Japanese torture of American prisoners in WW2 revealed

by fulltimestudent 15 Replies latest social current

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  JeffT

  prologos

  That story is a product of the imagination of a revisionist historian.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Losses

  German POW's that were shipped back to the states in large numbers. Many of them found life as a POW here better than that of a "free" person back in Germany. It was not uncommon for them to march out of the camps to go to work unguarded - we knew they'd come back at night rather than risk a firing squad for escaping.

  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_States
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  prologos

  JEFF, YES I AGREE, BUT LATE IN THE WAR THE STORY CHANGED. Pows in Canada too, earlier fared well, later bitterness took it's toll. I am just speaking from personal experiences. Millions of soldiers surrendering never made it back home.
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Looking for something else just now, I came across this drawing:

  
  

  Its from an American Journal and portrays the British Army in India executing captured Indian soldiers (after the Indian mutiny) by strapping them to the muzzle of a cannon and blasting them to bits. It was intended to scare the sh*t out of Indians.

  Can't really be compared to what the Japanese military did, but the image demonstrates that unreasonable cruelty is not confined to one particular race or military.
• 

  Bungi Bill

  unreasonable cruelty is not confined to one particular race or military.

  So very true!

  In the suppressing the Indian Mutiny, Britain carried out numerous atrocities, and not only against the mutineers, either:

  - indiscriminate slaughter of the civilian population also featured prominently in the punitive measures that were handed out.

  All this occurred in the year 1857, well after the "Age of Enlightenment" had taken place, and we of the West had taken to thinking we were a cut above everybody else when it came to humanity and civilisation.

  Bill.
• 

  Bonsai

  WW2 was a horrible time for all nations. I have seen first hand the lingering scars of war in Japan.
  

  Yet, look how far Japan has come? Today they love the west and admire North Americans/Europeans/Australians etc.. In elementary schools there are many books students can access which show the gruesome realities of war (torched bodies and starving children)-they well know the sins of their great-grandparents and they openly bash the government of that time for deceiving its people and doing terrible things.

  In Tokyo over one hundred thousand were killed from napalm bombs after Japan had all but been defeated.

  http://stopwar.org.uk/news/what-we-can-learn-from-the-day-the-us-burned-to-death-100-000-women-and-children
  

  They were nuked twice and still they forgive today and try to get along with their neighbors and the west. I wish the same could be said for China and the Koreas, although I feel like South Korea is on the right path.
  

  Both sides have learned from WW2 and I feel there is hope for mankind. Hope for religion? Well,,, that is another thing.
  
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  James Mixon

  How is this for a story I'm Vietnam Vet. Years later working with a

  Ex South Vietnamese veteran living here in the US. In a conversation

  one day he mention that the people of America are lazy, immoral, down

  right disgusting. My mouth dropped. I told him I was in your country and

  I saw first hand the moral state of your home, hell I may be your father.