CHAPTER 46
THE JAPANESE-AMERICAN WAR AND THE SUBJUGATION OF HAWAII
Nippon (also known by some in Europe as "Japan") had long been one of the only Asian realms that was not colonized heavily influenced by a European power. To the people of the Reich, Europa, and Holland, Nippon was far too defensible and densely populated to be a serious contender for a new colony. Back in the 18th century, the only allowed Western traders were based out of Dejima and were Portuguese. However, growing hatred of their weapons and their Catholicism led to massive unrest and an eventual massacre in Dejima of Western traders on April 3rd, 1710. For over 100 years, no foreign vessel dared to enter Nipponese waters and information to and from Nippon only came from the occasional Chinese merchant. In 1850, French vessels came to Edo Bay to force Nippon to reopen to the outside world. A massive battle ensued which saw 50 dead Nipponese and 176 French soldiers. The Europeans never really came back after that, becoming preoccupied with other territories and believing Nippon destined to always be a stubborn backwater. Growing up, prince Mutsuhito heard stories of the Battle of Edo Bay. Of how iron-clad whales rode into the bay and wished to destroy their way of life entirely. As news of the French Empire’s colonial ventures abroad entered the country, the French invaders were made the personification of Shinigami, the gods of death. These stories never left the young prince. When he became Emperor in 1867, Mutsuhito was very worried about the prospect of Western powers overthrowing his rule and destroying the ancient Nipponese way of life. He prayed to his ancestors that Nippon would forever be free of the control of the foreign Shinigami. To do this he believed he had to beat them at their own game. Feudalism, the Daimyō, and Nippon’s stubborn isolation had to go. If Nippon could modernize, then maybe, just maybe, Nippon would be safe from the foreign Shinigami. Unfortunately, Nippon lacked the expertise to fully modernize. As luck would have it, as Mutsuhito turned 18, things were about to get interesting.
Very interesting.
In 1870, Captain Nathaniel Butterworth of the Colonel Goodyear Enterprises Pacific Trade Company arrived in Edo Bay. Charles Goodyear had heard of the Emperor's attempts at modernization and desire to strengthen Japan. To entice Mutsuhito into a trade deal, he sent large amounts of rifles, handguns, and modern machinery as a gift. In order to acquire more of these items for a cheap price, Mutsuhito was asked to only trade with the Republican Union, host an Embassy in Edo, along with accepting Colonel Goodyear Enterprises bases to regulate shipping. Mutsuhito was hesitant, but the Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, whom also wished to see Nippon modernize, was able to convince him. As the ink dried on the Treaty of Edo, a new era had come to Nippon. For the first 17 years, this way of doing things went fine, with a cordial relationship between the Nipponese and the Yankee merchants. The flow of modern weapons and industrial machinery allowed Mutsuhito to slowly, but surely, modernize Nippon and weaken the power of the Daimyō, first through increasing their obligations in taxes, then by centralizing the armed forces. They could try to rebel, but swords are no match for guns. Then came Arthur Ponsonby, official Union Diplomat to Nippon. Ponsonby was a radical member of the AFC and Manifest Destiny Party and was appointed by President Custer to explore new routes for the growth of the Union sphere of influence. The Subjugation of Mexico was fresh in the minds of the Union people, and they were looking outwards once again. Ponsonby was going to be the one to tip the scale, knock the scale off the table, and then flip the table over before jumping up and down on both the scale and table. He became close friends with the Shogun. Unknown to all but a close few, the Shogun had actually converted to the AFC faith in 1878, keeping it under wraps to save face. Several other Daimyō had done so, too. Through befriending Yoshinobu, Ponsonby found a way to bring Nippon under Union control. He convinced the Shogun and the Daimyō whom had converted into overthrowing the Emperor in a palace putsch. The saviors, as they called themselves, had a plan ready and men hired. But the plan was never to be. Mutsuhito, having long distrusted Yoshinobu, had gotten wind of the plot, and on September 22nd, 1890, the Nipponese Army stormed Edo Castle to arrest the Shogun. A violent battle broke out that ended with the destruction of Edo Castle. The next day, the Emperor declared the position of Shogun defunct, ending the centuries long tradition. The story of Tokugawa Yoshinobu was not over and about to get a lot bloodier.
