May 15, 1932 – Japanese Civil War Begins

Eleven young officers in the Japanese Navy approached the home of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi to replicate the assassinations by the League of Blood from two months before. Japan was at a turning point with the populace frustrated by a struggling economy, and extreme-nationalists determined that it was time to purify the nation of the weak liberal-leaning civil leaders that had been in power since the beginning of the Taisho Democracy, when the emperor was ailing and political parties moved the Diet into authority.

Since being opened to the West by American Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853, Japan had undergone radical change. The Meiji Period saw the restoration of the emperor as the central source of power, ending the local control of the shogun. Industrialization brought new technology, and the Japanese market was flooded with commercially produced goods. The flow of foreign ideals upset many, especially as communism trickled over the border from the Russian Revolution.

Even more resentful than the radical changes in the country and the inflow of alien culture was Japan’s treatment by other world powers. Despite its participation in World War I where the Japanese Navy seized German colonies in China and the Pacific, Japan was treated as an outsider in the agreements. The Five Power Naval Limitation Agreement in Washington, D.C., in 1922 promoted disarmament in Pacific, creating a ratio of 5 to 5 to 3 for the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan for major ships. In 1924, the United States closed off immigration with the Japanese Exclusion Act, even though it enforced open markets. The final straw for Japan came when its own colonial ambitions in China were frowned upon after the invasion of Manchuria after a Chinese attack on a Japanese railway in 1931, even though that proved to be a hoax.

Conservatives grew in power throughout the 1920s. The first base came as a reaction against the communists, leading to the Peace Preservation Law in 1925 that ensured private ownership and sentenced anyone trying to undermine Japanese cultural spirit with ten years’ imprisonment. The populace grew restless as the war-time boom in the 1910s turned into a general recession, only made worse by the collapse of exports in the Great Depression. Nationalism, which had been strong in the country for centuries, was especially strong in the military, which enjoyed successes against Russia and China. Some believed that the disciplined military, not elected officials, should be in command of the country under the authority of the emperor.

Secret societies grew up among the ambitious young officers of the military, which had become stunted by spending cuts. The Army had its Sakurakai (Cherry Blossom Society), which attempted coup d’etats in March and October of 1931, which ultimately led to the society disintegrating in exchange for light punishments. Instead of cooling the flames, the light punishments proved to encourage others to act. In February of 1932, the “League of Blood,” formed by mystic Buddhist Nissho Inoue, who had previously served as a Japanese informant in Manchuria and was given a vision that he was to be the reformer of the country. He instructed a team of twenty followers with the motto “one person, one kill,” planning a wave of assassinations of politicians and businessmen that would rock the Japanese status quo. Only two of the assassins actually acted, and Nissho turned himself in, becoming exalted as a patriot. Another group from the Navy readied to carry through their own coup d’etat in May, planning to strike right after actor Charlie Chaplin arrived from America.

The assassins were slow in assembling on a strangely rainy evening, which proved fortunate to their cause as Chaplin and Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi’s son attended a sumo wrestling match before the reception at Inukai’s home. They arrived shortly after Chaplin, charged inside, and gunned down Chaplin and Inukai Takeru, who threw himself in front of his father. The Prime Minister was wounded but survived, while the eleven went on a string of assaults later that night. In the end, they turned themselves in to the Kempeitai military police, expecting similar awe as Nissho had seen.

Instead, the Prime Minister ordered their trial for executions the next morning. The military balked, saying that the officers were under their authority and should be court-martialed. Inukai, who had been customarily diplomatic over his life, was hardened, saying that if the officers were acting under military authority, then the military was treasonous. He ordered civilian police to re-arrest the officers out of Kempeitai custody. The resulting firefight was considered the second battle of the civil war.

Desperate for support, the Diet appealed to the League of Nations. This turned the majority of Japanese against them, but the nations of Europe (particularly Germany) were eager to act. What might have been a short war in the military’s favor turned into a long and violent international occupation. Britain and France eventually dropped out of the effort, although Germany carried on to create a fascist client state by holding the emperor. Hitler’s attention was focused on the Pacific, which he seemed determined to reach through the USSR, strong-arming Japan’s Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto into striking Vladivostok with a sneak attack.

