Japanese Barbarians: Lets act like they were never there

[M1A2U2]

By Basil Duncan,
Former 4th Division Marine:

REWRITING "HISTORY"

In war, it is difficult not to become like the enemy. After seeing and learning of all the atrocities committed by the Japanese, some American, British, and Australian soldiers took out their revenge on the enemy. The Australians, in particular, were bitter and took their revenge. Early in the war, the Japanese in the Malaya campaign, at Parit Sulong, would take the Australian POW's, truss them all together with barbed wire, bayonet them, pile them up, dead or alive, machine-gun them, then pour gasoline over the entire mass of dead and still-living humanity, and set them on fire.

There were several massacres like this against the Australian POW's, so one can understand that the Australian soldier was filled with hate and vengeance. Needless to say, the Australians didn't take many prisoners after that.

I can remember, during the battle for Saipan, when one night a marine came up missing. The next day he was found dead. His fingernails had been torn out, his tongue cut out, and his body showed signs of torture. It was very difficult to keep one's humanity toward an enemy that would do that.

However, I know for a fact that, if the Japanese had treated their prisoners according to the Geneva Convention rules of war, there would have been no acts of personal revenge by the average allied soldier.

Yet, when you read your "history" books, you don't read about Japanese atrocities. You read about ALLIED "atrocities" -- which were rare in comparison -- most Japanese prisoners were treated in accordance with the rules of the Geneva Convention.

Today, there is not one American in ten thousand that ever heard of these Japanese atrocities committed against our troops. Our "history" has never mentioned one word of the tens of thousands of men slaughtered -- not in battle, but slaughtered for "medical research" and the pure pleasure of their captors. Not one single so-called journalist has had the courage to inform the American citizen of what really happened.

However, when I or another veteran dares to mention these horrors, we are accused of "Japan bashing". When and if we dare use the word,"Jap", we are critized for using racial slurs and being unfair to the good peace-loving Japanese people. I was THERE, I LIVED the TRUE history -- I SAW the results of their campaign of terror, which was waged against civilians as well as allied soldiers.

How many Americans today know that, immediately after the war, Japan officially started a campaign to refocus the world's interest and knowledge about the war? They set out to re-invent history by continually denying any and all charges concerning the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731, and all other reports of atrocities. The Japanese government appointed a group of five people to actually re-write their history, eliminating any and all negative references concerning the war.

Today, Japanese children read nothing about the atrocities, about Unit 731, or the thousands of other torture camps operated by the Japanese military. They ARE, however, brainwashed with volumes of information about how the United States used the Atom bomb on thousands of innocent civilians, and how we and our allies were the real villains of World War II.

AND OUR GOVERNMENT ASSISTED IN THIS RE-WRITING OF HISTORY!!!

What did YOU read about in your history books? The holocaust? And the dropping of the Atom Bomb? You read all about Eichmann and the evil Dr. Mengele -- where did you read about Unit 731? Did you ever even HEAR of Unit 731?

By and large, the world, not just Japan, has bought into this great lie. Even our own people are beginning to believe that our Nation was the aggressor in our fight with Japan. People who were not even born when we were fighting in the Pacific have appointed themselves as experts on the War and condemned the role of the United States.

In my own home town of San Diego, California, there is a college professor teaching his students today that the United States, with their embargo on oil and steel against Japan, gave them "no choice" but to take drastic action, as in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. According to him, the attack on Pearl Harbor was OUR fault!

Americans? WHERE is our history? Where are our defenders? Where have all the patriots gone? Where is our country today?

Tell me America, is there any wonder that we still have 78,751 service men and women missing in action from World War II?

Yes, we SHOULD ask, "Where Have all the Flowers Gone?"

[soma]

I think most of us are well aware of the attrocities.

[mocking_loudly_died]

Japs in WW2 = cnuts (deliberately misspelled)

[AFG]

I suggest you all read Ghost Soldiers. It talks about a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines and how Rangers managed to rescue them (with help of some natives ;) ). It also talks about Japanese brutality within the camps and the Bataan Death March.

[Ballistic]

Japs in WW2 = cnuts (deliberately misspelled)

You got that right.

[Roger Rabbit]

Funny how the Allies got pissed off with the Germans and Japanese invading people left right and centre so within a year or two the Allies started invading people left right and centre. Talk about hypocrytical or what.

[Argyll]

I'm afraid todays world is about Political correctness,and I agree the Japs were bad wee bast*rds!!

[cut]

This guy is still bitter because he experienced it, but Japan is an american country now and it doesn't help bringing up the past.

besides I'd rank two nuclear bombs as pretty sweet revenge.

[Roger Rabbit]

Talking of political correctness i read in todays Sun(ok not the best place for reliable infomation) that at one school snowballs were banned as throwing them at one another classed as assault.

[Seoulstriker]

don't forget that what the japanese did to the Chinese during WWII is comparable to what Hitler did to the millions of innocents. :(

[Roger Rabbit]

Why have all the threads on this board recently turned to a discussion of atrocities?

[Argyll]

Maybe it's National atrocities week.........wear your atrocity with pride?

[2Sheds_Jackson]

On some level, maybe it was a good thing to try to forget the past. We see every day what happens when people are not able to put the past behind them - ethnic violence in the mideast, Africa etc. Maybe it was the only way that region of the world could move forward.

That being said, we certainly shouldn't completely forget what happened. Or worse, lie about the causes of the war or teach deliberate falsehoods. I'm merely suggesting that a lie of omission might not be such a bad thing.

The Japanese did all kinds of outrageous things. My grandfather was a changed man after returing from the Aleutian islands (he was mostly on Adak). He spent years there in the snow & muskeg & claimed the Japs had ruined his life. He was truly pissed off when I bought my first Japanese car in the 80's.

The Japanese tried to set fire to the great forests of the US NorthWest, hoping to incinerate the big west coast population centers. They floated baloons carrying chemical weapons over the west coast, again in pursuit of mass killing. Like the Germans, they were convinced of their racial superiority & saw us as lower forms of life.

Without putting all that behind us, it's nearly impossible to engage the present with a clean slate. After all the Japanese of today had nothing to do with any of that. Now if they could only finish of Godzilla before he figures out there's other places besides Tokyo to snack on...

[duck]

Not sticking my neck in this too deep, just reminding that there was a religious-ideological reason for the orginal American support to China during the Japanese occupation.Several leading American politicians were convinced the majority of the Chinese could be made to convert to Christianity and accept western values of life.

[Sabre]

America re-invented Japan as it did (West) Germany after the war. This was mainly to do with their proximity to the USSR and its satellite states. The BRD was (obviously) right next to the DDR and all the western allies ensured it was pro west and successful (Marshall plan, BAOR etc).

The US did the same to Japan. It would be (and was) the ideal base for US troops in the Pacific in case of 'Soviet aggression'. Remember, Sakhalin was just to the north and the Russians ended up at the 38th parallel.

In the US thinking at the time, what happened had happened, and there was now a new 'threat'. The west had always feared communism and had been striving since 1917 to 'westernise' areas where it was likely to spread to; ie areas of failed capitalism and post war destruction...germany, japan, greece, turkey, china...

Most people in Britain don't forget that the japanese commited atrocities (we are reminded every christmas when 'Bridge on the river Kwai' is on!). What is often forgotten are the appauling attrocities in Manchuria (it was here that the 'League of Nations' failed for the last time) and amongst indigenous populations in SE asia.

However, modern Japan is much different. It has become much more westernised and the old military code is long gone. It is very callous to have overwritten the history books as they did after the war, but that was still the 'old school' lot, and many of the population would have had no idea that those atrocities occured. I don't think that anyone is oblivious to the reality. It's just that nobody can really grasp what it must have been like to have been there.


BTW, the balloons sent to North America carried incediary devices plus one HE bomb. They, as far as I am aware, did not carry chemical weapons. Also, the majority landed in Canada, only two or three ended up in the States.

[2Sheds_Jackson]

They floated baloons carrying chemical weapons over the west coast, again in pursuit of mass killing.

Apparently I have verbally shat myself. I'd never researched this - just went by what my grandfather said he'd been told. After some quick googling - it appears that we only feared that they'd use CW or bio weapons. Nothing was ever found to prove they'd used them in the baloons, though they were available to the Japanese.

From seanet.com (similar available elsewhere):


A Little History
The Japanese have been using balloons in war since the 1800s. At Port Arthur they were used for observation of troop movements. The Japanese air force come out of the balloon society and little is mentioned of it during the war.

The Weapon
When the US first heard about the balloon bombs the didn't believe it. After a few were found things changed. They were considered a threat and they outlined it well in an unpublished manual called BD-1. Even though balloons which dropped incendary or antipersonnel were found other uses were enumerated in order of importance.

1. Bacteriological or chemical warfare or both.

2. Transportation of incendiary and antipersonnel bombs.

3. Experiments for unknown purposes.

4. Psychological efforts to inspire terror and diversion of forces.

5. Transportation of agents.

6. Anti-aircraft devices.

Were these threats real or were they just playing it safe? We know now from a book on Unit 731 that the BW possablity was real. Sanders (who went to Japan to interview Shiro Ishii (Unit 731s commander)) worked on finding all the Fugos that landed and looking for BW. Offically none was found. Sanders did help in the cover up of Japanese BW/CW after the war. Did Sanders cover up Japanese use of BW/CW in the war?

The Fugo or Balloon Bomb offiically came in two types. Type A: made by the Imperial Army and Type B: made by the Navy. The Type B had a radio for telemetry, was made of rubberised silk and offically carried no weapons. Just a few were launched and there are records of a balloon being heard for about 1600 miles.

The Type A: (pictured here) was made of mulberry paper and infalted with hydrogen. As a paper weapon it came under much ridicule by the US. Here are its' specifications:

A sphere about 100 ft. in daimeter with a volume of 19,000 cubic ft. of Hydrogen

Lifting capacity 800 lbs at sealevel and 400 lbs at 32,000 ft.

