Category Archives: U.S.

by Joel | 3 October 2026 · 5:11 am

Japan’s Diplomacy Fails, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 47-48:

With the German military successes in Europe since the spring of 1940, the call for solidifying Japan’s ties with Germany resurfaced. Still believing that a fascist alliance would be a mistake, Navy Minister Yoshida Zengo, in the autumn of 1940, opposed the signing of an Axis pact with such vehemence that a heart condition (but some also speculate a failed suicide attempt) landed him in the hospital, forcing him to resign right before the German negotiators arrived in Tokyo. Without Yoshida, and with more and more admirers of Germany in their midst (owing in no small part to the initial blitzkrieg successes), the navy agreed to support the pact, as long as it was explicit that Japan would not automatically be required to participate in a German war with the United States. (For falling in line with the government and army preferences, the navy was promised a bigger budget.) A new era of Japanese diplomacy had begun.

In early 1941, rumors of war began to circulate within Tokyo’s diplomatic community. The deteriorating relations with Japan prompted the United States to start bringing back home family members of the U.S. embassy personnel stationed in Japan. An American school in Tokyo was forced to announce its closure in February, just as a major publisher released a book predicting and analyzing a hypothetical Japanese-American war (won by Japan, naturally), which sold fifty-three thousand copies in one month.

Japan’s relations with Britain, too, had been strained of late. Traditionally, the British attitude toward Japan had been one of pragmatism and conciliation. In July 1939, the two countries had reached the Arita-Craigie Agreement, signed by Foreign Minister Arita Hachiro and British ambassador Sir Robert Craigie: Britain had agreed to neither actively resist nor legally recognize Japanese conduct in China. One year after that agreement, in July 1940, Britain conceded to Japan’s request to close the Burma Road, a vital supply route for the transportation of materials to Chiang Kai-shek. But Japan’s occupation of northern Indochina finally prompted Britain to abandon its appeasement policy. In December 1940, Britain agreed to lend £10 million to the Guomindang and to reopen the Burma Road. And in the north, one shouldn’t forget, lurked the Soviet Union, with its threat of Bolshevism. Japan started 1941 facing more enemies than it was ever prepared to handle.

For the Japanese people, 1941 was a year of less and less food and fuel. The struggling epicurean Kafu, who had developed an overwhelmingly carnivorous appetite during his long stays in the United States and France, was always ready to pay a good price for a good meal. But even he had tremendous problems. “Compared to half a year ago,” he complained that spring, “the quality of meat and vegetables has declined drastically.” This was only the beginning. Within a few months, he would write: “I have not seen any vegetables or fruit for the past few days. Tofu isn’t sold, either. People are feeling distressed.” Even a gourmet grocer in the fashionable Ginza district, famous for its pampered fruits (the shiniest apples wrapped in delicate washi paper, fragrant melons sold in individual wooden boxes, and the like), did not have anything to sell, except for a few measly peaches. As for the meat that Kafu so craved: “No beef to be seen anywhere.” And for cooking and heating, citizens had to make do with charcoal, since petroleum and coal were reserved for military use. Public buses ran on charcoal, and those resources were beginning to get scarce.

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Filed under Britain, China, economics, energy, food, Germany, Japan, military, U.S., USSR, war

by Joel | 2 October 2026 · 4:47 am

Japan Celebrates, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 20-21, 24:

In the early-morning hours of a frosty day, December 8, 1941, the Japanese nation woke to astonishing news. It was announced, shortly after seven, that Japan had “entered into a situation of war with the United States and Britain in the Western Pacific before dawn.” Though no specifics were given, by then the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, had been successfully attacked—the first wave of planes was dispatched at 1:30 a.m., Japanese time, and the surprise operation was completed by 5:30 a.m. When news of the attack arrived at 11:30 a.m., the nation was electrified. This was soon followed by Japan’s formal declaration of war on the Allies and the report of its further military successes in British Malaya and Hong Kong. (The Malayan operation actually preceded the Pacific offensive by almost two hours.) Throughout the day, the public broadcasting network, NHK, aired twelve special news reports in addition to six regularly scheduled ones for the millions of Japanese glued to their radios. On what, because of the time difference, had been December 7 in Hawaii, the air force division of the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk or damaged numerous ships, aircraft, and military facilities. About twenty-four hundred people were killed in the raid or died shortly afterward from their injuries. The devastating attack was carried out without a formal termination of diplomatic relations by Japan, let alone a declaration of war, a heavy, infamous legacy for the nation. But such tactical details did not interest ordinary Japanese citizens on December 8. The immediate public reaction was one of celebration.

