakamura's guards have suggested that the pilot is soft-spoken and has pleasant manners, but that he becomes vocally exercised over the American embargo of Japan and the refusal of many universities to install rice paper doors in dormitories.

"Detaining Nakamura only inspires others to imitate him," KATANA said, suggesting that he instead be released back to Japan where the government is running an anti-extremism program at the Strategic Institute of War that claims to be able to deprogram extremists with a 97% success rate.

Unfortunately the program, dubbed KAMIKAZE, is unable to accommodate all potential extremists without additional foreign aid funding from the United States government.

"It's cheap for us to spend 3 million dollars fighting Japanese extremism by funding Kamikaze instead of spending 30 million on national defense," Senator Earl Hawkins said. "Studies show that one of the leading causes of anti-American sentiments is unemployment. KAMIKAZE is tackling that."

Foreign policy experts at the Center for American Progress warned that the so-called Pearl Harbor event was the product of decades of American expansionism.

"It's easy for the flag-waving jingoist in the stockyards to rave about the Japs, but this attack did not occur in a vacuum," Lester Gore-Vinton said. "Look at Commodore Perry's globalization venture and the Philippines War and our ill-advised intervention in the Russian Revolution. This is blowback."

At impromptu peace rallies in New York City's Union Square and San Francisco's Union Square, speakers called for the government to explore all options for peace. Many pointed out that more Americans die every year of shingles than were killed at Pearl Harbor.

"The United States is allied with Great Britain. We have been aiding the Western occupation of Asia," Earl Gorber of Working People Want Peace and a Living Wage Now said. "The only amazing thing is that it took this long to happen. As long as the United States continues propping up the reactionary imperialists of Great Britain against the progressive movements of the German and Japanese vanguard of the working class, attacks like these will come again and again." 

Some were skeptical that Japan had even been behind the attack.

"Anyone can paint insignia on a plane and drop some smoke bombs. That's all we've seen on these photos," Martha Gabbitz exclaimed. "There hasn't even been a declaration of war.  We don't have a single piece of undeniable proof that there was even an attack. All it takes is a week in a photo lab and the government can produce a picture of anything."

Meanwhile at Shinto temples in Los Angeles, the mood was fearful and subdued. Worshipers refused to give their names worried about the consequences to their families.

"This is madness," an older gentleman studying detailed charts of the California coastline said. "One day you're an All-American entrepreneur studying submarine trade routes to America and the next day everyone is glaring at you no matter how many American flags you stick on your aerial poison gas balloon."

In San Francisco, the 109-year-old Rev. Francis Wheatley-Simpson, famous for protesting every war, including the Civil War, had already declared a hunger strike, even though no American forces were engaged in fighting.

"War is never the answer," Wheatley-Simpson said, as he had said about WW1, the Spanish-
American War, the Civil War and the French and Indian War. "Love is the answer. Violence never solves anything. America was not built on war. It will not survive through war."

"It doesn't matter what Japan did. There will be war," predicted Mason Johnson, author of War is a Farce That Forces Us to Fear. "We love war. We are obsessed with war. That's why we have a society with such rampant criminality. Our idea of masculinity is to use force on everything. Even our national symbols represent violation and patriarchy. If it isn't Japan, it will be someone else."

Meanwhile on a Topeka street, Barnard Stevenson, an 18-year-old lad blinked in confusion when asked about Pearl Harbor. He likewise could not name Hitler or Mussolini and had no idea where Europe was. He was however able to name the stars of Rocket Assault, the latest big film in which a dashing reporter must team up with the enemy to stop his own government from provoking a war with a false flag attack.

"Is this anything kind of like that?" he wondered when the Pearl Harbor attack was explained to him.

Comments

  1. Anonymous7/12/15

    Brilliant!

    All that is missing is the Council for American Japanese Relations (CAJR - sounds like cadger) whining.

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  2. Common 'Tater8/12/15

    December 8, 1941 (paraphrased): FDR-We have been attacked by units of the Japanese Navy without a declaration of war. We will declare war on Japan! Were you planning on taking a vacation? Don't, our boys will need that gasoline. Were you planning on taking a trip? Don't, our boys will need those tires.

    September 12, 2011: (paraphrased) JWB-On 9/11 we were attacked by terrorists. We will declare war on terror. Were you planning on going shopping, go ahead! Were you planning on taking a trip, go ahead! If we stop shopping and tripping the terrorists will have won!

    And I am not a fan of FDR and his "progressive" socialist/leftist policies. At least he could identify the enemy and run a war.

    As for 12/2/2015, I cannot tell if the CinC thinks the people in San Bernardino died from gun violence (nasty, bad, violent gun, why did you do that?), workplace violence (the poor guy had to work in the same cubicle as a Jew or self-identified Jew, or at least someone that dressed like one), or climate change (The climate changed so much that two people's brains got fried and they became radicals).

    Maybe the County Health Dept. needed to have a safe and comfy zone so the offended worker was not forced to hear people say such offensive things as "Merry Christmas," or Allah forbid, "Happy Chanukah").

