BATAAN DEATH MARCH
Posted on 05/31/2009 12:26:26 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Ambassador Speaks to Last 73 American Survivors of the March
The Japanese ambassador to the United States apologized in person today to the 73 surviving POWs of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in April 1942 during World War II.
"We extend a heartfelt apology for our country having caused tremendous damage and suffering to many people including prisoners of war, those who have undergone tragic experiences in the Bataan peninsula the Corregidor Island, Philippines and other places," Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki said at the last convention of the American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor POWs of the Japanese during World War II.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
My thoughts, too: Japan admits there was a WWII and they were in it.
Apologies, the latest fad, at least in some circles.
However, the Japanese are trying desperately to put WWII behind them and some of their actions have not been so appealing such as basically rewriting their history books to omit certain acts.
Agree - they really need to close the books on WW2 (by telling the truth). They live a very nasty neighborhood and need to start getting prepped for the next war.
Interesting timing for me.
Yesterday, I just put up my uncles “Former POW” license plate in my garage.
He and his brother were both captured, one was forced on the march, one was not and later released.
Check out the newest WORLD magazine and read one man's story......
..it is one of the most horrific, cruelest accounts of what happened on that march.
I served with a Bataan Death March survivor, old Sarge had no use for the “Japs”.
Yep, I knew one at the gym, a San Francisco Sheriff’s Deputy. He absolutely hated them. Can’t blame him after what he went through. He once told me that if they had been liberated a week or two later, he wouldn’t have made it.
He witnessed his fellow Americans being starved and butchered for sport. Herm was six feet tall and in incredible shape before the War. He came back from the Pacific weighing less than 100 pounds. The survivors of Japanese atrocities were forced to eat insects and rats and worse. The man was a True Hero and had the medals to prove it. Herm died in 2002.
He was a very astute investor and a great down-to-earth guy. Herm told me many times 'both political parties are corrupt.' Now I know he was 100% correct about politics.
To his dying day he refused to eat Japanese food, even in fine restaurants.
My opinion after reading what they did in WW11 bombing them back to the wood plow would have been too good for them.
One of the survivors, I only know him as Charlie, comes into the Lowe’s where I work every couple of weeks. He joined the Army straight out of high school and was assigned to the 31st Infantry Regiment in the Philippines just a few weeks before the war began. After surviving the march, he spent the rest of the war working in a copper mine in Korea.
The Japanese have a long history of barbarism.
Reading of their history it’s hard to imagine people more sadistic than the nazi’s but the Japanese managed to surpass Germany.
About bloody time!
There was a war? There was a war?
...and the Chinese have probably been taking notes.
If you ever have a chance to read The Rape of Nanking you will know the depth of hatred China has for Japan.
Well earned hatred.
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