“Japanese behaviour vacillated between grotesquery and sadism.
Ted Whincup laboured on the notorious Burma railway, a 250-mile track
carved through mountain and dense jungle. “
Regrettably, I have to admit that PBS did a good job on this subject
in their Burma Railway (River Kwai) episode on “Secrets of The Dead”.
IIRC, an American and Australian researcher were joined by a Japanese
officer who helped construct the railway.
The Japanese officer (engineer) claimed that only Asian workers were
used on his stretch of the roadbed...
then he shared his PERSONAL photos of the work.
In the background of some of the officer’s photos, you can see skeletal
Caucasians in ragged clothing at work, building the roadbed.
I’m glad I wasn’t there...I’d probably have started beating the guy
and calling him a lying b@$tard.
But for all I could tell, the guy was simply in total denial about
WWII (not the only Japanese with that brain dysfunction).
And was simply lost in his pride of telling how he helped get a
working railway constructed under tough conditions.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_kwai/index.html
AND, IIRC, the PBS show mentioned something really not known in
the USA...that many more Asian workers (than Allied POWs) perished
during the building of the railway as well.
I may be mis-remembering, but I thought something like 250,000
Asian workers perished in this ugly chapter of WWII.
I caught this myself...just the other night. Quite a story.
Re: total denial about
WWII as a Japanese brain dysfunction.
Remember another PBS explanation of the forcibly-impressed Japanese military prostitute “comfort women” that showed a young Japanese historian beaming with pride explaining his admiration for the many Asian women who did what they could to aid “their” soldiers-heroes.
I recall seeing that PBS program on the River Kwai as well, and your recollections coincide with mine.
That Japanise officer stuck in my mind also, because he was simply unable to believe that he had done anything wrong or had anything to be ashamed of.....truly a powerful example of the effectiveness of brainwashing, a form of which we are seeing again in our fight against islamofascism.