In the army at that time,my dad said they were warned about tattoos being put on lamp shades.
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 ...
In the army at that time,my dad said they were warned about tattoos being put on lamp shades.
We are still hunting Nazis today. Some POWs from the Pacific wonder why we aren’t looking for camp guards and others who brutalized them as we are the Nazis.
Guadalcanal was my first campaign,(never fired a shot there), Bougainville was my second, fired lots of shots there, Guam was my third and I had changed from rifleman to flame thrower. Got wounded twice, got the Bronze Star and sent home. (Have happily ever since.) Married my childhood sweet heart and were together for 68 years. I am getting old now, BUT I hope and pray that I live long enough that the vermin now in the White House is gone. (And I don’t care where to) Hell would be nice.
The very best to you and yours.
Semper Fi
Texican.
Autumn,1942: It came down to one Marine, and one ship.
(61 yrs ago)
Prev. posted on Enter Stage Right and Free Republic | October 23, 2000 | Vin Suprynowicz
Posted on 10/26/2003, 3:18:06 PM by MadelineZapeezda
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1008503/posts
Japanese kids are not taught WWII history, many come to Hawaii as adults shocked visit USS Arizona Memorial to learn about their countries sneak attack for the first time! They learn the truth is as an adult tourist. Sad.
I think you figures are a little off there. Japan's entire GDP was 1/3 of USA.
Unit 731, not 741. (Just in case somebody wants to look it up.) And yes, what they did in and around Harbin was appalling...and those responsible walked away free in exchange for giving all of their information and records to the Americans.
Yamashita’s was indeed a political hanging...he had pulled his Army forces out of Manila, because he saw no point in holding the city and preferred to fight it out north on the plains and in the mountains of Luzon. The forces that stayed behind and brought about the slaughter in Manila were Japanese Navy sailors and Special Naval Landing Force (”Japanese marines”) troops, led by a disgraced Admiral who had been relegated to shore assignments after losing his battleship command off Guadalcanal (IJN Kirishima). There was no concept of joint command in Japan...Yamashita could have yelled orders all day at IJN personnel and they didn’t have to obey.
Land = natural resources. And in the hands of all but the most incompetent rulers, people = natural resources. The Germans put Jewish lawyers and scientists to work as menial slave laborers, deliberately under-feeding them until they died of malnutrition. That's when they weren't shooting or gassing them. The Japanese left alone anyone who wasn't actively opposing them (i.e. raising funds for the resistance, propagandizing against Japan or attacking the Japanese administration).
A Korean-American pal from St. Paul days told the story of how his university professor parents were forced to adopt Japanese names.
They had a choice; adopt the Japanese names or be shot.
I got my numbers of a Lee Kuan Yew speech back in the 1980's, which may or may not still be on the interwebs. He graduated with two Firsts (the equivalent of summa cum laude with a double major), one of them in History, from Cambridge (the UK's Yale or Harvard, depending on who you ask). While I'm inclined to believe Lee's numbers without a second look, Wikipedia shows that in 1960, Japan's per capita number was $469 compared to the US number of $2881, meaning Japan had 1/6 the US GDP per capita after 15 years of breakneck growth goosed by (1) the Korean War, from which Japanese industry benefited greatly and (2) US government-organized tours of American plants, after which the Japanese adapted American-style mass production techniques to create the industrial juggernaut that, in the 1980's, was dubbed Japan Inc.
“Such brutality as the “Rape of Nanking” are not taught to them.”
One day they’ll get a crash course about it taught in Chinese.
Perhaps Professor Lee overlooked Edwards Deming’s contributions...
I guess it was the Japanese equivalent of the medieval loyalty oath. The conquered got to keep their heads only if they pledged fealty to the new sovereign. I bet the vast majority of the people slaughtered by the Germans would gladly have made whatever cosmetic or religious accommodations necessary to appease them. But the Germans could not be appeased. They were convinced that these ethnicities were literally vermin that had to be exterminated.
It was Lee (the prime minister of Singapore) who wrote that Japan's per capita GDP was 1/9 the US number at the outbreak of war. central_va said Japan's total GDP was 1/3 the US number in 1941, which would have put Japan's per capita GDP at 2/3 the US number. Now, the Japanese empire's
And I bet there aren't too many German tourists going to Greece.
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