Hortlund
Posts: 2884
Joined: 10/13/2000
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Doggie
Yes. I would say that just about sums it up. A number of my uncles served in the pacific during world war II as well as other aquaintances. To a man, every one agreed that the Japanese were more sadistic and barbaric than any of them ever imagined. Every one had absolutely no regrets about killing japanese soldiers.
Maybe that says more about your uncles and aquaintances though? Anyway, I find it rather peculiar to find a man who apparently has built his entire image of an ethnic group upon the (tall?) tales told to him by his relatives.
quote:
In contrast, those who served on occupation duty after the surrender described those same Japanese as polite and courteous, and G.I.s went out of their way to care for them.
That pretty much blows the pacifist conventional wisdom about American soldiers and marines being racist blood thirsty killers out of the water.
It does huh? So far your anecdotal "evidence" of the evil of the japanese consists of statements from your uncles and aquanitances, your anecdotal "evidence" of the good-heartedness and non-racist views by american soldiers and marines consists of...what? Statements grabbed out of thin air?
quote:
You can take all the slasher movies and horror stories about serial murderers combined and they do not even approach the level of barbarity exhibited by the Japanese on a routine basis. They literally tossed babies on bayonettes. They literally canibalized prisoners of war by slicing the meat of their legs while they were still alive so they could come back later and find the kidneys and liver still fresh. When the U.S. invaded the Phillipines, the Japanese herded PWs into air raid shelters, drenched them with gasoline, and burned them alive.
The problem is that you can take all those slasher movies and horror stories and they do not even approach the level of barbarity exibited by German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, British or US soldiers on a routine basis. The difference is that when the perpetrator of a henious crime is a German or a Japanese soldier, you take it as evidence of the perversity of an entire nation, you sit there and claim that they all were like that. But when a US soldier guns down a prisoner, or slaughters a civilian village, or rapes a young girl and then kills her you call that an individual act of lunacy.
quote:
None of this is propaganda and stereotyping. It's documented fact.
Actually, if you would care to open a dictionary some day, you would find that stereotypes are generalizations about a group of people, based on an image about what people in that group are like. That means that you are stereotyping (all japanese are stinking savages) based on documented fact (rape of Nanking).
If one would apply the same thinking pattern of the US, one would say that all American soldiers are rapists and murderers, because My Lai happened. Its a documented fact. However, when confronted with documented facts of US atrocities, you are very quick to leap to the defence of the US soldiers in general, trying to explain the crimes as individual acts of lunacy. But when confronted with evidence of Japanese atrocities, you use that as evidence to show that all japanese soldiers were stinking savages.
Whats funny (and when I say funny, I mean sad) is that this process seems to take place instanty and without reflection inside you.
quote:
World war II era propaganda films were kind to the Japanese. Even the worst of them did not approach the horror that was reality. "Sentiments" like mine went out of fashion when the people who experienced Japanese hospitality first hand started dying off and revisionists began re-writing history.
While the nazis practiced barbarism on an organizational level, it was personal for the Japanese. Nazis did haul jews off to the crematoriams, but they did not strut around Paris decapitating civilians for sport, which the Japanese did in every single terrority they occupied. They confiscated the entire rice crop in Korea and left the populace to starve, except for the thousands of girls they shipped off to Japan to serve in brothels.
A realistic remake of Midway would include downed allied airmen being fished out of the ocean after the battle of coral sea, castrated and disemboweled one by one during their "interogation" then tied to metal scrap and tossed overboard while they were still gasping in agony.
Yeah, but who would want to watch that remake of Midway is my question. What do you think a realistic remake of Dresden would look like? Who would want to see it?
Actually, you probably should read up a bit on what exactly the nazis (I take it you mean the SS here) did to the jews in the concentration camps, in the extermination camps, in the countless massacres performed by the einzatsgruppen.
quote:
They were stinking savages, and that's why Dutch, Australians, British, and American soldiers seldom took prisoners, and allied airmen happily strafed the miserable bastards in their lifeboats after sinking their ships. And they had every bit of it coming to them.
Ah, not only were they evil savages, but they were stinking aswell huh? I dont know if you ever tried to pretend not to be a racist, but that pretty much closes the book on that question.
And your explanation for allies gunning down of prisoners and strafing of survivors in lifeboats...well, the japs brought it on themselves of cource...after all, they were not only savagels, but stinking savages.
I dont seem to recall reading about that paragraph in the Hague convention...the one where it says it is ok to gun down prisoners if they smell bad, or if they are of a certain ethnicity, but I guess lawschool failed me there huh.
quote:
Maybe you should find someone who survived internment is a Japanese slave labor camp and ask them what they think about the poor Japanese.
Yeah, maybe you should find someone who survived My Lai and ask them what they think about the US. What can we learn from interviewing them?
Or, maybe more interesting, you should find the relatives of private Joseph Dorcas Allen. He was wounded in a minefield, lost his leg. A japanese soldier saved his life by dressing his wound and giving him water. The stinking savage.
Like I said, guilt is always individual. That means we have to judge every single individual based on his actions. We cannot put guilt on a collective, and claim that they are all guilty without examining the actions or inactions of every single individual in that collective.
If we do, we might end up thinking that all US soldiers are rapists, butchering murderous thugs.
< Message edited by Panzerjaeger Hortlund -- 11/19/2007 11:00:01 AM >
_____________________________
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close.
In its place we are entering a period of consequences..
|
Printable Version
RE: Letters from Iwo Jima - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread