Posted on 12/13/2014 5:00:31 AM PST by Hostage
My uncle fought on Okinawa. He has never talked about it other than to say that he hates the Japanese. To this day he still despises them.
That is, IMO, a direct result of fighting a war as it should: Fully committed, to its proper conclusion, with unconditional surrender as the only acceptable end.
We've seen the effect the lack of that has brought after every conflict since WWII.
“executed war criminals”
Not POWs... “war criminals” to him.
Japan’s war crimes, in terms of severity, not numbers, were worse than anything any other axis power did.
Regarding Japan and their modern understanding of WWII:
I once had the pleasure of visiting Tokyo Disney. At 6’2” and white, I literally stand out in the crowd over there.
On line for an attraction, a girl in front of us turned and asked me point blank why we had bombed them. She was college aged, or thereabouts.
I tried to gently explain that our leaders at the time felt that it would actually cost fewer lives than an invasion, and that it was the only sure way we had to end the war which Japan had started.
She was aghast, insisting the U.S. started the war. Pearl Harbor was a defensive attack.
Fortunately, one of her friends knew better and was able to calm her. But her world had been shattered. She grew up being taught that we started a war, weren’t smart enough to just leave Japan alone even after Pearl Harbor (that was the message PH was trying to send, leave us alone), and then we brutalized them with an unnecessary atomic bombing.
It’s not just the American schools that rewrite history.
I was born right at end of war, and grew up in sm town. No one talked about the war until the seventies. People wanted to forget.
A gentleman I knew introduced me to this organization:
http://philippine-defenders.lib.wv.us/html/quan.html
He survived Bataan and had a great deal to say about the Japanese treatment of POW’s. The word ‘Quan’ itself has an interesting etymology. It meant whatever you could find, catch or steal to eat - mostly insects.
Further, I have traveled in the far east in remoter parts and have met many, many who would vehemently disagree with the esteemed Japanese professor/Shinto priest.
Lastly, Iris Chang’s excellent histories of Japanese aggression during WWII should be required reading for all people - especially the Japanese.
A terrorist is a terrorist.
Japan is still in denial about their own history
I am sure she would like to dedicate her porn-tastic films to her version of Jesus.
Amazingly, the Review-Journal doesn’t correct any of Japan’s nationalist lies:
Yes, the Japanese practiced cannibalism of enemy POWs:
The Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, led by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), collected numerous written reports and testimonies that documented Japanese soldiers’ acts of cannibalism among their own troops, on enemy dead, and on Allied prisoners of war in many parts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In September 1942, Japanese daily rations on New Guinea consisted of 800 grams of rice and tinned meat. However, by December, this had fallen to 50 grams.[90]:78–80 According to historian Yuki Tanaka, “cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers”.[91]
In some cases, flesh was cut from living people. An Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified that in New Guinea: “the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles (80 kilometres) away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died.”[92]
Another well-documented case occurred in Chichi-jima in February 1945, when Japanese soldiers killed and consumed five American airmen. This case was investigated in 1947 in a war crimes trial, and of 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, five (Maj. Matoba, Gen. Tachibana, Adm. Mori, Capt. Yoshii, and Dr. Teraki) were found guilty and hanged.[93] In his book Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, James Bradley details several instances of cannibalism of World War II Allied prisoners by their Japanese captors.[94] The author claims that this included not only ritual cannibalization of the livers of freshly killed prisoners, but also the cannibalization-for-sustenance of living prisoners over the course of several days, amputating limbs only as needed to keep the meat fresh.[95]
And don’t even get me going about not torturing prisoners.
The movie was from the book of his war time experiences. I’d believe him rather than anything the Japanese say. They still will not acknowledge the rape of Nanking and the murdering that was done there ....
Both of those statements are absolutely true from a Japanese viewpoint. Prior to Pearl harbor, The U.S. essentially declared economic war on Japan, which was entirely appropriate from our viewpoint, and took actions that were crippling Japan's empire. In their view the Pearl Harbor attack was a defense to save their empire.
In Germany they passed laws after the war making it illegal to deny the holocaust. Their children learned the facts. Why not Japan? A failure of the occupation if you ask me.
The record is quite clear, at least in one case. On 5 May 1945, a B-29 bomber was shot down and the crew captured. Members of the crews were dissected while still alive by medical personnel at Kyushu University.
UKUOKA, Japan “I could never again wear a white smock,” says Dr. Toshio Tono, dressed in a white running jacket at his hospital and recalling events of 50 years ago. “It’s because the prisoners thought that we were doctors, since they could see the white smocks, that they didn’t struggle. They never dreamed they would be dissected.”
The prisoners were eight American airmen, knocked out of the sky over southern Japan during the waning months of World War U, and then torn apart organ by organ while they were still alive.
What occurred here 50 years ago this month, at the anatomy department of Kyushu University, has been largely forgotten in Japan and is virtually unknown in the United States. American prisoners of war were subjected to horrific medical experiments. All of the prisoners died. Most of the physicians and asistants then did their best to hide the evidence of what they had done.
