James Bradley wrote the highly regarded books “Flyboys” and “Flags of Our Fathers”. Doing the research for those books (which were about World War II), he began to ask how the whole war happened to begin with. What created the crisis, particularly in the Pacific Theater, that caused such a massive war?

His conclusions in “The Imperial Cruise” are unsatisfying. Basically, he blames all of World War II on Teddy Roosevelt. This book is a wonderful treatise on why dead white men should be blamed for everything. Frankly, it is an ingenious presentation of history that draws horribly wrong conclusions.

The entire first half of the book seems dedicated to proving that good old Teddy was a racist. It’s effective. I won’t argue the point. Teddy was a product of his time, and most white men and women of that age felt they were superior to all people of different color. From this point, Bradley asserts that Japanese imperialism was the direct result of America’s (specifically Teddy Roosevelt’s) blessing when the Japanese battled the Russians in the early 1900’s. Americans viewed the Japanese as a sort of “honorary Aryan” race who embraced Western values and attitudes, according to Bradley, and were therefore viewed as superior to other Asian races (such as the Chinese). The Slavic races (Russians) were held in check by the Japanese and that benefited American, French, German and English expansion into Asia. America wanted to continue expanding it’s particular way of life and values, and opening Asia up required assistance from a country like Japan.

There is, of course, a lot of truth to this. There is no doubt that Teddy Roosevelt’s international deal making was unchecked and overtly imperialistic (anybody who knows the history of his work to secure the Panama Canal would echo that viewpoint). There is also no doubt that American and European colonial powers wanted to open up China.

But Bradley goes too far and draws conclusions that are, in my opinion, a real stretch. Yes, Roosevelt made some stupid and deadly mistakes. But we can’t blame World War II on him. We can’t say that because we looked the other way when Japan surprise attacked the Russians, we set up Pearl Harbor. We can’t say that because our military acted horribly when we took the Philippines from Spain that the Japanese behavior on the Bataan Death March is to be expected. We can’t call the opium trade in China a “Christian undertaking” that was meant to undermine the culture of China, or that Queen Victoria was “the biggest drug dealer in history.”

I admire the work Bradley did uncovering the mistakes and follies of our government at the beginning of the 20th Century. I just completely disagree that our country must take responsibility for the vicious and brutal methods of the Japanese in the first part of the 20th Century.