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When it comes to the killing of the defenseless, the US can hold its head up with the rest of us. |
And with that post, i predict this thread will spiral downward into another bout of US bashing. Perhaps this thread should now be moved to the general forum since its been effectively hijacked in both content and context. :rotfl:
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I can remember sitting down in front of the TV every sunday to watch "Victory at Sea" as a child. The stock footage from the war and the wonderfully matched score by Richard Rodgers really was a real treat for a youhg boy. The horrors and intense struggles of the Armed forces and merchant marine depicted in those 26 shows had great impact. The sacrifice of men and women of all countries should be revered forever by every person on the planet. What we have today was made possible by those who served.
Anyone interested in the shows can find them on a three CD set by Mill Creek. I bought mine recently at Wal-Mart from the value bin for five dollars. It is just as good as I remembered. |
I think Douglas MacArthur is an intriguing person.
Did you know he was very highly regarded in Japan (by the Japanese) during the post-war years? I find it remarkable that a man with such a personal history in the pacific war was able to put it all aside and deal with the conquered japanese with such respect and finesse. One of his aphorims, badly mangled by me, is that "it's easy to deal with the Japanese- you just have to imagine you are talking to precocious 12 year olds" to which the Japanese apparently agreed. |
Wow! Victory at Sea. When I was a youngster, that was mine and Dad's special time. I would even be allowed to set my homework aside so we could watch it.
Ducimus, I hope this thread doesn't take a nasty downturn. Having these "history" oriented threads is always good, as I sometimes pick up little additions to historical references I may already be familiar with. Can't argue with the issue about Independence Day. I see it too, especially in the younger crowds. No care except that it's a 3 and sometimes 4 day weekend. "Give them bread and circus'". :nope: It's pretty cool when my daughter has friends over for a group effort on History homework. I have a very captive audience. And all it takes, is my daughter to say, Dad, can you explain what happenned in the colonies after the Declaration of Independence was signed? And away I go! |
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I think that is also because it seems (at least to me) as if Americans were often talking about how bad the others were but do seldom reflect on their own dark sides. This might be wrong since I only get a small incomplete picture of discussions going on in the US but that is the way I (and probably a lot of other people) often see it.:roll: But we might take such international forums as a chance to clear away prejudices and talk about it.:D |
US bashing?
I dunno. Personally if any person can make comments about what another country did to his country but others aren't allowed to say back, then there is a problem with honesty. We criticise the Japanese for denying the truth to their own youth through slanted history books, but as was pointed out at the beginning of this thread, the Bataan march is almost unknown outside military history circles. If the truth is to be remembered, let it be the truth of ALL participants, not just the winners. How many people know that the Japanese attacked the US because the US made a trade decision between Japan and China? China was the larger market and a government more pro-American so the US took sides in the Sino-Japanese war and stopped supplying oil to Japan. Sure, the Japanes had choices, like just give up after what, 8 years of fighting in China (morally shouldn't have been there in the first place) but you can't say the US wasn't aware that Japan might be somewhat miffed at the US response.
One of my Uncles died in New Guinea fighting the Japanese, and we too had our death marches. Changi is rather famous for us. The work of Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop for keeping so many men alive in the camp. The Burma railway. The group of female nurses who were beheaded on a beach after swimming ashore from a sunken transport, the British, Australian and Dutch women forced to 'serve' Japanese officers. It was a nasty war alright, but I know we looked on them as animals at the time (ie; sub-human)... just watch some of the newsreels. I've seen footage of my own RAAF crews machinegunning japanese lifeboats after sinking a ship and the enthusiastic "give the little nips what for' from the voice-over dude. Tell the truth, and let it be known from both sides, or we risk repeating the whole thing. Ignorance is how govenments lead us into these messes in the first place (altered expletives). And isn't ignorance a part of the complaint of this thread? Oh BTW, the reason there are movies about the Battered Bastards of Bataan but not the march afterwards is that the idea of the largest mass surrender of US troops in WW2 and that the US government wrote them off (couldn't rescue them or supply them) is not considered pallatable to a US audience. |
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Way to ruin this important thread, it was about rememberance not hatred. Good post piersyf, I still think the moral respoinsibility, for that war, rests with the Axis agressors but we certainly should reflect on the wrong done by all countries then or since. We should not be perpetuating the hatred either. |
Good thread, please keep it on track fellas. Specifics and outcome of the A bomb have been discussed before. Other facets of the war are being discussed here and are interesting. Please keep the idea afloat.
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The Pacific War was rascist on both sides...which is why it turned into such a vicious no holds barred kind of war. Plus you had the Japanese cultural belief in "no surrender" which in turn meant that any one who surrendered was a "non-person" and in their minds didn't deserve anything other than poor treatment. I've even read where some of the Japanese that were captured were basiclly ignored by family and freinds after the war BECAUSE they surrendered instead of dying. Thank God the Bushido crap has pretty much died out over there...for now.