When Japan sent planes to attack Pearl Harbor, it was mired in economic and political uncertainties. A sense of helplessness pervaded its population as the state took more and more control of public life. From the beginning of Japan’s war with China in mid-1937, its people were led to believe a swift, decisive victory was imminent. Despite all the announcements of Japanese victories in China, however, the Guomindang (a.k.a. Kuomintang, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party) leader Chiang Kai-shek was not about to give up. Similar to Napoleon’s army in Russia, the Japanese forces were drawn far too deep into harsh, unfamiliar terrain to carry out an effective operation. The jingoistic tone of Japan’s media coverage continued regardless, but people were privately beginning to question why the war had not ended. Though largely ignorant of the true state of Japanese diplomacy, they had been told that Nomura Kichisaburo, a navy admiral and former foreign minister, had been dispatched to Washington, D.C., in early 1941 to negotiate a peaceful solution to Japan’s international isolation. But no good news was forthcoming, and its absence made people fearful. Many knew the United States was upset over recent Japanese initiatives—such as allying with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and occupying first northern and then southern French Indochina—and seemed intent, unless a diplomatic settlement could be reached soon, on crippling Japan with economic sanctions.

…

But December 8, 1941, changed everything. The gloom of the national impasse that had arisen over the past couple of years turned almost instantly into euphoria as most Japanese cheered the successful attack. A man who was a second grader at the time of the attack, whose father owned a radio shop in Tokyo, recalled his surprise at the sight of a long line forming in front of his father’s store. People were waiting to get their radio sets repaired, in anticipation of more special government announcements. He never saw his father do so much business in one day before or after.

There was very little of the famous Japanese reserve. Strangers congratulated each other on the street. Others gathered at the public square outside the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo, falling to the ground and thanking the emperor for his divine guidance of their nation. Aboard an overcrowded train that evening, the diarist Kafu detachedly observed “a fellow making speeches in shrill voice,” apparently unable to contain his excitement over the day’s news. This outpouring of emotion stood in stark contrast to the many contrived victory celebrations orchestrated by the government over the previous few years in an effort to rouse support for its lingering war in China.

Men of letters were not immune to the Pearl Harbor spell. One of the most distinguished poets of twentieth-century Japan, Saito Mokichi, fifty-nine at the time, recorded in his diary: “The red blood of my old age is now bursting with life! … Hawaii has been attacked!” The thirty-six-year-old novelist Ito Sei wrote in his journal: “A fine deed. The Japanese tactic wonderfully resembles the one employed in the Russo-Japanese War.” Indeed, that war started with Japan’s surprise attack on Russian ships in Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, two days before Japan’s formal declaration of war. Japan won that war.

Even those Japanese who had previously disapproved of their country’s expansionism in Asia were excited by Japan’s war with the West. In an instant, the official claim, gradually adopted by the Japanese government over the preceding decade, of liberating Asia from Western encroachment gained legitimacy in their eyes. Until then, the innately self-contradictory nature of fighting an anti-imperialist war for Asia against fellow Asians in China had tormented them.

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Filed under China, economics, France, Germany, Hawai'i, Italy, Japan, military, nationalism, Southeast Asia, U.S., USSR, war

by Joel | 6 September 2026 · 5:53 am

First European Views of the Marianas

From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle p. 242:

The first Spaniards reaching the remote Marianas islands noted how tall and fit they were, and recent examination of remains suggests they had a life expectancy of 44 years, much higher than in Europe at the time. The islands had been settled some 3,000 earlier, from either Luzon or Sulawesi, and had typical Austronesian characteristics such as a matrilineal system, weaving skills and megaliths known as latte stones, and a language, Chamorro, roughly comprehensible to Ferdinand Magellan’s Malay interpreter. Magellan (in Portuguese ‘Fernão Magalhães’, in Spanish ‘Fernando Magallanes’) was so impressed with their sailing skills that he called them the ‘Islas de Velas Latinas’ (‘Isles of the Lateen Sails’) after their small but remarkably agile sailing craft. The late sixteenth century Spanish document known as the Boxer Codex noted that their lateen sails were made of waxen palm leaves of many colours and designs. The boats could sail very fast whatever the wind strength and direction. The people were described as ‘thickset with large and stout limbs […] larger than we are’. They had a ‘pleasant appearance’ apart from filed teeth and widespread yaws – a disfiguring but not fatal skin disease common in the tropics. However, less appreciative Spaniards called them the ‘Islas Ladrones’ (‘Robber Islands’) on account of their sense of communal possession, a name which lingered long after they were renamed Marianas in 1668 after Mariana, widow of Spain’s King Philip IV. They are now divided as Guam, the largest, which is an unincorporated US territory, and the Northern Marianas, a US-dependent Commonwealth.

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Filed under labor, language, Micronesia, migration, Philippines, Portugal, Southeast Asia, Spain, U.S.

by Joel | 19 August 2026 · 9:21 am

Migration into Mindanao

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 183-187:

The island of Mindanao is the most misunderstood part of the nation. Decades of on and off conflict in its Muslim region has long stolen the headlines. Under President Duterte, this provided an excuse for declaring martial law over the whole island. The reality is that for decades the island proved a land of opportunity for hundreds of thousands who moved from over-populated islands, mostly the Visayas, to the relatively underpopulated Mindanao…. Movement from the Visayas to Mindanao long pre-dates the Spanish.

…

The big boost to settlement came with the Commonwealth government, President Quezon recognizing the agricultural and forestry potential of the region as a way to underpin the national economy and raise the Christian population to counterbalance the Moros.

