Shining Tomorrow Historical Lore (Part 3)

This series of posts will detail the backstory of the setting of my upcoming novel, Shining Tomorrow. This backstory is not needed to understand the novel; it is only posted as a supplementary bonus.

Part 1: The Late United States Period (1914-1950)
Part 2: The Norman Regime and the MacGruder Coup (1951-1970)
Part 3: The Rise of the White Nationalist Movement (1971-2015)
Part 4: World War III (2015-2020)
Part 5: Morning in America (2021-Present)

The Betsy Ross flag, used as a symbol by Jasper Lowell’s white nationalist rebels. It will eventually become the national flag of the Middle American States.

1971: The National Politburo reconvenes and appoints Owen Stanton as new President of the NAF. With the formerly dispossessed middle and upper classes in charge again, the Shining Tomorrow Party adopts a right-wing stance to get rid of socialism forever. Japan establishes permanent bases in the NAF; people welcome this because the Japanese Army ended socialism.

[Mrs. K: Americans did not immediately warm up to the Japanese; it takes two decades for them to see the Empire of Japan as a welcome bulwark against socialism, and later, against white supremacy.]

1981: As the NAF’s economy expands, the government passes the Greater East Asia Migration Act, opening the door to free migration from mainland Japan, which was greatly overcrowded and had a birthrate of about 4.11.

1985: Princess of a Distant Sun is released in American theaters; it becomes a phenomenon due to its themes of heroism and anti-socialism, which resonated with a public scarred by the chaos of the 1960s. But in this movie version, the white American character of Leon Sullivan is turned into a former samurai named Toshizo Hayashi who left Japan due to the Meiji Restoration and took the name “Leon Sullivan” to fit in more with American society. The Blue People represent the Norman Regime, the Amber People represent the so-called “bourgeois foe,” and Leon Sullivan represents the Japanese liberators.

[Mrs. K: I like the movie too, but it’s not really needed here. Still, good job linking it to the political climate of the era. I will say that this movie resonates with me more than you realize. because my husband]

1990: Large numbers of Southerners have their land and property expropriated to make way for Japanese zaibatsu conglomerates to buy it up. This was done to punish the South for its support of the Norman Regime and erase the economic basis for similar uprisings in the future.

[Mrs. K: Far from a crude buying up of land, this was done in response to the bombing of several government offices by former EYST members. In the minds of officials at the time, the return of socialism had to be prevented by any and all means.]

1995: A white supremacist movement emerges amid those dispossessed by the government. There are multiple public demonstrations, many of them violent.

2000: German agitators instigate labor actions in Appalachia; not wanting to a repeat of the Norman Regime or the MacGruder era, North American People’s Army troops kill the demonstrators, seize their assets, and sell those assets to wealthy Japanese businessmen.

2005: Jasper Lowell, a lawyer from Virginia, declares a white supremacist movement intended to end the Japanese occupation and reclaim American sovereignty for whites, whom he says are America’s true inheritors. In response, the Party embarks on a vigorous education campaign to combat the spread of white supremacist ideology by pointing out how many of its proponents favor socialist economic policies and would thus make everyone poorer.

2011: A stock market collapse leads to massive unemployment, and the white supremacists become violent. Japanese-Americans, as well as mainland Japanese, are targeted for destruction by a growing number of white nationalist militias.

[Mrs. K: That is not even the half of it. Many people in my old neighborhood, solidly middle-class folks, were without work and up to their eyeballs in debt. Once proud professionals were forced into terrible things like the a never-ending cycle of seasonal and part-time work. Extracurricular activities disappeared from school overnight; all the kids were looking for whatever work they could find to help their families make ends meet. I know I was. And those who weren’t lucky enough to find whatever meager jobs existed ended up begging, committing crimes, or joining the white nationalists, like my late brother Lawrence in a desperate bid for any kind of relief.]

2013: Isao Taniguchi Middle School in Texas is attacked with rocket launchers, killing 50 people and injuring 215 more; this becomes the favored tactic of nationalist militias seeking to terrorize Japanese people.

[Mrs. K: The German role in all this cannot be understated. The militias acquired large amounts of heavy weaponry from German smugglers. One particularly large shipment was stopped in the Port of New York in 2012, and this had alerted much of the government to the issue.]

2015: Heath Amagasaki, then-current mayor of New York, is kidnapped by nationalist rebels and taken to the roof of the Northbank Tower in Manhattan. The rebels throw him from the roof, killing him; most historians regard this as the beginning of what would become World War III.