Letters from Iwo Jima

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

I contacted Erik becuase this is one of the most tasteless threads I've ever read and I'm embarrassed to be on the same board as some of you.

As for you finding better stomping grounds? Bon Voyage...you don't want to take a few others with you, do you? There are definitely a handful here (US and non US) who could do with some leave from this site.

So lets get this straight,

You contacted Erik due to our /morons tasteless replies, ok then lets all review Judge’s input so far

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Seems to me, from the snippets that I've read that Sarge and Doggie have explained in exemplary fashion how stupid they are.

You may both leave now.

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd
There you go. An apparently less intelligent than you lot Scot has summed it up for you. Now ffs grow up.

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

This thread is the biggest joke...there are people quoting and mis-quoting people all over the place, in and out of context, using analogies all over the place to get their little insignificant point across. There are several different discussions going on and all are hilarious in their own right...

Please do continue...this is great stuff

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

ooops...did I take this thread off topic [;)]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd
The thread has most definitely taken a tumble from sensible, rational debate....right from page 2 (if I can cast my memory back...I would go back and check, but I really can't be arsed...it was round about there...and we're on page 17 now).

Time for a diaper check people

That about sums it up


Seems to me by your replies which not a single one is related to the subject of Axes or Allied atrocities let alone WWII that in-fact you’re the problem.






.

[Doggie]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd


And I presume you work for Matrix, or know someone who does because you seem to have some inside knowledge that someone (some people) have approcahed Matrix to have the thread closed and those people are the same ones who are baiting Americans...is this correct? You do have actual knowledge of this?

Yep, see your own remarks below:

FYI, I contacted Erik becuase this is one of the most tasteless threads I've ever read and I'm embarrassed to be on the same board as some of you.

"Lock the thread!!! Lock the thread!!! The stupid Americans are interupting our polite conversations about what a bunch of morons they are again!!! Why do you allow these uneducated hillbilles to interupt the intellectuals while they are enlightening us as to how the United States is the most evil empire on earth?"

And yeah, I know a bunch of people who work for Matrix, and they're laughing their asses off at you. Most of them are Americans, and they don't share your hated of the soldiers who made it possible for them to make a living in a free country.

And there's fifth columnists in your midst. I know all about the e-mail campaign to ban the "unenlighted." Good luck with that, because it should be obvious even to you that you are outnumbered by the unwashed masses.

By the way, if you think this thread is about the poor Japanese and the evil Americans, you've read about 3 posts!

Quite right. For some of you, it's merely an excuse to continue your never ending crusade to establish your moral superiority over the ignorant colonials.

[ORANGE]

ORIGINAL: Ike99

ORANGE-I would like to see the proof of these alleged widespread atrocities of Allied Troops in the Pacific theatre.

Where were these widespread killings of POWS? And what do you mean by widespread? Do you mean that one POW was killed in the Aleutians and one killed in Borneo so that they were widespread spatially? Or did one occur in 1941 and another in 1945 so they were widespread chronologically?

Yeah, your getting a real history lesson now eh ORANGE? Didn´t see all this stuff in your history book I´d bet.


"What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought, anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off for the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skull to make table ornaments for sweethearts or carved their bones into letter openers."

Edger L. , Jones, a former American war correspondent in the Pacific as published in February 1946 issue of Atlantic Monthly pg64.





a young American soldier on Okinawa, who "snatched up a submachine gun and unforgivably massacred a line of unarmed Japanese soldiers who had just surrendered."

William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, his 1980 memoir of fighting in the Pacific




Professor E.B. Sledge, an American biologist, painfully recalled .....:severing the hand of a dead Japanese as a battlefield trophy, "harvesting gold teeth" from the enemy dead, urinating in a corpse's upturned mouth, shooting a terrified old Okinawan woman and casually dismissing her as "just an old gook woman who wanted me to put her out of her misery".More terrifying still, Sledge found himself coming close to accepting such conduct as normal.

Memoir published by Presidia Press in 1981


A month later, on June 21, he summarized the conversation of an American general who told an unsuspecting Japanese prisoner was given a cigarette and then seized from behind and has his throat "slit from ear to ear" as a demonstration of how to kill Japanese. ¨Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner attempting to surrender.¨

Lindbergh, American aviation pioneer in his memoirs with the US Marines in the Pacific.



...wounded Japanese attempting to surrender were ordered shot by the American commander.

Denis Warner, passing his own firsthand experience on Bougainville.


There you go Sarge. Start Spinning. [:D]




I´m thinking this story didn´t make it into LIFE magazine along with those demonizing the Japanese and skull pictures....

