1. Mankind has a brutal streak. We are civilized by the society
in which we are raised. The Japanese nationalistic, racist,
militaristic society is a case study. They considered the Chinese
as subhuman and everyone else as beneath themselves. Other
nations have created atrocities and even boy scouts, when drafted
into a war, will do things not acceptable in church. Specifically,
Japanese would play dead and kill the people who came to tend to
their wounds. Our boy scout learns to not take prisoners and to
shoot bodies rather than tend enemy wounded.
Today, Japanese are considered to be gracious people. The
society in which they are raised has changed. The Pacific War
is a reminder that we must work at civilization. I personally
fear that the farm boys who toughed out the Big War are all gone
and that the fast-food, MTV generation will not be able to stand
up to a "real" war. Looking at history, the Romans were helpless
before barbarians from the east. Wonder if they had "sword control"
and a make-love-not-war movement among themselves and missed that
just beyond the horizon their lies savagery.
It is difficult to separate Unit 731 from the entire subject
of atrocity and wicked society. We find biological and chemical
warfare unconscionable -- but only because we, that is Western
society, participated in WWI with poison gas.
The contrast in societies is extreme. Using live Chinamen for
bayonet practice far exceeds our greatest Western sin -- slavery.
But slavery was part of society of that time, yet working of people
from sunup to sundown was the expectation of Everybody including
factory workers, miners and office workers. A wife on the frontier
living in a mud hut, making clothing far after dark worked harder
and longer than a slave. Back to the Japanese, they stopped using
biological weapons on Chinese cities only when their own soldiers
were getting ill when they over-ran the Chinese positions. They
continued to poison wells when they retreated. That Unit 731 is
not an aberration, but a part of Japanese society, is shown by it
being headed by an imperial prince and its officers stood review
by the emperor.
I have concerns that Japanese society has not completely made the
migration to Western levels of civilization in that they refuse to
acknowledge any wrong to this day. You probably have followed the
Korean sex slave story. When confronted with evidence that children
were used for vivisection (live practice operations) the modern
response remains bad -- "they must have been the children of spies".
As if that made any difference; children are innocent.
That US pilots were eaten in communion-like ceremonies is primitive.
That US aircrews were dissected in university hospital while alive
is difficult to take.
Contrast this behavior with another great American sin -- the
relocation of enemy aliens from a combat zone. We moved these
Japanese citizens (who properly took their children who were born
as American citizens) into areas to live until they could find a
community that would accept them. People knew about the atrocities
on Chinese and on whites in the East Indies, on British in
Hong Kong and Singapore and we HATED the Japanese. We were losing
the war in 1942. The enemy aliens in America were not safe; even so,
over half the Japanese found new homes by the end of the war.
We treated military prisoners (POWs) with care; large numbers
returned to the areas of their imprisonment in the US and Canada
to live after the war. Our treatment of relocating enemy citizens,
rather than testing the sharpness of ceremonial swords by chopping
off the head of a Chinaman, is rather marked. Yet, our humane
treatment is considered a great American shame. History has much
to tell that is not told. Why?
We find that Japanese society suppresses discussion (from shame?
or embarrisment of losing?) and American society suppresses discussion
from politeness. A great lesson of history, the case study,
is not utilized.
>2. How do you feel about Unit 731?
2. Unit 731 members should have been exposed and executed.
Here is another bit of history that is concealed. Why?
MacArthur became the Surprise authority in Japan and wanted to
make them into a great democracy. Inhumanity was covered up.
It seems to me that shame leading to a resolve not to do it again
should have been the approach. It wasn't, so ...
What did come about was the change of the "war ending" Atom bomb
into another American shame. More people were killed in a
fire bombing attack months earlier, but the a-bomb is the one talked
about as if the ATTACKERS of Nanking and Pearl Harbor were victims.
Those of the Japanese younger generation that know that a war was
fought a war with the US, think it was because we bombed them
and they had to fight back!
Yet, not many Japanese youth know there was a war. Guides at
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, continually cite examples of teenagers seeing
memorials and asking if there had been a war. The classic follow-up
question is, "Who won?"