    By the way, from what I have run into on the internet, there appears to be a concerted effort to paint the murdered Messianic Jew as the instigator of the conflict and that he deserved to get capped. (The victim was admittedly not Jewish, but was a Christian and Gentile that had a conversion experience and joined a Messianic congregation).

    Great commentary Sultan, you really drew an interesting parallel to today's mindset, or lack of one.

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  3. Go to the political classes tweets against Donald Trump when he said he would ban muslim immigration.
    Hillary..Attacking Islam makes us more unsafe..
    O Malley Donald Trump is a fascist demagogue
    Cheney.. Banning muslims is against ever value we hold
    JEB! ..Divisive and Unamerican Donald Trump
    Little Ricky Rubio..We need unity and muslims are part of us
    Bernie ..The war on climate change is the real issue

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  4. Never mind the 18 year old on a Topeka street. If truth be told, if you showed the average college student this satire without calling it that, saying instead it was a report from the New York Times in 1941, he'd probably believe it was a true story. He would probably even ask: "Where's Topeka? Is that a kind of a country somewhere?"

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  5. Anonymous8/12/15

    Oh so circular. Things don't really ever change, do they?

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  6. I watch ABC only because they never used to piss me off as much as the rest, but yesterday they never mentioned Pearl Harbor on any local or national news that I could see on that network. I did see a story about some transgender psycho who killed him/herself about a year ago because mommy and daddy wouldn't go along him/her wanting to screw herself and neither would his/her classmates. They are destroying our history and trying to erase it. This entire thing is not going to end well in America. We are already a Third World country and when the silent majority has finally had enough, there will be chaos in America.

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  7. Start restoring America's democracy by changing the ballot, by giving voting rights only to those who contribute to society i.e. taxpayers.

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  8. This kind of defeatist, multiculti, PC attitude back then would have resulted in the alternative reality depicted in Amazon's new show, The Man in the High Castle. Well done, Daniel.

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  9. Nicely done. History does repeat itself if we don't learn from it. Many didn't learn from Pearl. The difference though between the Japanese then and ISIS now is we Nuked Japan and then rebuilt it and it kicked our ass in electronics for a long long time.

    Today Nuking ISIS would remove some of the problem, but this serpent has many heads and bodies all over the globe and even though we have the ordinance we can't go across the globe punching nuclear holes into this planet without universal repercussions.

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  10. Anonymous8/12/15

    Considering the rate at which mo´s reproduce themselves, to some it seems a safe bet to be pro diversity and inclusion in the hopes that when mo´s become the majority they will be spared. Fat chance guys, your head will roll too.
    Or at present, it could indirectly mean to attack just the “bad guys”, you know…

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  11. Odd how history repeats itself, ain't it.
    A shame that it's not taught in schools/universities anymore.

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. Sultan,

    I watched Obama give the First Oval Office Stand-up Satire Routine and if you did not know about the 7 years of prior fecklessness you would have almost thought he had turned a corner by just the mere mention of "terrorism" and "exceptionalism".

    Of course it was all couched in the usual liberal platitudes so it had as much impact as the global warming caused by the CO2 he created spewing it.

    Anyway good article. I fully expect it to be borrowed by the next Democratic administration when ISIS turns to using IEDs.

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  14. Anonymous9/12/15

    Liberals, effeminates as they are, fear islamists, fear the environmental damage that bombong them would generate, fear so many things. On the other hand, hard core leftists hate everyone in the west and then some more, they can hardly hide their admiration for these islamofreaks, yes the recent inventors of recreational mass murdering. Anyways both groups are encouraging the caliphate

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  15. Anonymous9/12/15

    "... and the next day everyone is glaring at you no matter how many American flags you stick on your aerial poison gas balloon."

    Just in case you had not heard of this part of US history, here is a link http://www.wired.com/2010/05/0505japanese-balloon-kills-oregon/
    The six were victims of Japan’s so-called Fu-Go or fire-balloon campaign. Carried aloft by 19,000 cubic feet of hydrogen and borne eastward by the jet stream, the balloons were designed to travel across the Pacific to North America, where they would drop incendiary devices or anti-personnel explosives.
    --Not an Oregonian

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  16. Anonymous10/12/15

    Eh ...who knew ...they were battling that fierce 'gloBull warming' back then too ...?

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  17. This is at least the third version of this parody based on 0bama's speech (so appropriately timed just before Dec. 7) that I've seen - American Thinker and the People's Cube have some excellent ones. One really can't help but assume that he is intentionally trying to make the U.S. into a joke.

    What I can't understand is why anyone thinks this is new for him. He did the exact same thing 7 years ago after Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood (and the death toll there would have been much greater if not for the heroism of a passing cop.) Anyone who didn't know what side 0bama was on then wasn't paying attention.

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  18. Thanks to Trump we now know all the moronic twits who don't have a clue to the danger of Islam. We know who to vote for and it's none of those idiots who attackedTrump.

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  19. Holy Cow, Daniel! This article seems so real in light of the Obama regime's denial of reality! In fact, I had to google parts of the paragraphs, just to make sure you're not quoting from an old NY times article!
    This is surreal, but oh so true in our scary days.

    ReplyDelete

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