Posted on 03/04/2007 2:53:43 AM PST by LibWhacker
Lindbergh may have been a daring pilot but he was also a strong Nazi supporter.
There no doubt were isolated acts committed by US troops, there are on both sides in EVERY war (WAR IS HELL, REMEMBER!!) but to equate that to deliberate, systematic tourture mass murder and genocide is stupid and intillectually dishonest.
The reason "this story" is vertually unknown except for Lindbergh's account is because he had a pro-Axis, anti American agenda to push.
20th Century ManThis is the age of machinery,
A mechanical nightmare,
The wonderful world of technology,
Napalm hydrogen bombs biological warfare,This is the twentieth century,
But too much aggravation
Its the age of insanity,
What has become of the green pleasant fields of jerusalem.Aint got no ambition, Im just disillusioned
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna be here.
My mama said she cant understand me
She cant see my motivation
Just give me some security,
Im a paranoid schizoid product of the twentieth century.You keep all your smart modern writers
Give me william shakespeare
You keep all your smart modern painters
Ill take rembrandt, titian, da vinci and gainsborough,Girl we gotta get out of here
We gotta find a solution
Im a twentieth century man but I dont want to die here.I was born in a welfare state
Ruled by bureaucracy
Controlled by civil servants
And people dressed in grey
Got no privacy got no liberty
Cos the twentieth century people
Took it all away from me.Dont wanna get myself shot down
By some trigger happy policeman,
Gotta keep a hold on my sanity
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna die here.My mama says she cant understand me
She cant see my motivation
Aint got no security,
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna be here.This is the twentieth century
But too much aggravation
This is the edge of insanity
Im a twentieth century man but I dont wanna be here.
To me, the Japanese are a riddle wrapped in an enigma. And anyone who thinks Japanese society is stable is kidding himself. Their society used to rest on Shintoism. Now it rests on nothing but consumerism, and that's a very slender reed.
Yes, you are right..Thats' what I get for being too emotional regarding this subject.
the Japanese simply fought like Asians have always fought wars, all sorts of Asians, from Mongols to Caucasian Russians..
Tokyo got firebombed like Dresden did.
The woman known as 'Tokyo Rose' was American of Japanese descent and was a convicted traitor. Although Gerald Ford pardoned her in the 1970s, it still shows your statement to be untrue.
I am not sure how you can defend and pump the Imperial Japanese and their American descendants especially the Kibei. I mean why are you doing this? And to try and foist your idea that the Nisei were the most decorated?? What are you trying to accomplish?
I'll tell you what you are trying to do. You are doing what many of the Japanese have done since the conclusion of that conflict and that is defend the honor of the race. Honor is so important to Imperial Japanese loyalists that they have been in denial about the atrocities or attempted to equate them with other war atrocities, they have created a revisionist history and refused to apologize for the war crimes committed, and they try to obfuscate and even eliminate references to Japanese betrayal and to promote Japanese as something that they were not.
Unfortunately for you that history remembers. To this day the Japanese are hated by many survivors throughout Asia and the Pacific.
Lindbergh wasn't a Nazi. Or even a Nazi supporter. That was spin from the FDR machine.
What Lindbergh wanted in the 1930's was the US to make it out of the depression in one piece. The two competing ideologies in Europe where he lived in the 30's, was highly controlled capitalism in Germany (not totally unlike todays regulated economy) and Communism in Russia. He visted both countries, several times, and reported on what he saw. Of the two, it was obvious to him which economic system worked, and which did not.
The elites of the day were in love with the Bolsheviks, and Lindbergh merely told it like he saw it, first hand. People didn't like him for that.
He was not an economist, and couldn't have known that the Nazis were operating on a looter economy, and that's why it was working better than any other in the world at the time.
Lindbergh was an aviator, and he was courted by the German aviation industry that sought to portray themselves as superior to what they were. They tricked him by taking him to several places over a period of time where he saw the same planes several times, which convinced him that the Luftwaffe was stronger than it was. He duely came back to the US and reported what he saw to the US Army Air Corps.