Emperor Mutsuhito of Japan
Since Butterworth's opening of Nippon to Union trade, a small amount of AFC converts had always been around, many simply calling themselves "The Saven." These Saven were fairly quiet and mostly kept to themselves. They were throughout most of Japan, but mostly concentrated on Kyushu. Some made the trip to America to see the "Holy Sites," such as Valley Forge and Burr's First Fundamentalist Church. At first, many Yankees looked upon these Nipponese as "yellow savages," not unlike all the Chinese slaving away in California. However, these people were different. They loved the Union and the Prophet Burr. Surely, then, they might not be all bad? In 1889, the Council of Jehovah announced that Nipponese were, in fact, descendants of the Pinnacle Man. According to this new doctrine, the Kamikaze ("Divine Wind") of Jehovah had shielded this "Lost Tribe of Israel" from the "Mongoloid Steppe-Savage Invasion" of Kublai Khan in the 13th Century, with unnaturally powerful storms destroying the Mongolian fleet. According to the Church, the Nipponese were actually
Jews, lost Israelites who took the land of Nippon away from the illiterate extinct "Inferior Cave-Dwellers" at some point in the distant past. Then, it got even more extreme, with official doctrine then declaring that not only were the Nipponese Jewish descended, but that Jesus Christ himself had appeared to the Japanese and preached the Gospel to them, based on some bizarre, cryptic manuscripts left by Aaron Burr that no one had ever quite deciphered. The Council "clarified" these writings.
"And then, as stated to me by the Angel of Destiny, Christ preached to the eastern Jews, and he said to these people, 'Yea, in the End of Days shall thee remember my name and beg for deliverance from the forces of darkness.'"
Rumors that the Council had invented these "lost writings" out of nothing to justify a convenient friendship with the Nipponese floated around but were quickly silenced. The Nipponese were also rabidly anti-European, which played well into Union hands.
On October 4th, 1890, Tokugawa Yoshinobu appeared in Nagasaki. He declared himself to be the rightful ruler of Nippon and for all good Christians to join him. By the end of the month, Kyushu had fallen to the Shogun’s forces. Across Nippon, the Daimyo who converted to the AFC faith had also risen up, though most were quickly crushed and summarily executed. While Yoshinobu had guns, the overwhelming force of the Emperor’s army crushed the revolt by the end of April. As Nagasaki fell, a small fleet of ships left port, secretly holding the Shogun and his supporters.
After what became known as the Kyushu Revolt, the Emperor abolished the Daimyo system entirely. The Republican Union brought forth evidence that the revolt was the work of a low-ranking diplomat who was called back and “arrested”, but Mutsuhito wasn’t so sure. It took four years for him to find the evidence that Custer himself had backed the Putsch. Mutsuhito had what he needed to act. In May 1895, he ordered all the ports in Nippon closed to Union vessels and once again banned Christianity. He denounced the West and Custer in a fiery speech that sent the locals of Edo (or as the Emperor had been calling it since moving there in 1892, Tokyo) in a frenzy towards the Union embassy. The rioters set the embassy ablaze and killed anyone left inside. Across town, several CGE employees were killed after an incident with the local police. Those that escaped death in the incident, along with the remaining embassy staff, were arrested. This would prove to be an... unfortunate incident. Custer was livid at the arrest of his ambassadors and, as Defender of the Faith, he saw it as his duty to protect Fundamentalists wherever they were. On June 4, 1895, Custer declared war on Nippon "in response to indignities never before suffered by our glorious nation and in defense of the persecuted Christian peoples of Nippon."
During his time in America, Yoshinobu adopted the name of John Splendidfaith. Interestingly, "Yoshinobu" roughly translated as "Splendid Faith." When Custer declared war on Nippon, Splendidfaith and his loyal followers set sail once again, this time to the Republic of Hawaii. Earlier that same year, in January 1895, the Hawaiian army had overthrown Queen Liliʻuokalani in a bloodless coup. However, the Hawaiian military was using outdated weaponry.The new government was desperate for money to fund modernization, and Splendidfaith had the cash. In exchange for hosting him and his followers, the government of Hawaii would receive $100,000 (in 1895 dollars). They quickly accepted. In Honolulu, he officially declared his dedication to the Bushido Code, his loyalty to the AFC, and proclaimed himself the "Shogun-in-Exile of Holy Nippon". In his first speech as Shogun-in-Exile, which was smuggled into Nippon, he called for all "honorable Christian samurai" to join him on his quest to "take our country into the bright future of service to Jehovah." After the speech made its way to Nippon, more shipping vessels left Nippon, growing Splendidfaith’s following from 75 to over 500. This bizarre turn of events was just as Custer had hoped. Previously silent on the matter, he now propagated the idea that the Nipponese were a lost tribe of Israel. Now that Hawaii held the capital-in-exile for "Holy Nippon," the Republican Union shipped out 19,000 Marines and 3,000 ORRA officers, as well as an "aerofleet" comprised of eight heavy assault airships and a squadron of small, 10-man scout "blimps." They wasted no time terrifying Hawaii into submission.
