Without Hate and Without Fear….

The sun that went down in the Western sky was red last night. It was the red red of mankind’s blood. Certainly it was a meaningless thing, but farther west, thousands of miles beyond the seemingly peaceful horizon, Americans were dying in our first day of, this, our World War II.
Gone are the doubts of Americans. No longer can we say “this is not our war.”
Even Burton K. Wheeler,leader of the reluctant isolationists, said yesterday the only thing for us to do is to lick hell out of the Japanese. By the time this is in the hands of readers, Congress will be preparing to clear the way for that by declaring war.
And from today on, the world will find that we are note the weaklings they thought, that they mistook our reluctance for war as weakness when it was in reality a praiseworthy disgust for the idiocy of war. Now it is forced uppon us by droppings of the eagles of the land of the rising sun, and our only answer can be to drain their blood into the sewers of mankind.
We go to war with a laugh on our lips and no fear in our hearts, only a feeling of sublime sorrow that mankind is so foolish. We go to war not with hate in our hearts, but rather with love for our stytle of doing things.
We go to war with full realization of the hell before us, and acknowledgement of our own guilt in the world flare-up, but with the firm conviction that we are united at last, that victory lies before us, and our sacrifices are not in vain. Say this is the enthusiasm of youth if you will, but deny us not that enthusiasm is a powerful thing. Deny us not that America, united in purpose as Japan has made u, can be made into the world’s most powerful military nation.

* * *
Japan has always been an opportunist. For a decade she has played up for everything she could get. Finally we refused to and she opened her amazing attack and now makes the Near East the latest holocaust of bloodshed. She asked for disaster and she shall have it.
We say this with no ill-will toward the Japanese, for we realize there is little difference in the people of different nations. Lost, however, in the grip of the militarists, and forced by their particular path in world affairs, they have made the mistaken move Mussolini made before the tragic fall of France. Only while Mussolini continues as Hitler’s satellite, the land of the rising sun will fall. Her sun will drop in the Eastern sky just as the real sun fell tonight in the Western sky–blood red.
For Japan cannot face the naval might of the ABCD powers inthe Pacific, and its cities are the most vulnerable in the world for incendiary bombs. Their cities will burn and corpses will lie in the streets.
We shudder with regret, but we are at war.
But when it is over, whether we are successful or not, let it not be said as it can said of students in the last war, that they were inflamed by the emotionalism of the mob and thereby diseased with intolerance. Let is (sic) not be said that we were too small of mind to respect the rights of man and the unfortunate Japanese-Americans among us.
–Bill Duncan