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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (43008)	1/30/2002 3:05:23 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I think it is important to be able to differentiate between the killing that results from war, and the killing that diminishes our humanity at a diferent level. In other words, to acknowledge that all is not fair in love and war; rather, civilized peoples must always reassess what may be tolerated between enemies, and what humanity ought to protect and cling to. It is not the point to compare the depth of atrocities. Most western history covers the other side to some degree, at least. My point is simply that it is still useful and human to be able to indulge in self criticism, and this purpose is not served by being dismissive of behaviour, or of any opportunity for self reflection. So please do not tell me the Japanese were worse. I have no disagreement with you on that. And you don't need to tell me that the Pacific War took the participants into a whole new arena of human engagement, where normal rules of humanity scarcely applied. Again, there is no disagreement. But does war obviate the requirement to make moral distinctions? I do not believe that you think it does, or you would not have so clearly seen the evil in the atrocities at Nanking. There is no comparison between that and this: and that is not my point. The comparison is to our own moral code...not to that of another. When we do not reflect, the past may contaminate the future. This is important: Best said many of the antecedents for the brutality of the war in Vietnam - a conflict that has become a byword for atrocities - could be traced to the conflict in the Pacific. freerepublic.com "For more than half a century they have been portrayed as wholesome heroes who fought in terrible conditions to save the Western way of life from Japanese aggression. But now the savage acts that Allied soldiers were driven to commit in the Pacific theatre are about to be exposed. Researchers for a TV series to be broadcast on Channel 4 this month have unearthed disturbing and previously unseen footage from the Second World War which had languished forgotten in archives for 57 years.The images are so horrific senior television executives had to be consulted before they were considered fit for broadcast. The film, shot in colour, was taken by an unknown combat cameraman in 1944 during fighting on the Pacific Island of Peleliu. It includes scenes of American soldiers shooting Japanese wounded as they lie prone on the ground. In another scene on the Japanese island of Okinawa a year later, a US soldier is filmed dragging a wounded enemy from a hiding place. Although the man has his ankles tied together, two bullets are fired into his knees and then, while he is still moving, shots are fired into his chest and head. Other footage from Hell in the Pacific shows American soldiers using bayonets to hack at Japanese corpses while looting them. Former servicemen interviewed by researchers spoke of the widespread practice of looting gold teeth from the dead - and sometimes from the living. Others spoke of units throwing away their bayonets to avoid being ordered by 'over-enthusiastic' officers to charge, and of machine-gunning villages full of civilians and clubbing wounded Japanese soldiers to death as they tried to surrender. In an incident related by a former marine, soldiers killed a shell-shocked comrade with a shovel for fear his screaming would give away their position. The revelations will shock many accustomed to the heroic image of American soldiers, particularly given the romantic myth boosted by blockbuster films such as Pearl Harbor, which goes on general release this weekend. Many cherished British military myths are overturned. Researchers found - contrary to the image of solidarity projected by films such as Bridge over the River Kwai - that in several POW camps prisoners dispensed brutal justice through 'kangaroo courts' to those who collaborated with Japanese guards. Fred Seiker told interview ers he had presided over a makeshift tribunal in a prison camp on the infamous Burma railway that found a fellow prisoner guilty of betraying a food-smuggling operation to the guards. The man was put to death by being drowned in a communal latrine. There are also stories of Japanese ears and heads being collected by British-led troops - particularly by Gurkhas and Nigerians. Neither are the Australians spared. Many witnesses interviewed for the series spoke of large-scale desertions by Australian troops before the fall of Singapore in 1942. One, a soldier with a British Highland regiment, speaks of Australian troops shooting officers who attempted to stop them boarding ships leaving the doomed city. Historians last week said the new material would surprise many. 'People are often blissfully unaware of what their country and their allies do in a war,' said Dr Antony Best, a lecturer at the London School of Economics. 'Interest in war crimes has been revived by the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and so actions from 50 or more years ago are increasingly being re-examined.' Best said many of the antecedents for the brutality of the war in Vietnam - a conflict that has become a byword for atrocities - could be traced to the conflict in the Pacific. 'The truth is that war is an occasion when god-awful things happen,' he said. Jonathan Lewis, the writer and director of the new series, said at least one marine who had fought in Vietnam reported that the battles on the Pacific islands were the worst. 'These were ordinary men faced with conditions of extraordinary adversity,' he said. 'We have always been told that these kinds of atrocities are aberrations in battle, but the lesson of the Pacific War is that then at least they were the norm. It is not a case of levelling blame. Taboos were forgotten by everyone. That is the way war is conducted, and that's why we have made an anti-war film.' One US marine, Steve Judd, based on the island of Saipan during some of the fiercest combat of the war, blamed repeated exposure to horrors for some of the Allied excesses. Judd described how he was ordered to clear some caves. Aware of the Japanese tactic of pretending to surrender before blowing themselves and their captors up with a hidden grenade, he and his team decided to be indiscriminate. 'We just blew it all up. We don't know if there were women and children or whatever, we just blew them up,' he said. 'Some people today will tell you it was cruel and inhumane, but you weren't there - we were.'"