The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

From Amazon.com

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.

In 2005, a century later, James Bradley traveled in the wake of Roosevelt's mission and discovered what had transpired in Honolulu, Tokyo, Manila, Beijing and Seoul.

In 1905, Roosevelt was bully-confident and made secret agreements that he though would secure America's westward push into the Pacific. Instead, he lit the long fuse on the Asian firecrackers that would singe America's hands for a century.

When my father, John Bradley, died in 1994, his hidden memory boxes illuminated his experience as one of the six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima. A book and movie — both named Flags of Our Fathers — told his story. After writing another book about World War II in the Pacific — Flyboys — I began to wonder about the origins of America's involvement in that war. The inferno that followed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor had consumed countless lives, and believing there's smoke before a fire, I set off to search for the original spark.

In the summer of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt — known as Teddy to the public — dispatched the largest diplomatic delegation to Asia in U.S. history. Teddy sent his secretary of war, seven senators, twenty-three congressmen, various military and civilian officials, and his daughter on an ocean liner from San Francisco to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, Korea, then back to San Francisco. At that time, Roosevelt was serving as his own secretary of state — John Hay had just passed away and Elihu Root had yet to be confirmed. Over the course of this imperial cruise, Theodore Roosevelt made important decisions that would affect America's involvement in Asia for generations.

The secretary of war, William Howard Taft, weighing in at 325 pounds, led the delegation, and to guarantee a Roosevelt name in the headlines, the president sent his daughter Alice, the glamorous Jackie Kennedy of her day, a beautiful twenty-one-year-old known affectionately to the world as "Princess Alice." Her boyfriend was aboard, and Taft had promised his boss he would keep an eye on the couple. This was not so easy, and on a few hot tropical nights, Taft worried about what the unmarried daughter of the president of the United States was up to on some dark part of the ship.

Theodore Roosevelt had been enthusiastic about American expansion in Asia, declaring, "Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe." Teddy was confident that American power would spread across Asia just as it had on the North American continent. In his childhood, Americans had conquered the West by eradicating those who had stood in the way and linking forts together, which then grew into towns and cities. Now America was establishing its naval links in the Pacific with an eye toward civilizing Asia. Hawaii, annexed by the United States in 1898, had been the first step in that plan, and the Philippines was considered to be the launching pad to China.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/books/excerpt-imperial-cruise.html

The author seems to forget that even before Teddy became President Japan had shown some imperialistic tendancies. Like the war with China in 1894. As a result Japan gained control over Taiwan. What strikes me as especially arogrant is when he tries to make the arguement that if not for TR maybe his father would not had had to fight in WWII.