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 ...
The gulf between our respective cultures was reflected by the widely varied attitude toward retreat and surrender.
To Americans, retreat was an acceptable military tactic. To the Japanese, retreat was dishonorable and revealing of an inferior culture.
To Americans, surrender was what you did when you found yourself trapped and without any means of further resistance. To the Japanese, a foe that surrendered was without honor and unworthy of respect. POWs were not treated well because they didn't deserve being treated well.
Nazi Germany was a unique animal. Empires traditionally aren't sectarian. The Romans added foreign gods to their pantheon and employed Romanized soldiers and administrators from conquered lands outside of the Italian peninsula as a means of knitting the empire together. The Germans decided they did not need non-Aryans in the empire and decided to kill them all.
I’ll bet they remember John Basilone.
He should never have been allowed to wade back in. He had paid his dues. What a goddamn waste.
“It is shocking to think it has been 70 years. The parents of my classmates fought in that war.”
The father of one of the girls in my high school (class of ‘78) was a survivor of the Bataan Death March.
He wanted to go back and be with his buddies.
“Red Mike” (Merritt A.) Edson was another, and of course, Puller.
A soldier goes where he's told. And if the brass had insisted, he would have gone home to his wife. Instead, he died on Iwo Jima, leaving a widow who lived the rest of her life alone and childless.
These men are always more valuable in a training role. The Japanese fell short in part because they kept their best men in until they died. The next batches tended to be completely green. Near the end, the quality of the people they sent into combat was abysmal, and the kill ratios just kept getting more and more lopsided.
In point of fact, far more Japanese were tried and executed (920 executions) immediately after the war than were Germans.
Our Marines were surprised to find that the Imperial Marines they were fighting were big guys, and ‘salty’.
And as you say, like Zero, Val and Zeke pilots, they had a short shelf life.
The thing is, though, for all the talk about Nazi and Japanese atrocities there is still little concern or discussion about the sadistic practices of the worst group of all: the Communists of the Soviet Union, China, NK, Cambodia, and on and on. The others were pikers compared to them.
And then there is Unit 741. It made what the Germans did to the Jews, including the Germans using the skin of dead Jews as lampshades, look like a Cub Scout art project.
Describing what Unit 741 did as medieval would be unfair to the folks who came up with the thumbscrew. They set a new standard.
My maternal grandmother had a cousin who also survived the Bataan Death March and a Hell Ship to Japan. He perished there, and his remains were later re-intered at that big military cemetery outside of Manilla, PI.
“I have to hand it to the Germans - they have a much better PR operation going.”
They also had technology we needed, with the possibility of the new Soviet enemy getting control of it. That, and the much-needed buffer between Europe and Soviet territory made for a completely different political situation.
Many times, Japanese leaders paid the price for the actions of subordinates, as well, such as Yamashita being executed over atrocities in Manilla, that were committed by a subordinate who refused to follow orders.
Both Germany and Japan were on the hunt for natural resources.
The execution of the Tiger of Malaya was a political hit job. Had the principals that got him executed after the war been applied by the U.S. to My Lai, Westmorland would have been tried for war crimes.
A point which is being rapidly squashed by moral relativism.
A late member of our church was also either a Bataan Death March survivor or was captured on Corregidor and survived as a POW.
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