Posted on 09/30/2017 4:19:11 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
I was watching a World War II movie in a theater, with an Asian immigrant friend, when I learned a lesson in culture that no university could have taught better. In one battle scene, there is a cease-fire order, and a German soldier approaches the British position, under a white flag of truce. The British commander steps forward, completely vulnerable, but the Germans do not shoot. There is a brief exchange of words, as the Germans demand surrender, and the British commander declines. Both men then return to their positions, and the deadly fighting resumes.
My friend in the theater leaned toward me, and quietly asked, why didn’t they shoot the German?
I was both amused and horrified at the question. It was unthinkable that one would shoot a man under a white flag, so unthinkable that it was literally laughable. I actually did laugh.
My answer was, they can’t shoot him; he’s under a white flag.
My Asian friend was perplexed for a moment, and then got it. So, this is how Western people fight wars.
This incident sticks in my memory all these years later, because it enlightened me to a profound truth. Not all cultures are equal. In that same war, the Japanese, for example, had utterly no regard for our white flags, unless it suited their purposes. Their concept of honor was utterly unlike ours. To them, it was the white flag of surrender that was dishonorable, and anyone who surrendered, friend or enemy, was a pariah. Suicide was preferable.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Their idea of sensitivity training only consists of try not to step on our own wounded if possible.
The problem is that while they themselves would not act violently, many of them seem to tolerate, even to condone, those that do. While there are laudable instances of Moslem leaders fully cooperating with American law enforcement, polls have repeatedly shown a disturbingly high number of Moslems who quietly admire terrorists.
Bingo
Even if you are a cat lover, don’t try to pet the tiger at the zoo.
Actually, Japanese troops on occasion feigned surrender to lure Americans into traps. Taking a Japanese prisoner was fraught with danger for Americans. Towards the end of the War, more Japanese did want to surrender, but that wasn’t always available, either because of decisions by their officers, or distrust by the Americans.
A white flag does not necessarily mean surrender. In the instance cited, the individual with the white flag was offering the enemy the opportunity to surrender. It is simply a signal asking for a temporary cease fire. The Japanese, ultimately did surrender, big time. Japanese troops rarely surrendered individually, but it was not never.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazuo_Sakamaki
I remember seeing an interview (or a documentary,can't remember which) in which the subject of medical personnel during WWII was discussed.At least one person (a WWII vet,IIRC) said that on the whole the Germans respected the red cross on helmets,vehicles and uniforms...including on the battlefield.OTOH,it was said that the Japanese specifically targeted Navy Corpsmen and Army Medics on the battlefield.
Speaking in general terms I can say categorically that in my travels over the years (First World *and* Third World) I've learned that not all cultures are the same *and* that not all cultures are *equal*.
My parents lived in Japan a few years after the war. The only thing I could ever get out of my mother about the experience was how cheaply they looked at life. The Asian culture has proven that over and over.
I petted a tiger once. It was a baby, not much larger than a housecat.
My dad was a Marine on Okinawa. He once told me that one thing every Marine understood was Japanese never surrender.
I believe the same was true of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.
I received this a while back... the marine makes a valid argument.
“The hell you can’t, because we did it. These Muslims are no different than the [Imperial] Japanese. The Japs had their suicide bombers too. And we stopped them. What it takes is the resolve and will to use a level of brutality and violence that your generations can’t stomach. And until you can, this s*** won’t stop.
It took us on the beaches with bullets, clearing out caves with flame throwers, and men like LeMay burning down their cities, killing people by the tens of thousands. And then it took two atom bombs on top of it! Plus, we had to bomb the s*** out of German cities to get them to quit fighting. But, if that was what it took to win, we were willing to do it.
Until you are willing to do the same...well I hope you enjoy this s***, because it ain’t going to stop!
A few years ago I spoke to a veteran of the Pacific War and asked about how it was that the Japanese never surrendered. “Oh, lots of them wanted to surrender as much as anyone, but we shot them whenever we could” he told me.
“What it takes is the resolve and will to use a level of brutality and violence that your generations can’t stomach. And until you can, this s*** won’t stop.
It took us on the beaches with bullets, clearing out caves with flame throwers, and men like LeMay burning down their cities, killing people by the tens of thousands. And then it took two atom bombs on top of it! Plus, we had to bomb the s*** out of German cities to get them to quit fighting. But, if that was what it took to win, we were willing to do it.”
Put more succinctly, the war doesn’t really end until the enemy KNOWS he is defeated. That takes inflicting so much pain and damage that they beg to surrender just to make it stop. Such damage is not inflicted with smart bombs and avoidance of civilian casualties.
White flags also signify parley. Not necessarily surrender.
“None But The Brave” (1965)
It’s important that Americans learn the difference between the western and Asian way of doing things.
In the West, individualism is held up as the highest value, but in the East, an individual doesn’t really matter *out of the context* of their family and place in society.
Large, wealthy and powerful *extended* families tend to be dynastic, and with closer bonds than say to their neighbors or town or city.
However, typical families are tied to their caste in society and their city or town.
So, for example, if a fisherman in a village offended the emperor or one of his major lieutenants, it would be regarded as an offense *by his village*, for which they would all be punished.
The clearest expression of the difference between western and Asian thinking are the Russians, who are philosophically tuned to both, yet comfortable with neither. For this reason, they can do things that would be shocking to westerners, but rationalize them in a half sensible way.
For example, in Afghanistan, the women and children actively helped their men fighting the Russians, so the Russians adopted the American idea of “concentration camps” (less the stigma). Putting the women and children in camps, with food and water and clothing and barracks. To probably live better than they did at home. Not intolerable.
But they still made trouble in the camps, so took far more guards than the Russians were able to give. So they came up with an idea.
Dig a slit trench, line it with plastic, and fill it with water that had a little blister agent in it. Make the women and children walk its length, which would take a layer of skin off their feet and ankles, so they would have to go around on their hands and knees until the skin regrew. Thus keeping them out of trouble.
This, as the Russians said, “was the humanitarian thing to do, as otherwise they would have no choice but to kill the women and children; that technically *might* be done according to the Geneva Conventions.”
So by disabling them, it is saving their lives. Russian humanitarian logic.
Of course the outcry in the west was huge. So the Russians backed down, rather puzzled as to why the West thought it was worse to injure than to kill.
The bottom line is that Asian morality and ethics do exist, but to westerners they are so alien that they seem brutal and inhuman. Oddly enough, many Asians see western morality and ethics, if not equally bizarre and alien, as at least illogical.
Good article but I take one exception. It is not an “American sense of civilized behavior” but a Christian one. If America were ever to loose its Christian foundations it would become as brutal as anyone else.
The atrocities perpetuated in the Balkans by the Austrian Hungarian troops in the very early days of World War 1 signify that there wasn’t much difference between east and west. Thousands of people were being slaughtered daily, hung up by wire on their tippy toes until they slowly choked to death, garroting so to speak... and other such ways of dealing with large masses of populations that needed to be contained and controlled. Colossal genocide.
And then the Turks (Ottoman empire) showed up...
My question is; which rogue state will develop neutron technology first?
1965 anti-war nonsense.
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