On August 20, the lead heavy assault airship
Gustavus Adolphus commenced bombardment on Honolulu while marines established a beachhead and built coffee grinder nests. Over 400 Hawaiian soldiers and militias were ruthlessly gunned down as they desperately attempted to repel the Yankee invaders. Meanwhile, John Splendidfaith and his followers declared a fifth column movement for the Union invaders and annihilated most of the Hawaiian troops inside Honolulu. The marines pummeled the remaining fragments of the meager Hawaiian army and seized control of the 'lolani Palace, lined up the Congress against the back wall, and then opened fire with a grinder, exactly as had been done to so many thousands in Mexico.
The ORRA had wasted no time in setting up "offices," and then they started rounding up Catholics, as a fairly large amount were in Hawaii due to Europan influence. While not listed on official records, most of the Catholics were taken out in the jungle and shot, and their bodies dumped in a ravine later known by islanders as "The Pit." Interestingly, the Society of Righteousness was responsible for the most brutal of the slaughters, conducting the execution of the former Hawaiian Royal Family with ancient katana swords, beheading their trussed-up prisoners with single strokes of the blades. A massive church was quickly built in Honolulu and the old Catholic buildings were blown to rubble. In another previously unthinkable event, the followers of Holy Nippon were proclaimed the "1st ORRA Nipponese Brigade," with the Shogun at the head as Legate General. The native population of Hawaii was severely depleted by the invaders, with most survivors becoming little more than servants, farm hands, and concubines. The sunny, beautiful weather of Hawaii was an instant draw for many Yankees, and they came flocking, quickly bringing the population back up.
The Union celebrated the defeat of the "yellow pagan Inferior Republic" by setting off fireworks and waving flags, and by encouraging the enlistment of men for the war against Nippon, which was still mostly at sea, even as Yankee prisoners continued to fester in Edo. The President was thrilled with the latest events, and immediately began using Hawaii, which was quickly renamed "the Goodyear Islands," as a base from which to begin his war against Nippon in earnest. Colonel Goodyear Enterprises was quickly hired and brought in a private army, the Overton Agency, to keep control over the island chain while the Union properly focused on Nippon. The wild-eyed blonde President declared all the little islands and kingdoms and atolls of the Pacific would be conquered by the Republican Union as part of its "manifest destiny to secure its future." Over the next few years, the Union Navy took one island group after another. One of the most important of these island groups was Polynesia, which had already been claimed by Peru. Recently-appointed Sky Marshal of the Aeroforce, Warren G. Harding, told Peru in an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Times to "back the Hell down or we'll send you to Hell. If you don't think the Union will fight three countries at once, you're dead wrong. If God is with us, who can stand against us?" Peru backed down, essentially wiping its hands of insanity for now and trying to look inward. After that tense stand-off, the Union went on to take all the South-East Pacific islands yet unclaimed by other powers. Finally, the Dutch government told the Union any further western expansion in the Pacific would mean hostilities with the Dutch and their allies. Thus, the nations created the "Wall of Micronesia," which marked the border between their Pacific empires.
Yankee troops fire on Hawaiian forces during the Subjugation of Hawaii
Independent Australia, now run by white supremacist and Custer fan Protector of the Realm David Campbell, dreamed of uniting all of Australia under Anglo-Saxon rule and forcing France out of the continent. Campbell's blatant racism against black Aboriginals was excused by the Council of Jehovah, who declared the Aboriginals "disgusting Inferiors and Pan-Indochinese mongrels, the byproduct of African, Indian, and Mongoloid Chinamen breeding a race of cultureless cave-dwellers worthy of the mercy of destruction." Following the Subjugation of Hawaii and the creation of the Goodyear Islands, Campbell asked for the first-ever formal conference with Custer. In Salvation City, the rechristened Honolulu, on January 30, 1896, President Custer met a foreign leader officially for the first time. The two men got along splendidly and began developing a plan for the future of Asia. Custer also introduced Campbell to Legate General Splendidfaith, who made a big impression on Campbell's view of Asians. The Legate-General was clearly an impassioned pro-Western Christian and believed that the Nipponese needed to be defended from the Mongoloid menace of China and Russia.
Union troops welcome the Australian delegation and Congressional Guards (in white) to the Old Palace in Salvation City, Goodyear Islands
Protector of the Realm David Campbell, fascist Australian strongman
John Splendidfaith, Leader of Holy Nippon
By the end of the Salvation City Conference, Campbell, Custer, and Splendidfaith called for the 20th century to be the "century of Fascism and the manifest destinies of our great Anglo-Saxon race." This weirdly included Holy Nippon, and its "white Jews, lost in Asia." They declared the area stretching from Nippon in the north, to Australia in the south, to the Union to the east to be the "Greater Fascist Co-Prosperity Sphere." This marked the first time that Custer officially entered an alliance with a foreign power.
