Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus

At Amazon, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Tobias S. Harris, The Iconoclast

At Amazon, Tobias S. Harris, The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan.

Shinzo Abe Assassinated: Former Prime Minister Was Leader For a New, Stronger Japan (VIDEO)

Japan is largely a gun-free society, which makes Abe's assassination all the more confounding. I haven't seen anything yet, but it's unimaginable to me that a gunman could basically walk right up an murder a former prime minister.

The moment of the assassination is here, on YouTube, "Shinzo Abe shot: TV cameras capture attack on former PM and suspect's arrest."

At the Los Angeles Times, "Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan, assassinated at campaign event":

NARA, Japan — Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated Friday on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech — an attack that stunned a nation with some of the world’s strictest gun-control laws.

The 67-year-old Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving leader when he resigned in 2020, collapsed bleeding and was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Nara, although he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead after receiving massive blood transfusions, officials said.

Nara Medical University emergency department chief Hidetada Fukushima said Abe suffered major damage to his heart, along with two neck wounds that damaged an artery. He never regained his vital signs, Fukushima said.

Prefectural police in Nara arrested the suspect at the scene of the attack and identified him as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, a former member of Japan’s navy. Public broadcaster NHK reported that he said he wanted to kill Abe because he had complaints about him unrelated to politics.

Dramatic video from NHK showed Abe standing and giving a speech outside a train station in Nara ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election. As he raised his fist to make a point, two gunshots rang out, and he collapsed holding his chest, his shirt smeared with blood as security guards ran toward him.

Guards leapt onto the suspect, who was face down on the pavement. A double-barreled device that appeared to be a handmade gun was seen on the ground.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Cabinet ministers hastily returned to Tokyo from campaign events around the country after the shooting, which he called “dastardly and barbaric.” He pledged that the election, which chooses members for Japan’s less-powerful upper house of parliament, would go on as planned.

“I use the harshest words to condemn” the shooting, Kishida said, struggling to control his emotions. He said the government planned to review the security situation but added that Abe had the highest protection.

Even though he was out of office, Abe was still highly influential in the governing Liberal Democratic Party and headed its largest faction, Seiwakai.

Opposition leaders condemned the shooting as an attack on Japan’s democracy. In Tokyo, people stopped on the street to grab extra editions of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper or watch TV coverage of the shooting.

When he resigned as prime minister, Abe said he had a recurrence of the ulcerative colitis he’d had since he was a teenager. He told reporters at the time that it was “gut-wrenching” to leave many of his goals unfinished. He spoke of his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia and a revision of Japan’s war-renouncing constitution.

That last goal made him a divisive figure. His ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China, and his push to normalize Japan’s defense posture angered many Japanese. Abe failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support.

Loyalists said his legacy was a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship that was meant to bolster Japan’s defense capability. But Abe made enemies by forcing his defense goals and other contentious issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition.

Abe — who studied at USC for three semesters — was a political blue blood who was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs.

Many foreign officials expressed shock over the shooting — especially because of Japan’s strict gun laws.

With a population of 125 million, the country had only 10 gun-related criminal cases last year, which resulted in one death and four injuries, according to police. Eight of those cases were gang-related. Tokyo had no gun incidents, injuries or deaths in the same year, although 61 guns were seized...

Still more.

 

Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal

At Amazon, Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle.

E. B. Sledge: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

A classic, E. B. Sledge: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa — Frontline Marine Combat in Two of the Bloodiest Island Invasions of World War Two.

Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept

At Amazon, Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor.

Richard B. Frank Tower of Skulls

Richard Frank is stupendous. His earlier work, Guacalcanal, is essential reading for the Pacific War.

At Amazon, Richard B. Frank Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Volume I: July 1937-May 1942.

Olympic Games Losing Luster as Stars Struggle

At the Los Angeles Times, "A stormy 24 hours: Stars in unexpected trouble at increasingly turbulent Tokyo Olympics":

TOKYO — These Olympic Games were always walking a tightrope, right from the beginning, teetering on the edge of disaster. From the first positive coronavirus test, there were fears the COVID-19 pandemic might land scores of athletes in quarantine, maybe wipe out an entire event like the men’s 100-meter final.

From the first explosion of fireworks over an empty stadium during the opening ceremony, there were doubts that Tokyo could generate any real buzz without fans in the seats.

But the Games instead are troubled by a different problem. The mental stress that drove Simone Biles to abruptly withdraw from the women’s gymnastics team competition on Tuesday night underscored a more alarming trend.

These Olympics are losing their star power.

Biles was merely the latest marquee name to suffer misfortune in the last few days. American swimmer Katie Ledecky — another ostensible “Greatest of All Time” — finished second in her initial race and fifth in another, before winning a gold medal in her last race Tuesday. Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka, whose face adorns countless billboards and television commercials in this country, was bounced from the women’s draw in the third round.

“I’m disappointed in every loss,” Osaka said, “but I feel like this one sucks more than the others.”

