Posted on 03/04/2007 2:53:43 AM PST by LibWhacker
Why would you want to live???
No, I did not finish reading this article.
Humanity recoils in disgust and horror at this--perhaps even more those of us who are physicians. It challenges our powers of forgiveness, even as we understand that forgiveness benefits the forgiver more than the forgiven and that the greatest challenge is to forgive the unrepentant.
One can only grasp for grace and bring to mind the truth that goodness is as fundamental to humanity as is evil, heroism as fundamental as savagery, Todd Beamer and Mother Theresa as exemplary as is this wretched Akira Makino creature who somehow managed to go on living to a ripe old age, evidently untortured by the evil that he had committed and that had overwhelmed him.
Mother Theresa said that she decided to go to Calcutta when she looked inside herself and found a Hitler lurking there.
The supreme beauty of Todd Beamer is that he was an unremarkable, average man, who, if the challenge had not presented itself to him, would have remained unknown to most of us.
We cannot redeem ourselves by our own resources. Our redemption can come only through God's grace.
Those who do not recognize the potential for evil lurking within all of us are the most in danger of succumbing to it.
Only by facing the truth about the dark side and the light side of human nature and consciously determing to flee to the light side can we avoid descent into the depravity into which this wretched man descended, and we can cling to the light side only through the strength, wisdom, and grace that comes from surrender to Him, His love, and His truth.
The Chinese took very few Japanese prisoners. The Japanese soldier knew that to be taken alive by the Chinese was a fate worse than death.
Americans were not as brutal as the Japanese were. Japanese are still wanting apologies from Americans for bombings. Where is the apology from Japan for what they did to the Chinese,Korean,Americans & Aussie soldiers? They were very evil just like the Nazis'.
FDR was deathly afraid that Lindbergh would run for president on the Republican ticket, so he destroyed his reputation first. The "politics of personal destruction" has a long history in the Democratic party.
Lindbergh's father, who had been a Senator during WWII, and a big isolationist, was where Charles got his isolationist ideas. He was 100% All American, he just didn't want to get involved in another big war.
The bottom line was immediatly at Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh did all he could do help the US at war. He had poisoned any possibility of getting back into the Air Force because of his attacks on FDR, so he worked at helping the US build airplanes, and later he personally risked his life flying P-38 fighters and doing field test flying of Corsair fighters in the South Pacific. At one time he was nearly shot down by a Jap Zero.
Insinuations that somehow he was somehow un-american, or a NAZI are BS.
Never said we were. We're just not angels either. And the stories retold constantly that the Japs refused to surrender are merely cover for the fact that we wouldn't allow them to surrender.
Hey, it was a brutal war. We were nicer than the Japs were, but that doesn't mean we were perfect.
Make that WWI.
"It was a brutal war, and Americans returned at least some of the barbarity shown us. Except for Lindbergh, this story is virtually unknown."
You might enjoy "With the old Breed" by EB Sledge.
Horrible.
I'm not sure very many humans can hold the conviction, "These people are my enemy and I must kill them" while also treating survivors and wounded humanely.
Mentally, it must be very difficult. Unless we can remove the human element from war entirely, I don't think we can stop it.
I wouldn't be too sure about that. The Japanese were masters in the art of the feigned surrender. Even the ones who surrendered felt humiliated and depressed in the extreme. Whereas many allied troops who surrendered felt glad to be out of the war. We have oral and written materials on the Japanese side confirming that even on a squad level, they were resigned to suicidal and futile banzai charges in the event they ran out of water, food or ammunition. On Okinawa, tens of thousands of *civilians* jumped off cliffs rather than live under American occupation. Lindbergh's individual views cannot outweigh the combined weight of evidence from enemy sources about the determination of the Japanese fighting man to not simply risk his life, but actually die fighting for the greater glory of the Emperor.
Lindbergh is simply not to be trusted as a neutral commentator on the war. He was a patriot and a great American, but he let his anti-war feelings color his commentary on the war. I don't have a problem with his anti-war sentiments. (After all, Uncle Sam stayed out of European wars throughout the 19th century with little disadvantage, whereas its first entanglement during the 20th century - WWI - resulted in the deaths of 100,000 Americans). What I do have a problem with are his slurs on the American fighting man.
Many Japanese Christians (there have been Christians in Japan for around half a millennium) were crucified during World War 2 by their own government--and were persecuted for a long time before that.
The Dutch helped put down a Christian uprising in the island nation to help protect their status. In effect, they betrayed those who should have been their brothers and sisters in Christ. Granted, being Christians, those Japanese should not have uprose, but that is beside the point.
Dutch medical science was also used by Japanese doctors during their relative self-imposed isolation from the Western world.
Not the living. Big difference. That doesn't even begin to put them on the same level. How nice of you to point this out.
In World War 2, the United States' big fight was with the Nazis, although the Japanese were the ones who attacked Pearl Harbor. Most Japanese atrocities were against Asians, not American citizens (Filipinos, Guam(ese?), and Northern Marianans were American nationals). The number of people murdered (not just killed) by the Japanese in World War 2 was greater than the number of American soldiers killed by Chinese in the Korean War.
In contrast, the number of Australian soldiers facing these atrocities were relatively few compared to some of the above listed groups.
Where's your source for this statement?
No American of Japanese descent in the United States was found to be a traitor. And the Nisei Regiment in Europe was one of the most (if not the most) decorated regiments in American history.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.