Five Days Commemorating the Victims of Japanese Atrocities

Day 1: The Bataan Death March.

As I explained the other day (here), I thought it would be a good idea to spend the first five days of August recounting Japanese atrocities during (and preceding) World War II. The Japanese have been our allies throughout my lifetime, and ordinarily I wouldn’t make a point of mentioning their atrocities, but too many liberals and leftists make such a fuss on Aug. 6 about our dropping an atom bomb on Japan that young people today often don’t even know the context of that decision. To counter this ignorance, I want the first five days of August to be used for reminding them of some of Japan’s atrocities from the WWII era.

For the Bataan death march, see the Wikipedia entry (here). After Japanese troops forced American and Filipino troops to surrender in the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines in 1942, they then forced them to march 60 miles to a prison camp. As one description puts it:

They were beaten, and they were starved as they marched. Those who fell were bayoneted. Some of those who fell were beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their samurai swords from horseback. The Japanese culture at that time reflected the view that any warrior who surrendered had no honor; thus was not to be treated like a human being. Thus they were not committing crimes against human beings.... The Japanese soldiers at that time ... felt they were dealing with subhumans and animals.

It looks like there are plenty of books on the subject, but this one, which is the first that comes up on the subject on Amazon.com, looks like revisionist history and so perhaps should be avoided. Sure, there is something to be said for listening to the other side’s account of things, but if the point of this is always to play down atrocities done by non-Westerners while never doing the same for Americans, then I don’t want any part of it.

Let me add that I spent plenty of time in my younger years protesting against actions by the U.S. military and raging against certain aspects of American society. It was my intention to make the world a better place. Weakening America so that reactionaries from the Third World could come in and take over was not my intention, but getting leftists to see that this is in fact a possible outcome of what they are doing is nearly impossible.