Posted on 03/04/2007 2:53:43 AM PST by LibWhacker
After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die.
Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials.
Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during the four months before Japan's defeat in March 1945, he dissected ten Filipino prisoners of war, including two teenage girls. He cut out their livers, kidneys and wombs while they were still alive. Only when he cut open their hearts did they finally perish.
These barbaric acts were, he said this week, "educational", to improve his knowledge of anatomy. "We removed some of the organs and amputated legs and arms. Two of the victims were young women, 18 or 19 years old. I hesitate to say it but we opened up their wombs to show the younger soldiers. They knew very little about women - it was sex education."
Why did he do it? "It was the order of the emperor, and the emperor was a god. I had no choice. If I had disobeyed I would have been killed." But the vivisections were also a revenge on the "enemy" - Filipino tribespeople whom the Japanese suspected of spying for the Americans.
Mr Makino's prisoners seem to have been luckier than some: he anaesthetised them before cutting them up. But the secret government department which organised such experiments in Japanese-occupied China took delight in experimenting on their subjects while they were still alive.
A jovial old Japanese farmer who in the war had been a medical assistant in a Japanese army unit in China described to a U.S. reporter recently what it was like to dissect a Chinese prisoner who was still alive.
Munching rice cakes, he reminisced: "The fellow knew it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony.
"He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped.
"This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time." The man could not be sedated, added the farmer, because it might have distorted the experiment.
The place where these atrocities occurred was an undercover medical experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. It was known officially as the Anti-Epidemic Water Supply and Purification Bureau - but all the Japanese who worked there knew it simply as Unit 731.
It had been set up as a biological warfare unit in 1936 by a physician and army officer, Shiro Ishii. A graduate of Kyoto Imperial University, Ishii had been attracted to germ warfare by the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning biological weapons. If they had to be banned under international law, reasoned Ishii, they must be extremely powerful.
Ishii prospered under the patronage of Japan's army minister. He invented a water filter which was used by the army, and allegedly demonstrated its effectiveness to Emperor Hirohito by urinating into it and offering the results to the emperor to drink. Hirohito declined, so Ishii drank it himself.
A swashbuckling womaniser who could afford to frequent Tokyo's upmarket geisha houses, Ishii remained assiduous in promoting the cause of germ warfare. His chance came when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, the region in eastern China closest to Japan, and turned it into a puppet state.
Given a large budget by Tokyo, Ishii razed eight villages to build a huge compound - more than 150 buildings over four square miles - at Pingfan near Harbin, a remote, desolate part of the Manchurian Peninsula.
Complete with an aerodrome, railway line, barracks, dungeons, laboratories, operating rooms, crematoria, cinema, bar and Shinto temple, it rivalled for size the Nazis' infamous death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The numbers of prisoners were lower. From 1936 to 1942 between 3,000 and 12,000 men, women and children were murdered in Unit 731. But the atrocities committed there were physically worse
than in the Nazi death camps. Their suffering lasted much longer - and not one prisoner survived.
At Unit 731, Ishii made his mission crystal clear. "A doctor's God-given mission is to block and treat disease," he told his staff, "but the work on which we are now to embark is the complete opposite of those principles."
The strategy was to develop biological weapons which would assist the Japanese army's invasion of south-east China, towards Peking.
There were at least seven other units dotted across Japanese-occupied Asia, but they all came under Ishii's command. One studied plagues; another ran a bacteria factory; another conducted experiments in human food and water deprivation, and waterborne typhus.
Another factory back in Japan produced chemical weapons for the army. Typhoid, cholera and dysentery bacteria were farmed for battlefield use.
Most of these facilities were combined at Unit 731 so that Ishii could play with his box of horrors. His word was law. When he wanted a human brain to experiment on, guards grabbed a prisoner and held him down while one of them cleaved open his skull with an axe. The brain was removed and rushed to Ishii's laboratory.
Human beings used for experiments were nicknamed "maruta" or "logs" because the cover story given to the local authorities was that Unit 731 was a lumber mill. Logs were inert matter, a form of plant life, and that was how the Japanese regarded the Chinese "bandits", "criminals" and "suspicious persons" brought in from the surrounding countryside.
