Shortly thereafter, I found myself to be one of the few foreigners in constant contact with Myanmar’s current
de facto leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, as international censure mounted on his consequential action. My enduring engagement with him underscores Japan’s near century-long special relationship with Myanmar, an oft-forgotten geopolitical factor crucial to resolving the present crisis as China’s clout increasingly overshadows the future of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
The Myanmar so territorially defined on today’s map is an impossible geopolitical proposition perennially constrained by its inhospitable terrain and internal contradictions. The horseshoe-shaped Irrawaddy river basin is home to the thriving agricultural base led by the Bamar ethnic majority and a gateway to the burgeoning Indo-Pacific. Meanwhile, while the highlands surrounding the basin insulate the Burmese core from continental powers, such as China and India, they harbor 10 armed insurgent
Japan s calculus: make the cost of surrender less than the cost of total war for America.
Here s What You Need To Remember:
Bottom line, no likely masterstroke no single stratagem or killing blow would have defeated the United States. Rather, Japanese commanders should have thought and acted less tactically and more strategically.
Let s face it. Imperial Japan stood next to no chance of winning a fight to the finish against the United States. Resolve and resources explain why. So long as Americans kept their dander up, demanding that their leaders press on to complete victory, Washington had a mandate to convert the republic s immense industrial potential into a virtually unstoppable armada of ships, aircraft, and armaments. Such a physical mismatch was simply too much for island state Japan with an economy about one-tenth the size of America s to surmount.
Illustrations at core of reopened Battle of Okinawa museum lay bare the horrors of war msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Saburo Ishizaki plans to make a scabbard of plain wood for this partially restored Japanese sword shown in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, on May 1. (Koji Takahashi)
SETOUCHI, Okayama Prefecture Craftspeople here restoring a Japanese sword for Aung San Suu Kyi have not heard from her representatives since her arrest in a coup staged by the Myanmar military.
While fearing for the safety of the ousted Myanmar leader, the workers have continued the project as scheduled in this western prefecture, and the sword is expected to be finished in autumn.
The blade was created by Sadatsugu Takahashi (1902-1968), a swordsmith of Okayama Prefecture’s Bizen-den school, who was designated a “living human treasure” by the central government.