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In reality, the civil government of Japan did little to stem the rising tide of militarism. The officers assassinated Inukai Tsuyoshi, who yet tried to reach out to them with his last words, “If I could speak, you would understand.” They replied, “Dialogue is useless.” The sensational trial furthered national zeal, which prompted Japan to walk out of the League of Nations after censure over Manchuria. Charlie Chaplin and Inukai Takeru avoided assassination by attending the sumo match.

May 13, 1958 – VP Nixon Killed

A tour of Latin America ended abruptly and tragically when American Vice-President Richard Nixon was killed in a riot. Venezuelan protestors had surrounded his limousine. In a show of foolhardy bravery, Nixon got out to calm the mob. Someone threw a lead pipe, which hit him in the head. A blood clot killed him later that evening at the Caracas hospital.

It was a heartrending end to a classic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps American life story. Richard Nixon had been born the child of Quakers in California in 1913. The family ranch was lost in 1922, and his father struggled on with a grocery store. He awoke at four every morning to drive the vegetable truck for his store, excelled in school, and was voted student body president. Family illness kept him from accepting a scholarship to Harvard, so he worked the store and attended Whittier College, where he was turned down by the affluent Franklin Literary Society since he did not come from a prominent family. Nixon countered by forming his own society, the Orthogonians, graduated with a huge range of extracurricular activities, and went on to Duke University School of Law on scholarship.

Due to budget cuts, Nixon was turned down for his dream job at the FBI. Instead, he began practicing law in California and moved to Washington, DC, in 1942 to further his prospects. Deskwork was tedious to him, so Nixon joined the Navy where he worked in logistics. Home from the war, he was invited back to California to run against Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis, who had already been elected five times. Nixon won after fighting a brutal campaign that destroyed Voorhis’s character by suggestion communist connections.

Nixon became a national figure from his work on the House Un-American Activities Committee, contributing to the revelation that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. He then worked his way up to the Senate, defeating fellow California Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas by handing out the “Pink Sheet” that showed her left-leaning voting record. Republican king-makers handpicked him for the vice-presidency in 1952. When Nixon’s “political fund” from backers was revealed in the press, he gave his passionate “Checkers Speech” that displayed his humility, accused “the crooks and the Communists and those that defend them” of undermining American government, and admitted he had received a gift of a Cocker Spaniel puppy that his daughter named “Checkers,” which he was going to keep (no explanation was given for the $18,000 in cash except that it was for “reimbursements”). Eisenhower and Nixon won the election handily, as they did again in 1956.

As vice-president, Nixon did a great deal of executive work while Eisenhower presided. He chaired meetings on domestic policy, including those for national security. When Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955, Nixon stepped in to run the country for six weeks. Outside of Washington, Nixon was especially active in goodwill tours, going to East Asia in 1953 and Africa in 1957. His tour of Latin America in 1958 began with a surprise visit to take questions from college students about American foreign policy. In Lima, Peru, however, the tour took a bad turn when student demonstrators greeted him by throwing trash and chasing him back to his limousine. More demonstrators spat on him at the hotel later that day. Nixon left for Caracas, where the mob went even further.

The American reaction to the death of a popular, if wily, vice-president was angry mourning. The United States had instituted a blockade of Venezuela in 1902 alongside Britain, Germany, and Italy after the winners of the Venezuelan civil war refused to pay debts, an action that mirrored the European intervention in Mexico forty years before. Eventually the two countries had found common ground over oil exports, though many Venezuelans felt that the wealthy Americans were taking advantage of their rates. A new military intervention by the U.S. Navy to round up those responsible sparked anti-American protests all over Latin America, spurring further engagement with the Soviet Union, who readily accepted them as they did Cuba.

