NEVER FALL INTO THE CLUTCHES OF G.I.
JOE
The controlled media depicting allied and in
particular, American Armed Forces atrocities as aberrations; one-off isolated
acts carried out in the madness of war. In fact,
If you thought the American treatment of enemy combatants
in
These double standards of war are best illustrated by
Colonel Charles Lindbergh’s observations made whilst serving in the battle zones
of the American Japanese war. He questioned the American policy of not taking
prisoners. “I felt it was a mistake not to accept surrender whenever it could be
obtained; that by doing so, our advance would be more rapid and many American
lives would be saved. If the Japanese think they will be killed anyway when they
surrender, they, naturally, are going to hold on and fight to the last – and
kill American troops they capture whenever they get the
chance.
THE MEN BOAST ABOUT NOT TAKING
PRISONERS
Take the 41st, for example; they just don’t
take prisoners. The men boast about it. The officers wanted some prisoners to
question but they couldn’t get any until they were offered two weeks leave in
“The Aussies are still worse. You remember the time they
had to take these prisoners south by plane? One of the pilots told me they just
pushed them out over the mountains and reported that the Japs committed
hara-kiri on the way.”
He recounted how ‘our troops captured that Japanese
hospital? There wasn’t anyone alive in it when they got
through.”
Lindbergh also described his concern over ‘our lack of
respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy – for courage, for
suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his
companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation. What
is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity
screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our
own.
“A Japanese soldier who cuts off an American’s head is an
Oriental barbarian. An American who slits a Japanese throat, ‘did it only
because he knew that the Japs had done it to his
buddies.’
THEY TOO WERE FIGHTING FOR A COUNTRY THEY
LOVED
On another occasion he described his feelings when, “I
stand looking at that patch of scorched jungle, in the dark spots in the cliffs
where the Japanese troops had taken cover. In that burned area, hidden under the
surface of the ground, is the utmost suffering – hunger, despair, men dead and
dying of wounds, carrying on for a country they love and for a cause in which
they believe, not daring to surrender even if they wished to, because they know
only too well that our soldiers will shoot them on sight even if they came out
with the hands above their heads.
“But I would have more respect for the character of our
people if we would give them a decent burial instead of kicking in the teeth of
their corpses, and pushing their bodies into hollows in the ground, scooped out
and covered by bulldozers.”
“I am shocked by the attitude of our American troops.
They have no respect for death, the courage of an enemy soldier, or many of the
ordinary decencies of life. They think nothing whatever of robbing the body of a
dead Jap and calling him a ‘son of a bitch’ while they do so.
I said during a discussion that regardless of what the
Japs did, I did not see how we could gain anything or claim that we represented
a civilised stare if we killed them by torture.
HUMANE POLICY: KILL THEM BEFORE YOU LOOT THEIR
TEETH
“Well, some of our boys do kick their teeth in, but they
usually kill them first,” one of the officers said in half
apology.
“It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers
tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs
themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Jap prisoner or a soldier
attempting to surrender. They treat the Jap with less respect than they would an
animal and these acts are condoned by almost
everyone.
“We claim to be fighting for civilisation, but the more I
see of the war in the Pacific the less right I think we have to claim to be
civilised. In fact, I am not sure that our record in this respect stands so very
much higher than the Japs.”
Lindbergh also described how Japanese bodies were
bulldozed over as ‘a number of our Marines went in among them, searching through
the pockets and prodding around in their mouths for gold-filled teeth. Some of
the Marines had a sack in which they collected teeth with gold fillings.
An officer said he had seen a number of Japanese bodies
from which an ear or a nose had been cut off. “Our boys cut them off to show
their friends for fun, or to dry to take back to the States. We found one Marine
with a Japanese head. He was trying to get the ants to clean the flesh off the
skull, but the odour got so bad we had to take it away from him.”
Pretty rich behaviour and double standards coming from a
nation which, like Britain, made sixty years of propaganda out of the untrue
story that Germans had boiled bodies to make soap, and used skin to make light
shades.
ALLIED TREATMENT OF THE
JAPANESE
Not surprisingly much has been said and written about Japanese atrocities. Unsurprising very little is said about allied atrocities which invariably exceeded those of the Japanese.
Indeed, there was little more than lip service paid to the taking of
prisoners.
Beri Beri and the trots in a Japanese POW camp, building a railway with at least some chance of survival, might by some be considered a reasonable alternative.
BLOOD LUST. THE YANKS KILLED EVEN THEIR OWN
POWs
As a mater of policy American ships sank all Japanese ships on sight, irrespective of whether they were carrying passengers or war materials. Such was their enthusiasm in this respect that when they sank a freighter filled with American POWs there was no change in policy.
With shades of
Over 250,000 lost their lives during the fire raids on
The west has never been slow to make a fast buck out of recounting tales
of Japanese atrocities but the Japanese themselves, for cultural reasons, have
never spoken of their own ordeals at the hands of the allies. They see such
account as a national humiliation. Even when during a POW riot at a camp in
CAPTIVITY COULD BE A
BALL
When at the end of the war evidence was produced that showed not all
allied POWs suffered abuse this was ignored. Much to his credit
He recalled sharing a bottle of whisky with the camp commandment,
travelled in the First Officer’s cabin on the ship bound for
Not quite the Raffles Hotel and tea dances were a rarity but each officer did have a room to himself, a library of English and American books, table tennis to keep them amused, and a gramophone with a good supply of records which they could buy locally.
The prisoners received letters though they did take rather a long time in
transit, and were allowed to write one letter a month. For a period at least
they received a choice of two English language newspapers, and each had their
own radio set. When they were moved to
So who would you prefer being captured by? The Allies or the Japanese?
A Michael Walsh News
Report
16th November
2004