Posted on 11/23/2007 8:07:42 AM PST by Stoat
War through the eyes of a PoW in JapanLast Updated: 2:43am GMT 23/11/2007
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Sketches by a Second World War serviceman, tracing his experiences from RAF bases to a Japanese PoW camp, are to be exhibited for the first time
Fred Goodwin (far right, second row) was captured by the Japanese. He painted in watercolour at Changi prison in Singapore, where he bartered with guards for materials
While incarcerated at Changi, Mr Goodwin painted this stunning scene of the Battle of Britain
He painted the four RAF Hurricanes that went up to try and halt the Japanese advance in the Dutch East Indies
When he was imprisoned on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, he was kept under a tighter regime, and his drawing was more secretive
He drew this picture of the ship that took him to Japan. Over 50 men died in the awful conditions and their bodies were thrown overboard
Mr Goodwin drew this picture of the Battle of Britain while he worked as ground crew for the RAF. He would sit in the cockpits of planes on the ground and listen in to the battle through the radios
Mr Goodwin came back to Britain after the war and died in 2001 at the age of 83
Bob Goodwin holds an RAF note book that his father used for some of his sketches. Fred Goodwin's paintings and sketches will be exhibited at Buckfast Abbey in Devon from Nov 26 to Dec 2
Buckfast Abbey - Home to a Catholic Community of Benedictine Monks
Buckfast Abbey,
Buckfastleigh,
Devon
TQ11 0EE
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Readers may also be interested in these recent Free Republic threads:
Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood
(Heartbreaking photos and content warning)
Exhibition of wartime posters reveals very different Britain, with very different values
(Heavy graphics content; readers with low bandwidth connections may experience loading delays)
ping :-)
Only because the Jap savages were fortunate enough to attack the USA, a country of unprecedented military prowess, but historically unique charity toward its enemies, were they spared their deserved fate of being annilihated from the face of the Earth.
Two nukes up their a$$? Big deal.
Two nukes up their a$$? Big deal.
I have no doubt that your sentiments are shared by all who have direct knowledge of these events; they are certainly shared by most posters to this thread:
Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood
(Heartbreaking content warning)
bttt
Ping to show my daughter.
I take it Bob didn't do too well in history when he was in school.
I may be completely wrong about this, but from a British perspective it has always struck me as slightly surprising that for every 100 times the war with Hitler is referred to by U.S. Freepers, in all sorts of contexts, the war with Japan is barely mentioned once - even though, and forgive the grotesquely crude over-simplification, the European war was ‘our’ war, whereas the Pacific war was ‘your’ war.
My suggested explanation is not meant to imply that it's the definitive one by any means; I was born well after WW2 and so I would never consider myself any sort of an authority on the subject. However, one possible explanation may be that articles at Free Republic are usually threads commenting on published news articles, as is this one. Therefore, the numerical sampling will be skewed, to a large degree, based upon what's published in newspapers. Sadly, most "journalists" seem to be eager to minimize the profound suffering caused by Imperial Japan because these "journalists" are typically Leftists who are of the opinion that our nuking of Japan was a horrible war crime and should never have been done. Usually, articles pertaining to Japan's involvement in WW2 fixate almost exclusively upon the atomic bombing and the American internment camps and only give a passing glance, if that much, toward Japan's innumerable sins. This is in keeping with the Left's desire to denigrate the USA at every opportunity, and a newspaper article accurately documenting Japan's evils would be counterproductive to the "journalists' " anti-American agenda. There's an endless flood of articles about Japan /.Hiroshima, and I think that most FReepers tend to just roll their eyes and move on to an article that's not merely written as another tired America-bashing exercise.
Most FReepers don't like anti-American articles and so they typically won't post them, except in cases where the article and the writer are being mocked.
Although that sort of sentiment also exists in regard to America's involvement in the European theater (the bombing of Dresden is incessantly harped on by the Left) it seems to be of a lesser degree, possibly because the Left has managed to portray the Nazis as "right wingers" in the modern sense / parlance and so they eagerly write about that as much as they can.
Just one possible reason among many.
Interesting, thanks.
You're quite welcome :-)
Upon reflection, I can't say that I recall seeing any American newspaper articles on Japan and WW2 that have NOT focused almost exclusively on the atomic bombing and the internment camps in the past 20 years, if ever.
I remember that in public school the only mention of Japan and WW2 was in the context of the atomic bombing and the American internment camps. This appears to be the only "accepted" template for discussion here, unfortunately.
It seems to me that many others find an honest discussion of the true evils of Imperial Japan to be remarkable and rare as well, as evidenced by over 360 posts to this thread as of this moment.
.Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood
(Heartbreaking content warning)
And this thread was not a discussion of a newspaper story per se, but of a book review.
I have yet to see the featured book discussed in the American press.....this is one of the reasons why I enjoy reading the UK press so much....quite a bit more diversity of thought, it seems.
Amazon.com Slaughter at Sea The Untold Story of Japan's Naval War Crimes Books Mark Felton
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