Fukuoka is midway between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities that are planning elaborate ceremonies to mark the devastation caused by the United States’dropping the first atomic bombs. But neither Fukuoka nor the university plans to mark its own moment of infamy.
The gruesome experiments performed at the university were variations on research programs Japan conducted in territories it occupied during the war. In the most notorious of these efforts, the Japanese Imperial Army’s Unit 731 killed thousands of Chinese and Russians held prisoner in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, in experiments to develop chemical and biological weapons.
Ken Yuasa, now a frail, 70-year-old physician in Tokyo, belonged to a military company stationed just south of Unit 731’s base at Harbin, Manchuria. He recalls joining other doctors to watch as a prisoner was shot in the stomach, to give Japanese surgeons practice at extracting bullets.
While the victim was still alive, the doctors also practiced amputations.
“It wasn’t just my experience,” Yuasa says. “It was done everywhere.”
Kyushu University stands out as the only site where Americans were incontrovertibly used in dissections and the only known site where experiments were done in Japan.
On May 5, 1945, an American B-29 bomber was flying with a dozen other aircraft after bombing Tachiaral Air Base in southwestern Japan and beginning the return flight to the island fortress of Guam.
Kinzou Kasuya, a 19-year-old Japanese pilot flying one of the Japanese fighters in pursuit of the Americans, rammed his aircraft into the fuselage of the B-29, destroying both planes.
No one knows for certain how many Americans were in the B-29; its crew had been hastily assembled on Guam. But villagers in Japan who witnessed the collision in the air saw about a dozen parachutes blossom.
One of the Americans died when the cords of his, parachute were severed by another Japanese plane. A second was alive when he reached the ground. He shot all but his last bullet at the villagers coming toward him, then used the last on himself.
Two others were quickly stabbed or shot to death.
At least nine were taken into custody.
B-29 crews were despised for the grim results of their raids. So some of the captives were beaten.
The local authorities assumed that the most knowledgeable was the cap! tain, Marvin Watkins. He was sent to Tokyo for interrogation, where was tortured but nonetheless survived the war.
Every available account asserts that a military physician and a colonel in a local regiment were the two key figures in what happened next. What happened cannot be easily explained. Perhaps caring for the Americans was an impossible burden, especially because some were injured. Perhaps food was scarce.
Whatever the reason, the colonel and doctor decided to make the prisoners available for medical experiments, and Kyushu University became a willing participant.
Teddy Ponczka was the first to be handed over to the doctors and their assistants. He had already been stabbed, in either his right shoulder or his chest. According to Tono, the American assumed he was about to be treated for the wound when he was taken to an operating room.
But the incision went far deeper. A doctor wanted to test surgery’s effects on the respiratory system, so one lung was removed. The wound was stitched closed.
How Teddy Ponczka died is in dispute. According to U.S. military records, he was anesthetized during the operation, and then the gas mask was removed from his face. A surgeon, Taro Torisu, reopened the incision and reached into Ponczka’s chest. In the bland words of the military report, Torisu “stopped the heart action. “
Tono remembers events differently. The first experiment was followed by a second, he says. Ponczka was given intravenous injections of sea water, to determine if sea water could be used as a substitute for sterile saline solution, used to increase blood volume in the wounded or those in’shock. Tono held the bottle of sea water. He says Ponczka bled to death.
Then it was the turn of the others.
The Japanese wanted to learn whether a patient could survive the partial loss of his liver. They wanted to learn if epilepsy could be controlled by removing part of the brain. According to U.S. military records, physicians also operated on -the prisoners’ stomachs and necks.
All the Americans died.
“There was no debate among the doctors about whether to do the operations - that is what made it so strange,” Tono says.
Word of the experiments eventually leaked out.
Thirty people were brought to trial by an Allied war crimes tribunal in Yokohama, Japan, on March 11, 1948. Charges included vivisection, wrongful removal of body parts and cannibalism - based on reports that the experimenters had eaten the livers of the Americans.
Of the 30 defendants, 23 were found guilty of various charges. (For lack of proof, the charges of cannibalism had been dismissed.) Five of the guilty were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment. The other 14 were sentenced to shorter terms.
But the attitude of the American occupation forces began to change largely because of the start of the Korean War in June 1950. The United States had less interest in punishing Japan, an enemy-turned-ally.
In September 1950, U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, as supreme commander for Allied Forces, reduced most of the sentences. By 1958, all those convicted were free. None of the death sentences was carried out.
Costco magazine has very good write up this month on this story. He made the cover before he passed away this July at 97. Pix from the movie and his real life book are in the article.
http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/201412#pg1
I met a vet who even in the 1990s woke up in the middle of the night screaming about the japs burning him with hot pokers.
They were sadistic in ways most could only imagine.
Screw the Japs.
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