Fat Electrician Debates History Of Everything On Emperor Hirohito | History Teacher Reacts

Hey there, Mr. Terry, high school history teacher. Welcome back to another history teacher acts video. All right. I've been getting more requests to cover Nick and his buds over at unsubscribed podcast. And this clip was shared with me. It's called fat electrician debates history of everything on emperor Hirohito. Sweet. I hope it gets spicy. All right. Make sure you are subscribed to the unsubscribed podcast. I'll link them down below and give this video a thumbs up if you liked it. All right, let's get started. All right. As we're getting started here, I'm wondering what they're going to debate about. Is it maybe the role of Hirohito in world war two? They're going to debate his his power role in the ending, maybe with all the bombs, I guess. Well, you know, we'll find out. But let's see. We got tell me about Emperor Hirohito. How do you feel about it? OK, Emperor Hirohito was I mean, he's got controversial opinions. I mean, here's the thing. Here's the thing about here. Oh, we're going to fight. Yeah, we probably disagree. No, no, no, no, no. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. He was all right. So prediction then is history of everything going to say, OK, he was a puppet maybe of the military. OK, could see that. They really ran things. The military really ran things, especially with like the Great Depression. Oddly, in Japan, the the military gained more power during the Great Depression and like didn't faze them so much. But I'm assuming our buddy, fat electrician, what he's saying, he's the he's the ringleader of it. Hirohito. OK, OK. That's just what I'm thinking of. Weak will to shit. I disagree. He was. No, no, no. He did from every single documentation that comes out. He specifically did not want war. He did not want conflict. But once he signed up, once the whole military was was into it, he basically was the it was the weakest position you could have of, well, fuck it, might as well ball. I disagree. So I guess to back that up, then you're just going to have to say that it was like the military was just using him as a way to what? Like keep the will of the war going on because they're like, we don't want to sacrifice him or at the end when they're saying really the last thing hanging up Japan from surrendering was the position that his position. I wonder if Nick's going to come in and say, well, if he really wanted to end the war, he could have just surrendered earlier. We'll see. OK, I'm excited because Nick smiling over there. Check that out. He's he's like ready to pounce on him. What do you mean? Explain that. I completely think that he was complicit in the militarization of Japan the entire time. The military. Do you have any idea what was going on over the course of the first sign of Japanese war heading into the period with Manchukuo? Army, Navy competing, disobeying orders the entire time. I completely think that that's fabricated. No, 100 percent. OK, what's the read the book book on it by Bix? No, he has an entire book basically saying that Hirohito Hirohito orchestrated the entire thing and played it off like he didn't. That everything afterwards would have been fabricated. Yes. Tear me out. I see that. Hear me out. Look. OK, so the entire argument is that he doesn't have power and he's a puppet of the army and the Navy, right? No, not that he is a puppet. Is that he basically became that afterwards? But in because here's the thing that never happened in Japanese history. Literally, that is the entire fucking thing for Japanese history. That was one of my big points. Who is like he was like one of the 90s and everything. The entire member, the role of, you know, until the Meiji Restoration, at least it was supposed to late 1800s. You've got a emperor that is virtually powerless when it comes to the politics and the military throughout Japanese history. They were very much a cultural, spiritual figurehead, pretty much working at behest of the, you know, the shogun who really runs the the politics and the military of Japan and did that for centuries of the Japanese emperorship throughout all of his. Do you have any idea how little power? Do you know the last time the emperor actually had real fucking power in Japan was defined as 720 A.D. With the Nara area, not according to the Japanese constitution during World War two for what is supposed to happen. What is supposed to happen doesn't actually mean it fucking does. I'm listening. Oh, I love it. And who determines good is a documentation on what did happen. All of the people that would have sworn to defend the emperor. Uh huh. From the same people that tried to fucking go in to keep the war going. Right. But why would you kill a guy that didn't have any power in the first place? If he was just a puppet that had no power, why would you say? We got to kill him, though, because if he makes a public announcement that that's to the entirety of the people, that's the point. So he is not powerless. He is technically not. That's well, the thing is that the militarization and imperialism and imperialist tendencies of Japan started before Hirohito. Because, yeah, like a history of everything was trying to bring up, I think, a good point, which was about, you know, like like the militarism going back to the late 1900s. So after the Meiji Restoration and their rapid industrialization and build up of their military in a very Western fashion, they started engaging in imperialist activities, especially with mainland Asia there as they fought the Sino-Japanese War. So that's when they Japan defeated China. And then right after that, a decade later, defeating the Russians and the Russo-Japanese War. And so Hirohito, I mean, he would have like inherited a very militaristic one. And he is going to also inherit the throne because it was like mid 20s. They're