Saturday, March 30, 2013

Research Note: Testing Claims of Douglas Dietrich

In researching the culpability of Franklin Roosevelt in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we came across an interesting character by the name of Douglas Dietrich who claimed that
·         Durham White Stevens (1851 – 1908) was an American dictator of Korea after the American Civil War
·         the Japanese had developed an atomic bomb by the end of World War 2
·         the United States sued the Japanese for peace to end World War 2
We reject all of these statements as either false or unsupportable from the historical record.

Dietrich makes many other unconventional statements of equal controversy, and does so in a convincing, at times erudite, fashion. He often challenges his listeners to do the research themselves to prove that he is right. We took up the challenge only to report disappointment for our revisionist historian.
 
Much of Dietrich’ authority rests upon his alleged access to massive quantities of American official archive documents he was assigned to destroy while a librarian assistant at the Presidio during the 1980s. He states that these documents stretched back to the Spanish American War and were backlogged at the military base by incompetent military and civilian staff who refused to the do the dirty work of destroying the records. Through various connections as a military brat, he obtained his position at the age of 16.
 
While his stories and analyses are quite entertaining, they often lack any factual basis, or rest upon dubious evidence - Durham Stevens being one such example. More specifically, Dietrich’s claims about Stevens are made to demonstrate that Americans have been brainwashed or its leaders have hidden the truth about their nation’s imperial aggrandizement in Asia, specifically Korea.
 
Stevens was an obscure American diplomat who served in the State Department in Tokyo after graduation from law school in 1873. In 1883 the Japanese government hired him for its legation in Washington, DC. In 1904 Japan appointed him as foreign advisor to the Emperor of Korea, during which time the New York Times reported that he was known by some as the “American dictator of the Hermit Kingdom.” While visiting San Francisco in 1908, he was assassinated by a group of Korean students from which wounds he died.
 
The point is that Stevens assumed his Korean post in 1904 – not in the early 1870s as Dietrich reports. More importantly, Stevens was not an American dictator of Korea installed by the American government in a takeover of the country. Rather, he was working for the Japanese when he earned the sobriquet as American dictator, a moniker which the New York Times reported to illustrate the influence he had in Korean affairs on behalf of the Japanese.
 
Turning to the subject of Japan and World War 2, Dietrich cites an article in the October 3, 1946 Atlanta Constitution reporting that Japan had developed an atomic bomb which it had tested in Konan Korea at the close of World War 2. The author David Snell cites a pseudonymous Japanese Captain Wakabayashi who related details about the Japanese atomic program which had been moved to Korea to avoid the American B29 air raids. Five days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the Japanese detonated their bomb at sea to avoid capture by the Soviets, according to the report filed by Snell who was working with the Army’s 24th Criminal Investigation Detachment.
 
Snell reported his findings to the US Army intelligence team in Korea which censored details of the information which were contained in the article.
 
A book entitled Hungnam and the Japanese Atomic Bomb: Recent Historiography of a Postwar Myth by Walter Grunden reviews the claims of the article in detail, along with a review of the Japanese nuclear program, to demonstrate that the story is false.
 
If Dietrich wishes to credibly contradict the findings of this book and other researchers who failed to substantiate Wakabayashi's story, he needs to produce evidence of greater weight than this 1946 newspaper article.
 
Dietrich’s larger point that the Japanese detonated the bomb to intimidate the Soviets fails because they occupied the northern part of the Korean peninsula in spite of the alleged detonation.
 
Regarding the final assertion by Dietrich – that the United States sued Japan for peace – we only offer our pity. The United States has occupied Japan since the end of the war and MacArthur’s vice regency of the island is well documented. The emperor of Japan did not step down because of the Japanese triumph in the war.

References
New York Times, D W Stevens Shot by Korean Assassin, March 24, 1908
Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

6 comments:

HL Shancken said...

Thanks for debunking this charlatan. The moment he opened his mouth on Coast to Coast I could tell that, as usual, the program was hosting yet another liar.

Anonymous said...

OK. I listened to him for TWO hours; time which I will never get back. He is either delusional, or a liar, or both. As the daughter and niece of WWII veterans, and the friend of other sons and daughters of such veterans, I take great offense at the insults he lobbies at them. As an obvious Japanese/Asian sympathizer (at one point he referred to Taiwan as his "homeland": 3/28/15, "Where Did the Road Go?" interview. No. Really. He did) he paints the American G.I.s as the most vile, evil, cruel and vicious people who ever walked the earth -- a classic case of projection if ever I heard a case of psychological projection.

