Here's some guys (and gals) havin' a good old time in Tokyo while on R/R. Your predecessors (well, actually, 8thUSArmy at Sugamo circa late 40's.) Does'nt look to me like anyone's an unhappy gaijin camper! ;-)
Posted on 08/19/2002 11:23:47 PM PDT by BlessingInDisguise
JAPANESE soldiers butchered Australian soldiers for food on the Kokoda Track, veterans have claimed.
Sixty years after they fought on the infamous track, Australian veterans say cannibalism was common among enemy troops after their supply lines were cut. In a Sky TV documentary to be aired today, one digger describes finding the body of an Australian sergeant with his heart and liver missing, and strips of flesh cut from the arms, legs and buttocks.
Disobeying orders not to engage the enemy, he says that the patrol pursued the Japanese and found four of them cooking the human flesh.
The veterans admit that they were incensed by the knowledge that the Japanese had resorted to be eating Australian dead, and in the heat of battle they showed no mercy to their enemies.
In another incident, Australian troops entered a Japanese hospital from where shots had been fired, and although most of the occupants were bandaged and either sick or wounded, all were shot dead.
Former RSL state president Bruce Ruxton confirmed the allegations of cannibalism, but said many people would not want to believe the Japanese had eaten the flesh of Australian soldiers.
"There was cannibalism. That's a fact of life," Mr Ruxton said.
"There were men out of my battalion who were found with their buttocks cut off. My battalion was there, I wasn't."
Mr Ruxton, who was a rifleman in Borneo with the 2/25 Infantry Battalion during World War II and then served with the occupation forces in Japan, said the Japanese committed some terrible sins during World War II.
"People just don't understand. They (the Japanese) weren't animals. That is too good a name for them. They were monsters. Nothing shocks me about them."
The revelations come only days after Prime Minister John Howard and Papua New Guinea leader Sir Michael Somare unveiled a memorial dedicated to the Kokoda Track Diggers and their PNG allies.
The memorial, unveiled on Wednesday, is high in PNG's mountainous jungle at Isurava, where 1000 Diggers made a stand against 4000 Japanese.
But Australian War Memorial historian Dr Peter Stanley said yesterday that he believed cannibalism of soldiers had to be seen in perspective.
"It's been known since 1942. It was documented in an inquiry which was reported late in the war, I think in 1944," Dr Stanley said. "It's been documented in every book on Kokoda since 1942.
"Two thousand Australians died in the Papuan campaign. In 1942, if people had come back saying Japanese are eating the dead, 2000 Australian families would have been devastated.
"No Australian was killed in order to be eaten. The Japanese ate Australians who were already dead. That's what William Webb (the jurist who investigated Japanese atrocities) found."
Dr Stanley said it was important to keep reports of cannibalism on Kokoda in proportion, given that such a large number of families lost loved ones.
"It's important not to allow them to imagine their relatives were eaten," he said.
The ANZAC Legacy -- the Kokoda Track, presented by John Gatfield and produced by Lisa Whitby, screens at 12.30pm and 11.30pm today on Sky News Australia.
What?!
After what the Nazis did in Auschwitz and the way they gave it to our boys at Normandy?!
/sarc (same reasoning)
Here's some guys (and gals) havin' a good old time in Tokyo while on R/R. Your predecessors (well, actually, 8thUSArmy at Sugamo circa late 40's.) Does'nt look to me like anyone's an unhappy gaijin camper! ;-)
I still occasionally run into people (both male and female) who absolutely despise the thought of a "gaijin" living and working in Japan, much LESS being married to a Japanese. I have learned to just consider the source in most cases.
While here, I have generally worked in Japanese electronics manufacturing companies, not in English schools. As such, I have usually been the only gaijin in the company. Just like anywhere else, my Japanese co-workers have had their good days and their bad days. Some bosses were good to work for and some were real terrors. And yes, I even had one who totally despised me because I was not Japanese.
I am not trying to say that you are wrong AIT, but these people are nowhere near saints. Living and working here, one of the first things you have to accept is that you will meet ALL kinds of people. Good AND bad... And, just like anywhere else you go in the world, you try to accept the good and not sweat the bad so much. All in all, it is a great place to live.
Oh yeah, Shryke, I typically refer to myself as a gaijin. Now, do you think that this ol Mississippi country-boy is racist for using that word about myself? If you stay in Japan long enough next time, you may find out what it really means.
Take care,
Ruck
This, to me, was the kernel of the argument. You have verified what I am trying to say completely.
You might also remind him to support the NIH (read: death) -- whose budget Bush just DOUBLED -- and who welcomed into their membership the likes of Drs. Naito, Kitano and Ishii after the war ... Japanese human experimentation, including live vivisection, being far too valuable to let go to waste or "the Soviets".
Same lame excuses we made when we paperclipped in the Germans and even installed a member of Mengele's shop on our board of Biology Standards overseeing and shaping the content of the nation's public school biology texts. To Die in Unit 731
Sounds like my friend Yui ... =)
Just remember that they will eat you, if their supply lines are cut!
This is my first encouter with this type of cannabalisim in Asia, though I do know that some POWs from Stalingrad, mostly the Italians formed cannabal gangs that ate those that died in the camps or killed those that were just about to die so they culd eat them fresh. The Soviets organized anti-cannabal gangs from the Axis POWs and armed them with crow bars in an attempt to stop the practice. As described in the book Enemy At the Gates.
Toyota is hard to beat. I'm sure you are correct, and that you have a great car. I have read that it was the American military's demand for trucks to use in Korea that got Toyota going again after the war.
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