Life magazine's 'Picture of the Week' had shown a young woman admiring a souvenir from her serviceman-boyfriend in New Guinea: a skull inscribed 'This is a good Jap — a dead one'.
Posted on 08/31/2023 7:28:09 AM PDT by srmanuel
The nonprofit group working with the American Families to send back Japanese Flags taken from dead Japanese soldiers during WW II is the Obon Society, I would urge you to watch some of their videos on YouTube.
Here is a couple of videos worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjn6-M6ZtSY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvHTtR8NID4
Grandpa was a Marine or a soldier who gets his ass shot off over there, lucky to make it home alive. Went through the brutality that he went through, and brought home a souvenir. And his idiot virtue signaling children don’t think enough of what he did to keep a souvenir of his sacrifice. This kind of thing turns my stomach.
Eff that. Notice no veterans giving shit back because they aren’t here to object.
If you watch the videos one of them is a 93 year old former Marine who personally returned the flag he took off the dead Japanese soldier he took it from.
You can’t hate people forever, you might able to, but I can’t and a lot of WW II veterans feel the same way.
Indeed.
There are a lot of ugly people in the world.
How IRONIC the reverence we give a Japanese flag versus the way leftists trash our own American flag
My father who was in the Seabees and worked on the airbase on Tinian, traded his beer rations to a Marine for a Japanese unit flag, with several dozen Japanese signatures on it, which the marine pulled from a bunker
They likely signed it before their final battle or a banzai charge.
Dad later felt increasingly uncomfortable having it, not having “earned” it and also that it was probably was the last act and will of dozens of men, so he donated it to his local VFW, where its hanging on the wall.
According to the videos I posted those Japanese battle flags had the soldiers name on it plus well wishes from his family and friends
Your father was a great man and I appreciate his sacrifice dearly.
My dad was in the Army, served in the Pacific during WW2 and was part of the occupation force after the war. He brought back a Japanese saber (not a samurai sword), an Arisaka rifle, and two bayonets for it.
The Japanese Embassy contacted him once and asked for the saber back, as it had some sort of paperwork hidden on the handle. He didn’t bother responding.
He never did get over his hatred for the Japanese.
I certainly don’t hate them- it was a different time back then.
What pissed me off was he gave the Arisaka to one of my cousins.
Very kind of you to say. He was proud to have been in the Navy, but never felt he deserved recognition.
He never had to fight directly. Landed on Tinian about a week after it was secured. Then followed MacArthur to Luzon and Samar. He always said "I followed the action around the pacific, camped on a tropical beach in Samar, and got a free world tour as a 19 year-old, but other guys did the fighting and dying and were not so lucky."
He is the kind of man we need more of, in addition to you of course:)
My first trip to Tinian I saw landing boat carcasses still caught on coral reefs. Also saw an older American living in a lean to on the beach. The story is that he was a grunt who decided to come back and just live on the beach. I, like your father, was 19 and saw a lot of the South Pacific, although peacetime, it was a rich experience. God Bless your father.
The Japanese soldier didnt start the war
His best friend growing up, Mr. Cliff (I also knew him well as he also returned to our town) had his toes frozen off in the Hurtgen Forest. His right foot was a stump. My father always understood he himself got off lucky.
My best friend’s dad had two purple hearts and a bronze star from his time in Europe. We would sneak up to his attic to look at those awards, and photos of his Father looking bad-ass humping a machine gun or riding on a tank. We had to keep it super quiet, like we were thieves, because his father never wanted it mentioned (and probably had a bit of PTSD).
Growing up, I never quite grasped that such men were all around us!!
Neither did the Germans, we are allies with both now, the war was over 75 years ago, my father was in the pacific during WW II in the Navy serving on a minesweeper.
I don’t hold any animosity toward the Japanese people or the soldiers from back then, they were doing what they thought was the honorable thing to do, so were most of the Germans and Russians.
I don’t have anything against any particular group of people, most are manipulated by insane governments or religions and develop beliefs that lead to war, left alone most people would live in peace.
LOL, great memories. I do feel for Mr. Cliff, he suffered so much. I had the pleasure of befriending a local guy who was one of the original Band of Brothers, what magnificent man. They saved the world, all be it, for a short time. Now we have totalitarians youth and old lawfarers.
Agreed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjn6-M6ZtSY
5.1M views 5 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvHTtR8NID4
257K views 7 years ago
What’s next, posting passages from “The Epic of Gilgamesh” as “news?”
The WW2 Allies also printed “escape maps” on silk for our troops in case they were stranded in enemy territory. They folded up so small that they could be concealed inside clothing. Here is one of occupied France, I'm guessing around 30" square:
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