There have been bright moments in Japan. The host nation got early gold from skateboarder Yuto Horigome — another highly publicized athlete here — and in sports such as judo and table tennis. Victories by 17-year-old Alaskan swimmer Lydia Jacoby and Carissa Moore in the inaugural surfing contest provided the American team with highlights.

“It was crazy,” Jacoby said after the surprising 100-meter breaststroke. “I knew I had it in me, but I wasn’t really expecting a gold medal.”

Still, the list of disappointments has run considerably longer.

Two-time Wimbledon champion Andy Murray of Britain withdrew from singles, deciding to give his body a rest by playing only doubles. Positive coronavirus tests derailed Jon Rahm of Spain, the world’s top-ranked golfer, and Bryson DeChambeau of the U.S., ranked No. 6, before the start of play.

The powerhouse U.S. women’s soccer team has looked shaky, barely escaping pool play with a 0-0 draw against Australia, and the men’s basketball team, stocked with NBA talent, hasn’t played any better.

“I think that’s a little bit of hubris if you think the Americans are supposed to just roll out the ball and win,” Coach Gregg Popovich said...

Still more.

 

Japan Olympics Diversity

Japan's population is 98 percent Nihon. For reasons of ethnic chauvinism, fear of the outer world (like the U.S. and Commodore Perry's expeditions to that country in 1853-1855), or outright racism, it's unreasonable to expect much "diversity" to be coming to that nation's shores anytime soon.

Frankly, given the above, I'm not sure what's the purpose of this article. *Shrug.*

At LAT, "Tokyo Olympics: Diverse faces are representing Japan. Does it reflect real change?":

TOKYO — With millions around the world watching, Rui Hachimura walked onto the gleaming white floor of Japan’s Olympic Stadium on Friday waving the country’s red-and-white flag.

The 6-foot-8 Washington Wizards forward with a Japanese mother and Beninese father led his nation’s athletes in procession, a beaming smile peeking out of the sides of his face mask. Towering 20 inches over his fellow flag bearer, wrestler Yui Susaki, the 23-year-old’s careful steps signaled a changing face of Japan.

But in an unpopular Games, echoing with protests outside the largely empty Tokyo stadium, the discontent and ire over the influx of foreign visitors in the midst of a pandemic threatened to overshadow the inclusive image Japan had intended with Hachimura.

Even apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, the years and months leading up to the Games have been marked by a series of disappointments over promises to highlight diversity. The planet’s biggest sporting event has been troubled by high-profile resignations following scandals involving sexist and discriminatory remarks. The Olympic moment will come and go with neither a highly anticipated new anti-discrimination law nor immigration policies that reflect Japan’s fast-changing needs and norms.

It has left a conflicted feeling for Japanese like Hachimura or tennis great Naomi Osaka, who lighted the Olympic torch capping Friday’s ceremony, who haven’t always felt accepted. Some Japanese cling to notions of ethnic and cultural homogeneity even as the country needs young people to replace the world’s fastest-aging population. Though cities like Tokyo have become more cosmopolitan over the last half century, only 2% of babies born in Japan have at least one foreign parent.

Athletes like Hachimura are “one of the few people that can bring major changes for us,” said Alonzo Omotegawa, who has a Japanese mother and Bahamian father and has lived in the Tokyo area his entire life. Yet he has been repeatedly told: You are not Japanese.

The 25-year-old English teacher said he questions whether Hachimura’s popularity and symbolism will be enough to stifle the discrimination he faces on a daily basis — change the minds of landlords who refuse to rent to him because of his skin color, children who ask if it will wash off or police who stop and search him without a warrant, saying people with dreadlocks like him “tend to carry drugs.”

“The country is only on our side when it wants to be,” he said.

Organizers devoted a chapter of Friday night’s opening ceremony to a performance featuring children of diverse ethnic backgrounds assembling the Tokyo Olympics emblem. For months, the slogan “Unity in Diversity” had been pasted on posters around the city, projecting at least for the international media that this nation of 126 million was pledging to become more nuanced and accepting.

At the same time, the pandemic, as it has elsewhere, has brought out in Japan suspicion of those who look different, and a fear they may bring danger. That unease has been amplified in recent days as tens of thousands of athletes and others from around the globe have filtered into a nation that had kept its borders heavily restricted, even keeping out many foreign expats who’d long called Japan home.

Gracia Liu-Farrer, a sociologist at Tokyo’s Waseda University who studies migration and inequality in Japan, said of the Olympics: “It’s ironic. It’s not a moment of change but a moment of almost intensification of xenophobia because of this global health crisis.”

Even so, she said, the international attention around the Olympics has led to soul-searching and introspection over discriminatory opinions and remarks that may have previously gone unchallenged. The week before the opening ceremony, a director who’d made a Holocaust joke years ago and a composer who admitted to once bullying disabled classmates stepped down from their roles...

 Still more.

Yesterday Was the 75 Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima

I didn't blog yesterday --- I was binge watching "Game of Thrones" --- but in what news I did follow yesterday I didn't see anything about the August 6, 1945. Last week I watched a History Channel segment on the aftermath of Hiroshima on Nagasaki. The U.S. sent American scientists to study the effects of radiation on the two leveled cities. I think young people today have no idea of the kind of human destruction possible with the invention of the atom bomb. When you get pulled back into that history and historical debate over justifications and "never again," it's just extremely fascinating.