The Japanese and the Marines HATED each other. No one, including the Marines, would argue that, and atrocities WERE committed on BOTH sides. But, unlike his "history" would have us believe, in 1942 the U.S. military forbid such atrocities on pain of court martial . . . at best. Americans did not, as a rule, commit atrocities in Europe, a fact he would no doubt account to racism. Pacific theater atrocities are more likely, however, a response to Japanese racism, and consequent atrocities, toward Americans. At one point, he glossed over the rape of Nanking as if it never happened. That's when I "had his number", i.e., knew where he was really coming from.

Regarding America's "defeat", remember, one of Dietrich's claims is that, because the Japanese did NOT wear, nor turn over, any Samurai swords to the Americans on the Missouri, that is, ipso facto, proof that they did NOT surrender. On the other hand, to the American mindset regarding such swords: who cares? and: they ARE on the Missouri, a U.S. vessel. What victor accepts *formal* surrender and signing of treaties on the *enemy's* vessel?

IF America "lost" the war then: 1) how is it the Japanese Supreme Commander surrendered 680,000(!) men to Lord Mountbatten, *and* surrendered his 700-year-old Samurai sword to Mountbatten? Apparently, the Brits are more astute when it comes to these traditions and subtleties, and weren't going to let the Japanese get away with what they apparently got away with on the Missouri. Thus, the British won WWII, and the U.S. lost. Pray tell, how does that work?

2) After WWII, the American Dollar became the WORLD'S reserve currency -- this is irrefutable fact -- and America, for the most part, began controlling the world's oil, a fact that has led to no end of problems in the world, but that's another topic. Now, considering that part of the reason Japan attacked the U.S. was because the U.S. was preventing Japanese access to oil . . . again, pray tell, how does that (America mostly controlling the modern oil industry) look like a Japanese victory?

This didn't require intensive research. It just required a look at how the world works, and has worked, for the past oh, say, 70 years.

Finally, if all this -- and much more, including the U.S. occupation of Japan -- is an American defeat, I would just LOVE to see what an American victory would have looked like! Every nation on the planet flying the stars and stripes, and calling itself a U.S. state (oh Lord forbid and help us all)? What? What would victory have looked like, if being the world's preeminent power, and the holder of the world's reserve currency, is defeat?

Dietrich's thesis is ridiculous. It does Japan no good, and provides no honor for it. In fact, it makes Japan look like "the mouse that roared". I think he should sit down and shut up.

Anonymous said...

I've just spent 2 hours listening to Deitrich and there were many things I already knew as fact like the USSR getting it's arse kicked when it tried to battle Japan at the end of WW2, that even gets into WW2 documentaries here in the UK.
Japans nuclear explosions I don't know but the dirty work that went on in China in the '30's isn't that secret, all sides carried out atrocities.
FDR was known as 'The butcher of Haiti'.
The past U.S use of weaponised small pox is also a matter of public record but other more recent claims cannot be proved so easily but it is true to say that many Asian people thought China and Asia's recent Avian flu was blamed on, or thought to have been caused by the USA, that doesn't prove anything but it does show that the people there do think there is a precedent for such actions and indeed as we know with the original Americans there is precedent for it's use by the U.S government.
'Spanish flu' has long been known to have originated in the U.S amongst U.S servicemen and the Spanish have complained about it's name for a long time..
Other than that he speaks too fast to go too far into the info he throws out in such a short time he speaks so fast and I don't have the time or inclination to get out every book I own or spend a week on the net for this comment.
He seems to mix facts with his own theories, I only wrote about what I knew to be true already, Japanese nukes? Hhmmm...

Anonymous said...

So all the history that has been written is accurate and and truth I think your all programmed to believe anything like the 6m holocaust why can't you just look up and learn the truth about Eisenhower's death camps killed 1.7m at least Douglas Dietrich inspires people to think for themselves. How else is can we know the truth

Anonymous said...

I hate to break it to you the US dollar is the petro dollar controlled Saudis and China isn't taking any more of our fake fiate currency.In Europe towards the end of WW2 Eisenhower's Rhine Medows death camps where German POWs were put in open air prisons no food or water the Geneva convention was ignored 100s>thousand> were killed ya!! no atrocities in Europe!!!!? Oh and the 3rd Reich did not surrender look it up Pearl Harbor was a set up false flag look it up The Spanish flu started in fort Reilly Kansas proven by sample tested by Modern science look it up

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