the increased militarization of of Japan was already going. So I'll be honest, I'm not an expert on Hirohito. And so I'm listening to these guys. I want to see what they're going to point to as far as like evidence goes. I don't know the book necessarily that that electricians talking about, but I know about the historical context that history of everything is talking about here. But we'll see. Let's continue the thing. But legally, for what you'd be able to do, the amount of precedence that has to go into changing any single action within the government is a lot more than it sounds like. He just needs to get on the radio and say what's up. He needs to. However, have you ever tried to get a Japanese person to say what it is that they actually fucking feel in a scenario instead of repressing it and holding it down? So he was powerful. Yes. And no, it's quantum fucking physics at this point with Hirohito. It kind of sounds like you're just like, look, oh, look, OK, so how much ability did Hirohito have to just, again, come on the mic and say, we're going to stop doing all this crap and we're going to end the war and the expansion? If you're talking about earlier in the war or as the war was progressing and coming towards the end on the eve and both in the dawn of the atomic bombs about him coming out instantly to sort of do this. Who really held the power for that? Or did Hirohito have to just come out at his own peril on his own to try to make and to without the wishes of the military leadership to come out and say, OK, we surrender. I love this. I already got this done, but I'm not going to fight. That's what it sounds like. Like, could I win this fight? Absolutely. I'm just not going to because I'm an OK person. OK. Oh, by the way, you know, the couple non like more non history guys are just kind of like looking this is like sports. The final vote on whether or not Japan was going to surrender was cast by the only person that directly answered to Hirohito on the council. Hirohito decided to surrender. Yes. OK. OK. Hirohito also sanctioned the attack on Pearl Harbor. OK, yes. OK, that's my whole point. He's way more powerful than everybody plays him off to be. No, no, no, no. He's a sun god. I understand that. But it's not a man. OK, look, when we're talking about this, it's not saying that he was completely fucking powerless. That's never the point. It's just that people either think in terms of absolutes, that he was either the one who was directly in control of everything or the one who could absolutely do nothing but sit by his helpless puppet. There is no arguing that he was not complicit in all the shit. It is interesting in a lot of way. The irony of post major restoration where it's like a shift away from them. I shouldn't say shift away from the military is the shogun who commanded the military. But I guess you would say that now the emperor is more in control of that. But I mean, their whole like war council was so powerful. But I'll be honest again, I still don't know exactly what Hirohito's influence was over that, over a guy like Tojo. OK, that's the thing. The reason is why he was let go in the first place was specifically because of a thing to save Japanese honor and also to make the occupation afterwards easier. Right. That is the entire purpose of why that was done and why he was spared. OK, well, I'll be on the same page. Exactly. Otherwise, he would have been tried. Because here's the thing, just because you may have been forced into the others did OK, like Tojo and the whole group, they had their own Nuremberg trials and they all went to death or at least we're going to if they don't, you know, seppuku thing. If someone gave you a gun and held a gun to your head and said, hey, kill this person and you kill them, you still fucking killed them. You still committed murder when you could have tried to do something to get out of that. Oh, I don't even think it was that bad. I think it was. I don't think they put a gun to his head. I'm giving you as an example, right now, for sure. I would say in the Crusades, like, actually, yes. Yeah, well, you're fucking. Yes, you kidding me with the first one? The pope, the pope directly as he really knows me. I say this as a person. Jay, hold on. I'll go back. Actually, yes. Yeah, well, you're fucking. I know for sure. I'm saying in the Crusades like, yeah. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, yeah. Fuck yes. You kidding me with the first one? Yeah, he called it. Yeah. I don't know if he knew. I don't I forget all their names with the guy in the white shirt. Yeah. I mean, the pope called for it. You know, with the emperor or the Byzantine emperor coming out saying, hey, well, Pope, we need your help. Bring your boys over, you know, and Pope was like, I got you, fam. Let's go. The pope, the pope directly as he really knows me. I say this as a person. Chase, zoom in on my face. I say this as a person born and raised Catholic. All right. From the first pope to call a crusade, specifically the action done in the effort to strengthen relations and ties with French nobility and garner power around himself to secure his own position within Italy and also the power of the papacy. You don't. And I need to add there. A big motivation to is regain authority over the east. The official split, the great schism happened about 40 years before this. Forty, 50 years before this. And the pope was virtually powerless in Eastern Europe where, you know, the Crusades were going on and who was fighting, who had been fighting in the Crusades. Yes, he was countering Islamic influence across Europe. He was. Yeah, because I was already gone. Here's the thing that bothers me with that. And that ended with the Battle of Tours long before that. But it happens with a lot of people. It's not fucking black and white, no matter what anyone says in this year. It's multiple levels of grays