In any case, here's a cool thread from Foreign Affairs:

“August 6, 1945, will remain forever a milestone in human annals. On that date the world’s first atomic fission bomb was dropped upon Japan,” the military correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin wrote in our October 1945 issue.https://t.co/2bm5UAvf6h

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

The detonation of atomic bombs in Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 devastated both cities, killing tens of thousands of people in the initial blasts alone. In the 75 years since, avoiding the use of nuclear weapons in war has preoccupied generations of policymakers.

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

In our July 1953 issue, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the project to develop the bombs used in World War II, wrote about the existential danger of the era of nuclear war:https://t.co/qKo6IfX4ZQ

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

In April 1956, Henry Kissinger considered how the bomb had transformed notions of war and peace, and what that meant for Cold War policy:https://t.co/46Pmz7nCdg

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

In January 1957, U.S. Army historian Louis Morton examined the deliberations that went into the decision to use the bomb:https://t.co/YaFl9QJr8Y

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

In summer 1983, the physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, who participated in the Soviet Union’s atomic bomb project, advocated for disarmament: https://t.co/BGiB9k8rJF

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

No nuclear weapon has been used in war for 75 years—“the single most important accomplishment of the nuclear age,” according to Nina Tannenwald. But the norms and institutions of nuclear restraint are unraveling.https://t.co/qkzgqQDlSi

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

The next 75 years are not guaranteed. As Ernest J. Moniz and Sam Nunn write, catastrophe “has become disturbingly plausible . . . all that is needed is a spark to light the tinder.”https://t.co/yidPdgc3tG

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) August 6, 2020

John C. McManus, Fire and Fortitude

John C. McManus, Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943.

John Dower, Embracing Defeat

At Amazon, John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.

Chalmers A. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle

At Amazon, Chalmers A. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975.

John Toland, The Rising Sun

At Amazon, John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945.

Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept

At Amazon, Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor.

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Min Jin Lee, Pachinko.

Doesn't Kim Jong Un Understand 'Suicidal'?

If Kim wants to play gamesmanship, I think the U.S. should show him who's boss.

At the Asia Times, "North Korea: Doesn’t Kim Jong Un understand ‘suicidal’?":

American officials and commentators often say it will be “suicide” if Kim Jong Un tries something. That something is usually unclear but at the rate Kim is launching missiles he appears to think he’s got plenty of leeway before he does something suicidal.

The North Koreans wouldn’t be the first to miscalculate what suicidal is.

It was suicidal for the Japanese to attack the Americans and British in 1941, in retrospect, at least. But at the time, it seemed like a reasonable idea.

It was suicidal for Hitler to attack Russia, especially when over half the German invasion force’s transport was horse-drawn. But at the time it didn’t seem so.

The United States invading Iraq without a plan for what to do once Baghdad was captured? It might not have been suicidal, but was at least the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building onto an asphalt parking lot, repeatedly.

So consider things from Kim’s perspective as he looks over the last 30 years. No matter what he and his father and grandfather did they’ve never been painfully punished.

At various times, the Americans, Japanese, South Koreans and others have given the Kim’s food, money, oil, and atomic reactors – all in exchange for a promise to talk or behave better. Keeping the promises was optional.

And when the Kim regime has acted out – blowing up the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon, torpedoing a South Korean Navy ship, kidnapping Japanese citizens, launching missiles, building and testing nuclear weapons, poisoning a half-brother in broad daylight in a crowded airport terminal?

Why … nothing much happened.

After the South Korean vessel was sunk the Americans even pressured Seoul to do nothing. And China helpfully insisted at the UN that it was unclear who fired the torpedo.

China – the one country that can economically “turn off” North Korea – has kept the Kim’s afloat, protected them politically, and helped with their nuclear and missile programs.

This continues and includes pressuring South Korea over its THAAD missile defense system and strong-arming South Korean companies operating in China. But it’s not just Beijing.

The Kim regime maintains a gulag that a Korean Solzhenitsyn will someday write about. Yet 164 nations have diplomatic relations with North Korea.

And a number of them accept North Korean “forced” labor and allow the regime’s licit and illicit money making operations to continue.

The United States has had a curious approach towards North Korea. It maintains military forces on the peninsular and is committed to defending South Korea – while often displaying naivety and incompetence on the diplomatic front...

Still more.

And at Politico, "Trump threatens to 'stop all trade' with any country doing business with North Korea."

J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan.

Hiroshima Day: 72 Years Since U.S. Dropped Atomic Bomb on Japan

Here's Michael Beschloss below, on Twitter.

Also, at the New York Times (FWIW), "The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima - Daily 360 video: Through modeling and mapping technologies, witness from above the attack on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945."

Hiroshima, today 1945: #NARA pic.twitter.com/iEmTZ4TDuO

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 6, 2017

Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War

At Amazon, Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941.