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The big boost to settlement came with the Commonwealth government, President Quezon recognizing the agricultural and forestry potential of the region as a way to underpin the national economy and raise the Christian population to counterbalance the Moros.

…

The Davao region, meanwhile, had attracted large numbers of Japanese to develop timber and plantation industries and Davao city was on its way to becoming the largest in Mindanao, with far more Japanese than Americans. Japanese ran shops, restaurants, fish canneries and export enterprises, often with sleeping Filipino partners to get around alien laws. The 1930s Japanese-led developments were key to making Davao the premier city of the island that it soon became. Although many Japanese left in 1945, their lands and enterprises were quickly taken over by immigrants from the Visayas and Luzon.

…

The scale of the internal colonization after 1935 was only partly a result of colonial rule or the Quezon initiatives. The underlying demographic driver was that because of improved government in the late Spanish period, and the impact of the US on public health, the population in the Visayas and Luzon in particular grew exceptionally fast. The people of Mindanao had far more land than they were able to occupy and cultivate.

…

Worst off have been the Surigao provinces where few benefit from mining and forest wealth. The Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines (PICOP) once employed more than 10,000 people in and around Bislig on the coast of Surigao del Sur. At its peak it was the biggest pulp and paper operation in Asia.

…

Caraga encapsulates many of the problems of the wider nation. In theory, it is endowed with great forests, well-watered lowlands and lakes, a variety of mineral deposits, a coastline which offers opportunities for fisheries, and beaches and scenery to lure tourists. The regional capital, Butuan, is the oldest identifiable city in the country, dating back more than 1,000 years and with trading links to Java and China. In recent times, however, Butuan has been overshadowed by the growth not only of Davao City but also Cagayan de Oro to the west.

…

One large mining company, Nickel Asia, operates modern mines but much mining is small- to medium-scale and uncontrolled, raising little if any revenue for the government while polluting rivers and lakes.

Well, this will have to be my last post from this book, since I’ve nearly reached the publisher’s limit for copying. (I appreciate the warnings when I hit 80% of the limit.) The book has a fair number of little proofreading errors, and navigation to the helpful maps on the Kindle often drops you back into the Table of Contents. But the author covers a wide range of topics in great detail.

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Filed under economics, industry, Japan, language, migration, military, Philippines, religion, U.S.

by Joel | 13 August 2026 · 5:56 am

Magsaysay Era in the Philippines

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 60-62:

Magsaysay was dynamic, reorganizing and enlarging the army, improving discipline and reducing corruption. He exuded a man of the people image, meeting peasants and joining troops on operations. His close links to the US was not an issue for most Filipinos, Huk-leaning peasants included, who were still grateful to The US for helping rid them of the Japanese. He acknowledged peasant grievances and talked of land reform, increased crop shares and offers of free land in Mindanao. Copious US funds brought clinics, roads and services to poor villages. Lansdale was a behind campaigns to discredit the Huks, frighten their peasant supporters with psywar propaganda and use money and the media to highlight the positive. Those measures were at least as important as the military ones. Gradually, the tide turned against the rebellion which remained focused on Central Luzon despite Huk efforts to develop movements in Bicol, the Visayas and Mindanao.

By the time Magsaysay became president, the Huks were weakening, their forest camps threatened by Magsaysay’s troops. They were short of arms and divided ideologically between urban mostly well-born idealist Communists, several of whom were arrested, including the party boss, Jose Lava, as well as Taruc and his men in the field. Many peasants felt they had been heard and that conditions were being ameliorated. The rebellion faded, particularly after Taruc’s surrender following negotiations with Magsaysay’s envoy and a young well-connected journalist, Benigno Aquino Jr. The son of a leading collaborator he was to use the resulting fame to propel his own political ambitions.

Magsaysay was very much America’s man in foreign policy, the Manila Conference of 1954 creating the South East Asia Treaty Organization – a US-led anti-Communist alliance. He also declined to join such giants of anti-colonialism as Nehru, Nasser and Sukarno at the Afro-Asian Bandung Conference in 1955, though he did agree to send foreign secretary Carlos Romulo. Magsaysay’s clout in Washington enabled the nation to re-visit some of the provisions of the odious 1946 Trade Act. Jose Laurel represented the Philippines in negotiating what was known as the 1955 Laurel-Langley Agreement. This freed the Philippines to set its exchange rate against the US dollar and significantly improved trade access to the US through preferential tariffs and quotas. In particular, it benefitted sugar producers now able to sell in the US at a higher price than the world market. Parity rights for Americans were maintained but the Agreement was to expire in 1974. Also in 1955, the Philippines finally reached a reparations agreement with Japan, providing $550 million and a promise of another $250 million in private sector investment.

The flow of US money was the first key to a rapid recovery of the economy, even if it was mostly evident in Manila and a few other cities. Japanese reparations followed with private US investment arriving to take advantage of its privileges. The nation was seen as the most likely to prosper in the region because of its mix of education, access to the US and relatively stable political outlook. Indeed, from 1950, when its GDP per head was already higher than Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Thailand, it had the region’s highest annual GDP growth rate of 6.5 per cent.

Magsaysay died in a plane crash in Cebu in March 1957 and was automatically succeeded by Vice-President Carlos Garcia. He had served as Foreign Secretary under Magsaysay and was identified as a pro-American anti-communist, chairing the 1954 Manila Conference which saw the creation of the South East Asia Treaty Organization. One of his first acts in office was to sign a law making the Communist Party illegal, but in other respects he was a staunch nationalist who resented foreign commercial domination, a reference to the local Chinese as well as to the US interests. Garcia was elected President in late 1957 as a Nacionalista with 41 per cent in an election with several prominent candidates, but his running mate, Jose Laurel, the son of the president appointed by Japan, lost the vice-presidency to Diosdado Macapagal of the main opposition Liberal party. The Nacionalistas controlled Congress, with a representative from Ilocos, Ferdinand Marcos, as the minority leader.

…

The creation of an indigenous capitalist class was a natural goal and one pursued elsewhere in Asia. However, it rested on three pillars: one was the landowning elite who used their resources, wealth and political clout to expand their economic role but were not natural entrepreneurs; the second was the Chinese who, evading laws to deter them, managed the shift from middle-man role to into newer manufacturing industries; the third was the state, supposedly in command but without institutional roots, short of funds and at the beck and call of politicians and rent seekers. The policies did have the effect of bringing more local investment into protected manufacturing. The anti-Chinese Retail Nationalization Act in the longer run helped the Chinese by forcing them out of retailing into manufacturing, whose percentage of GDP rose from 10.7 per cent in 1948 to 17 per cent in 1960.

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Filed under China, democracy, economics, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, Philippines, U.S.

by Joel | 12 August 2026 · 2:13 pm

Philippines Under Japan

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 51-54:

At least initially, few of the elite saw reason to confront the Japanese. A majority of senators joined the Executive Commission; others kept a low profile. A few were enthusiastic, including Laurel who admired Japanese order and devotion to the nation. Laurel could reasonably claim that some cooperation with Japan was necessary for the good of the people. Accepting the Presidency of the supposedly independent republic, however, was another matter given that the elected president and vice-president had a government-in-exile in Washington.

Another key collaborator was Benigno Aquino, a lawyer and landowner from Tarlac, who had been Secretary for Agriculture under Quezon. The Japanese made Aquino head of a new appointed assembly, known by the acronym Kalibapi (the Association for Service to the New Philippines). Also banging the drum for Japan was the MaKaPili, the Patriotic Society of Filipinos, led by former Sakdal leader Benigno Ramos. Former revolutionary general, Artemio Ricarte, who had always refused allegiance to the US, returned in late 1944 after thirty years in exile in Hong Kong and then Japan. Even Emilio Aguinaldo resurfaced, urging close cooperation with Japan.

Spanish citizens, who were still numerous and influential as priests or from the old elite, were divided. Many had supported the Falangists during the Spanish Civil War and were thus prone to be sympathetic to Japan, but Andres Soriano of the giant A. Soriano Corporation stuck with Quezon as a member of his cabinet even though he had been the local leader of Spain’s Falangists. Others played an equivocal role. Manuel Roxas, who Quezon originally favoured as vice-president over Osmena, was captured by the Japanese and became an adviser to Laurel. The Japanese hoped to make him president in 1943 rather than Laurel but he declined. Late in the war Roxas may have provided intelligence to the Americans.

Whatever its notion of Asia for Asians, the occupation had several problems which fed on each other. The first was the arrogant and often brutal behaviour of the Japanese military for whom easy-going Filipino ways were alien. There was also a demand for comfort women for the soldiery, for which there was little local consent. Second was the quest for raw materials by Japan, combined with the inevitable shortages of a wartime economy shorn of foreign trade. The Japanese needed local resources to feed a 400,000-man army in the Philippines. Food shortages and unemployment were caused by Japanese demands for materials and the collapse of export industries which had been focused on the US market. A third factor was that antipathy towards the Americans was found more among the elite than lower down the social order where the US was associated with progress and aspiration. In exile, Quezon and Osmena provided a focus for resistance, there was pride in the Filipinos’ sacrifices in Bataan, and before long an expectation that the Americans would return.

Guerrilla activity developed, in many cases led by former soldiers, and provided some support brought by American submarines. As only Americans could defeat the Japanese, many Filipinos now longed for their return, past sins forgiven. They provided information and help to the Americans while appearing to be loyal to the puppet government. As resistance grew, so did reprisals and fear of the kempeitai, the Japanese military police. Disorder reigned too with some supposedly anti-Japanese activity becoming a cover for settling feuds between rival families. The resistance spawned many heroes but also, in the aftermath, many bogus claims to it. The most significant resistance, at least in the longer term, was provided by the Hukbong Bayan Laban na Hapon – the People’s Anti-Japanese Army – or Huks in Central Luzon, heart of rice and sugar cultivation, and of big haciendas. Feudal and paternalist tenancy systems, which at least provided stability for families, had been significantly replaced by sharecropping and small farmers, reduced by debt, into becoming wage labourers. As anti-landlord as it was anti-Japanese, some of the movement’s leaders drew inspiration from Mao Zedong. The movement was headed by Luis Taruc, a protégé of early nationalist and convert to Marxism, Pedro Abad Santos, brother of the Chief Justice. Taruc, who had been a full-time peasant organizer for the Socialist, then Communist, Party since 1934, was the leader of several thousand members from the sharecropper and landless workers, mainly in Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga and Tarlac. The Huks were, however, predominantly a peasant organization born of injustice more than ideology.