Shackled hand and foot, they were fed well and exercised regularly. "Unless you work with a healthy body you can't get results," recalled a member of the Unit.
But the torture inflicted upon them is unimaginable: they were exposed to phosgene gas to discover the effect on their lungs, or given electrical charges which slowly roasted them. Prisoners were decapitated in order for Japanese soldiers to test the sharpness of their swords.
Others had limbs amputated to study blood loss - limbs that were sometimes stitched back on the opposite sides of the body. Other victims had various parts of their brains, lungs or liver removed, or their stomach removed and their oesophagus reattached to their intestines.
Kamada, one of several veterans who felt able to speak out after the death of Emperor Hirohito, remembered extracting the plague-infested organs of a fully conscious "log" with a scalpel.
"I inserted the scalpel directly into the log's neck and opened the chest," he said. "At first there was a terrible scream, but the voice soon fell silent."
Other experiments involved hanging prisoners upside down to discover how long it took for them to choke to death, and injecting air into their arteries to test for the onset of embolisms.
Some appear to have had no medical purpose except the administering of indescribable pain, such as injecting horse urine into prisoners' kidneys.
Those which did have a genuine medical value, such as finding the best treatment for frostbite - a valuable discovery for troops in the bitter Manchurian winters - were achieved by gratuitously cruel means.
On the frozen fields at Pingfan, prisoners were led out with bare arms and drenched with cold water to accelerate the freezing process.
Their arms were then hit with a stick. If they gave off a hard, hollow ring, the freezing process was complete. Separately, naked men and women were subjected to freezing temperatures and then defrosted to study the effects of rotting and gangrene on the flesh.
People were locked into high-pressure chambers until their eyes popped out, or they were put into centrifuges and spun to death like a cat in a washing machine. To study the effects of untreated venereal disease, male and female "logs" were deliberately infected with syphilis.
Ishii demanded a constant intake of prisoners, like a modern-day Count Dracula scouring the countryside for blood. His victims were tied to stakes to find the best range for flame-throwers, or used to test grenades and explosives positioned at different angles and distances. They were used as targets to test chemical weapons; they were bombarded with anthrax.
All of these atrocities had been banned by the Geneva Convention, which Japan signed but did not ratify. By a bitter irony, the Japanese were the first nation to use radiation against a wartime enemy. Years before Hiroshima, Ishii had prisoners' livers exposed to X-rays.
His work at Pingfan was applauded. Emperor Hirohito may not have known about Unit 731, but his family did. Hirohito's younger brother toured the Unit, and noted in his memoirs that he saw films showing mass poison gas experiments on Chinese prisoners.
Japan's prime minister Hideki Tojo, who was executed for war crimes in 1948, personally presented an award to Ishii for his contribution in developing biological weapons. Vast quantities of anthrax and bubonic plague bacteria were stored at Unit 731. Ishii manufactured plague bombs which could spread fatal diseases far and wide. Thousands of white rats were bred as plague carriers, and fleas introduced to feed on them.
Plague fleas were then encased in bombs, with which Japanese troops launched biological attacks on reservoirs, wells and agricultural areas.
Infected clothing and food supplies were also dropped. Villages and whole towns were afflicted with cholera, anthrax and the plague, which between them killed over the years an estimated 400,000 Chinese.
One victim, Huang Yuefeng, aged 28, had no idea that by pulling his dead friend's socks on his feet before burying him he would be contaminated.
All he knew was that the dead were all around him, covered in purple splotches and lying in their own vomit. Yuefeng was lucky: he was removed from a quarantine centre by a friendly doctor and nursed back to health.
But four relatives died. Yuefeng told Time magazine: "I hate the Japanese so much that I cannot live with them under the same sky."
The plague bombing was suspended after the fifth bacterial bombing when the wind changed direction and 1,700 Japanese troops were killed.
Before Japan surrendered, Ishii and army leaders were planning to carry the war to the U.S. They proposed using "balloon bombs" loaded with biological weapons to carry cattle plague and anthrax on the jet stream to the west coast of America.
