Posted on 06/06/2014 12:36:50 PM PDT by DFG
Is Garwood still alive?
I worked for a guy whose father was editor of the Frankfurt (am Main) Zeitung before the War, but had to leave to make room for an Aryan. He and his father arrived in the fruited plane just before the War, and he joined the Army at 18, despite his improbable Katzenjammer Kids accent. He served in the Pacific (cruel misnomer), where his job was demonstrating and training troops, Marines and Army, in the use of night vision equipment, including rifle scopes.
He said that towards the end, they began to feel sorry for the Japs, but initially Japs were very reluctant to surrender. Most “prisoners” taken early in the war were innocent Korean laborers. The War, the real War, not the one on television, was wearying and demoralizing. He saw a Marine try to use pantomime to induce a Japanese prisoner to undress. Whenever the Marine would unbutton his clothes, the Jap would, but when he buttoned up again, his prisoner would eagerly comply. After a few tries, the bone weary Marine shot the Jap, just to be done with him. No malice, just exhaustion.
A lot of times the Japs would just pretend to surrender.
They would get close then pull a grenade.
After a few of those the marines just shot them to be on the safe side.
My old man said even with the $50 bounty most of the Marines just didn’t take the chance.
My old man almost got blown up.
They had a food station set up for the islanders and there was what looked like an islander standing in line wearing a marines shirt and he had his hands in his pockets.
My old man grabbed him so he couldn’t pull his hands out of his pockets and the Marines came up and got him. He had a grenade in his pocket.
The Marines took him off to the side and shot him. Didn’t care about a $50 bounty.
Towards the end of the War, a lot of Japs actually did want to surrender. It was apparent that Japan had lost and few wanted to die as a futile gesture in a lost cause at the end. But by 1945, their earlier tactics had made it difficult for the ones who wanted to surrender to do so. I wonder how many Korean laborers were shot because Americans couldn’t distinguish them from Japs?
If you Google Robert R. Garwood, you’ll get several pages of information on him. Wikipedia (for what it’s worth) lists him as alive and 68 years old.
Today, of all days, they have to bring this up?
The exhumation and transfer was finally approved in 1987. Slovik’s bad luck briefly reasserted itself when his remains were put on the wrong plane and ended up in San Francisco. He finally arrived in Detroit two days later and was laid to rest beside his wife.
Okay, thanks.
There was no war on television during WWII. There was no television.
Leaving aside that fact that public television broadcasting began in Germany, the U.S., and Britain before the War, I cannot agree more strongly. The war that everyone knows is the one that is presented by Hollywood and the media today, that often bears only the most superficial resemblance to the War experienced by the participants.
Big difference between Slovik and Bergdahl.
Slovik didn’t join up with the enemy.
Slovik didn’t get American soldiers killed.
Our Dictator brings this degenerates parents into the Rose Garden for a big celebration and will now stand by and allow the military to court martial and imprison him?
This is just getting started
The parents had no clue that their idiot son would end up in Leavenworth when they stood next to the foreigner.
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