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Once upon a time, there lived a king who had sincerely loved a country called Japan. Falling in blind love with Japan, he decided to satisfy its desire to exploit the neighboring Korean peninsula. Their inappropriate affairs had been ceaseless. In the end, Japan was allowed to own the naive Hermit Kingdom, which was cold-heartedly dumped by the king. Unfortunately, the king's crafty love turned out a false illusion due to the partner's betrayal. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. The great king was no less than a person than President Theodore Roosevelt who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1907.
Too sad, embarrassing! Don't take the story for a fairy tale. It's just what I had to improvise, upon reading the James Bradley's article 'Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy', which tells us a hidden history we have not totally noticed for about a century.
=Facts from the article=
• "The Japanese were a wonderful and civilized people entitled to stand on an absolute equality with all the other peoples of the civilized world.” from Theodore Roosevelt
• Back in 1900, Roosevelt had written, “I should like to see Japan have Korea.” When, in February 1904, Japan broke off relations with Russia, President Roosevelt said publicly that he would “maintain the strictest neutrality,” but privately he wrote, “The sympathies of the United States are entirely on Japan’s side.”
• To signal his commitment to Tokyo, Roosevelt cut off relations with Korea, turned the American legation in Seoul over to the Japanese military and deleted the word “Korea” from the State Department’s Record of Foreign Relations and placed it under the heading of “Japan.”
• Theodore Roosevelt, confident that he could influence events in North Asia from afar, wrote to his son, “I was thoroughly well pleased with the Japanese victory, for Japan is playing our game.”
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"History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." ~James Joyce, Ulysses
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