that overlap. And so someone can do something for guess what? Guess what? Are you the multiple fucking reasons? Oh, man, I say that's objectively good. I get on to hear a hero argument because I always end up getting stuck on arguing with people on the Internet about the atomic bombing of Japan and the amount, the amount of misinformation that people fucking believe about that dumb shit, like the amount of people that believe that Japan tried to surrender beforehand and we said no just because we wanted to do it for funsies is fucking insane. No, no, no. Because what they offered was not even a surrender. No, they offered a white piece. Yeah, basically, that's a surrender. You guys want to stop and we're going to keep all of the government that just tried to take over the world completely intact. Usually the argument's more not necessarily about the surrender thing because we're talking about a cultural interpretation of surrender. That's, you know, the Japanese militarism is a good identify with as much, you know, due to their history. Right. You don't you don't do that. But the argument I hear more is that Japan was already defeated, meaning they were powerless at that time. So essentially the war was already over and most of the land as well. Let's not forget that it wasn't even just keep our current regime. It was basically. Yeah, this is this is the guy in the middle of the boxing match pressed up into a corner, arms broken in three different places, blood pouring out of an eye and going, Yeah, I think we're in. You want to call it a draw? We could call it a draw. Sure. Japan, again, was not a peaceful this. This is a warrior society at this point, like a warrior society, which the ideology, which I think Americans have a really hard time. It is what is is like kamikaze. It was imperialist. That is normal. It was imperialist. Everybody likes to make that like synonymous with like Western European culture, but like Japan was 100% imperialist trying to take over the fucking planet and they were doing a fantastic. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was they had the greater sphere of East Asia or whatever, right? They wanted to what they say was protect, basically unify all of Asia against Western imperialism. That was their goal. And shoot, they got pretty close to it. But when you talk about ruling over the Asian population of the planet, then you get into like interesting, like Kaiser ideas is, you know, what was going to go on after that. So like, let's say they win. Japan, Germany win World War two. And you have these two ideologies. Do they end up basically just dividing the world? Kind of like man in the high castle where you have. Yeah, that parts and this part. So you got essentially like white people ruled by Germany. The exception of like Western United States. But I guess they would see that above a buffer zone. But then Japan ruling over, you know, Asian people and everyone else is just going to be divided up like Africa. My job, it was a hyper militarized. It's almost what would happen if you combined. Let's say that you combine Spanish colonialism with Prussian militarization. That is the closest thing that I could possibly associate with it, because their entire ideology behind it was we want to be a member of the big boys being the colonizers. They wanted to do that. But that was the whole idea behind the East Asian co-prosperity sphere. That's what that it was. They were the biggest brother that was going to be taking care of all the little Asian brothers. The big irony, of course, was how brutal they were. Look at what happens with China everywhere else with how the Japanese treated them. That's where it's hard to say where they were. What were they protecting by, you know, the the slaughter of so many people? And that was their point. So everyone else was going to be subservient. They were all going to be one big happy family. But we're the big fucking brother. And just so you know, if you mouth off to the big brother, you get popped. But there was an incredible amount of like racism within the whole Japanese ideology with that as well, because these other people were not seen as equals to the Japanese under how they they saw that. Yeah, it might be big brother, little brother. But it's like you really beat up your little brother hardcore for not much in the way of gain that very brutally popped. Yeah, and they controlled how much they controlled the most. Yeah, they controlled. If you go by geographical landmass within the territory, it was I think it's the biggest empire that's ever existed. No British Mongolia. Well, I think it's close. I think the stat they're taking into consideration was like, oh, right. OK, land consideration versus human population was a British empire. But yeah, Mongolia land base for sure. Shit, too. That doesn't know that doesn't get granted, because if that, though, when you're just talking about land base, I mean, are you talking about like, OK, I guess all of Canada and the ocean. If you want to see rights, the British Empire, it's would be that I guess that's out by a million miles. Well, there was a giant sense of racial superiority, too. I don't know if that never went away. Yes, there was. That never went away. No, I know. I don't know if it came up. But yeah, the the Japanese considered themselves racially superior to all the rest of the Asians who were talking about. It's the big brother. It's the biggest brother. They were the ones who were on top consensual sex of Nan King. Now there's like this really funny short of I don't know if he's like a Japanese historian or whatever, but he's like a traditional Japanese like doughnut operator, formal outfit. And it's like it's the snippet of Joe Rogan on his podcast explaining that the Japanese were such this badass warrior culture that the Mongols showed up and the Japanese fucked them up and they