Another plan was to send a submarine to lie off San Diego and then use a light plane carried on board to launch a kamikaze mission against the city. The war ended before these suicidal attacks could be authorised.
As well as Chinese victims, Russians, Mongolians, Koreans and some prisoners of war from Europe and the U.S. also ended up in the hands of Ishii, though not all at Unit 731.
Major Robert Peaty, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, was the senior British officer at Mukden, a prisoner-of-war camp 350 miles from Pingfan. Asked, after the war, what it was like, Peaty replied: "I was reminded of Dante's Inferno - abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
In a secret diary, Peaty recorded the regular injections of infectious diseases, disguised as harmless vaccinations, which were given to them by doctors visiting from Unit 731. His entry for January 30, 1943, records: "Everyone received a 5cc typhoid-paratyphoid A inoculation."
On February 23, his entry read: "Funeral service for 142 dead. 186 have died in 5 days, all Americans." Further "inoculations" followed.
Why, then, after the war, were nearly all the scientists at Unit 731 freed? Why did Dr Josef Mengele, the Nazi 'Angel of Death' at Auschwitz, have to flee to South America and spend the rest of his life in hiding, while Dr Shiro Ishii died at home of throat cancer aged 67 after a prosperous and untroubled life?
The answer is that the Japanese were allowed to erase Unit 731 from the archives by the American government, which wanted Ishii's biological warfare findings for itself.
In the autumn of 1945, General MacArthur granted immunity to members of the Unit in exchange for research data on biological warfare.
After Japan's surrender, Ishii's team fled back across China to the safety of their homeland. Ishii ordered the slaughter of the remaining 150 "logs" in the compound and told every member of the group to "take the secret to the grave", threatening death to anybody who went public.
Vials of potassium cyanide were issued in case anyone was captured. The last of his troops blew up the compound.
From then on, a curtain of secrecy was lowered. Unit 731 was not part of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. One reference to "poisonous serums" being used on the Chinese was allowed to slip by for lack of evidence.
Lawyers for the International Prosecution Section gathered evidence which was sent directly to President Truman. No more was heard of it.
The Americans took the view that all this valuable research data could end up in the hands of the Soviets if they did not act fast. This was, after all, the kind of information that no other nation would have had the ruthlessness to collect.
Thus the Japanese were off the hook. Unlike Germany, which atoned for its war crimes, Japan has been able to deny the evidence of Unit 731. When, as now, it does admit its existence, it refuses Chinese demands for an apology and compensation on the grounds that there is no legal basis for them - since all compensation issues had been settled by a treaty with China in 1972.
Many of the staff at Unit 731 went on to prominent careers. The man who succeeded Ishii as commander of Unit 731, Dr Masaji Kitano, became head of Green Cross, once Japan's largest pharmaceutical company.
Many ordinary Japanese citizens today would like to witness a gesture of atonement by their government. Meanwhile, if they want to know what happened, they can visit the museum that the Chinese government has erected in the only building at Pingfan which was not destroyed.
It does not have the specimens kept at Unit 731: the jars containing feet, heads and internal organs, all neatly labelled; or the six-foot-high glass jar in which the naked body of a Western man, cut vertically in two pieces, was pickled in formaldehyde.
But it does give an idea of what this Asian Auschwitz was like. In the words of its curator: "This is not just a Chinese concern; it is a concern of humanity."
Appreciated.
Apparently the guy in your link discovered the hidden truth that a great many Japanese were willing to surrender, if as Lindbergh contended, they were merely allowed to.
Stay tuned, I'm getting ready to post some of what I read tonight.
Many of the accounts have the same rationalization as I've seen on this thread. That the Japs were evil, so it was OK for us to do whatever we wanted with them. The following is by no means all of the things Lindbergh witnessed. But as you can see from the page numbers and dates, there were many days that he spent flying in combat where he witnessed no crimes. He flew an amazing number of combat missions in P-38s, P-47s, and Marine Corsairs.
