Word: itagaki
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Most people in the U.S. were hardly aware of an Asian event which Itagaki and the Japanese army never forget. That event was the weird (to Occidental minds) and semicomic Japanese invasion of Russian territory in 1918. The Japs chose an opportune moment, when Red Russia was weak aborning, to endeavor a second time to drive the Russian bear out of the Far East. They wanted, and seized, Russia's northern half of the island of Sakhalin, the half rich in coal and oil, and added it to their southern half. In the guise of Allied intervention, they seized...
...Among Three. Itagaki's career and power had their foundations in the area where he now waits to strike: in North China, Manchuria and the near borders of Russia's Siberia (see map). There were bred Japanese hates, fears and hopes which only war could release. There too, in a vast segment of the earth almost unknown to the U.S. people, swirled forces which deeply involved the U.S. and, at least in Japanese minds, committed the U.S. to a final war for Asia...
...story goes that Itagaki wanted to commit hara-kiri after his disgrace, that his aides forcibly dissuaded him. The known fact is more characteristic of Itagaki. He did not spill his bowels. Instead he returned to Tokyo and shortly attained the highest post open to him: War Minister in the cabinet of Prince Fumimaro Konoye. Men in other armies concluded that he was a mere politician, a fixer, a conniver who throve on the favor of better...
...value. The army is not only "in politics"; it dominates Japanese politics. No Cabinet can survive without the army's approval. Political genius was therefore closely allied to military genius, and the soldier with genius or capacity in both fields was all the more necessary to the army. Itagaki therefore had to take no insult when his closest friend and associate, General Juzo Nishio, said: "I'll do the fighting. Let Itagaki do the office work...
Drinking Team. Squat, ugly Itagaki and lean, handsome General Nishio made a perfect army team. They drank great quantities of sake together, Itagaki growing garrulous and gay, Nishio sour and taciturn on the gently powerful wine. They shared two of the controlling passions of the Japanese army: a hatred of Communists and a companion hatred of Japan's great capitalist families (the Mitsuis, Iwasakis, Sumitomos and Yasudas) on the twin grounds that their abuses fostered Communism and that they disputed the mastery of Japan with the army. When others laid an indiscreetly heavy hand upon the princes of money...