If Japan ever goes nuclear... WATCH OUT.
My father used to tell me horror stories of a military Japan and how cruel they were to their enemies.
BTW, The Koreans (both North and South) and the Chinese have not forgotten their cruelty either.
Very true. Japan committed tremendous atrocities against the Chinese during WWII. The Japanese made Hitler look like a choir boy, but people only remember Hitler. I’m sure that grudge hasn’t cooled one bit.
Nonetheless, cruelty was a calculated artform among them, not found in outbursts of emotion or insanity, or deviantly evil as one might typically expect to find such in our society. Soldiers with whom he came into contact were all steeped in the pecking order and its transactions.
Dad called their system a meat grinder. The POW system was meant get as much work out of their prisoners as possible, per calorie of food expended upon them. Everyone's ration was meted out closely. It was a grand, gradual slope toward death. It was expected that an average 80kg soldier would literally work his way down to 40kg and die off in 2-3 years. It became clockwork.
My dad lived through 3-1/2 years because he got out of the heavier work details because he was a hospital ward nurse. He was down around 44kg in September of '45. When he appeared on his parents' doorstep in January of 1946, after four months of relatively "high on the hog" eating and treatment, his parents didn't recognize who he was.
HF