Thread: Bataan Death March

I watched a documentary about the Bataan Death March tonight and came away with the feeling that it had to be one of the most inhumane treatment of war prisoners in the 20th Century.

I know a lot of fuss was made earlier in the week about America's participation for the first time at a service honoring the victims of Hiroshima. But has Japan ever apologized for the barbaric treatment of the captured America and Phillipino soldiers?

Those acts committed by the Japanese were terribly cruel. Sadistic treatment that makes "water-boarding" appear as a day at poolside.

Japan Apologizes for Bataan Death March - ABC News

Japan has apologized. Doesn't erase the crime, or the pain, anymore than the USA's apology erases the crime or the pain of Hiroshima, but it's been done.

What documentary did you watch? I'm interested in learning more about the pacific theater of WWII because most of what I know has to do with Nazis.

I don't think much of these long-after-the-fact apologies. They're mostly done for political reasons and seem somewhat hollow to me. An apology doesn't mean much if it doesn't come from those who had something to do with it.

As far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki is concerned, I've read a good deal that indicates it might not have been necessary to drop the bombs, or both bombs. Whether or not it could be classified as a crime is debatable. I think you'd need to reconsider the firebombing of German cities too, but you don't hear much about that. But it certainly is a lot easier in retrospect to second guess.

No, yhat information is incorrect. The Japanese were fierce fighters. The soldiers were taught never to surrender. In fact, to surrender was to shame oneself. It is estimated that the dropping of both bombs actually saved more than one million American lives and one million Japanese lives had the Allies invaded Japan.

Years ago, I recall listening to a man in a park blasting Harry Truman for dropping of the bombs. The man was anti-American and he called the president every name in the book. What the man failed to mention (and what I hadn't known at the time) was that the Japanese killed as many Chinese as the Germans killed Jews.

The Japanese were fascinated with swords. They used to behead captives just for sport.

There is a military channel on cable. That is where I watched the documentary.

Forgive and forget, right?

Forgive, but never forget.

Many in the U.S. Air Force were convinced in 1945 that they could end the war without the atomic bomb. In the 1960's I interviewed many people who were involved in the bombing of Japan before the atomic bomb was dropped, and almost without exception that said that the continued use of conventional bombing, massive high explosives followed by incendiaries, would have forced the surrender eventually and without an invasion.

They admitted it would have taken longer, that the destruction of an entire city by one bomb worked far faster. They also admitted that the continued bombing would possibly have killed more people than the two atomic bombs killed.

And had there been an invasion by ground forces, there has never been any doubt there would have been massive bloodshed on both sides.

Let us do remember this, though, as we conjecture about what might have been . The decision to surrender was a political decision, not a decision made on any battlefield or by any soldier.

Years ago I talked with Japanese who had the same attitude toward Hirohito's government's decision to surrender that many Germans had about Kaiser Wilhelm's government's decision to surrender in 1918, that it was a stab in the back. No Japanese soldier, from the rawest recruit to the senior command, wanted to surrender. Atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, surrender was a bitter pill to swallow.

The decision to surrender wasn't political. It was made because the Emperor thought the next bomb would fall on his own head. It's same today with suicide bombers. You see all these poor, brainwashed people carrying out the attacks. You never find a leader strapping himself with explosives and blowing himself up.

The Japanese soldiers were treated harshly--even beaten--by their own commanders. It was beaten into them that the allied forces were inferior to them. They treated their prisoners badly because they thought them to be cowards (for surrendering) and animals.

Japanese intelligence operatives knew very well that any bombing that would threaten the life of the emperor was forbidden. The planners in Washington looked to Hirohito to be able to control the Japanese people in any postwar occupation, so they wanted him to be kept alive.

When I say the decision was political, I mean it was made by civilians, including the emperor, and not by the army.

In my days in southeast Asia I had the opportunity of talking with many veterans, military and political, from all sides of the Pacific theatre of World War II. The accounts of that very complex war, or series of wars, actually, given in most survey history books such as are used in high schools and undergraduate university courses are very simplistic. They cannot go into all the causes and all the outcomes of that conflict, and we are yet living with consequences of that war. In my day I wrote tens of thousands of words on the subject, and it's a subject I continue to study.

You must look beyond surface motivations.

garza - do you feel the US sanctions against Japan between WWI and WWII might have caused their Imperialistic effort to expand the empire?
Little is ever said about their invasion of Manchuria and China and the millions killed on both sides.

I'm looking at the cruelty factor. Nobody deserves to be brutalized, not even enemy captives. Men were beheaded for sport or for just a quick laugh. Allied soldiers were beheaded just for having red hair.


