May 17, 2024
Don’t ever forget your Grade 1 buddies: they’re both rare and precious!
Posted by WARREN PERLEY – Editor, BestStory.ca
Writing from Montreal
Reconnecting with a close childhood friend whom you’ve known for six decades is always a memorable, heart-warming experience. Especially when that buddy happens to be an eminent journalist who specializes in analysing geopolitical security, intelligence, and military issues – and you are an editor on the lookout for interesting, little-reported stories.
So it came to pass that Robert Karniol, who was Asia/Pacific bureau chief for Jane’s Defence Weekly for 20 years, touched base with me upon his return to Montreal and offered this week to contribute a fascinating story to our independent, ad-free journalism site.
And not just any story, but one hidden in the opaque shroud of Second World War history (Rodney: link to Karniol yarn the red text) involving military action contemplated at the end of the war in August 1945 by then-Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to carve up Japan by invading Hokkaido, the northern-most island of the Japanese mainland.