Of course the Russian Front was extrememly brutal as well. |
Not really a big contribution to the thread but just a little thought:
Aside from all other reasons, there is one practical reason that the war in the Pacific was so brutal: that a very large part of it was fought in the air and in the sea. That is to say, when you fight on land, very rarerly do you completely destroy the enemy... combut units retreat or disband long before reaching the 100% death rate. Worst case scenario (excluding death) you can abandon the fight and run for it! But at sea, or in the air... when a ship goes down EVERYBODY onboard goes down. When fighting on land, you can take pitty on your enemy and let him run away after you have defeated him, but when fighting in the air, sea or even in an island, there's no such posibility because theres no where to run to! So yes, there was a lot of hate, but there were also practical issues at play that made the death rates higher. This consideration, of course, does not excuse or apply to the way that japan treated it's prisioners, but rather explains why fighting at sea and air is such a "kill or be killed with no room for middle ground" deal. |
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N ot with anyone who didnt start it first!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
OK, enough trolling, clayp. I can see where you're coming from.
there was a third bomb btw. It was en transit to Tinian at the time of the surrender and was of the plutonium (fat man) variety. Most of us in this world are glad that the surrender came no later and with no more death than it did, but your position is shared by many Koreans that i have met. Why the Japanese were so cruel is worth asking. In WW1 the Japanese captured the German garrison in Tsing-tao, and apparently treated them in a friendly manner although the facilities were antiquated. This caused some confusion among German POWs. I guess the difference in treatment of pows and other non-combatants lies in the contexts of the two wars, but this little story puts a question mark over the assumption that it was an ingrained cultural phenomenon. |
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Balance
To be honest I'm really glad that at least some have asked this thread to continue on an historical education type basis. I've been on many other sites where the general response has been like clayp's; if you say anything bad about the US you get severely flamed. I find it ironic that as an ex Australian soldier I was called a communist...
It may be of interest that the Japanese army was trained by the German army when it first formed, so the Japanese in WW1 had significant respect for their former educators. The treatment of prisoners in WW2 was very harsh by our standards, but not by theirs. How many willingly surrendered to us? What did they expect? Did you have many POW camps in the US for Japanese (apart from your own citizens)? We did in a town called Cowra. Read about it. The Japanese fed us a diet consistent with penalty rations for their own army. That's right, a Jap soldier who had done wrong would have received the same general treatment our prisoners got. Secondly, if you read some of the literature the real mongrels were the Indians who changed sides. They even had the Japanese asking them to hold back. In camps in Japan it was the Korean guards trying to 'out Jap' the Japs. Clayp, if you have something to say, say it. If you can back it up. How many are aware that a condition on US entry into the war in Europe was the dissolution of the British Empire? Not to give 'freedom' to those 'colonial territories' but to give access to American business. Prior to WW2 US businesses couldn't get access to markets in the British Commonwealth because they all had favoured trade status with England. Look at the trade balances after WW2. You think it is a coincidence that the US was the only economy to increase after the war? I have no problems with the US, except that it seems quite a few Americans are unwilling to consider ANYTHING unsavoury about their country (America never had colonial aspirations? What crap!). One of the great pleasures I get from this site is that there ARE Americans on here who WILL talk about the world as the rest of the world sees it, NOT just from an American perspective. |
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At the time of the attack on Pearl, the Japanese Navy was down to approximately 30 days of fuel oil for their ships. So a desparate nation with few resources of it's own will act desparately to continue on with it's agenda reguardless of what the rest of the world thinks. Especially if they, and or their government think that what they are doing is absolutely fine, and proper to do. Racism was two sided in the Pacific war. Both sides considered the other to be inferior. There are many factors why the American, Australian, New Zealanders, and British troops did the things they did when confronting the Japanese. The Japanese attitude about fighting to the death, even with the use of booby-traps, and hidden grenades on the living who would act as though surrendering, and then blow themselves up and anyone close enough to get caught in the blast. The veteran soldiers knew what to expect, so out of self preservation, or saving the life of a fellow soldier, or friend, would tend to make you do things, you would not necesarilly do. But to the Japaese this was perfectly acceptable. It was also part of their idea, that if you inflict enough casualties on the enemy, they will sue for peace. Then Japan could keep what she had gained, and continue with the ideas of the Co-East Asian Prosperity Sphere that was set down by the Japanese Warlords. I too had an Uncle who served in the Pacific. I just found photos from New Guinea, and the Philippines he had taken, but he and my Aunt were killed in a car crash in 1948, and Gramma buried those pictures away, and never told me about Uncle Ted serving in the artillary. Maybe because it brought back bad memories for her, as Aunt Mary was her younger sister. |
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You've all been warned. This isnt the place. |
Thing is people really do foget the context. The context in 1941 was that the Axis seemd on a roll, one sucess after another, the problems Germany had in Russia were not really apparent yet, after a brief stall in the muds of autumn, they picked up the advance when the ground froze and seemed to be on the way to Moscow. The very high casualties (more than the rest of European campaign together or at least comparable) were not appreciated, Germany had overrun Europe and everyone had written off the Soviets by this time.
Japan, bogged down in China, I think was encouraged to move by the German success and a probable free hand in Asia... the embargo was slapped in direct response to the Japanese move into French Indochina (controlled by Vichy France at the time). This showed a growing threat to the European holdings in Southeast Asia as well as the Phillipines, so I don't see how the US could not respond in some matter given that Japan was allied to Germany and the US was supporting those countries now at war or occupied by Germany (Uk and the Netherlands in this case). True a healthy dose of self-interest and realpolitik I mean no action was taken during the early stage of the Sino-Japanese war despite the moral outrage over the Rape of Nanking or the sinking of the Panay. Some good posts here though. |
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