Posted on 01/28/2014 4:07:04 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
There’s a very good account of the Bataan Death March in John Toland’s “The Rising Sun.” Even though Toland sought to write the book from the Japanese point of view (Toland’s wife was Japanese), he didn’t gloss over the horrors of the Death March. His account made my blood boil, so much so that when he got to the equally graphic account of the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, my only thought was “Good.”
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Also, mention was made here not long ago about the book Unbroken, which is the story of Louie Zamporini, who went from Olympic athelete to American airmen, to Japanese prisoner. Even in his superb physical condition, he barely made it to the end of the War. Written by Laura Hillenbrand and also highly recommended.
I got “Unbroken” on CD, too. The waiting list for the paper book was too long! I understand Angelina Jolie is making a movie of it, *sigh*.
Awful stuff, one can certainly see why people of that generation felt as the they did about the Japanese.
Lots of people in the Pacific theater would agree given the brutal occupations by the Japanese, the Rape of Nanking, Burma railway, etc.
OMG, you are right that Jolie is directing Unbroken. The Coen Brothers are on the project, so maybe she’s getting some help. But, as Princess Leia said, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Angelina Jolie seems to be something of a patriot. Maybe it won’t be a disaster. On the other hand, the Coen brothers ...
They made some good war movies in the 1940s. Why can’t they now?
For one thing, they don't know much about the military anymore. Only 7% of the population today are veterans and I bet that's much, much lower in Hollywood.
Plus, the liberal takeover of Hollywood has led to a mindset that every war fought since WWII was wrong. Almost everything filmed about Vietnam and Iraq has been an anti-war movie. Some exceptions, but not many. The Hurt Locker comes to mind. It had a lot of Hollywood inaccuracies, but so did most of the WWII films.
There is a really good article from a back issue of Military History Quarterly entitled “From Light to Heavy Duty,” that postulates that all wars go through a progressive cycle of increasing brutality. The American Civil War that began with a “gentlemans’ skirmish” at Bull Run wound up with corn cribs and smokehouses as military targets in a scorched earth campaign. World War II went through the same cycle in the doctrine of strategic bombing. There is also a very good discussion of this in the second chapter of Richard Frank’s “Downfall; The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.”
Although Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack, it was strictly an attack on a military installation. The Japanese naval aviators were expressly told to NOT attack civilian targets. The Bataan Death March brutalities were inflicted on military POWs, not civilians. But before the end of the Pacific War, 100,000 Filipino civilians died in the fanatical defense of Manila, and hundreds of thousands Japanese civilians were incinerated in LeMay’s strategic bombing.
Both the article and the book make a point about war that should never be forgotten. Picking up a war is like picking up a turd; there is no clean end.
It was a truly horrific event. Worse still, these men were already half starved when they surrendered thanks to some poor planning when they evacuated to the peninsula in the first place.
My Grandpa Marvin survived The Bataan death march. He never spoke of it, not once.
I completely agree. Unfortunately, we have many in the West, including many in our own DOD and armed forces, who think you can fight a completely clean war. Some good American soldiers are in prison today because of that thinking. And our enemies take full advantage of that mindset.
It is somewhat surprising the French knuckled under given that the French welcomed African-American troops to fight under their command in WWI, even though the U.S. Army would not allow them in combat.
It is also a little surprising that the British, with large numbers of Indians under arms, didn't object.
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