More than 22,000 Americans were captured in the Philippines with the fall of Corregidor and Bataan. By Sept 1945 more than 40% of those captured had died at the hands of their Japanese captors.
People don't really appreciate just how brutal Imperial Japan was. Unit 731 is the stuff of pure nightmares, and the rape of nanking isn't much prettier.
While the Japanese were the most ruthless, violent, and brutal of our enemies during WWII. The worst of them were never prosecuted for their inhuman acts against their prisoners.
There's something about a bloke who will walk up to a sobbing pregnant 16 year old and bayonet her in the womb that rubs me the wrong way.
My wife lost an uncle in the Bataan death march. He died a POW from neglect. We have his flag and medals displayed proudly in our home. He didn’t have a chance to start his own family and my MIL is his only living sibling. She is 86.
I had a friend who was in the Bataan death march, was shipped to Japan and was sent to work in a lead mine the entire time of the war. He survived and died in his late 70's.
I have this book. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Horrors-Japanese-Crimes-Voices/dp/1538102692 Reading some of what they did would not only shock you, but piss you off as well.
A constant I find in history is that people need very little license to be absolute, Hitler level evil. Give them an inch of authority and power will corrupt the **** out of them. I highly suspect that most of the people in your or my street would do the same under the right circumstances.
Still nothing like the brutality brought upon the american natives or africans by the US and england. Ok, we were talking about how other people treated white folks and pretending we were the only victims of war and never had blood on our hands, I get it now. So where were all you guys when all this happened? Oh, most of you were not even born yet so it is a bit hard to remember since you were never going to have to endure it. Well, remember the alamo or whatever. It is good to be angry and bitter over something long over and done.
Get over yourself, who is claiming we are the only victims? Maybe you need to take your White hatred elsewhere.
We hear about slavery and mistreatment of blacks on nearly a daily basis. This is the first I have heard of Corregidor and Bataan in years. Keep in mind, there were likely blacks and many other races and nationalities in the Bataan death march. It was a horrible time in history and should be remembered just like all our other horrible times in history.
The suffering was horrific. We must never forget. War brings out the worst in soldiers. And remember war can be started by one man. One man who orders a good family man to kill another good family man on the battlefield. Besides the military men and women suffering we must remember the horrific suffering of the civilian men, women, and children. Civilian populations were bombed, their ships sunk, they were starved and worked to death. Mothers watched their children die horrible deaths. Nothing can be more cruel to the mind. Between 50 and 55 million civilians lost their lives in WW2.
It was a PR disaster for Japan. Americans redoubled their efforts. Every stroke of a drill press had deep meaning. When I was a kid a guy who was there became a leading NCO in the Guard. He would go down to the armory on Saturday, hook a Howitzer to a 6 x 6 and drive around the neighborhoods telling the kids that that cannon was for blowing Japs to smithereens. We all grew up wanting to kill Japs.
Tribal warfare was far more brutal than even the worst examples of modern warfare. Casualty rates often approached or reached 100% over time. "Harold E. Driver said that cannibalism (as well as torture and human sacrifice) occurred in all tribes from the Iroquois in the northeast to the Gulf tribes in the southeast. '... For example, the torture of prisoners, or their sacrifice to the supernatural, and cannibalism, occur in a continuous area from the Iroquians in the Northeast to the Gulf tribes in the Southeast, thence south through Northeast Mexico to Meso-America and the Carribean.'" William M. Osborn, "The Wild Frontier, Atrocities During The American-Indian War From Jamestown Colony To Wounded Knee," Random House NY 2000.
