 Ah, that's good. But it's not coffee, it's tea. Because in today's lesson, we're gonna learn that the reason why the United States nuked Japan in World War II is because, well, they're British like tea. Interested? Let's go learn. You are clear for launch. And with that, shut down your visors, O2 on and prepare for ignition to O2. You can copy that and... So our story starts with a concept that defined East Asia for hundreds of years, isolationism. This means that a country has adopted a policy that it isn't gonna deal with other countries either economically or politically. And while none of the countries in East Asia were totally isolationist, China, Japan, and Korea severely restricted trade with other countries. These isolationist attitudes began to take root during the Ming dynasty. The Ming dynasty came to power after overthrowing the Mongol Yuan dynasty in 1368. But the Ming's move to isolationism didn't come right away. In fact, one of the many things that it's known for is the voyages of Songhi. Zenghi was a Chinese Muslim unit who became the admiral of a fleet of ships that were unrivaled anywhere in the world for the next several hundred years. The Chinese were the undisputed leaders of naval technology of the age. And the times of Zenghi, massive ships called treasure ships were being built. Some of these ships were being reported as being as long as 400 feet, although most historians believe that probably 200 feet was about the longest they could make. Still, these were huge ships. Let me put this in perspective. These ships were as big as the largest of the ships of the Spanish Mar Armada 300 years later. And there have been archeological discoveries that does suggest that the size of these ships may have actually been as long as 400 feet. That puts them in the same size as a World War II aircraft carrier. Now, whether they were for 200 or 400 feet long, these were huge ships for the age. And in 1407, the Ming emperor Young Li, Zenghi, had a fleet of over 200 ships, including 62 treasure ships on the voyage to Southeast Asia. By his death, Zenghi would make seven voyages stretching across the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and Africa. Most historians agree that the purposes of these voyages were not to do trade, but rather to show off the might of the Chinese people. However, these voyages were out a step of the guidance that the first Ming emperor had laid out for his successors. The previous one dynasty were controlled by Mongols who were much more open to foreigners operating in the country. The Ming dynasty sought to change this. Additionally, Confucian teachings had long looked down on merchants and foreign entanglements and this also influenced emperors after Young Li's death in 1424. Now, 10 years after Young Li's death, the Ming dynasty signed a proclamation forbidding foreign trade. Now, despite the words of the proclamation, foreign trade did continue, but the proclamation assisted the emperor in controlling foreign trade in China. In 1479, all the records of the Zenghi's voyages were destroyed and by 1524, the flea ships that had numbered as many as 300 ships were destroyed. The attitude of the Ming dynasty was that China was the center of the world and the world would come to China, not the other way around. By the mid 1500s, they did begin to open their trade again, but by this time, the Mongols in North had started to regain their strength, but it would be the Manchus that would end the Ming dynasty. The Manchus are the ethnic group found in Manchuria, region north of the Korean peninsula. In the 1600s, the Manchus began to exploit the Ming witnesses and would take over the emperor in 1644 and call themselves the Qing dynasty. The Qing dynasty championed the ethnocentric idea of the Chinese being at the center of the world and the superiority of the Chinese culture. The Qing saw foreigners such as the Europeans as barbarians and believed nothing could be learned from them. The only reason trade was allowed at all was because it was a source of income for the government. Unfortunately, as soon as the Qing took over, England would start the Industrial Revolution, which would change the world, except for China, who largely refused to allow new ideas in their country. To further control trade in 1759, the Qing instituted the Canton system, which all foreign trade had to be conducted in one port, Canton. Additionally, severe limitations were put on Europeans to isolate them from the Chinese people and all trade had to be paid in silver. And this is what became a problem for the British and their tea. Tea from China had only been introduced in Britain in the 1600s, but it had already become the main drink within Britain. To supply this tea habit, over 15 million tons of Chinese tea were being imported into Britain each year. However, the Chinese would not take any other products as payment for the tea, only silver. This imbalance of trade meant that, very quickly, England's silver supplies were largely been depleted as they were all going to China. This is where the British East India Company had an idea. In British India, opium, as it is in Afghanistan today, was a major product. The British East India Company gambled that merchants in India would actually defy the Qing emperor and purchase opium for silver. This silver would then be used to buy tea to ship back to England. By 1839, the entire tea trade for Britain was financed by this opium trade. And as you can imagine, the Qing emperor was not amused. Beyond the effect it had on the millions of Chinese who were now addicted to opium, the trade of opium stopped the amount of silver coming into China. This greatly disrupted the Chinese economy that was built upon silver as its currency. So in 1839, the Chinese government seized the British stores of opium and destroyed