[Wednesday June 21, 1944 visiting General Paul B. Wurtsmith. Page 853]]
General’s account of killing a Japanese soldier: A technical sergeant in an advanced area some weeks ago complained that he had been with combat forces in the Pacific for over two years and never had a chance to do any fighting himself – that he would like the chance to kill at least one Jap before he went home. He was invited to go out on a patrol into enemy territory.
The seargeant saw no Jap to shoot, but members of the patrol took a prisoner. The Jap prisoner was brought to the sergeant with the statement that here was his opportunity to kill a Jap.
“But I can’t kill that man! He’s a prisoner. He’s defenseless.”
“Hell, this is war. We’ll show you how to kill the son of a bitch.”
One of the patrol members offered the Jap a cigarette and a light, and as he started to smoke an arm was thrown around his head and his throat “slit from ear to ear.” The entire procedure was thoroughly approved by the general giving the account. I was regarded with an attitude of tolerant scorn and pity when I objected to the method and said that if we had to kill a prisoner I thought we ought to do it in a decent and civilized way. “The sons of bitches do it to us. It’s the only way to handle them.” ……………..
[June 26, 1944 (page 856) visiting the 475th fighter group, spending the night with Colonel Charles H. MacDonald. Spent evening talking about the war with several officers.]
There were three silk Japanese flags hanging on one wall of the hut we were in,k taken from the bodies of Japanese soldiers. The souvenir value of one of these flags was about [$33.00 US], one of the officers told me. Someone who has a Japanese officer’s sword is asking [about $1000 US] for it. The talk drifted to prisoners of war and the small percentage of Japanese soldiers taken prisoner. “Oh, we could take more if we wanted to.” One of the officers replied. “But our boys don’t like to take prisoners.”
“We had a couple of thousand down at [deleted], but only a hundred or two were turned in. They had an accident with the rest. It doesn’t encourage the rest to surrender when they hear of their buddies being marched out on the flying field and machine guns turned loose on them.”
“Or after a couple of them get shot with their hands up in the air,” another officer chimed in.
“Well, take the [deleted]__th. They found one of their men pretty badly mutilated. After that, you can bet they didn’t capture very many Japs.” …………..
[Wednesday, June 28 still with the 475th, page 859] Supper and evening with the 475th officers. Talk again turned to war, prisoners, and souvenirs. I am shocked at the attitude of our American troops. They have no respect for death, the courage of an enemy soldier, or many of the ordinary decencies of life. They think nothing whatever of robbing the body of a dead Jap and call him a “son of a bitch” while they do so. I said during a discussion that regardless of what the Japs did, I did not see how we could gain anything or claim that we represented a civilized state if we killed them by torture. “Well, some of our boys do kick their teeth in, but they usually kill them first,” one of the officers said in half apology.
Later in the evening, as I was getting ready for bed, another officer showed me his souvenirs. Several Japanese soldiers had walked into the camp at about two hours after midnight. (There was argument among the officers as to whether the Japs had come to steal food or to surrender.) The officer who was showing me the souvenirs woke, saw the Japanese, grabbed his .45, and shot two of them. Another officer accounted for a third.
I don’t blame them for what the did. After all, one can hardly afford to ask questions when he sees Japanese soldiers in camp during the darkest hours of morning. What I do blame them for is the attitude with which they kill and their complete lack of respect for the dignity of death. The souvenirs consisted of a silk Japanese flag containing the usual characters, a number of Japanese bills, including invasion money, a name stamp, a postal savings book, a number of postal cards already written and addressed, several other articles, and a photograph of several Japanese soldiers, including the one from whose body the “souvenirs” were taken – a young boy of about fifteen to seventeen years of age. ……………
[Thursday, July 13, 1944. In Australia to discuss his status flying as a civilian with the army. Saw Generals Kenney and MacArthur. Page 875] Supper with Phil La Follette, Phil cooked supper. We discussed the war, old times, and the political situation back home [Roosevelt had just announced his run for a fourth term]. At one point, the conversation turned to the atrocitites committed by the Japanese and by our own men. It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Jap with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone. We claim to be fighting for civilization, but the more I see of this war in the Pacific the less right I think we have to claim to be civilized. In fact, I am not sure that our record in this respect stands so very much higher than the Japs’. ……………
[With Major {Claude} Stubbs and several other officers, drove in Jeep over to the Mokmer west caves. Monday, July 24, 1944 Page 883]
At the center and far end of the cave the Japs had set up huts similar to those in the first cave we entered, but in better condition, since they were far enough in to escape the flame thrower. One of them had apparently been used for a hospital. One of the bodies on the floor was still lying, partially covered, on a stretcher. This is the cave where the Japs reportedly tried to surrender and were told by our troops to “get the hell back in and fight it out.” The far end of the cave opened into a second pit, also littered with dead bodies.l We could stand it no longer and turned back to our jeep. Drove to the shore and bathed in the cool and clear water of a small spring, which the Japs in those caves had probably used only a few weeks previously. ………….
