・World War I, which took place from 1914 to 1918, opened up an era of total war where the total power of nations collided, and while wars up until then focused on clashes of military power on the battlefield, mobilization of the entire nation became important in total war, and society as a whole, including not only male soldiers but also women, children, and the elderly, came to be incorporated into the war, and the abundance of national power and resources became decisive factors affecting the victory or defeat of the war (p37)
・This is because at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire were dismantled and many new nation states were born in the form of setting up the principle of national self-determination, but this principle was limited to the Eastern European region, and if extended to Asia and Africa, it could legitimize the independence of colonies held by the great powers (p40)
・Before the start of the Sino-Japanese War, most of Southeast Asia was a colony of Western powers; present-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are French Indochina, Indonesia is Dutch India, the Philippines is the United States, and Malaysia, Singapore, and Burma meet British colonies or spheres of influence (p43)
・The formal beginning of that war was on December 8, 1941, but the actual beginning was 1937/7/7, and after the Sino-Japanese War, Japan had entered a state of war over a long period of time on the continent (p57)
・The significance of looking back on history is not to glorify or denounce the past; what is important is to deeply understand why Japan made such a choice at that time, retake it as our own, and connect it to the present (p59)
・The execution of the Anglo-Japanese alliance also occurred in the trend of international cooperative diplomacy after the First World War, and the Versailles system based on the Treaty of Versailles was established in Europe, and the Washington system triggered by the Washington Conference was established in the Asia-Pacific region, and it is unlikely that there actually existed an option to continue maintaining a bilateral alliance with only Japan and Britain against this trend (p69)
・Certainly, Japan achieved economic growth as a trade nation after the war, but this was greatly influenced by the beginning of the East-West Cold War and the fact that Japan was incorporated into the Western faction, and the United States positioned Japan as a breakwater for the capitalist faction and actively provided economic aid and technology transfer (p79)
・While Japan is seeking equal treatment from Europe and the United States, it faced racial and cultural discrimination and prejudice in reality and was unable to completely wipe away the sense of humiliation and alienation. That being said, even if they treated Asia with the same law, the fact that Korea and Taiwan were colonized became a barrier and a strict gaze was directed at “what is different from Europe and America,” such divided self-awareness formed the core of modern Japan's identity, and what resolved that twist all at once was the start of the war between Japan and the US. At this time, Japan made a major shift to Asianism and “built a new order in Greater East Asia” I established a self-image of being a “bearer of justice” who confronts the “evil beings” of Europe and the United States under the cause. That's why the start of the Great East Asia War was taken by not a few Japanese people as a “moment of surprise” (p112)
・When Prime Minister Kishida visited Kyi, the capital of Ukraine, in 2023, it was reported that the prime minister's visit to the battlefield was the first time after the war. The reason why it was not the first in history but the first after the war is that Tojo had a foreign trip (p129)
・The Netherlands had profits of 50% or more of the central government's tax revenue from the “forced cultivation system (1830-1870),” and thanks to this system, “it was possible to return huge debts in the past to normal levels, pay security deposits to slave owners during the emancipation of slaves in 1863, push railways all over the country, and postpone the introduction of income tax until 1893” (P169)
・Thailand blatantly began keeping a distance from Japan when Japan's electoral districts deteriorated, Prime Minister Pibbon did not attend the 194/11 Great East Asia Conference and only dispatched the Prince as a proxy, and declared that it was invalid on 1945/8/16, saying that “the declaration of war had not obtained everyone's consent” when wired, and the United Kingdom did not recognize Thailand's claims and tried to impose retaliatory compensation measures, but the United States put Thailand into its own camp I wanted to bring it in, and they diplomatically lobbied against Britain and finally decided that the declaration of war was invalid (P203)
・There were times when 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were forcibly evicted from their homes or jobs and quarantined in camps for up to 4 years, and these measures were hardly applied to German or Italian immigrants, and the land received great criticism as racial discrimination. In 1988, President Reagan officially apologized and a security deposit was decided to be paid to survivors, which is on display at the National Museum of American History (P262)
・The US military suffered enormous damage in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and in the special attack on US ships by the Japanese military, more American soldiers died in just 2 months than in the past 2 months, and when more than 1 million troops were moving toward mainland Japan, the first atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima on 1945/8/6, and this is written in the National Museum of American History (P263)
・The conclusion of this book is clear; when talking about that war, we should not focus on “only” that war; it is also important to deepen understanding of individual phenomena such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Special Attack Force, but what is more important than anything else is to look at the historical process and structure leading up to them; that war only comes up when positioned within a long period of time called modern Japanese history, and finally by standing from such a point of view I wonder if that war will settle down to a place where it should calm down without being excessive process or denial, and that is only possible now, 80 years after the war (P275)