Posted on 12/05/2014 7:55:58 PM PST by Lorianne
GUADALCANAL, Solomon Islands — Using a trowel to dig into the shadowy floor of the rain forest, pausing only to wipe away sweat and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, Atsushi Maeda holds up what he has traveled so far, to this South Pacific island, to find: a human bone, turned orange-brown with age.
Mr. Maeda, 21, was looking for the remains of missing Japanese soldiers at the site of one of World War II’s most ferocious battles. Others have done this work before him, mostly aging veterans or bereaved relatives. But he was with a group of mostly university students and young professionals, nearly all of them under 40 and without a direct connection to the soldiers killed here.
They had come to honor their countrymen, many of whom were no older than they are when they fell on the battlefield. The group was also searching for answers. “These young men who died here believed they were defending their family and loved ones,” said Mr. Maeda, a university junior in religious studies. “We need to rediscover their sacrifices and learn from them.”
As the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, there has been a surge in interest among young Japanese about the disastrous war that their nation has long tried to forget.
It is a phenomenon that crosses political lines, encompassing progressives who preach the futility of war as well as conservatives who question the historical record of Japan’s wartime atrocities. What these young people have in common is an urgent sense that they learned too little about the war, both from school, where classes focus on earlier Japanese history, and from tight-lipped family members, who prefer not to revisit a painful time.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Americans still have several thousand of our own missing in the South Pacific battle area.
The Germans have accepted their sins in WWII but the Japanese mostly deny the truth of how they behaved.
Such brutality as the “Rape of Nanking” are not taught to them. Many Japanese war criminals are still treated as heroes.
After the Surrender was signed on the USS Missouri, my dad ( who was 18) was sent with his ship to retrieve over 250 American POWs who were on a tiny atoll in the Pacific. They expected the Americans to be emaciated and sick, so they assembled a medical team, and braced themselves for what was probably going to be a difficult, though happy assignment, bringing our boys home.
They arrived to find that the Japanese had abandoned the island, but not before beheading all 250 of the American POWs there.
This is not an anecdote. It is the truth.
8 crewmen of a B24 missing 70 years and recently discovered were laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery this month.
It is shocking to think it has been 70 years. The parents of my classmates fought in that war.
My cousin endured the Bataan Death March, transport to Japan to work in coal mines, and was liberated early October 1945.
When he went to war he 5’8” 150 pounds; when repatriated he weighed 85 pounds. He died in 1976.
The Japanese have not yet made a proper repayment for their sins in that war. And in my eyes, they never will.
Words can’t express the gratitude I feel for our troops and the incredible hardships they endured to win the Pacific war. Japs were monsters back then, assuming the Americans didn’t have the resolve to fight. They were so wrong!
***Many Japanese war criminals are still treated as heroes.****
Ever notice how the US government will compass land and sea to find a Nazi war criminal but give the Japanese a pass?
Yes I have notice that. Also that no one ever looked for the Communists who murdered the Polish Officer Corps at Katyn Forest.
I recall seeing an interview of several soldiers or marines who fought on Guadalcanal.
They mentioned that after seeing what the Japanese did to some of our soldiers, they began to treat the Japanese the same way.
The Japanese deliberately massacred a fraction of the civilians the Germans did, for the simple reason that they were simply operating much as previous empires did - to add people and land to the empire while destroying those who resisted. The Germans were mainly interested accumulating land while wiping out those considered subhuman much as one would attempt to exterminate vermin.
Nonetheless, more Japanese were executed as war criminals. Joachim Peiper, prime mover behind the Malmedy massacre, had his death sentence commuted by the German government. The Germans made a show of penitence, but freed most of the war criminals who should have been drawn and quartered, never mind simply hanged. What's interesting is that despite monstrous German atrocities almost an order of magnitude greater than Japan's, Germany got to keep most of its prewar territory, whereas Japan had to given up Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan. I have to hand it to the Germans - they have a much better PR operation going.
That's why i always say, in regard to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the Nips had it coming. And the bounus was that it ended the war and saved lives on both sides.
I am not certain where you get your information. It is estimated that the Japanese empire killed somewhere between 30 to 40 million Non combatants. The Germans killed about 12 million in the Concentration camps.
About 55, 000 Americans are missing from the Pacific Theater if IIRC.
The Japanese were brutal to defeated soldiers, in the same way they've always been, even during various Japanese civil wars. Unlike the Germans, however, they did not systematically exterminate, like vermin, 12m civilians who weren't fighting them. The Bataan atrocity occurred in large part because Japan was a poor country (1/9 the US GDP per capita, the rough equivalent of Nigeria doing a Pearl Harbor today) punching above its weight militarily. They had a choice between starvation rations for all (their soldiers and POW's) and feeding their soldiers adequately while starving the POW's. They chose to feed their soldiers.
The Germans never had a problem feeding POW's because they were a wealthy nation roughly at parity with the US on a GDP per capita basis. (This was how Germany managed to kill 300K Americans compared to the 100K killed by the Japanese). And yet the Germans felt compelled - on a whim - to exterminate 12 million civilians who were not fighting them or even associated with resistance movements.
There is a superb WW II movie about a group of Australians who attempted an attack on Singapore harbor. They sank several ships, but were unable to make an escape and were eventually captured.
In the end, they were tried by a military court and sentenced to death. But, because their mission had been conducted so inventively and their conduct had demonstrated the highest qualities of bravery, they were also accorded The Highest Honor.
Which was death by beheading...
The Chinese (both Nationalist and Communist) fabricated a lot of numbers to get assistance from the West. I get my information from people who lived under Japanese occupation. Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore, described the Japanese policy as more or less directed towards pacification. There would be a few exemplary massacres of people suspected of involvement in resistance movements, but the general idea was that everyone would learn Japanese ways and, in time, become Japanese. I know of half-a-dozen or so Chinese who lived under Japanese occupation. None knew of anyone who was merely minding his own business who was actually executed. In contrast, they all know of someone who died of hunger during the Communist famines of the Great Leap Forward and of landlords who were executed in the immediate aftermath of the Communist victory in 1949.
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