[Flying as flight leader with the 433rd. Friday August 11, 1944. Non flying day to inspect the aircraft (P-38s) Page 902]
Sitting on boxes and the edge of bunks in the rather poorly lighted tent, we discuss the question of Japanese prisoners. I said I felt it was a mistake not to accept surrender whenever it could be obtained; that by doing so, our advance would be more rapid and many American lives would be saved. If the Japanese think they will be killed anyway when they surrender, they, naturally, are going to hold on and fight to the last – and kill American troops they capture whenever they get the chance. Most of the officers agree (not very enthusiastically) but say that our infantry [doesn’t] look on it that way.
“Take the 41st, for example; they just don’t take prisoners. The men boast about it.”
“The officers wanted some prisoners to question but couldn’t get any until they offered two weeks’ leave in Sydney for each one turned in, Then they got more than they could handle.”
“But when they cut out giving leave, the prisoners stopped coming in, The boys just said they couldn’t catch any.”
“The Aussies are still worse. You remember the time they had to take those prisoners south by plane? One of the pilots told me they just pushed them out over the mountains and reported that the Japs committed hara-kiri on the way.”
“Well, you remember when our troops captured that Jap hospital? There wasn’t anyone alive in it when they got through.” “The Nips did it to us, though.”
[On Tarawa island, Wednesday, August 30 1944 on jeep tour with an officer]
The officer I was with, who came in soon after the first landing, told me that our Marines seldom accepted surrender of the Japanese troops on the island. It had been a bitter fight; our men had lost heavily; the general desire was to kill and not take prisoners. Even when prisoners were taken, the naval officer said, they were lined up and asked which ones could speak English. Those who were able to speak English were taken for questioning. The other “simply weren’t taken.” ………….
[Apparently on Roi island, Monday Sept 4, 1944] One of the doctors on the island tells me that some of the Marines dug up Japanese bodies to get gold-filled teeth for souvenirs. ………….
[Apparently still on Roi island, Saturday, September 9, 1944 page 919]
Before the bodies in the hollow were “bulldozed over,” the officer said, a number of our Marines went in among them, searching through their pockets and prodding around in the mouths for gold-filled teeth. Some of the Marines, he said, had a little sack in which they collected teeth with gold fillings. The officer said he had seen a number of Japanese bodies from which an ear or a nose had been cut off. “Our boys cut them off to show their friends in fun, or to dry and take back to the States when they go. We found one Marine with a Japanese head. He was trying to get the ants to clean the flesh off the skull, but the odor got so bad we had to take it away from him.” It is the same story everywhere I go. ………….
[Arriving at Oahu Hawaii, September 14 1944 page 923] Colonel [John S.E.] Young and several Marine officers happened to be at the NATS station when I arrived. He invited me to spend the night with him at Ewa. Cleared customs and we drove out to the base. (The customs officer asked me if I had any bones in my baggage. He said they had to ask everyone that question because they had found a large number of men taking Japanese bones home for souvenirs. He said he had found one man with two “green” Jap skulls in his baggage.) ………………
Post 264 is for you.
.... not around to defend their honor against the 'diary' of one solitary man who didn't believe in their cause.
In researching and typing post #264, I saw dozens of combat missions under fire flown by someone who "didn't believe in" America's cause.