left. And this it just comes to this Japanese like historian, dude, laughing hysterically. It didn't happen. Bro is a typhoon. It was every time their their navy was destroyed. Their ships are destroyed. Yeah. And it happened twice, 10 years apart. Three three typhoons. Point of interdiction here. It was both. OK, because the fucking thing is, they did actually make landfall in their one multiple battles on land. They did. Here's the problem. Yes, literally. Not even just Tsushima. They landed on the mainland, too. They did. Not the epicenter cities, though. But you know, fringes. They did fight battles. So here's the fucking problem. So this is the whole thing when you actually look at Japanese history and the whole point with how the samurai were structured in the first place. So the samurai fought in almost the same way that the Mongols did at that time. They were horse archers. That's what they were. The whole sword is bullshit in the first place. Like the sword was never actually the common weapon. It was very rare. I mean, they had to blow. No, they had them. But yeah, there's especially, yeah, horsemen, archers, bow being the number one. And that is what they utilize. It's why if you look at old samurai armor, they have these gigantic pads. Think of like a football pads on steroids where they're just gigantic squares that are right here. And the whole purpose of that is to block arrows. As I while riding a horse point back here, I have a giant square shield and they had a lot of mobility protecting my face. And that's the whole point. So they're fighting the Mongols with almost the same type of tactics against. It's honestly not Mongols at that point. It's mass Korean levies that are enforced into the battlefield by the Mongols. But they win. The problem is the samurai government almost immediately after this fucking collapses from winning. Do you know why it collapses after they win? Because their entire society was based off winning not only honor, but money and land after winning a battle. Yeah, it's like when you're you don't get new land after winning a defensive battle. So what ends up happening is that all the samurai go. I'll be quiet here because I have not heard this take. This is actually really interesting. OK, because I didn't think about that part of the cultural aspect of a warrior culture. Well, the fuck do we fight and die for? We didn't get any new lands or anything. We get to live bodies, but that's it. And so they rebel against the government and take it over. God, I love it. Yeah, because they didn't get any land. I got four skulls. And so it's like it's like an illogical position, though. It's like, well, what do you want? Like, did you want to either? OK, if that was the goal, then what would you rather have surrendered? Or are you saying like the Japanese should have done like a counterattack, you know, onto the mainland? That's not something Japanese did. Japan was about closing themselves off for the most part, being self-sufficient. I shouldn't say closing themselves off. Not as much as what's going to happen in in the early 17th century with the Tokugawa. But they didn't bring gold here because you're not traveling with anything of merit. You're just coming to take everything. Most of the treasure and fleet and whatnot went down to the bottom of the fucking ocean from the typhoon. They don't have anything worth taking. And Mongols, I know you've done like different beats on it, which we will get into it because it's one of my favorite pieces of history. Like Mongols didn't give a about like property or any of that shit. They were a roaming tribe, a steep people, at least in the beginning. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. When it was Genghis, like Genghis was very big. And then they became like trade obsessed afterwards. That's one thing they're going to do is and it's why they also invested so heavily in the expansion and build up of the Silk Road because they could tax it that way. But yeah, it's a different system that I guess what you would traditionally think about wealth and imperialism that way. But I mean, there was it was supposed to be basically all people unified under one sky. It's kind of the policy of Genghis Khair. The generations fuck that up. But when they went to Japan, it was just like, hey, conquer shit, conquer shit. That's why I care so much about the like the misunderstanding of the power that Hirohito had, because he brings it back. You're kind of looking at it as like. Jeff Bezos is in control of Amazon, but also there's like 800 people below him making decisions that he never actually gets to see. No, no, no. That's still associating too much. Here's the thing. It's too. It's no, no, no. You're what you're saying from my belief. It's too harsh and definitive of a stance. Here's the thing. Again, I say that he was a guy who ended up being used. He is not innocent in this. I have never made a statement that he is in that sense. He in fact, he ended up getting away with a lot of the stuff that he was complicit in, allowed or otherwise that may or may not be. He got off. He got off so easy there. Neither of them have really talked about what led to the the modern iteration of the militarization of Japan. And it traces it back to like, you know, OK, so the Tokugawa, they locked down the country early 1600s. Fast forward. It's mid 1800s. The Americans show up. Commodore Matthew Perry shows up, forces them open, and they get this glance of the outside world and and they see firsthand. And they've been they've seen this. They saw this before, like on the eve of the closing up of Japan. So like 1500s, they saw what was going on with Europe in Asia's 1500s. The Spanish, the Portuguese, with these incredible amount of of this modern technology when it comes to warfare, you got guns coming in. The Japanese actually thought that stuff was cool at first, but