Posted on 12/28/2018 10:29:46 AM PST by Captain Peter Blood
I had an older in-law, who was a Japanese POW - Bataan death-march, hell ships, prison in China.
Japanese high command had given a kill-all-prisoners order. He said he was saved immediately after surrender of Japanese by leaflets dropped on his camp declaring Americans were to be protected, followed immediately by a small team of OSS operatives who parachuted in to take surrender of the camp from the Japanese. He said Japanese officers were pushed outside the camp, into the hands of waiting Chinese mobs.
Foreign Sex Slaves (Comfort Women) trained for combat (note that they weren't trusted with real weapons - they were told to pick them up from dead soldiers during combat.)
many gruesome pictures of smiling Japanese soldiers just cannot be posted here.
The thing about McArthur’s campaign is at the time those decisions were made within the context of a two year experience where we had seen the Japanese fight for every inch of island and to every last man in many cases. We saw massive fire bombing after strategic bombing have no effect on the Japanese resolve.
We had no ability to foresee the effectiveness of the Atomic Bomb and it took two before they capitulated.
I will have to look for exact stats - but post-war “denazification” in Germany executed, imprisoned or otherwise purged something like 5% of all German officials, military officers, government bureaus, etc...
In Japan, the figure was much lower - something like 0.2%
I found this book at the small time thrift store where I live. I am revolted by what I am reading, but cannot put it down.
It sheds light on McArthur the egotist and narcissistic. It also enlightens on what the GIs thought of “I shall return”. They mocked him. He had a tendency not to believe his intelligence officers but to believe what he wanted to believe. Dedicated and professional, but flawed in some ways. Japanese had banished their best general to Manchuria due to rivalry, and assigned him to defend Philippines after it was a lost cause.
Japanese soldiers were mostly beasts; stealing and raping whenever it suited them. Played sadistic games for their own entertainment.
The fight to take and saved the wrecked electrical plant was a total exercise in futility. Did not make strategic sense for taking a worthless objective.
I know we had internees who were in dire straits due to cruel starvation by the Japanese, but couldn’t this somehow have been avoided? Probably not. This is what our GIs would have faced had they invaded Japan!
Amazing GI soldiers!
The American defenders of Bataan and then Corregidor called him "dugout Dave." They felt he was nowhere to be seen.
BFL
I felt the same way reading this book. I was revolted but fascinated at the same time. Hard to read in places.
Dave?????
Sorry - “Doug!”
In retrospect the sixty five year old General who spent much of his time in the Philippines on diplomatic and administrative duties was stunned and depressed at the beginning of the war. He botched the evacuation of Manila, ineffectively opposed the Japanese landings with the forces he did have and led his American and Filipino soldiers into a hopeless military situation on Bataan. He moaned endlessly that the Navy was not able to resupply and reinforce him. Doubt he was fit for command from 12/41 thru 4/42. Yet Roosevelt the politician recognized the value of his escape to Australia and MacArthur’s personal charisma which gave Americans hope in dire times. Roosevelt used MacArthur well and Macarthur took full advantage of his opportunity for redemption. If one views his career from 1943-1951, he deserves to be considered a great man of his time.
“Hitler read about Nanking he commented the he thought the Japs were being cruel to the Chinese. When Hitler thinks you are cruel then that tells you something”
What is more cruel than systematically rounding up people into camps to be robbed, raped and killed en masse?
I suppose Hitler may have considered the Chinese to be more human than his extermination targets (jews, gypsies, gays, etc)
My late uncle, who served there in the Army’s Americal division, would vote B. He never talked much of his experiences there to anyone, but he had absolute hatred toward the Japanese until the day he died.
My father was on a yard mine sweeper (YMS 389) and would have been in that first wave trying to sweep mines in Tokyo harbor. Do you think he ever regretted them being nuked? Neither do I.
I know a guy who was in that battle. he said there were very few prisoners or wounded taken. You had to go room to room and plain kill them all. It was just simple murder, it went beyond war.
“Dave’s not here man.”
Yes. I believe that my uncle got some good mileage out of a flame thrower in Cebu.
The way I understood the guy he said there wasn’t much strategy. Just kill them. A lot of booby traps.....
“Of course he is contemptuous of Macarthur’s generalship overall.”
Contemptuous of the premier military genius of the 20th century. Sounds like Dunning Kruger to me.
To bypass the Philippines would have been to leave the Filipino people to the tender mercies of the Japanese. I doubt that any of us would want that for ourselves.
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