You might not want to read it, because it might puncture your own fantasy of what history was really like.
And where exactly in your post, is Lindbergh an eyewitness to the torture and/or murder of Japanese soldiers?
The bottom line is, that what you have here, amounts to nothing more than hearsay...like it or not.
I had the opportunity about a year and a half ago to speak at length with a veteran of several of the island battles in the Pacific, stemming from my mentioning to him in passing that I'd read EB Sledge's "With the Old Breed". If you've never read the book, I highly recommend it.
As horrific as that book was, it was nothing compared to seeing the look in that veteran's eyes as he recounted some of his experiences to me. Sixty years had not erased the horrors that he witnessed and his disbelief at the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese. He described the terror he felt that he'd be captured and 'skinned alive' by them. He also detailed the ruthless efficiency and heroism of the men who drove the Japanese from the caves in what for many were inevitably suicide missions. None of it is for the squeamish. And I would be loathe to judge anyone for their wartime actions based on his account alone.
After enduring the candy-cane view of Charles Lindbergh that one receives in public school in this country, I grew up and expanded my horizons a bit.
Prior to the US entry into WWII, Lindbergh was what one might call his era's Cindy Sheehan (Jimmy Stewart's portrayal notwithstanding). He went out of his way to prevent the US from aiding the Brits or preparing our defense, and nearly cost them - and us- everything
Personally I wouldn't be offended if the guy had simply STFU in 1928.
You make me see Cindy Sheehan in a whole new light.
Lindbergh was isolationist, as his father, a US Senator, had been in WWI. His opinion was the majority opinion, which was why FDR was petrified that Lindbergh might run for President, and could possibly win. As the son of a US Senator, that possibility was very real.
There are those that claim FDR engineered Pearl Harbor in order to get us into the war in Europe. That might be a bit far fetched, but he did bait the Japanese with trade policies, and once Pearl Harbor got us into the war, FDR spent the first part of it agressively going after Germany, not Japan.
Back to Cindy Sheehan. Could you ever imagine Cindy Sheehan flying a fighter aircraft, strafing a Japanese barge with 20mm and .50 caliber machine guns? Could you imagine her dive bombing in a Corsar at 500mph with several thousand lbs of bombs that are aimed at killing people?
I don't think so.
Comparing Lindbergh to Cindy Sheehan doesn't quite cut it.
If Lindberghs second hand account is true. Then we didn't execute 9 Japanese prisoners, but more like 2000, machine gunned on an airstrip. That was the one account where he deleted the name of the location and unit, apparently to protect the perpetrators. That's the one incident that rises above personal conduct to the level of genuine war crime.
The other surprising thing are the numerous discussions with senior officers Lindbergh had where they apparently ratify the "no prisoners" concept. They pass the buck that the enlisted war fighters just won't take prisoners. Lindberghs argument was not only that we were being barbaric, but that it was bad tactics as well. Had we spent the two years between Dec 7, 1941 and the summer of 1944 training a few Japanese speakers, then maybe we would have had thousands of Guy Gabaldons. Perhaps it would not have been as bloody on Iwo Jima, had we had a few trained people to talk the Japs from the caves as Gabaldon did by the hundreds. 800 prisoners on a single day, captured by one man! These are the fanatic Japanese that fight to the death? I think it much more probable that our policy of taking no prisoners created the situation where Japanese troops held out in the mountains for months, pining down our people and preventing them from being moved on to the next island. It was a stupid policy, as well as barbaric.
The original article in this post is about a Japanese doctor that killed a handful of innocent people while he was under orders. He spent the rest of his life trying to make up for it, and fully confessed to what he had done. In contrast, our troops apparently committed barbarities of their own, without direct orders to do so (one reported incident I didn't type in last night was a Japanese found tied to a post, apparently tortured to death). But I see no equivalent confessions by our people that these things happened. Instead I hear the story, "the japs refused to surrender, the japs refused to surrender, the japs refused to surrender", without the explanation offered that they did so because we wouldn't allow it.