The Republican Party particularly missed Richard Nixon, whom they felt could certainly have defeated Democrat John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats controlled the White House until losing to Nelson Rockefeller in 1968 when Johnson did not run for another term and the Democrats split over the Civil Rights question. Rockefeller proved adequate overseeing the end of Vietnam and the introduction of Civil Rights, many laws modeled on ones he championed as governor of New York. He widely expanded the administration and increased spending to fight the growth of crime, specifically that which centered on drugs. For international affairs, Rockefeller focused his support through the UN and NATO. Rockefeller handily won reelection in 1972, but he was blamed for the struggling economy. Conservatives overtook the Republican Party, which put Ronald Reagan in office in 1976 in a narrow defeat of Georgia governor Jimmy Carter.

The United States continued to struggle economically through the final decades of the century. Increased government spending and encouraged consumerism kept jobs afloat, but collapsing unions and low minimum wages sparked deflation. Japanese and German international trade regularly undersold American goods, promoting isolationism, cutting off potential markets like communist China and Latin America, which faced constant revolution. Through it all, however, the American opinion is lasting that they can trust their president to do what is best for the country.

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In reality, Nixon survived the riot in Caracas. He stayed in the limousine, unlike his attempts to deal face-to-face with demonstrators in Peru. Nixon was defeated by JFK in 1960 and partly retired from politics, but he returned with gusto upon the post-Johnson shake-up of the Republican Party to win elections in 1968 and 1972. During his second term, he would be implicated in the Watergate Scandal and become the first American president to resign.

April 28, 1192 – Conrad’s Would-be Assassin Names Richard

Conrad of Montferrat, the newly elected King of Jerusalem and not even yet crowned, was attacked in midday as he walked the streets of Tyre with his bodyguard, heading home to have lunch with his wife. The attackers were Assassins (the Hashshashin—“outcasts”), specially trained suicide-soldiers of the order founded by Hassan-I Sabbah during the chaotic days of the early Crusades. They were trained in a mountain fortress in Iran, indoctrinated through drugs and propaganda to give their lives in order to receive Paradise in the afterlife.

One of the crusaders guarding Conrad proved quick enough to throw his own body in front of the king, taking a blow from a knife meant for Conrad’s side to his chest. Another blade struck Conrad’s back, giving him a scar that would last the rest of his life. One assassin was killed, and the other captured and tortured to death, but not before he gave the name of his hirer: Richard of England.

Richard, nicknamed “the Lionhearted” not only for his bravery but also his bravado during the campaign against Castillon-sur-Agen, continued his brashness through the Third Crusade. After the fall of Jerusalem to the forces of Saladin, the new King Richard and his counterpart Phillip II of France launched forces funded by the Saladin Tithe, a special tax of 10% levied on nearly everyone with money to their names. While in Sicily in 1190, locals in Messina balked at their treatment by the visiting crusaders. Richard responded by besieging, conquering, and looting Messina before moving on. On the journey to Acre, a storm separated the ship with his fiancé, Berengaria of Navarre, from the rest of the fleet and drove it to the shores of Cyprus. Richard conquered Cyprus from the Byzantines to win her back. At last the crusaders marched on Acre, and Richard fought despite suffering scurvy, legendarily firing crossbows while soldiers carried him on a stretcher.

Conrad of Montferrat, who had commanded the defense of Tyre against Saladin’s army in the previous years, negotiated the surrender of Acre. He carried a great deal of notoriety with locals and was called “the greatest devil of all the Franks.” During the siege of Tyre, his own aged father, William IV of Montferrat, was brought forward as a prisoner. Saladin promised to release him and shower Conrad with riches if he gave up the city. Conrad replied by aiming his own crossbow at William and saying, “He has lived long already.” Saladin then himself released William, saying that Conrad was “an unbeliever and very cruel.”

Yet Conrad was also handsome and popular among the crusaders. The Third Crusade proved militarily successful, even though Duke Leopold V of Austria marched away after Richard tossed his standard down, saying that it wasn’t worthy of being hung beside those of kings like himself and Phillip II. Phillip II left in 1191 to return to France, leaving his treasure and valuable prisoners with Conrad. Eventually Conrad had to turn the prisoners over to Richard as the king was now sole leader of the crusade. Rather than use them for leverage against Saladin, Richard had them all killed.At last Jerusalem was taken back from Saladin, an election was held on who would be the new king. Richard offered up his own name, but the barons unanimously voted for Conrad.