Massacre at Palawan:

American Prisoners of War: Massacre at Palawan » HistoryNet


As far as the deaths to civilians in both bombings, I put the blame on the Emperor. He is the ruler of his country, the Father of his people. As a father, would you send your child into a burning building because you think their may be valuables in it. No father puts his child at risk, and no leader endangers the lives of his people.

I'm in the third stage of frustration. For the third or fourth time this morning we've suffered a power failure. I had just finished a nice little essay on the origins of the drive toward empire by Japan, and was explaining why prisoners were beheaded.

I don't feel like repeating all that, so let's just say that Japan long had planned to lead an empire in the East that would balance the power of the nations of the West, especially the U-S and the U-K. The embargo on essential goods heightened Japanese animosity toward the U-S, and no doubt made it easier for the military leaders to succeed in making the bombing of Pearl Harbour one-half of the two-pronged attack in December of 1941.

War is brutal, and both the winners and the losers tend to be brutalised by what they often are ordered to do and what they in turn have done to them. In the West there are rules about the treatment of prisoners of war, but even in the West those rules are not always followed. Consider Bosnia and Chechnya.

And war against civilians has forever been seen by the strict militarists as legitimate. Consider the stories in the Bible, about how the people were ordered to slaughter everyone in a captured town, right down to the infants. The belief was, and continues today in the minds of many, that a dead baby today means one less enemy soldier 15 or 20 years from now. That's how cruel war gets when it's concepts are carried out to their logical end. Consider My Lai.

Decapitation is less cruel than starving to death. It's over with in a second, nearly painless, and efficient. In many cultures decapitation has been seen as the most humane way of executing someone. It just looks cruel. (Doctors say it's nearly painless, but I've no desire to find out if that's true.)

Decapitation for fun is just as horrid as starvation, and Inhumane treatment of even a dog is a brutal crime. I couldn't care less about what happened in the Bible: two wrongs don't make a right.

This back-door, double-dealing for power is a stain on humanity. And anyone who engages in it is insane (The massacre at My Lai was carried out by a madman).

I believe to be political the fact that, because America is now allied with Japan, the face of evil is one that solely belongs to the Nazis, especially Hitler's. When in fact, the Japanese were as vicious as the Nazis were. How many Chinese were tortured and murdered by the Japanese during the war? And why, whenever the atrocities of the war are mentioned, the focus is always on the Holocaust and the Nazis? Why have the Japanese been given a free pass whenever the evils of the war are mentioned? The answer is simple: it has to be cash.

In a sense (because of both the abandonment and the treatment of Allied soldiers in the Pacific), I am ashamed of the U.S. Government. I can't understand the alliance they formed with Japan after the war. I believed the strong ties should have been made with China, a country which suffered dearly under Japanese cruelty.

Robinjazz - I don't know what media you are watching, listening to, or reading to get the impression that 'the face of evil is one that solely belongs to the Nazis'. That's simply not true. Google 'Japanese atrocities'.

I know far less about Nazi atrocities because I've never been to Europe. I know a lot about what happened in the East because I lived and wrote from there for years. I don't believe anyone will ever try to downplay the rape of Nanking or the Bataan death march or the forced prostitution of Korean women and girls.

But does that mean new generations cannot consign those things to the history books, try to learn from them, and try to build a better world? World War II ended 65 years ago. Japan is now a major economic power. The U-S and Viet Nam are now allies.

World War II in the East was incredibly complex. Simple explanations won't work. The Japanese culture as it developed during and in the years following the Meiji Dynasty is so radically different from Western culture that it defies comparison, and every other country in the area had its own culture, more often than not at odds both with Western thought and Japanese.

Many in the East told me that one day the U-S and Japan will fight again. It's been 40 years since people were telling me that, and only recently have I begun to see small cracks in the relationship that has bound the two countries together since General MacArthur invented modern Japan. There's been shouting between them in the past over minor issues, but today we may be seeing a resurgence of that Eastern Empire concept that was first put forward during the reign of the Samurai. If so, the little quarrels could turn serious and old wounds could re-open.

Media?

I have nothing against Japanese people, but I am growing tired of listening to people blame America for the tragic deaths of the people who were killed in the nuclear blasts. Put the blame where it deserves to be--on the Emperor of Japan himself.

And I agree with you--life is complicated. But you don't have to be a genuis to figure out that barbaric cruelty is the right thing to do.

I see a lot of young Japanese people, and I respect them dearly. But the horrid treatment of those young Americans should never be forgotten.