Lindbergh published his diaries in 1970. There were plenty of veterans alive when it came out. Had Lindbergh been inventing stories, an innocent group of people, having their honor trashed would have called Lindbergh a liar. Lindbergh wouldn't be known as the guy who accepted a tin medal from the Germans in the days when he was attempting to head off war Europe, but would instead be the goon that trashed the honor of thousands of heros in battle. But that didn't happen. Instead his diaries were ignored, I think because he told the truth, and people with guilty consciences didn't want to admit their involvement. By staying silent, they allowed the fantasy that Americans were good, but the Japanese were evil, to continue. I'll accept that perhaps the Japanese were "more" barbaric, but I don't want to hear the preening that Americans were full of virtue while Japanese like the guy in the article at the top of the thread is not. The true story just isn't that black and white. Akira Makino admitted his guilt. The fact that there are no Americans that I've heard of admit to any improprieties at all is telling. I prefer Japanese honesty to American silence.
History, and truth, is not limited to what is acceptable in a court of law.
Lindbergh's diary came out in 1970, when plenty of veterans were alive to protest any inaccuracies. The fact that there were not thousands of veterans protesting the publication, enraged that their sacred honor was being trashed by Lindbergh, speaks volumes.
Obviously Lindbergh was telling the truth, and the veterans of the South Pacific new it.
new it = knew it
Lindbergh was isolationist, as his father, a US Senator, had been in WWI. His opinion was the majority opinion, which was why FDR was petrified that Lindbergh might run for President, and could possibly win. As the son of a US Senator, that possibility was very real.
Isolationism is great for things like 'Peace in Our Time'. Lindbergh was a dandy pilot, but a moral failure. We could pretend just about anything and speculate as to the outcome; Lindbergh as president would not have averted US entry into the war- it almost certainly would have made it worse. You overstate the sentiment against the war-- it was not so widespread that FDR couldn't push through things like Lend-Lease, no thanks to Linbergh. Lindberg and his ilk prolonged the inevitable with their handwringing and dissembling. One wonders what Churchill would say about your reading of history.
There are those that claim FDR engineered Pearl Harbor in order to get us into the war in Europe.
Yes, and they watch Michael Moore movies in slow-mo and trade 9-11 conspiracy theories over at DailyKos.
That might be a bit far fetched, but he did bait the Japanese with trade policies, and once Pearl Harbor got us into the war, FDR spent the first part of it agressively going after Germany, not Japan.
Nonsense. FDR watched the tightening noose that Japan held in the Pacific (ask the survivors of Japanese atrocities if FDR was baiting the Japanese) and played all diplomatic hands first. The allied consensus was that Europe was the most pressing and that Japan could- and would- wait. Even so, the US racked up solid victories and had Japan backed up to her own shores by VE day
Back to Cindy Sheehan. Could you ever imagine Cindy Sheehan flying a fighter aircraft, strafing a Japanese barge with 20mm and .50 caliber machine guns? Could you imagine her dive bombing in a Corsar at 500mph with several thousand lbs of bombs that are aimed at killing people?
Only if it harmed US troops.
Your comparison is like saying that Ted Kennedy ably served all of his constituents except Mary Jo Kopechne. Lindbergh was wrong, and he used his position as a celebrity before, during and after the war to harm US interests (presaging the Liberals of the VietNam era and the kook left of the modern era).
Maybe in some future generation he will be remembered for what he did. But not until the passions have gone out of this thing. Not until all the veterans of the South Pacific are dead, and their children who hold their memory sacred are gone too.
Was that while he was strafing houses, and barges in Japanese occupied areas? Or perhaps while he was helping that other Nazi, Henry Ford, produce more heavy bombers than Boeing?
We were not ready for total war when the Brits and French declared against Germany. Lindbergh helped that effort more than he hurt by over reporting the strength of the Luftwaffe (he had been decieved by the Germans), giving data to those who were trying to get arms bills through Congress.
I'll have to re-read the early parts of his diaries, but I seem to remember that his emotional argument for staying out of war in Europe was isolationism, but his logical argument was that we would lose because we weren't not armed.