…

Post-war tales of Japanese atrocities and Filipino suffering during the occupation helped provide a focus for the nation in the early years of independence, which finally occurred on 4 July 1946. Yet not far under the surface of this massaged history was the reality that the elite recognized. There was little instinct for retribution against collaborators. Aquino was charged with treason but released on bail and died the following year. Laurel was likewise charged with treason but never tried. In 1948, as President, Manuel Roxas, whose own cooperation with the Japanese remained questionable, declared an amnesty. Only five years later, Laurel stood unsuccessfully for president as the Nacionalista Party candidate winning 37 per cent of the vote. The victor was Elpidio Quirino who, despite the deaths of many family members in the Battle of Manila, pardoned the Japanese convicted of war crimes. Vargas went from the puppet republic’s ambassador in Tokyo in 1945 to head of the National Planning Commission in 1946.

Whatever mixture of class solidarity, family relationships, Catholic notions of forgiveness or common nationalism, the quick post-war healing was in sharp contrast to experiences in many other countries occupied during the 1937–45 wars. There were also cross currents. Lingering Spanish and Church sentiments were in favour of the Spanish dictator, General Franco, as a bastion against atheistic communism and hence highly critical of the anti-clericalism of leftist nationalists. Those with Chinese affiliation, on the other hand, were influenced against Japan by its invasion of China. Nationalists came in different colours with some interested in sustaining the status quo but without the Americans. Only those on the far left were consistent in being anti both Japanese and US imperialism and even they were sometimes divided between middle class Marxist revolutionaries and rice farmers fighting landlords.

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Filed under economics, food, Japan, labor, military, nationalism, Philippines, Spain, U.S., war

by Joel | 9 August 2026 · 5:13 am

Modern Philippines: A Jigsaw

From The Making of the Modern Philippines: Pieces of a Jigsaw State, by Philip Bowring (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), Kindle pp. 1-3:

In March 1521 three ships under Ferdinand Magellan (Magalhaes/Magallanes), a Portuguese navigator in the service of the king of Spain, landed in the Visayan islands. One ship later completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, an event for the history record books but more importantly it changed that history of the islands, now home to 110 million people. A few decades later, Spain assumed ownership of the archipelago stretching from the Luzon Strait to the Sulu Sea and named it Islas Filipinas. The Spanish left a religion, a few genes and some aspects of culture, but the people were and remain predominantly of Malay/Austronesian race, language and culture, albeit with other influences from America and China.

The Philippines is unique in many ways; its geology, its fauna, in its history of rule by two successive Western powers, Spain and the United States. It has been a political identity with a singular name for nearly 500 years, much longer than many of its neighbours. It is the only predominantly Christian nation in Asia south of the Caucasus and is fervently Catholic. In the nineteenth century it spawned the first modern nationalists fighting Western imperialism.

However, this singularity does not make for an identity which is readily understood even by its own citizens, let alone by foreigners. It is part of the vast Malay Archipelago and shares a basic language and some culture with its Indonesian and Malaysian neighbours but it is separated from them by 500 years of history and itself divided by fragmented geography and regional loyalties. That history explains its current problems as reflected in its weak post-1945 economic and social performance compared with most of its neighbours, and its continuing high levels of violence. Democracy flourishes, elections are regular, noisy and competitive yet little progress is made towards changing a system dominated by dynasties as seen in the contests in the 2022 election. After the grip of two distant empires, Spanish and American, it now lives under the shadow of another, closer one, China.

Geology divides it into more than 2,000 inhabited islands. Regional rivalries and the widespread but not universal use of English have thwarted the acceptance of Filipino (essentially the Tagalog of Central Luzon) as the national language. Regional languages and loyalties remain strong so that imported languages and the Church seem at times the main unifiers. It is also an administrative jigsaw in that power locally lies not with its geographically coherent seventeen regions but with eighty numerous provinces and cities with province-level powers, some very small.

A basic Malay culture has been so influenced by Spain, the Catholic Church and then by America that its identity is sometimes seen as Latin as much as Asian. Indeed, many Filipinos in California, where they are the second largest Asian community, often self-identify as Latino or Pacific islander not Asian. The Catholic Church, as adapted locally, provides some common bond, other than for the Muslims, but faces its own challenge from evangelicals and populist preachers. Religious division is an underlying historical reality exacerbated by the concentration of Muslims in western Mindanao and Sulu and more recently by extremist Islamism from abroad. Yet the cultural roots and language, even aspects of its politics, remain essentially Malay from Ilocos in the north to Sulu in the south. However, fragmented by religion, local languages and quasi-tribal identities, the Philippines is at once identifiable yet hard to define or describe.

The very notion ‘Filipino’ began with local born Spaniards, known as creoles, and only very gradually spread to Spanish mestizos, Chinese mestizos and urbanized indigenous people accepted into the dominant principalia class. The nationalism of the ilustrados (the reformist educated elite) in the late nineteenth century raised national consciousness and the struggles against America and Japan saw mass participation. Independence brought the masses into the Filipino embrace but despite shared urbanization and education, the sense of national identity developed fitfully. Added to the centrifugal forces of geography were the strength of elite links to the US and of many leading businessmen to China. Suggestions to change the colonial name to a Malay one have failed – many late nineteenth revolutionaries preferred ‘Katagalugan’, which became the name of a short-lived Tagalog republic. More recently ‘Maharlika’, a word denoting a Tagalog noble warrior class, has been suggested but attracted little support.

Five hundred years on from the arrival of Spain and Catholicism fissures remain. Muslim Mindanao’s on and off warfare has been about local rivalries as well as opposition to Manila and Christianity. Meanwhile, non-Muslim parts of the island also continue to see conflicts, mainly over land rights between local ethnic groups, particularly in Mindanao and the broader population whose composition has been changed by decades of migration from the Visayas. That internal colonization continues. Visayan languages now predominate in Mindanao. Generally, regional loyalties and in political terms local patron-client relationships remain important. They remain crucial even if weakened by urbanization and the shared identity of the millions of Filipinos now working overseas or brought together via social media such as Facebook or by international beauty pageants. National politics is still partly driven by the regional appeal of particular candidates. Local identity is mostly stronger than national identity, perhaps a reflection of the lack of esteem of the national government.

After years under a backward Spain and the aegis of friars, American imperialism brought education and new legal and administrative systems. Seventy years ago, the then recently independent Philippines boasted higher literacy levels than most of Asia and the highest income levels of populous Asian countries apart from Japan. It had an admired – at least from a distance – US-inspired legal and democratic system. Today, despite two decades of reasonable economic performance, it is widely seen as having failed to match most of its neighbours in income growth and progress in education. It remains better known for natural disasters, flamboyant leaders, political violence and sporadic insurgencies, and for its major export – its own citizens finding work abroad which they could not find at home.

Its social structure has changed only modestly over time, with huge gaps in income and wealth, the dominance of certain families, particularly in the provinces, the preference for the fairer skins of mestizos (European or Chinese) and even place names celebrating colonialists, for example the posh enclaves of Makati – Magallanes, Forbes, Legazpi, Urdaneta and Dasmarinas. Violence is an all too constant ingredient in politics. President Duterte’s so-called War on Drugs killed particularly large numbers. Killings of political rivals, critical journalists and of farmer and worker activists had long been common but accelerated dramatically under Duterte. Lawyers abound but the state of law and order varies widely, ever subject to political and pecuniary influences. The state structure is weak for historical and geographical reasons which partly explain the persistence of insurgencies and of dynastic politics at both national and local levels. Senses of nationalism and civic duty appear weak compared to the demands of kinship and client relationships, blurring lines between public and private spheres. These features have especially flourished under the de-centralized political system and weak central bureaucracy bequeathed by America. Trading and sailing have always been essential elements of economic life and smuggling a natural outcome of attempts to tax it.

However, the nation has strengths too. Filipinos may be divided among themselves at home but in the outside world they have an identity and solidarity that is strong and recognized as such. Gender equality is ahead of most of Asia; Filipino workers are valued overseas for their skills and commitment, and command of English carries global benefits. Its Catholicism is sometimes more about ritual than ideology and society has relatively few hang-ups about racial mixing born of centuries of practice and the more recent impact of migration. It is welcoming of foreigners and renowned for its love of music and fiestas. There is a tradition of free speech – and sometimes gaudy rhetoric – and a media which is often too lively for those in power. In the much longer run, a generation or two away, its high fertility rate, which has long been a burden, will in a generation prove a bonus as most of its neighbours face ageing and falling populations. One day the nation may even acquire a name which reflects its Malay core identity.

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Filed under China, language, migration, nationalism, Philippines, religion, Spain, U.S.

by Joel | 7 August 2026 · 7:55 am

Honolulu FBI vs. Mass Internment

From Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor, by Christine Kuehn (Celadon Books, 2025), Kindle pp. 160-161:

There was intense pressure to intern the entire Japanese population of the island—160,000 men, women, and children. Hoover and President Roosevelt, fearing an uprising, wanted a crackdown. Surprisingly, the man who stood in their way was the straitlaced conservative Robert Shivers. He fought it tooth and nail, astonishing Hoover and putting his career at significant risk. The close bond Shivers had formed with his Japanese American “adopted daughter,” Sue, had swayed him.

