By Incredibly the Taft-Katsura Agreement which Koreans have long used to blame the US for the Japanese colonization of the peninsula in the last century; is now being used to blame the US for starting World War II:
SIXTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?
In search of an answer, I read deeply into the diplomatic history of the 1930s, about President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policy on Asia, and his preparation — or lack thereof — for a major conflict there. But I discovered that I was studying the wrong President Roosevelt. The one who had the greater effect on Japan’s behavior was Theodore Roosevelt — whose efforts to end the war between Japan and Russia earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. [New York Times]
Read the rest of the article because it does provide some interesting historical quotes from Teddy Roosevelt in regards to his respect for the Japanese. However, whether Roosevelt respected the Japanese or not is irrelevant. The Japanese already had control over the Korean peninsula in the wake of their victory over the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War.
The Russo-Japanese War was officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in the United States between the Russian and Japanese representatives. It was few months before this treaty was signed that the Taft-Katsura Agreement so remembered today by Koreans was agreed upon. This agreement effectively recognized that the US would not interfere with Japanese ambitions in Korea and Manchuria and that Japan would not interfere with American ambitions in the Philippines.
Delegates meet to sign the treaty of Portsmouth.
Plus this agreement and the following Treaty of Portsmouth would ensure regional stability after a decade of constant warfare in northeast Asia. All this agreement did was recognize reality at the time. Does anyone think for a minute the Japanese would not have colonized Korea if the Taft-Katsura Agreement didn’t exist? I think it is safe to say that the fact that Japan fought two wars within 10 years shows their intention to colonize Korea no matter what document they signed with the US. Why would Japan need US approval to colonize a country the US did not control and had little influence over?
This most obvious question that the author of the New York Times article James Bradley should ponder is why should the US have intervened against the Japanese to help Korea? Teddy Roosevelt probably didn’t think highly of the Koreans when in 1894 the Japanese government deployed a force of 8,000 combat troops to Korea and seized the Korean capitol of Seoul and captured the Korean emperor.
Why should the US be expected to defend a country that isn’t even willing to protect itself from an invasion force of 8,000 soldiers? If the Koreans fought a protracted war against the Japanese to keep them out of Korea maybe the US would have done more to help the Koreans. As it turned out the Koreans did very little to expel the Japanese during both the Sino and Russo-Japanese Wars thus why would the US government feel an obligation to protect Korea when it appeared they didn’t want to fight to protect themselves?
Additionally let’s say hypothetically that Roosevelt wanted to help the Koreans, how would he do it? Too many people confuse the US military might of today with the US military of 1905. In 1905 the US military was at the most equal to, if not weaker than the major European powers. If the Japanese had so decisively defeated the Russians whose country is located adjacent to both Korea and Manchuria, how can the United States located on the other side of the world, be expected to sail over to Korea and conduct a 1905 version of the Incheon Landing Operation?
To blame the US for Japanese colonization of Korea is ridiculous. Saying that the US didn’t do anything to help Korea I could agree with, but to further blame the US for starting World War II as Mr. Bradley insinuates is even more ridiculous. If people are looking to assign blame for World War II, I agree with One Free Korea that people should first start with General Tojo.
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Note: I highly recommend everyone read my prior posting on the Taft-Katsura Agreement which better sums up my opinion on this issue and especially recommend reading the many good comments that posting generated:
10:32 am on December 11th, 2009 1
“In 1905 the US military was at the most equal to, if not weaker than the major European powers.”
Yes, WW1 changed everything.
11:15 am on December 11th, 2009 2
LOL suprised that Koreans blame Americans…. L O L.
11:21 am on December 11th, 2009 3
Slow news day, so now you got to bring out an article written in New York Times to flame bait the Koreans once again.
Predictable…this site and all its supporters
7:48 pm on December 11th, 2009 4
Korean history is to place blame elsewhere. Whereas the US had just gone through a disasterous civil war just 30 years before (1864) and was still in most peoples memories, why on earth would the US intervene in a Japanese/Korean affair? The US was a minor entity in the world at that time.
Why wasn’t Russia blamed, or even China, for coming to the rescue of Korea? The Brits? Germans?
Blame the US? Give me a break.