Also, how did his going on active duty around 1940 (before America First) with the job of helping gear up aircraft production for war damage our ability to fight it once it began? Some peacenick.
And you would presume to know the nature of truth?
Tell me, what is the difference between a soldier who kills on the battlefield, and a criminal who murders their neighbor, and by what immutable moral principle do you distinguish the two.
Absent context, History and truth are meaningless, abstract concepts, and contingent to what we are discussing here, it certainly is limited to what is acceptable in a court of law.
Lindbergh's diary came out in 1970, when plenty of veterans were alive to protest any inaccuracies. The fact that there were not thousands of veterans protesting the publication, enraged that their sacred honor was being trashed by Lindbergh, speaks volumes.
And one person's deductive inference is another persons logical fallacy. As I said before, for someone who is so interested in the truth, you have an odd way of showing it.......
Ah. So veterans like it when stories are fabricated about them. Either that, or they knew that the best way to make the story go away was to just keep quiet. Guilty consciences work that way naturally.
for someone who is so interested in the truth, you have an odd way of showing it.......
If by "truth" you mean finding creative ways of describing Americans good, Japanese bad, then no, I'm not into that. If by "truth" you mean "truth", then I'm interested.
Lindbergh said right in his diaries that the Japanese were more barbaric than the Americans apparently were. But that didn't change the "truth" that Americans often were very barbaric, and were obviously intent on killing japs, not in achieving victory in the most expeditious manner.
Guy Gabaldon figured out all by himself how to achieve victory in the most expeditious manner, and with little loss of life on either side. From the web site:
His routine previous to July 8 had been simple but effective; carefully approach a cave, shoot any guards outside, move off to one side of the cave and yell "You're surrounded and have no choice but to surrender. Come out, and you will not be killed! I assure you will be well treated. We do not want to kill you!" At this point, anyone running out with a weapon would be immediately shot, but anyone coming out slowly would be talked into returning to the cave and bringing out others.
On his first sortie Guy captured seven prisoners using this method, only to be told by his commander that if he deserted his post again he would be court-marshalled. The next morning Guy returned from another unauthorized trip, this time with 50 Japanese prisoners. From that moment Guy was granted the envious privilege of "lone wolf" operator. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. The perfect task for a tough Chicano kid from the East Los Angeles barrios.
On July 6, Guy left on another of his evening patrols and entered an area near Saipan's northern cliffs. It seemed fairly deserted at the time, but before daybreak he realized that hundreds of enemy infantry were moving onto the flats and gathering for an assault. By this time he was cut off from any path of retreat and any attempt to show himself would have resulted in a quick and noisy death. He remained under cover and listened as thousands of Japanese troops and some civilians drank sake and loudly prepared for the largest banzai charge of the campaign. This tragic and unsuccessful charge ended late that evening, with most of the remaining Japanese returning to their cliff-side positions.
The next morning, Guy crept to the edge of the cliffs, where he quickly captured two guards. It was then that he embarked on the most dangerous of his many ventures. After talking to the two men he convinced one of them to return to the caves below. This was a personal moment of truth for both of them. If the soldiers below were still too agitated, then everyone involved would face immediate death and a disgraceful one at that for the two guards. Shortly afterward a Japanese officer and some of his men walked slowly up from the caves and sat down in front of Gabaldon. Within an hour hundreds of Japanese infantry accompanied by civilians began surrendering en-masse; the gamble had paid off.
This climactic morning did not end Guy's prisoner-taking days. By the time he was machine-gunned in an ambush, he single-handedly captured over 1,500 soldiers and civilians from the most fanatically inclined army in the world. Decades later stories of the "Pied Piper of Saipan" continued to be told and retold within the Marine Corps, although they were considered by many to be some of the great fish stories of World War Two.
If Guy Gabaldon had brought in some prisoners on one occasion, then I might think his experience was a fluke. But obviously the Japs in the caves were desperate (obviously). Gabaldon convinced them they would not be harmed, and they surrendered in droves, on multiple occasions. To honor him now would put the lie to the mantra that "the japs refused to surrender". So Gabaldon has been forgotten, just like Lindbergh's diary.
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