VINI, VIDI, VICI!

"VINI, VIDI, VICI!"

The above words were spoken by Gaius Julius Caesar after his victory at the Battle of Zela in 47 B.C.. "Vini, Vidi, Vici" is one of the most well known sayings in the modern world. It translates as "I came, I saw, I conquered". Without a doubt we can say today that Caesar was one of the greatest Generals that ever lived.

A Genius Is Born

Julius was born on July 13, 100 B.C. to a patrician (or elite) family. His ancestors are said to be Lulus, son of the famous Prince Aeneas who was a survivor of the Trojan War. Julius grew up in a country of political unrest, a time of political wars, each party wanting power and control. His family had no strong political ties except for having three consuls and his father being a Praetor and governor of Asia. At the age of sixteen his father would die, there were no apparent causes. At the young age of sixteen he become the head of his house. The following year he would become a high priest to jupiter (a Roman "god") known as a flamen dialis. Caesar would have to become married if he wanted to be a priest. So he married Cinna daughter of Cornelia in 83 B.C. when she was 13 and he was 18 years old. This title would be held by him until his entry into the Roman Army.

Caesar The Soldier

Caesar, Sun Tzu, Napoleon Boneparte, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Miyamoto Musashi and Erwin Rommel are seen today as some of the greatest military strategist and tacticians to ever live. Napoleon, while writing on the Great Captains, said this about Caesar, "Caesar's principals were the same as Alexander and Hannibal: keep the forces concentrated, do not be vulnerable at any point, move swiftly against the important points, taking into account psychological conditions, the reputation of one's arms and the fear that they inspire, and also taking the political means to keep allies loyal and conquered peoples obedient, to give every possible chance to assure victory on the battlefield and to concentrate all of one's troops there. He was at one and the same time a man of great genius and great audacity."

Caesar would make his name known by winning the Civic Crown. Their crown was made out of common oak leaves woven in the shape of a crown. This was the second highest military decoration a citizen soldier could earn. It meant that the wearer had saved comrades during a battle and that he had held the ground so that the enemy could not advance. Caesar was a military genius.

The Dictatorship and Death of Caesar

The people loved Caesar, he brought victory and honor to Rome, but they worried about electing him as Dictator because they thought he might strip powers away from the people as did Sulla in 82 B.C.. When Caesar was made lifetime Dictator or Dictator Perpetuus, he made great reforms in the Roman society and government. Roman Dictator's are different than today's. The Consuls would nominate a few people and then the Senate would choose who would serve. The man chosen would then serve for a six month span. They could rule by decree if they so chose to. They did not have to answer to the Senate as the Consuls did.

All men's day's here on earth are numbered, and for Julius the clock stopped on March 15, 44 B.C.. Caesar was murdered by the Senate, the very men who helped to bring him to power. It is often those who put men in power that later kill the men they install there. A few years after his death, the Senate would elevate the now dead Caesar, and make Him a Roman "god". Just as God's word says in Proverbs 8:36 "But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death."

The rise and fall of Imperialism

Today's post is about the Sino-Japanese War. This is the forerunner of Japan and China's entry into the Second World War.

Every Country has it's enemies. For Japan, it's always been China. Just like England and France have been at each others throats for the past few hundred years. To better understand the Japanese desire to occupy China, we must go back into history.

Now most don't know that Japan tried to conqueror China when under the rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (b.1536/37-d.1598) in 1591-93. Hideyoshi originally ask the Koreans to allow his armies to pass through their land's. As history tells us, Korea refused. Japan laid their plans on August 1591 for the conquest of not only China, but now Korea as well. Unfortunately for the Japanese, all attempts failed when China and Korea took up arms together.

A truce followed; the Japanese armies withdrew back to Japan. So in 1931, the Japanese officially started the second Sino-Japanese War with the kick-off event, the invasion of Manchuria (and later occupation of) or the Mukden Incident. Shown below are the Commanding Generals of both sides at the time of the invasion.


General Shigeru Honjo was one of the two Japanese commanding Generals in the invasion. Shigeru came from a farming family.






The other was General Jiro Minami. His father was an ex-Samurai (the Samurai were abolished in 1876 when Emperor Meiji outlawed the wearing of the Daisho).


The Chinese Commanding Generals:

Zhang Xueliang: His father was a warlord in China. At the age of 21 he was already a Major-General.







Ma Zhanshan was born into a poor family. He started his career as a bodyguard and rose to the rank of General.

Feng Zhanhai, (I am sorry to say, but I could not find a picture of him), was a Colonel at the time of the invasion.

This led into the long (1931-1945) war between Japan and China. Japan wanted all of Asia so much they signed some of their swords with the slogan "Koa Isshin" which roughly translates as "Asia one heart". A picture of a "Koa Isshin" sword can be viewed here: Japanese Swords Arms & Armor Home

One of the other atrocity's the Axis powers created during WWII was the infamous, Unit 731. It was based in Manchuria under the crazy, yet genius scientist, Lieutenant-General Shiro Ishii (1892-1959). He was the Hitler of Japan. Just like Hitler is now known for his infamous acts towards the Jewish people, so is Shiro Ishii is known for his acts against the Chinese people to this day. A simple search will prove this.


This building apart of Unit 731, today it is a museum.



One of the many test that were conducted at Unit 731 was the distribution of chocolate covered smallpox and/or anthrax candies that were given out to little Chinese children.

They also tested grenades on the people that they illegally detained. The people would simply be strapped to tall wooden boards and placed either five to (about) fifty feet away from the grenade. The grenade would explode and if it did not kill the innocent victim, it left their bodies riddled with shrapnel.


Japanese scientists would then take the remains, where they lay, of both the dead and living, and preform on the spot autopsies, bringing the living to their death.

After the war General Shiro Ishii and his men at Unit 731 were not prosecuted as war crimanals. They were all over looked. Why? Because a trade was made with these murderers. Ishii gave the u.S. authoritys some of the test papers that showed what would happen if put anthrax, smallpox, etc, were placed into someone's body.

At the time, America was, by law, not allowed to test chemical/weapons on humans, so this was a chance of a lifetime.

General Tomoyuki Yamashita, was one of the falsely accused. He did nothing during the war to desevere death. Yet, to make the people of the Philippines happy, this man was hung. In Yamashita's own words he said he was dying for, "The defeat of Japan".

Shiro Ishii (left) died of throat cancer at 67, having never being brought to justice.

To sum it all up, Japan lost. Although the Japanese had the spirit to keep on fighting, as in the countless suicide charges of Japanese officers with drawn swords against machine gun nest. Or the feared Kami-Kaze, who took their name from the massive-typhoon that stopped the Mongol invasion of 1281. Japan did not have enough raw materials needed to keep the war going. After their surrender aboard the u.S.S Missouri, Japan was occupied by u.S. forces from 1945-1952.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

On this day, 232 years ago, our Founding Fathers put forth this declaration as a act against the British King, George the III, as the below will clearly show the faults and errors which he put on the people of America at that time. Many of us have heard of, and/or read the Declaration of Independence, but have you ever thought about what went into this Declaration?

Today we celebrate this day, July 4th, as our day of Independence from Britain, but true Independence was not achieved until October 18, 1781 with the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and his army after the Battle of Yorktown. Thousands died to put that Declaration into action; now only few care to even read it.

America's history clearly shows it was founded with the Bible as the foundation, be it in the family, school or the government. This Declaration goes to show that this Nation was in fact founded with godly principles. Consider one of the most used sayings, "All men are created equal."
Acts 17:26-28 says, "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.". Perhaps this is what the Founders based these famous words on, "All men are created equal."

Also consider that in the Declaration of Independence it says, "...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...", The Bible says in Matthew 5:45 "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." We also find in the Bible that we are to enjoy this life, that we should abide in God's law's.

Consider what Robert Winthrop said: "All societies must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. People, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the state supporting religion. Here, under our free institutions, it is religion which must support the state".

And this comment from Founder, Noah Webster, author of Webster's Dictionary , who believed the rejection of a Christian world view was at the root of all evil: “All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”

As I have stated above, it has been 232 years since the Declaration of Independence was made. What would men like George Washington, Noah Webster, John Adams, James Monroe and John Hancock think of us, their heirs? What would they think our modern government? Or think how angry they would have been to hear that prayer was just simply taken out of schools. Ask yourself, if the Founding Fathers were here today, would they start a new Revolution?

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offencesFor abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
Column 1Georgia: Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton
Column 2North Carolina: William Hooper Joseph Hewes John PennSouth Carolina: Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton
Column 3Massachusetts:John HancockMaryland:Samuel ChaseWilliam PacaThomas StoneCharles Carroll of CarrolltonVirginia:George WytheRichard Henry LeeThomas JeffersonBenjamin HarrisonThomas Nelson, Jr.Francis Lightfoot LeeCarter Braxton
Column 4Pennsylvania: Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George RossDelaware: Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean
Column 5New York: William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis MorrisNew Jersey: Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark
Column 6New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett William WhippleMassachusetts: Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge GerryRhode Island: Stephen Hopkins William ElleryConnecticut: Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver WolcottNew Hampshire: Matthew Thornton