they saw how such a threat that the Europeans were and they close up their borders up to, you know, the Dutch for some trade missions here and there. But then fast forward to the 1850s and all of a sudden, you know, that like Europe that was just peaking its head has become the Western world because talk about the U.S. I should say as a whole is now like on steroids, 1800s. This is where we're starting to get like Maxim machine guns coming in and the steamships and this incredible amount of military technology at that point. And you see what the Meiji restoration was. We have to militarize some in a similar like Western fashion or we're going to go the way of what's happening to everybody else in Asia at that point. China has been exploited. The Philippines look at the Spanish did centuries before that to them that like motivated it was like, get on track with the Westerners and become that imperial juggernaut or you're going to be victim of it. I think that is one of the biggest benchmarks that we have of this. And this is something that Hirohito would have inherited that had already been going on for well over a generation. The thing is, he did not have as much power to organize how things were done on the ground and for specific actions that led to as many war crimes. Because here's the thing. He can say, hey, I'm going to pull the trigger. And then after pull the trigger, the fucking person controlling the bullet ends up splitting it off into three different directions and going after an orphanage. That's that's my point, is that the generals and those underneath were significantly worse than anything he ever had in mind. It's like the well, same thing. You you could put him in the same category. Then fear of the Japanese population being possibly ignorant to some of the atrocities that were going on, because remember, the Japanese government didn't even accept that stuff. And people, the general Japanese population, some of them went to their grave of old age after the war, not believing in the atrocities that actually went down there. And he was like, hey, yes, you can attack China. But then the repercussions of that, then they turn into the competition of a hundred heads. Yes, yes. OK, we're still close enough. Brutal story, by the way, with it. Everybody plays it off like he was literally like everybody plays it off like he was fucking off in the corner playing with koi fish and had no clue what was going on. There's no way my argument. That's what upsets me. It's like he was literally just like a halfway disabled kid playing with koi fish in his pond in his palace. And he didn't know anything. No. Yeah. OK, absolutely not. But he was complicit. But that's why I care so much about like, no, he had way more power than you think. And he was complicit. And he is a big part of the reason that they didn't agree to surrender at Japan earlier, because the last consolation before them surrendering that because they kept like lowering their expectations for surrender like three or four times. And then finally, the last stipulation was, OK, well, you can't try the emperor for war crimes. And then we're like, OK, fuck it, fine. And that was it. That was the surrender. So like, that's my whole point of like, well, if he was truly nothing all along, why the fuck would that even be? You have to pose next to my partner. It is actually a big thing. Even if he was responsible for a lot more is spiritual importance because the so that's the story that he made that speech for the people because he was revered as a god, a living god. That's the whole point. A lot of a lot of Japanese citizens, some God, a lot of Japanese citizens that never heard his voice like, no, they never addressed. No one. No one. That was the first time it had ever been on radio. Well, you don't even see him either, by the way. Being the presence like physical presence was such a big deal. You know, ever no one outside of the immediate government that was right there had ever heard his voice, his mind. That is that is essentially that is essentially like for America. It's like Jesus coming over. Yeah, no, it was like, hey, we're giving up. And everyone's like, well, I was going to say, oh, gee, I was like, oh, people, people knew the radio transmission was coming. They were dressed up like they were like the equivalent of going to church. Like people was like people were dressed up like the formal occasion just to hear the emperor's voice on the radio. It was kind of crazy. All right. That was a fun conversation to see them have. And actually seems like they came to some consolation a little bit because it seemed like both of them started on more extremes about what the power, you know, was of the emperor. But then they kind of like kind of understand it's maybe somewhere in the middle there. And they both did make up. They did both make good points. I do think there was a little bit of only a little bit of historical context potentially missing. History of everything was able to put in a little bit that hopefully heard again a little bit more about, you know, like the opening of Japan and the effect that that is going to have on their militarism, because that's a huge part of this that wasn't really discussed there. But it is something I need to learn a little bit more about, about what when it comes to like day to day operations of the Japanese imperial actions. What role did the emperor play? That's actually something I want to know a lot more of. So I need to look at some sources. If you got any, you can let me know. Let me know in the comments. Come over on Discord. And what's kind of the best, most reliable stuff we have about the actual command structure there outside of the just war council and what we think about with these military leaders? Anyway. All right. That was a lot of fun. And thanks for hanging out with me. We'll see you next time. Bye.