Solon, your latest "find" is laughable:
A year-long television investigation ... has uncovered stark evidence of atrocities by American marines.
Oh my goodness, how shocking! Oh Dear, what were these atrocities?
Former US marines admit to extracting bags of gold fillings and teeth from the mouths of Japanese soldiers...
Gross! Horrible! Inflicting such pain on a corpse.
And it gets worse, because these soldiers were ...murdered under an unspoken US military rule of taking no prisoners. (Gasp) the Marines murdered?
But wait, then she says [Japanese soldiers] were indoctrinated that the Emperor of Japan was a god, that surrender in any form was a mortal crime and that death in battle guaranteed them a place in heaven. er, does this quite make sense? If the Japanese troops were forbidden to surrender, then how could the Marines take prisoners?
Well, never mind that little contradiction. Let's get back to those horrid Marines.
The marines also appear to have decapitated enemy soldiers and boiled their heads, to keep the skulls as souvenirs. (er, were these live or dead soldiers?) When they got the upper hand, the US soldiers were merciless. Former marine Paul Montgomery recalls one officer carrying a bag containing about seven kilograms of gold teeth. "That was our off-duty activity," he said. "And it was fair game, I guess."
Yes, how merciless it is to defile a corpse. Corpses should always be treated with mercy and compassion.
Okay, so now we know how monstrous these America Marines were. What about the Japanese?
A two-part documentary to be aired this week in Britain by the BBC, and the basis of a book to be released in the new year, dispels the myth that the Japanese military culture was somehow inveterately sadistic... The product of extensive interviews with surviving soldiers in Japan, Australia, Britain and the US, Horror In The East points to a web of factors to explain the notorious cruelty inflicted on PoWs in particular, a program of unrelenting brutalisation of trainee Japanese soldiers by their superiors that left them completely emotionally desensitised.The documentary confirms that Japanese troops carried out organised, group cannibalism of Australian and British troops in New Guinea. It argues that the Japanese resorted to cannibalism after bungling army commanders in Tokyo had sent far too many of them in, only to abandon them to starve in the jungle when supply lines failed.
That sure does dispel the myth. The "notorious cruelty" and the "group cannibalism" are easily explained by "desensitivation." These Japanese soldiers were really fine fellows at heart.
Congratulations, Solon. You've found a really balanced and fair article here.
If you want a somewhat more graphic idea of what "desensitivation" can produce, try this link on the Rape of Nanking:
gotrain.com
It may sound bad, but it's nothing compared to stealing gold teeth from corpses or boiling skulls of dead soldiers for souvenirs.
We know now who the bad guys really were. |