11:38 pm on December 11th, 2009 5
So, the US didn’t have colonial aspirations back then?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War
12:05 am on December 12th, 2009 6
If Japan had not taken over Korea, Russia would have annexed her anyway. The prosperous South Korean today would have never existed under the communist Soviet’s or present Russian rule. The Korean living standards would be the same as those of the ethnic Koreans living in eastern Siberia today.
12:39 am on December 12th, 2009 7
It wasn’t even an agreement. As the links in the notes in the previous post you mentioned at the end here clearly show, it was just notes on a conversation between the US minister and a US government official who went out of his way to clearly state he was not speaking for the president, and didn’t want to step on the toes of the new Sec. of State, and that he was just stating what he believed was the president’s thinking and the general thinking in the US government at the time.
To cut the Koreans some slack, the links also show that the first people to use Taft-Katsura and call it a “secret treaty” were Americans and American politicians playing political games in their contemporary era.
7:58 am on December 12th, 2009 8
When in korea, do as koreans do Tom. That’s what you koreans always say.
“If you don’t like it, leave!” Another thing you koreans always say.
7:59 am on December 12th, 2009 9
I think it would have been much better that way.
It was a mistake for the UN and the US to help korea in the first place.
9:21 am on December 12th, 2009 10
I never have had a whole lot of use for James Bradley.
Look, Russia was on the ropes and we had no leverage over the Japanese. If we did anything other than Taft-Katsura, Russia would have collapsed and Japan would have had Siberia. With the resources in Siberia, Japan would have been significantly more powerful come 1941. At that point, they would have either defeated us or we would have won but through a conditional cessation of hostilities. Either result would almost certainly have included Korea staying under Imperial Japan’s heel.
Tom (and all the other similarly situated ethnocentric Koreans here), in light of all that I have two words to say. You’re welcome
.
6:11 pm on December 12th, 2009 11
If you read my original Taft-Katsura posting the Moro Rebellion was part of the rationale on why the US had no intention of getting involved in Korea.
6:47 pm on December 12th, 2009 12
His first book was pretty good- but he went radically left and down from there.
6:48 pm on December 12th, 2009 13
I would have said no, in retrospect to the article referenced. It would seem the Phillipines was ceded by Spain to the US. As such the US bungled the entire operation of giving the Phillipinos a free government. Colonial aspirations? I’m not an expert on the Phillipines.
Yet it does not in anyway tie in to what was going on in Korea at that time. In fact it would seem to argue against any additional involvement in asia by the US.
8:10 pm on December 12th, 2009 14
Many at that time would have agreed with you, as most of the advice that President Truman recieved was against US intervention. It was Truman who decided that the North Koreans, ‘with significant Russian equipment and support’ were not going to push the US around.
With the exception of Trumans decision, the UN would not have gotten involved.
Korea today, would have been one nation under Kim Jong Il.
9:24 pm on December 12th, 2009 15
My point is that at that point the US may not have been a power to the scale of France or Great Britain (its navy was too small), but it probably wasn’t any weaker than Belgium, Portugal, or the Netherlands. And, yes, the US had its aspirations. Read up on the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and Manifest Destiny.
10:30 pm on December 12th, 2009 16
The Manifest Destiny shows the point: The US was still busy consolidating its hold on what territory it had in North America. People really need to get their heads out of their butts (not meaning people here) when talking about US imperialism before the end of WWI.
The Monroe Doctrine basically said to the European powers — who were trying to stave off a WWI by “balancing power” by gobbling up much of the rest of the world – “Stay out of South and Central America.”
If you can show me how the Monroe Doctrine activated the US into colonizing the rest of the Western Hemisphere beyond what it already had semi-control of in North America, I’ll honestly look at it….until then….
10:33 pm on December 12th, 2009 17
If I’m not mistaken, the Japanese people and press reacted to the peace treaty, which Taft-Katsura was supposed to prepare the way for, were highly pissed off at the deal Japan got: for the second time, after having fought a war for the the Shantung Peninsula (and Manchuria this time (as well as Korea)), they saw Japan give up conquered territory in the face of “world opposition.”
3:53 pm on December 15th, 2009 18
You make good points in your article.
But don’t you think Senator Bradley made some good points? Would love to hear what you think.
Back in 1900, Roosevelt had written, “I should like to see Japan have Korea.”
“I have of course concealed from everyone — literally everyone — the fact that I acted in the first place on Japan’s suggestion … . Remember that you are to let no one know that in this matter of the peace negotiations I have acted at the request of Japan and that each step has been taken with Japan’s foreknowledge, and not merely with her approval but with her expressed desire.”
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.”
4:41 pm on December 15th, 2009 19
Bradley writes that in permitting Japan to have Korea, Roosevelt “emboldened them to increase their military might — and their imperial ambitions. In December 1941, the consequence of Theodore Roosevelt’s recklessness would become clear to those few who knew of the secret dealings.”
Sadao Asada points out what should have been obvious to Bradley and the editors of the New York Times: “Bradley entirely ignores and skips the course of real Japanese aggression from the Manchurian Incident of 1931 to Japan’s advance to southern Indochina in 1941.” Of course: there was plenty of policy and policy change in both the US and Japan between 1905 and 1941. But more, “In my view (shared by many of my Japanese colleagues and most of American specialists in TR’s diplomacy), the Taft-Katsura Agreement was a part of TR’s ‘realistic’ policy of ‘peaceful coexistence’ with Japan based on his sphere-of-influence policy and balance-of-power considerations.”
OK, I cut and pasted. My bad. Also not mentioned is that it would have been a buffer to Russia as well at that time. Bottom line is it had little to do ( nothing) with the start of WWII.
8:53 pm on December 15th, 2009 20
Frank, I mentioned in my posting that the article does provide some interesting historical quotes from Teddy Roosevelt in regards to his respect for the Japanese. However, whether Roosevelt respected the Japanese or not is irrelevant. The Japanese already had control over the Korean peninsula in the wake of their victory over the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War and there was nothing the US could do about it.
All Taft-Katsura did was state the obvious, Japan controlled Korea and the US wouldn’t interfere.
Even if the US wanted to help Korea it couldn’t because the US didn’t have the military capacity to do so. The 1905 US military was as strong or even less strong than the major European powers and the Japanese had just got done defeating the Russians. What land forces the US had were tied down anyway in the Philippines trying to put down the Moro Rebellion.
Why should the US fight a war it can’t win, for a country unwilling to fight for their own freedom, and of no national interest to the US?
11:00 am on December 16th, 2009 21
I agree that the US probably could not do anything practically about Japan’s colonization of Korea. But still it is somewhat concerning how Roosevelt wanted Japan to take Korea and that immediately after the annexation cut off all relations w/ Korea.
In terms of human rights in general and in particular w/ regards to Japan’s brutal conquests, Roosevelt’s choosing not to respect international law is troubling.
Korea’s history is filled w/ examples of being the pawn of more powerful countries and it’s sadder when one of those powerful countries is the U.S. that is the symbol of what is supposed to be good.
I would have liked to have seen the U.S. at least protest the annexation and try to recognize Korea’s sovereignty.
11:35 am on December 16th, 2009 22
Let me make sure I understand you.
You are upset because (empty words) that would have had no impact were not spoken?
Is that what you mean?
Did Korea even exist (as a Government) after Japan’s conquest? In relation to cutting off all relations with a Government that no longer existed. Who would have been speaking for Korea? Japan?
Yes we know Korea has been a pawn to any country that was more powerful. The same can be said for many countries around the world that are weaker than their neighbors. Korea is not special in it’s suffering.
I also know that the ROK would not exist today, if not for the U.S. which is the symbol of what is good in the world.
7:34 am on December 17th, 2009 23
What international law or human rights you are referring to in 1905 I’m not sure of? The world was a very different place back then.
You have to remember Roosevelt was a warfighter and probably highly respected the Japanese for their tenacity in defeating both the Chinese and the Russians who Roosevelt clearly disliked. As far as Korea he knew little about the place and probably didn’t have much respect for the Korean people’s ability for self determination since the Japanese so easily occupied the country. Most importantly how would protesting the annexation be in America’s national interest? There was nothing strategically important about Korea at the time and remember the US was busy colonizing the Philippines at the time as well.
The lesson that should be learned is that Korea needs to continue to make defense its number one national priority to be able to prevent such tragic circumstances from happening again.
7:56 am on December 17th, 2009 24
Thanks GI Korea for your response. I agree that I was probably being too idealistic about the U.S. and that the U.S.’s response was in line with its own national interests. And you are right that Korea needs to make defense a higher national priority.