them. This would start the first of two wars between Britain and China, the opium wars. Now, in the United States, it's said that our government has a war on drugs, but here we have Great Britain actually having a war to actually protect drug trade. Now, these were also wars that China just didn't have a chance of winning. They're turning away from the knowledge of the Industrial Revolution, gave the British a huge advantage in ship and weapon technology. The British won both these wars and opened the Chinese trade to Europe. The Chinese also had to give up Hong Kong. This humiliated the Qing dynasty and left them weaker than before. Military action would also open up trade in Japan and Korea. As we saw in our last lesson, Japan was opened up due to American warships. In Korea, so secluded was the country that it had earned the name the Hermit Kingdom. When the Koreans destroyed a U.S. Navy ship and killed all of our crew while they were trying to negotiate for open trade, the Americans sent a detachment of nearly 700 Marines and captured five fortresses on Gongwa Island to the northwest of Seoul. Expecting the Koreans to capitulate as the Japanese had, the Americans were surprised when the Koreans still refused to negotiate. It would actually be the Japanese would sell their warships to Gongwa Island that forced Korea to open up trade in 1876. This really signaled a shift in power in East Asia from China to Japan that occurred after the open wars. While the Qing dynasty had been weakened by the open wars, the opening of Japan had brought in into the Japanese Shogunate and revival of the empire of Japan. Realizing the Qing dynasty was weak as a result of the open wars, Japan attacks Korea. This forces the Qing dynasty to withdraw their protection for Korea. In 1910, Japan fully invades Korea and annexes the country. Now Japan would completely control Korea for the next 35 years. The Japanese military that would then push north into Manchuria where they would go to war with Russia. This war lasted only a couple of years and would have brought to an end by a negotiation by the American president, Teddy Roosevelt, with the Japanese largely being seen as the victor of the conflict. But the weaknesses of the Qing dynasty didn't only mean that it couldn't protect Korea. In 1911, it found it couldn't even protect itself. With a weakened Qing emperor, democratic forces in China took the opportunity to stage a Chinese revolution that ended 2,000 years of Chinese dynastic rule. However, instead of establishing a democratic government, military leaders actually tried to take control themselves and the government collapses. Without a working government, the landowners take control of their own lands and begin to act independently. This situation created a tenuous alliance between the Chinese communists who were fighting the landowners because of the landowners' own land and the nationalists who were fighting the landowners because the landowners were standing in the way of a democratic government. Such an alliance just wasn't gonna last. In 1827, civil war breaks out in China with Mao Zedong being the leader of the communists and Shen Kai-shek being the leader of the democratic nationalists. At this point, the Japanese see the civil war as an opportunity and take all of Manchuria. In 1937, the Chinese are still locked in a civil war between the communists and nationalists and the Japanese turn west and attack into the heart of China. The Japanese were effective and brutal invaders. It was during the invasion of China in 1937 that the rape of Nanking occurs. This was the slaughter of an estimated 300,000 Chinese citizens in the city of Nanking by approaching Japanese forces. But the rapid conquest of China and other areas in Asia was causing a problem with Japan. Since the fall of the Shogun, the Japanese military had fully modernized its armed forces. To invade China, it was now using trucks, tanks, and aircraft all needing oil to run and rubber for tires and ungas kits. But a world opinion of the Japanese invasion and their war crimes was causing many countries to impose embargoes on resources that Japan needed to advance through China. In 1940, the US embargoes oil sales to Japan when Japan invades into China. Figuring that they only had two years of oil storage, Japan plans now to attack the Dushies' indies not only get their oil, but the rubber plantations. However, the Japanese military feared that an attack of the Dushies' indies would bring Americans into the war. And since any plans to take the East Indies would mean that they would have to take the Philippines, the US territory, they were sure that this would mean war with the United States. Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. So on the morning of December 7th, 1941, Japanese aircraft from six aircraft carriers attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor. It was the intent of the Japanese leaders that this attack would render the American Pacific fleet from being able to stop the Japanese taking Dushies' indies in the Philippines. Ironically, such an attack may not have been necessary. When asked in 1940, President Roosevelt had privately said that he would not go to war if the Japanese attacked the East Indies or even the Philippines. However, with the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Americans were now at war with Japan. Fortunately, while every one of the American battleships were sunk or severely damaged during the attack, the Pacific fleet's aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor the morning of the attack. And for the next four years, American forces would fight across the Pacific, literally hopping from island to island to island until they had seized the southern islands of Japan. By May of 1945, Hitler was dead and the war in Europe