Armament: 5 5 or 12 kg. Theremite bombs and 1 15 kg. High Explosive Anti-personnel bomb.

Of the over 300 incidence recorded about the Fugos during the end of WWII (1944-1945) none caused stoppage of war related activity, except for one case where a balloon landed on a power line at Cold Creek in Washington state. It caused the first SCRAM in history, taking down the first reactor used to make plutonium. The reports of all balloon bombs were censored so as not to give anything away to Japan. Eventually, after six people were killed in Oregon, the story did come out. Over Washington at least 50 were seen on one day. In a oral history of Hanford at least 40 were seen over the reservation. Offically no forest fires or other damage ocurred. The Fugos were a joke.

But were they?

If you read the newspapers for the last 2 years of the war a number of things do come out that are hard to explain. But first we will look at how a Fugo is supposed to work.

The balloon bombs were released from Japan in the winter months when the jet stream is the strongest. They popped up to altitude (20,000 to 40,000 ft.) and if they were lucky into the stream. They traveled along in an easterly direction crossing the Pacific at around 200 mph in the jet stream. In daytime they would ride at the maximum altitude but as time wore on they would sink. At night they would collect dew and become heavy. Below a set height the altimeter would cause a set of blow plugs (charges that released the ballast) to fire releasing the sand bag ballast. The lost of weight would cause the balloon to pop back up to altitude. This continued till all the sand bags were gone. The last ballast was the armament. Thermite bombs were armed and dropped in the last positions on the ring. Anti-personnel bombs were also used. After all the ballast was gone a picric acid block blew up destroying the gondola. A fuse was lit that was connected to a charge on the balloon itself. The hydrogen and air mixture burned the balloon envelope up as a large orange fireball.

http://www.seanet.com/~johnco/fugod.gif

The Allies thought they were coming from Japan but were not sure. Using the USGS and Canadian scientist they were able to narrow it down.

A USGS Mineralogist Dr. Clarence S. Ross studied samples from Balloons found at Holy Cross, Alaska and Glendo, Wyoming. He found that the samples were beach sand and the type of fossils pointed to Northern Japan. The most likely source being in the vicinity of Shiogama on the east coast for Honshu, eight miles northeast of Sendai. The next most likely site were the beaches just south of Ohara, about forty miles southeast of Tokyo-this was Ichinomirya, an actual site.

The Canadians also looked at samples and found a slag content, which indicated a nearness of a blast furnace. The US and Canada shared info to find the sites.

The actual official launch sites were:

Otsu, Ibarki Prefecture

Ichinomirya, Chiba Prefecture

Nakoso, Fukushims Prefecture

On the West Coast of the US a secret mission was being done protect the country from the Fugos. It was called "Fire Fly" and included aircraft, to shoot down the balloons and a troop of fire fighters to put out the fires. These "Smoke Jumpers" were the first to jump to a forest fire and fight them the way we do today. They were called the "Triple Nickle" for the 555 designation their battalion was given.

[Ichhabe]

Replying on those baloon bombs: Even though as far as I know, only 1-ONE cow was killed and a woman injured from theses bombs: That was a cruel plan. We must only see those as weapon testing. If it had worked, thoses insane Japanese "scientists" would surely put something crueler in to action.

And in the sweet light of PC... Japan managed to stop a US stamp back in 1995, about the drop of the A-bomb over Hiroshima.
Unfortunatly the US Post Service backed down. :(

[AFACadet]

Actually an entire family of 5 died from one balloon and dozens of forrest fires were started in the Western States.



I know a man who I just found out a few weeks back worked for the Forrest Service as a Teenager in 44-45.

Guess what his sole job was?




Sit around all day and watch for those balloons. Once they were spotted, he was required to go to where they were and bring the Army to them. Or when they started fires, to let the fire fighters know where to go.


He knew they were from Japan, but that was all. No one told him anything, and he was required to tell NO ONE else about the balloons.


He got a close look at a number of them, but he said they had already dropped their bombs, so he was safe.

[vitiaz]

Forget the stamp,

http://www.nasm.si.edu/galleries/GAL103/SI95-4624s.jpg

Looks great doesn't she?

[2Sheds_Jackson]

I remember there was a huge brouhaha (there's a word you don't get to use much) over the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian a few years back.

If memory serves - the Smithsonian had taken a pretty hard-line revisionist stance. The exhibit was shaping up to be substantially anti-American, basically showing the horrors of the attack without explaining the complex reasons behind it (as we're discussing). I'm pretty sure that some veterans groups "reminded" them of why it was done.

Hey, war sucks any way you slice it. Anything that hastens its end is probably a good thing...

http://39th.org/39th/images/damagephotos/Damage13-hiroshima-c.jpg
http://39th.org/39th/images/damagephotos/Damage11-hiroshima-a.jpg
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanderkp/pows.jpg

[Kellhound]

We have too quite a few "rehistorians" around here.
And of course, every side only remembers the atrocities of the other side. The ones about them are only propaganda.