Richard left immediately and even sold Cyprus, apparently done with the Holy Land if he could not be its king. On his journey toward England, a storm drove his ship to Corfu, held by the Byzantines, who were still upset over losing Cyprus. He sneaked away in a smaller ship, which wrecked and forced him to travel over land disguised as a Knight Templar. Near Vienna in 1192, he was recognized by a fellow crusader, captured, and brought to Duke Leopold. As a vassal of Emperor Henry VI, he was to turn over the prized prisoner, but Leopold sent him back to his cousin, Conrad, King of Jerusalem, to undergo trial for attempted regicide. Pope Celestine III was put in a terrible position since imprisoning a crusader was an excommunicable offense, but so was masterminding such an attack. The matter was resolved when Richard drowned during a storm at sea (suspiciously, it took no other lives).

Although Richard’s death quieted the east, it sent England into civil war. His younger brother John had ousted Richard’s chancellor, William Longchamp, to effectively rule in 1191. He proved very unpopular, and, upon news of Richard’s death, barons in Normandy upheld five-year-old Arthur, son of Richard and John’s brother Geoffrey, as rightful king. John retreated to his holdings in Ireland and re-invaded with aid from Phillip II through the supporting Welsh marcher lords. William the Lion, King of Scotland, agreed to join the alliance in exchange for an earldom in the northern counties. England became war-torn.

After years of campaign and routinely putting down rebellions in his own lands, John won back England only to lose his lands on the continent to France as Philip seized them along with the boy Arthur, whom he kept at court. Deeply indebted and fearful to raise taxes any further, John became a vassal to Philip, who could at any time reject John and establish Arthur. Although John held rule over England, Ireland, and Wales, it was tenuous at best, and he needed French authority to keep down rebellious barons. While John’s son Henry III ruled quietly under France and his grandson Edward I crusaded or warred with Scots and Welsh, later generations would carry out a Hundred Years Rebellion that would eventually wrest England out from under French influence.

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In reality, the assassins’ blades struck home, and Conrad of Montferrat died soon after. Richard was held for a ransom of 65,000 pounds of silver, which was raised by his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Upon arriving back in England, Richard made peace with John and named him heir. During his own reign, John would lose his holdings on the continent to France and fight repeated wars with the barons, bringing about the signing of the Magna Carta.

April 14, 1865 – Booth Conspiracy brings Night of Terror

As the American Civil War looked to be coming to an end, famed actor and Southerner John Wilkes Booth determined that he must do something to help the cause. He had sworn to his concerned mother that he would not join as a soldier, yet he wrote her, “I have begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence.” While he would not go back on his word, he decided that the war could be fought with civilian hands in a more untraditional fashion. He began a conspiracy with fellow sympathizers to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln in March of 1865. The plans to kidnap Lincoln had all gone awry due to poor intelligence, and, upon hearing a speech by Lincoln encouraging the extension of the vote to freed slaves, Booth decided to go all out.

Booth wrote in his diary that “something decisive and great must be done.” Not only would he assassinate the president, but his coconspirators would kill the vice-president and secretary of state as well, decapitating the government. On Good Friday, picking up his mail from his box at Ford’s Theater, he happened to learn from the owner’s brother that the president and General Ulysses S Grant would be attending Our American Cousin that night.

Booth called his the band of assassins together and ordered Alabaman Lewis Powell, just days shy of his twenty-first birthday, to kill Secretary of State William Seward. Powell refused, saying he had only volunteered for kidnapping. Booth began a long and passionate speech, noting the horrors of war that the Union had performed upon the South and the duty of vengeance for them. Powell conceded, and the other conspirators were fired up by Booth’s rhetoric. George Atzerodt, a German immigrant who had settled in Maryland as a child, was to kill Vice-President Andrew Johnson. Fellow Marylander David Herold would act as guide for Powell and then manage the escape after the quartet reached the rendezvous outside of Washington, D.C.

