When there are no more standards or absolutes, the rape of Nanking becomes no different than the bombing of Berlin. That's where this looks like it's heading. Lately, in recent documentaries about that war, I have caught the occasional whiff of relativism - little things that I can't precisely pinpoint but that leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. Sometimes it's nothing more than a tone of voice or the selection of a particular adjective. Some time ago, the Smithsonian got into all kinds of trouble with their display about the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If my memory serves me, they failed to give proper credit to the prevailing wisdom - at the time, and since - that so many lives (Japanese and American) were spared by the forcing of the surrender. The Japanese were prepared to defend the home islands to the last man, woman and child. I think it matters that they started the whole thing. Call me silly ... Makes me want to go back and reread Ernie Pyle's description of London in flames in December of 1940.
The relativist tells us that life is not simple--then he oversimplies. It has been part of American policy to forget Japanese atrocities in China and the Phillipines.
"...and reread Ernie Pyle's description of London..."
I have visited Ernie Pyle's grave in Punchbowl-the National Burial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. It was easy to find. Elison Onizuka, STS-51L astronaut is buried next to him. Compared to what these two flicks are trying to portray with the reality of who's buried in Punchbowl as a result of Japanese agression, I'm sure I won't pay good money to see them.
He was a general who won two wars -- one of a few years, the other of two hundred and fifty years. In both cases he applied bloodless, yet ruthless, tactics as his major weapon. The March to the Sea in one, the extermination of the great buffalo herds in the other.
Yet in a battle his troops fought with all vehemence and for blood and terror.
War is hell. And to try to avoid a war or keep it from being a hell, both lead to making it more of hell.
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Yet war has rules too. What is the difference to each soul of each victim of the Desden fire-bombing versus the rape of Nanking? There are great differences. Death is death, but it was the indiviual brutality of rapes that most afflicted the souls -- in rape and in extremes of personal or bureaucratic tortures -- the soul is most challenged, becomes most dispirited and loses hope. And it is in releasing themselves to the most base and violent urges that the rapists and torturers rip their own souls to pieces, and the camp guards and bureaucrats suffocate them.
From this website:Click for the entire article
Excerpt
In 2000, for the first time in years, the government ordered a new supply of Purple Hearts. The old supply, manufactured in anticipation of the invasion of the home islands of Japan during World War II, had begun to run low.
The decoration, which goes to American troops wounded in battle and the families of those killed in action, had been only one of countless thousands of supplies produced for the planned 1945 invasion of Japan, which military leaders believed would last until almost 1947.
Fortunately, the invasion never took place. All the other implements of that war -- tanks and LSTs, bullets and K-rations -- have long since been sold, scrapped or used up, but these medals, struck for their grandfathers, are still being pinned on the chests of young soldiers.
The Purple Heart
Remarkably, some 120,000 Purple Hearts are still in the hands of the Armed Services and are not only stocked at military supply depots, but also kept with major combat units and at field hospitals so they can be awarded without delay.
But although great numbers of the World War II stock are still ready for use, the recent production of 9,000 new copies was ordered for the most simple of bureaucratic reasons. So many medals had been transferred to the Armed Services that the government organization responsible for supplying them had to replenish its own inventory.
In all, approximately 1,506,000 Purple Hearts were produced for the war effort with production reaching its peak as the Armed Services geared up for the invasion of Japan. Despite wastage, pilfering and items that were simply lost, the number of decorations was approximately 495,000 after the war.