“I couldn’t have let you and thousands of people like you be arrested,” Shivers told her. The thought of Sue and scores of other innocents like her being forced into a camp had fueled a fire within that spurred him to take on the highest levels of the government.

On the west coast of the U.S. mainland, 120,000 Americans with Japanese heritage would be put into camps and not released until the end of the war, with virtually no one ever being charged with a crime.

Even the spy Yoshikawa, who was interned for a short time with Japanese Americans after his capture, saw the irony. “We were taken to a relocation camp full of innocent American Japanese,” he recalled. “They had done nothing. It was a cruel joke. You see, I couldn’t trust them to help me in Honolulu. They were loyal to the United States.”

While most of those held on Sand Island and in internment camps on the mainland were innocent of any wrongdoing, that was not the case with Otto and the rest of the Kuehns. Before it was over, they would have to navigate the ire of an enraged American public, a furious government, and federal prosecutors hell-bent on punishing someone for the heinous crime of December 7.

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by Joel | 4 August 2026 · 3:03 pm

Dusko Popov vs. J. Edgar Hoover, 1941

From Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor, by Christine Kuehn (Celadon Books, 2025), Kindle pp. 119-120:

Special Agent Shivers was convinced the Kuehns were spies; he just didn’t know for whom. The payments pointed to the Japanese, but the FBI was getting information that the Nazis also had an interest in Pearl Harbor. That revelation came from another German spy turned double agent for the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6: Dusko Popov.

Popov was a well-educated Serbian who attended law school at the University of Freiburg in Germany in 1935. A few years later he was recruited by a former classmate to work for the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.

Popov immediately contacted the British diplomatic authorities, who enlisted him as a double agent. Within a short period of time, the Germans had come to trust him implicitly, even fronting him $50,000 to set up a spy ring in London. Popov was supposed to turn the money over to MI6, as part of a plan to fleece the Germans out of chunks of cash.

Ian Fleming, a British intelligence officer who would go on to create the character James Bond, was assigned to watch over Popov and make sure the cash made it back to London. After receiving the money from the Germans, Popov met Fleming in Portugal for the trip back to England. The Serbian, a well-known ladies’ man and gambler, made his way to Casino Estoril, an oceanside casino that was a well-known hangout for spies and other international highfliers.

While gambling at a nearby table, Popov overheard a Lithuanian businessman pompously declare he would match any bet, no matter how high the amount. Popov sauntered over to the table, sat down across from the man, and, without saying a word, dropped $50,000 on the table—MI6’s $50,000, the equivalent of $1 million today. The casino went quiet, and Fleming went white watching Popov potentially wreck the entire operation. The flustered Lithuanian asked the casino if they would lend him the money if he lost. Not unexpectedly, they declined, and the man walked away from the table, red-faced. Popov pulled the money off the felt with a grin, loudly proclaiming that gamblers like that are “an annoyance to serious players.”

Popov was, like Otto, a risk-taker, a bit of a narcissist—and Popov was purportedly Fleming’s inspiration for James Bond. The baccarat scene was even re-created, blow for blow, in his first book, Casino Royale.

In August 1941, the Germans sent Popov to the United States with $58,000 and a directive to establish a network of spies. Then he was to head to Hawaii and gather as much intelligence as possible on Pearl Harbor. Unbeknownst to Otto Kuehn, Popov was to be his replacement.

The Japanese had grown tired of Otto’s flamboyant lifestyle and considered him a growing security risk. Frequent phone calls and visits to the consulate, exorbitant spending, wild parties with military officers that made the local gossip column—Otto was becoming a threat to the operation. Fresh blood was needed, and Japanese intelligence asked Goebbels to replace him.

Arriving in New York, Popov set up a meeting with the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover was suspicious of the double agent, agreeing to let his staff meet with Popov only after the British reassured him. Popov was eventually summoned to the Commodore Hotel, where he showed the agents his orders, written in microdots, a new technology invented by the Germans that reduced entire pages of information down to the size of a period.

Almost half the hidden directives consisted of questions the Germans wanted answered about military operations in Hawaii: the depths of the water at Pearl Harbor, the torpedo nets under the water’s surface, exact locations of air bases at Hickam, Wheeler, and Kaneohe, and locations of submarine stations, along with sketches of the Pearl Harbor piers. “Is the Crater Punchbowl being used as ammunition dump?” read one question.

The warning was clear: The Nazis wanted Popov to gather intelligence the Japanese needed for an attack on Pearl Harbor. That got Hoover’s attention, and the FBI director decided to come to New York and meet with Popov personally. But when the two met face-to-face weeks later, the rendezvous was a disaster. The FBI director could barely contain his disdain for the German double agent. “You’re like all double agents,” he berated him. “You’re begging for information to sell to your German friends so you can make a lot of money and be a playboy!”

Popov brushed off Hoover’s comments and reiterated to the FBI director his warning of an impending attack. “But he just wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say,” he said later.