Now, finally sorted through determining who would run the Nipponese puppet government upon invasion and subjugating Hawaii, the Nipponese-American War finally came to a head and saw the first real action. Australia declared war on Imperial Nippon in April, 1896, and dispatched ships and men to help the Union Navy assault the Nipponese coast. The vicious barrage greatly weakened support for the Emperor, who seemed helpless and held himself up in a bunker of sorts in Edo. The worst was yet to come, however, as Union aeroships flew overhead and dropped bat-bombs, pots full of oil and bats. Before the pots would be dropped, a match would be used to light the bats on fire. When the pots broke on impact, the bats would scatter and light the entire city, primarily built of paper and wood, on fire. Warren G. Harding personally oversaw the devastation of Edo from his enormous aeroship
R.U.S. Pride of the Buckeyes, which he affectionately referred to as "my little Teapot, short and stout." Accompanying him was Quartermaster-General Woodrow Wilson. Wilson wrote of witnessing the Great Fire-bombing of Edo in his 1925 book,
Tempest in a Teapot: My Time with Warren Harding in Asia.
"There stood Harding, his leather-gloved hands clasped behind his back. Always bombastic and full of machismo, the Supreme Chief of Military Affairs cut a good figure in his personalized brown uniform with yellow trim, with a chestful of medals from Mexico and an Order of Patriotic Brethren medallion pinned to his lapel above them all. A yellow necktie was neatly in place over his black shirt collar, and his mustache was curled up at the ends. A brown scarf hung about his neck, as it was quite cold eight thousand feet up in the air. This man so fabulously bedecked before me had just ordered the first bombing run on a city in the history of mankind. As the first bat-bombs dropped over Edo and the buildings lit up like Patriot-Saints Day crosses, a deafening cheer arose from the bridge's navigational crew (who were equipped only with primitive talkieboxes and manual navigational and targeting instruments). Harding, always one to contrive the quotable out of thin air, remarked to us all - or maybe to himself, or perhaps to God - 'Like bats out of hell, gentlemen. Like bats out of hell.' I never forgot that day. I can still smell the fumes from the ship's engines. When I close my eyes I can still see Harding standing in front of the observation window as Edo burned below."
Supreme Chief of Military Affairs Warren G. Harding
The R.U.S. Pride of the Buckeyes
As Edo went up in flames, the Emperor fled the city. As news spread that the Emperor was routing, the people rose up in general revolt. Supporters of the Emperor viciously slaughtered the rebels, who both represented internal Nipponese movements and supporters of Holy Nippon. Though the Holy Nippon supporters were outnumbered ten to one, they experienced great success, as many had been tipped off before the attack to be ready to rise up. Mayhem was the rule of the day as Nippon exploded into civil war. As the Emperor reached the outskirts of the city, a mob stopped his carriage before dragging him out and capturing him. Shouting "Long live the revolution!" radical Beutelists severely beat him before carting him off to parts unknown.
Over the next few weeks, the battle lines became clearer as Holy Nippon squared off against Imperialist remnants and the "Workers' Beutelist Party of Equality." This entire time, the Holy Nippon forces, greatly outnumbered, should have been quickly annihilated. However, they had been equipped with primitive talkieboxes that enabled communication with the Union Aeroforce. Whenever danger was near, a "miracle from Jehovah" would occur and a Union aeroship would fly overhead, with highly-skilled snipers opening fire from portholes. Three aeroships did indeed go down in the war, but their constant victories more than made up for those few loses. At last, John Splendidfaith arrived on Nipponese soil on October 1st, 1896, accompanied by the 1st ORRA Nipponese Brigade. Australian forces also made landfall shortly after, bringing up his rear as the "Christian Samurai" began slaughtering those who refused to accept the rule of Splendidfaith. By October 20th, Splendidfaith was in command in Edo and protected by Australian infantry as the ORRA Nipponese Brigade combed through the ruins of the city looking for enemies. The Yankees whom were imprisoned by Musuhito were finally freed, and anyone found to be a Beutelist was immediately executed.
The bloody war would last until 1900, when the last vestiges of the Empire would collapse upon the discovery that the Emperor had actually been murdered shortly after his capture, making their four-year war to reestablish his rule pointless. Many began to believe in the power of the Yankee God. Nipponese culture was totally collapsing and centuries of isolationism came crashing down. In 1901, Custer officially announced Nippon was an American protectorate and the Shogun declared himself Protector-General. That same year, the Fundamentalist Church of Nippon (FCN), a sub-branch of the AFC, was established. They took up residence at the old Imperial Palace in Kyoto where construction of a new religious compound on the site quickly began.