was over. But the war in the Pacific was still raging on as the soldiers in Japan proved themselves to be tough warriors. The fighting only intensified as Americans got closer to the Japanese homeland. When US forces fought for the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, the Japanese soldiers never surrendered until 110,000 lay dead and the other 10,000 were captured. While not as many as the Japanese losses, nearly 20,000 Americans died fighting for the island. Now, despite the American firebombing in major cities such as Tokyo, there was no indication that the Japanese would not fight just as hard, if not harder, with an American invasion of the main Japanese islands. Military leaders briefed the American president that nearly 800,000 Americans would be needed for the invasion of Japan and probably a third of them would not survive the fight. A hard decision for Truman, probably not as hard as the one he actually made. Since 1942, American scientists have been working on the most secret weapons development program the world has ever seen, the Manhattan Project. So secret was the program that as vice president, Truman was not even told about the program to build an atomic bomb until 10 days after FDR had died and Truman was sworn in as president. Deciding that the invasion of Japan was to be too costly, Truman authorized the first of two atomic bombs to be dropped in Japan. The first was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Despite leveling 70% of the city and killing 75,000 people, instantly the Japanese leaders refused to surrender. So on August the 9th, the second bomb was dropped on Nakasaki. On the 15th of August, the emperor of Japan surrendered and World War II was over. So why did we nuke Japan? Easy, the British liked tea so they sold opium to buy it. Fighting the opium wars, they stabilized the Qing dynasty, prompting the Chinese revolution in civil war enticing Japan through invade China, leading to the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor which brought the Americans in the war which we ended with two atomic bombs. We nuke Japan because the British liked tea. But this series of events would continue. After World War II, both Mao Zedong and Shanghai Shik decided to govern China together but it didn't work out very well and very quickly they were back at war. The civil war ended with the communists driving the nationalists off of the mainland of China known onto the island of Formosa. Here, Shanghai Shik would establish the Republic of China or Taiwan which the United States would recognize as the true government of China for the next 30 years. In 1979 however, in an effort to turn the Chinese communists away from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, we now formally recognize Communist China as the true government of China. Now China does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country. So this creates an awkward situation where the U.S. has adopted what is known as the One China policy acknowledging that China sees Taiwan as part of their country. However, when China isn't looking, we treat Taiwan as an independent country in all but name. For China's part, as long as we do not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent state, they largely look the other way. It's kind of like knowing your girlfriend is cheating on you but you don't want to fight so you look away. That's the situation between China, Taiwan and United States today. But the serious events that started due to the British love of tea has also had lasting effects on the Korean Peninsula. In the last days of World War II when it became clear that Japan would surrender, the Soviet Union declared war in Japan and started rushing down South to be able to claim as much land before a formal surrender. They were able to make it all the way down to 3th parallel before Japan surrendered. And as we saw in Europe after the war, the Soviet Union did not give up their territories. Instead, they established a Communist North Korea north of the 38th parallel and below the 38th parallel under American protection would be the capitalist South Korea. However, just five years later, war would revisit the Korean Peninsula as North Korea invaded South Korea and put South Korean and American forces as part of the United Nations to the southeast portion of the country before the combination of General Walker's breakout of the Pusan perimeter and MacArthur's landing at Incheon turned the tide. Now the UN would push through North Koreans all the way up the Yellow River which forms the border between China and Korea. Then the Chinese came into the war on the side of the Communist North. With the Chinese in the fight, they would push the UN forces down South and by 1951, the battle lines stabilized roughly where the war began along the 30th parallel. Here the war would be fought for the next two years. In 1953, an armistice agreement was signed that stopped the fighting. However, there has never been a formal peace treaty ending the war. In 2018, North Korea and the United States agreed to talk to them formally in the war but by 2020, these talks seem to have been petered out. Now today, North and South Korea are separated by a demilitarized zone which ironically is probably the most militarized zone in the world. Starting across the peninsula, the DMZ extends two kilometers North and two kilometers South of the border between North and South Korea. The DMZ itself is fortified mind-mind fields in Constantino wire and the bulk of both the North and South Korean armies are along the DMZ. All right, in this lesson, you should know why China is communist, why Taiwan is Taiwan, how World War II started and ended and why we now have a North and South Korea and it's all because the British liked tea. Until next time, keep on learning.