The assassinations were performed with intensity and efficiency. Powell and Herold went to the Seward residence just after 10 PM, knocking as casually as a messenger. Powell talked his way past the butler, claiming to have medicine for Seward, who had recently been treated after a carriage crash. Seward’s son Frederick tried to stop him, and Powell leaped forward with his Bowie knife, stabbing Frederick deeply in the chest. Frederick’s sister Fanny opened the door to complain of the noise disturbing their father and found Powell in a sudden bloodlust. Powell shoved her aside and stormed into the room, drawing his revolver to shoot Seward as he lay in bed. He meticulously shot the other patrons in the room, Seward’s nurse Sergeant George F. Robinson and his other son Augustus. On the way out of the house, Powell found Herold scuffling with a legitimate late-night messenger. Powell killed the messenger, and the two escaped Washington with Herold at the lead.

Before the assassinations, Atzerodt had rented a room at the Kirkwood Hotel, Johnson’s residence while the vice-president was in Washington. Atzerodt was tempted to spend the evening in the bar but, as he lived precisely one floor above, determined to wait until 10:15, listening for the Johnson’s movement. When the prescribed time arrived, he walked calmly downstairs and knocked on the door. Johnson himself answered, and Atzerodt stabbed him with his knife. He then fled, leaving the knife where it had struck the vice-president.

Booth was the only hiccup in the evening as his intelligence once again had proved faulty. Due to Mrs. Grant’s dislike of the First Lady, the Lincolns had gone to the theater with Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris. Nonetheless, Booth struck at 10:25, giving a card to the usher, who showed him to the presidential box. Booth barricaded the outer door to the box and waited for the cue “sockdologizing” to act: the roar of laughter from the crowd covered up the sound of his derringer’s shot. Major Rathbone jumped to stop Booth from escaping, but Booth planted his knife firmly into Rathbone’s arm before leaping from the box to the stage. One of his spurs became caught, making him land off-balance. Always the performer, Booth cried out “Sic semper tyrannus!” to the 1,700 people in the crowd and fought his way through the chaos to his horse.

The assassins met successfully at their rendezvous and fled into Maryland. Herold guided them in the night, going on even as Booth refused to stop for treatment to his leg after the fall. They crossed the river into Virginia and disappeared.

The Union was filled with despair over the lost leaders and anger that the assassins had escaped. Any connections to the conspirators were arrested and thoroughly interrogated, leading to the execution of Mary Surratt, the owner of the boarding house where many of the conspiracy meetings had taken place. Many called the execution unfair, but the North howled for blood. The new government, largely Radical Republicans under Lafayette Foster, treated the South as an area of military occupation rather than states in reconstruction. Freedman laws and punishments for former Confederates were enforced by Federal troops, who themselves turned corrupt with power.

While many Southerners initially despised Booth and his men for their cowardly actions, they came to hate the North further. Secret societies such as the Ku Klux Klan began guerrilla raids prompted by Booth, who became a wandering speaker whose left-legged limp became a trademark and a clandestine sign for fellow rebels. The violence earned more ire from the North, who began relocating criminals to camps in the Dakotas. As the South burned, many Southerners fled, ex-Confederates to Latin America or South Africa and Freedmen to the North or to protected cities where soldiers stood guard against routine attacks and arson. The violence turned generational with deadly bombings and costly sabotage lasting well into the twentieth century until purges and propaganda during the World War finally ended the Southern revolt.

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In reality, Booth only told Powell that they had come too far to give up now. Powell did as he was told but panicked and merely injured the Sewards. Herold heard the screams from inside and fled, leaving Powell stranded in unfamiliar Washington, where he wandered and hid in a tree for three days before finding Surratt’s boarding house. Atzerodt never worked up the nerve to assassinate Johnson and instead sat in the hotel bar and talked with the bartender about Johnson before wandering the streets drunk. Booth assassinated Lincoln but was soon shot himself during his escape. The other conspirators were hanged.