After Lindbergh came back from Europe, he went on active duty for some time, flying an Army P-35 around the country visting aircraft plants and helping them get their act together. Do you think the Army would have allowed a Nazi access to that high level of contact? He only left the Air Corps when he got involved with politics in the America First movement. That was when FDR destroyed his reputation with the false "Nazi" label. Lindbergh was associated with Henry Ford, who was likely was anti-semetic. Lindbergh was not, and neither of them were Nazis.
Lindbergh was not allowed back into the Air Corps when the war started, because FDR was afraid that he would renew his "hero status" by being an important general, and would later return as a strong Republican politician like his father was. But Lindbergh stayed involved at the highest levels of aviation manufacturing all during the war. Do you think they would have let a Nazi do that?
Lindbergh was a victim of an earlier version of the Politics of Personal Destruction. Nothing more. He was not a Nazi, or even a Nazi supporter. If he was, then so was the rest of the country in the late thirties, because Lindbergh and America First polled higher than FDR for a time.
Because we killed them even when they tried to surrender.
That doesn't even begin to put them on the same level.
Didn't say it did.
How nice of you to point this out.
Just thought there should be a little balance while we're gloating about how good we are, and how evil the Japs were, that we weren't entirely angelic at the time either.
On a purely historical note, I think it would be good if a few GIs who fought in the South Pacific would tell *everything* they saw back then. This Japanese guy confessed to what he did. I think americans who were there should be man enough to do the same, if only to set the facts straight while there are eye witnesses still alive who know what really happened.
those two cities could have been hit instead of the two which were.
Tokyo and Kyoto were both already destroyed by fire bombing.
There was little to destroy there, so they bombed other cities that were intact. One of the cities bombed was a secondary target, which was bombed because the primary was covered with clouds.
What slurs?
I have a book of his wartime journal where he entered his daily experiences.
He worked for Henry Ford as a consultant and test pilot for the B24 bombers manufactured by Ford.
He did a lot of high altitude research using a pressure chamber and high altitude airplanes.
He became a consultant and test pilot for the F4U Corsair.
He went to the South Pacific as a factory rep, and flew many missions with the Marines. When MacArthur learned he was down there, he had him come meet with him.
MacArthur had him go around to airbases and teach the pilots how to get more range out of the airplanes. Using his procedures the fighters got 750 more miles of combat range.
MacArthur told him that 750 more miles would enable them to skip over many islands and not invade them. That became the island hopping campign.
His procedures were why the army P38s had enough range to intercept Yamomoto.
He had the utmost respect for the Pilots he flew with, and the pilots he flew with had the utmost respect for him.
You must have read some revisionist history to say that he slured any American fighters.
Just what is your point with this post?
Japan attacked us and we were at war, the commanders on the ground made decisions based upon the real enemy they were facing.
Validating Lindbergh's comments are no different than validating the armchair generals in the media or in the Democrat party today, some who have also 'traveled extensively' thoughout Iraq and Afghanistan.
Japan started the war and got what they deserved, America achieved what we were required to do.
We need that attitude today to allow our trusted military leaders to do their job and not worry about the 'experts' on the sidlines. Just because Lindbergh flew a plane over the Atlantic doesn't make him right. It was a war. People get killed. The whole thing is an atrocity.
Some people will do anything to find a speck of dirt in a mission of glory carried out by millions of Americans. I find it distasteful, disgusting...and ask myself "why"? Others should be questioning why YOU make this statement. My Dad fought in CBI theater, and at 86 he would still choke anybody who would defame the mission and achievements of those great men and women with statements like that.
Expecting a guarantee on a 'clean, perfect war' is just hiding some other agenda. Take it elsewhere, please.
This is pure crap. Your agenda of 'Americans are bad, just not as bad' is disgusting.