Hoover had deployed a lot of manpower to the FBI office in Hawaii and stepped up the pressure on Shivers. Yet here was the plan for the entire Japanese assault in front of his face, and he ignored it. While Hoover did notify President Roosevelt that the FBI had discovered a new microdot technology, forwarding a small portion of the text from Popov, he sat on the most important information: The Japanese were planning an attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Abwehr, meanwhile, aborted Popov’s mission to Hawaii. The glaring spotlight thrown on him from Hoover would bring too much attention to Japanese operations there. Otto would remain in place as Japan’s spy. But Germany’s role in the Pacific was now obvious. It was working in concert with Japan toward a common goal of knocking out the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, and they were using a network of spies to do it.

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Filed under Britain, Germany, Hawai'i, Japan, literature, military, U.S., war

by Joel | 2 August 2026 · 10:29 am

German Spies on Oahu in late 1930s

The Far Outliers are back in the Pacific now, as my reading reflects. I’ve been reading a new book that came out after we left for our academic year in Poland: Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor (Celadon Books, 2025), by Christine Kuehn, the granddaughter of the family of spies. Honolulu Civil Beat author Kirsten Downey read an advance copy of the book and highlights some of its findings in her online commentary on The Secret Life of a Prominent Kailua Family Revealed. Here are some excerpts.

There were indeed spies among us.

A long-running tale of intrigue in Hawaiʻi will get a new twist later this year with the publication of a soon-to-be published book from inside the family of notorious Hawaiʻi spies. Wealthy German nationals Otto Kuehn and his family were paid by the Japanese government to spy on U.S. military operations at Pearl Harbor, and they funneled information to Japan that helped make the Dec. 7, 1941 attack so devastating.

…

In her book Christine — the daughter of Otto’s son, Eberhard — describes the family’s spy history as a secret concealed from the grandchildren. She gradually unspools how she unraveled the story and pressured her relatives into sharing some of the facts, with her own research filling in more of the specifics. Eberhard, sometimes crying, declined to share many details about what his family had done and then developed dementia.

Her account will be new to many people. But the tale has independently survived in Hawaiʻi, amid the whispered reminiscences of kamaʻāina, in published news accounts from the era, inside archival records housed at the University of Hawaiʻi’s War Records Depository and in books about espionage published after the war. It’s been included in a list of the FBI’s most famous cases. All shed more light on how the chain of events unfolded.

Otto Kuehn, a former naval officer in Germany, his wife Friedel and their three charming children made quite a splash in Hawaiʻi in the late 1930s.

Mr. and Mrs. Kuehn had first arrived on the ship Tatsuta Maru in the spring of 1935, stopping in Honolulu for two weeks before heading to Japan, which they visited several other times in the next few years, according to gossipy society news reports at the time.

By 1936, the Kuehns had permanently settled on Oʻahu, where they were mentioned as the hosts of a dance party at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and as guests at a music recital attended by Hawaiʻi’s elite. He said he was in Hawaiʻi to learn Japanese.

The Kuehns became popular hosts at their posh homes in Kailua and Lanikai, frequently hosting the young naval officers who were squiring Ruth, their pretty 22-year-old daughter, around town and on outings. She and her mother operated a beauty salon near the Kāneʻohe Naval Air Station that was a favorite spot for Navy wives. Their two younger sons, Eberhard and Hans, were students at Punahou.

In August 1941, Ruth, then 25, married a widower, retired stock broker, J. Carson Moore, “who was flattered by her interest,” his family later recalled. Moore, 48, was a generous bon vivant who hosted an open bar at his home, with free-flowing booze, that was frequented by service members. Moore called his little saloon the S.S. Rum, according to archival records at the University of Hawaiʻi.

America was at peace at the time, but the Japanese Empire’s expansionist and militaristic ambitions were drawing increasing concern, particularly as Japan allied itself with Nazi Germany.

…

Many details of the Kuehn case were initially concealed because it was a wartime secret, which allowed both Otto and Friedel to vehemently protest that they were innocent of the charges.

In a letter to Otto, Hormann told him they felt misled, because they had considered him “a good Joe,” but that now they had been left hoping “that you were innocent of giving aid to the enemies of our country.”

Otto responded to Hormann in 1947, described the spying allegations as “ugly rumors,” and said his attorney had “demonstrated his innocence.”

“Mistakes will be made in time of national hysteria or danger,” Otto wrote in another letter. He added that his attorney “firmly believes in American justice and is sufficiently confident in a final success regarding my affair.”

In 1962, Friedel sued the U.S. government, saying that the charges against them were “all rot,” and that the allegations were brought against Otto to cover up the incompetence of the American military in allowing the surprise attack to occur. She sought $27,000 in damages from the U.S. government.

The facts, however, when they finally emerged, were damning. The Kuehns had done much more than make friends with amiable American military officers.

Otto had opened a steel furniture company, winning a commission to decorate a cocktail lounge at Pearl Harbor, which enabled him to get access to the base and take photographs of the ships in the harbor. He took pictures of other military installations, including Bellows, Wheeler and Hickam, revealing aircraft configurations. On at least one occasion, Otto took little Hans with him as he conducted his investigations, according to his granddaughter.