Onward! Part One
By MAS HASHIMOTO
There have been many revolutions throughout world history. Here are several. No doubt you can add others.
We changed from hunters to growing plants and domesticating animals with the Agricultural Revolution.
For the Southern economy in the United States, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin which made the South a prisoner of cotton, but his most important invention for the North during the American Civil War was the concept of interchangeable parts which led to the mass production of weapons. Thus began, in earnest, the Industrial Revolution.
As a US History teacher at Watsonville High School from 1960 to 1996, I taught about changes like revolutions, where the masses rose up against the tyranny of the ruling party.
In a brief review, in the American Revolution, from 1765 to 1783, an estimated 1/3 of the colonials were “Patriots,” 1/3 “Tories,” or Loyalists to King George III, and 1/3 didn’t care one way or the other. The Patriots fought against the tyranny and insanity of King George III and an unsympathetic Parliament.
In the French Revolution, from 1789-1799, when Marie Antoinette asked why the peasants were protesting, an aide replied that the people had no bread. She didn’t Tweet, “Well, let them eat cake.”
The proletariat rose against the bourgeoisie in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Czar Nicholas II relied on the advice of his secretary of homeland security, Rasputin.
In the Communist Chinese Revolution from 1945 to1949, the peasants, led by Mao Tse Tung, rose in rebellion against Chiang Kai-Shek and his corrupt warlords.
In the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1975, Ho Chi Minh defeated the French forces at Ngo Dinh Diem in 1955, and those of two American presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.
On a personal note, early during the Vietnam struggle, I told my students we would lose the war. Several anti-Communist Catholic parents and a Green Beret in town wanted me fired. The John Birch Society’s Minutemen had their cross-hairs on the back of my neck. With the end of WW II in 1945, the French wished to regain their colonies as part of their global racist imperialism. This included “French Indo China” which contained Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The French forces surrendered in May 1955 at Dien Bien Phu and left.
We should have helped the Vietnamese people gain their independence, not unlike our own struggle for independence. In world imperialism, white racism continued to play a major role after WW II.
My military historic knowledge has been challenged with “you’re not a military strategist!” True, I was only a Specialist 4 in the US Army and US Army Reserves from 1958 to 1964. In all the previous revolutions like those mentioned above, those who controlled the countryside won. In Vietnam, the Communists controlled the countryside. The US and its allies controlled the cities. The outcome was inevitable.
The Vietnam War cost more than 58,000 American lives and who knows how many Asians and others. Among them were my students. Sixteen Watsonville High School graduates, including Rocky Yukio Hirokawa, were KIA in Vietnam. They are honored with a memorial grave marker on campus.
We have not recovered from the Vietnam War which left our nation deeply divided. There was an attempt by Hollywood to reverse the outcome of the war with the movie, “The Green Berets.” A more realistic account was “Born on the 4th of July.”
In 1973, I was called into the principal’s office. An appointment was made to have me fired. My accusers didn’t show. They must have felt like they had done their “patriotic” duty, and now, it was up to the school district to have me fired. After teaching for 36 years, I retired in 1996.
Today, in my retirement, I am invited to teach, mostly to high school and university students, the historic racism experienced by many ethnic, cultural, and religious societies for 244 years in this nation. I am grateful for each invitation.