So he didn't observe what he observed? Right?
He was there. I wasn't, and I seriously doubt you were.
Your agenda of 'Americans are bad, just not as bad' is disgusting.
My agenda is truth. Putting underwear on prisoners heads is one thing, but shooting an enemy soldier under a white flag is another. I always thought we were better than that, and I was surprised to learn that we were not.
My Dad fought in CBI theater, and at 86 he would still choke anybody who would defame the mission and achievements of those great men and women with statements like that.
CBI meant that he was likely early in the war. The issues Lindbergh witnessed were late, after the atrocities of the Japs were known and we were in a rush to get things over with.
Expecting a guarantee on a 'clean, perfect war' is just hiding some other agenda.
Hiding your eyes to the facts is no different than the Japanese of today being surprised that Chinese don't like them because of what happened in the war. Todays Japanese, and many Germans, have no idea of what their parents generation did. How is your attitude different?
And you know for a fact that they didn't "surrender" like the terrorists in Iraq do? Feigning death to kill more of our soldiers? There's no way those "atrocities" the Americans were accused of even come close to what the Japanese did to their prisoners. I don't doubt that the soldiers did things that some would find distateful, but to equate the two is unreal. Considering the pressure those men faced on the field and what they knew about Japanese treatment of people, I don't think anyone who hasn't been there is in any position to criticise their behavior.
That kind of attitude making Americans look just as bad is disgusting and smacks of the anti-American setiment displayed by the America hating left today like Jane Fonda and Michael Moore. They want perfect little sodiers who behave in the prefect little leftist way while fighting a war; a way that would put the life of every other soldier on the line. Prisoners are treated like guests and we're the bad guys. It's equivalent to spitting in the face of those men who suffered and died to give us the freedom to speak our mind.
It certainly appears that the Japanese then were today's muslim terrorists. They feign surrender, or anything else for that matter, to kill Americans.
I don't blame the Americans for not taking prisoners. Why should they take the chance and put their life on the line for some inhuman scum that wants to kill or torture them. They should be nice to the enemy so he can kill them? That's stupidity.
That was war with a cruel, unrelenting enemy. They didn't even want to surrender after both bombs were dropped. There's no choice about how to deal with them. As far as *eyewitnees* accounts.... well, I'd trust the opinion of a liberal anti-war activist back then just about as much as I would now. Only a liberal would consider that an accurate account because it's what they want to hear: Americans are bad.... booo.
Makes me sick.
Lindbergh said (remember, he was there) than when rewards were offered by our commanders to bring in prisoners, then they got prisoners. When there were no rewards offered, then no prisoners.
There's no way those "atrocities" the Americans were accused of even come close to what the Japanese did
I didn't say they did.
That kind of attitude making Americans look just as bad is disgusting and smacks of the anti-American setiment displayed by the America hating left today like Jane Fonda and Michael Moore.
I'd settle for the truth. The only two pieces of evidence I have that this occured are Lindberghs writing (he was pretty upset that this was going on), and the mantra repeated endlessly that "the Japs never surrendered, the japs never surrendered", which sounds like a justification if what Lindbergh witnessed was true.
The GIs who where there are dying, and the truth of their stories along with them. We'll see if any one of them have the guts of this Japanese guy that confessed about what he did.
In 1943, the Eighth Air Force in England lost tens of thousands of airmen because they were trying to make daylight bombing work. Daylight bombing let them hit the targets better, and spare civilians at least to some extent. By 1945 over Japan, the B-29s were running firebomb raids on cities like Tokyo, where the only possible military goal was to destroy their economy, by killing as many civilians as possible. Quite a change.
The left is making political hay, attempting to make the US look bad for Gitmo and putting underwear on prisoners heads. On the other extreem, you're willing to excuse shooting a soldier, wearing the uniform of his country, carrying a white flag. I have no use for either of those extreem opinions.
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