On the 22nd of August the camp commander held a speech in the Indonesian language which I could understand. He told us that the Emperor of Japan had the pleasure in telling us that he had decided to end the war.

However after a couple of weeks the Muslim Militia was infiltrating the area. They were forcing the Indonesian population to stop helping us. In those days these Militia were called extremists or permoeda’s, nationalists, T.K.R. Indo’s etc.

The Japanese under the command of Major KIDO fought shoulder to shoulder with the British against the Indonesian uprising. The seven camps in and around Ambarawa were attacked by thousands of Idonesian rebels which prevented any food transport. This is all described in Wing Commander T.S. TULL’S report.

After sixty years I still remember all the good people who were so friendly to us. The local Indonesian population, the british soldiers and ghurka's, the british sailers and last last but not least the german POW's. Even the Japenese commander had a weak moment when he gave me a biscuit.

These were my experiences of the Pacific War.


J.E.H. Rijkee prisoner of the Japanese 4 years.

Forgive me but I am not aware that war correspondents were armed so I am a little hesitant to accept one stating he, along with others, shot prisoners in cold blood and blew up hospitals. As a bonus he also apparently served at sea where he was a pilot and strafed lifeboats.

You also seem to ring up the treatment of the Japanese dead a lot. I am more concerned with the treatment of the living. To see the difference between the Axis and Allies one just has to look at the record of each side after winning territory. There is no question the Japanese and Germans were more brutal.

Even if all of your sources are truthful I would put them in the category of the exception proves the rule not that these actions were normal.

You are also trying to judge people in the past by modern standards. This is not a legitimate standard. You have to judge their actions to their contemporaries. It is partly because of the high standard the United States set that the standard has been raised.

[Ike99]

morvwilson-In rechecking the picture you posted of a japanese head on an allied tank, I don't think it was an Allied tank. Below is a picture of me and my son on a Japanese tank in a museum near Manilla R.P.

What, it suprises you Allied soldiers would cut the head off a Japanese soldier and stick it on a tank? [:D]

Why? They were sending the body parts of Japanese to their homes in the US by the thousands, cutting the gold teeth out of live Japanese. Making ashtrays and candle holders out of their skulls. Things out of ¨the worst slasher film¨ to quote someone else on here.

Are you THAT naive morvwilson???

Anyways...picture published in LIFE Magaine 1943, unedited. Sweet no? Hope that little Japanese girl didn´t see that as she sat in a concentration camp.

Now, would you like to stop skirting & ducking and changing the topic and comment on all this morbid barbarity by Allied troops against the Japanese or is it too shameful for you to even acknowledge?

Sarge-This is no longer a discussion on Japans WWII military,And has been molested into a Anti-American hate platform under the cloak of your delusional agenda driven perceptions of history.

Looked an awful lot like an Anti Japanese hate platform before to me Sarge. Funny, didn´t here you complaining then. Your not biased are you? [8|]

Now, when you get done crying would you like to comment on what I asked you before?

Ike99-Now would you like to comment on all the atrocities by Allied soldiers commited against the Japanese presented on this thread?

[morvwilson]

Ike,
The problem is that you presented it as an allied tank whose crew had placed a japanese soldier's head as a trophie.
How do we know the head was severed by an allied soldier and placed on the wreck of a Japanese tank?
The problem here is that most of what you have presented as "fact" has not stood up to even cursery examination and you do not appear open minded enough to understand this.
At this point, I have a hard time beleiving anything you have to present because of your obvious bias. Again, this is why I think you should steer clear of news publications because they tend to poison your thinking and dampen your spirits into a perpetual depression.

[Bloodybucket28th]

I helped host a 4Th MarDiv reunion some time ago and got to talk with some of the Marine Corps veterans of Iwo Jima...any group like that is going to have a lot of individuals with different opinions, but it's safe to say they were comfortable with the fact that they did what they had to do and they deeply regretted that they had to do it.
 
Time had also allowed most of them to view the "race hatred" for what it was - an ugly but predictable and given the context of the times, unavoidable component of a struggle to the death in a hellish situation.  
 
A film was shown of the prior reunion on the island, and a Japanese veteran (one of the few remaining) was embraced, not as one of their own, but as a fellow survivor.
 
I'm sure that these men, who have been to physical and mental places that are beyond my ability to imagine, would be quick to deride any idea that the US and Japanese were on an equal moral field as governments, but would also laugh at the idea that any of the fighting was "clean" on either side.
 
Time seemed to have given those veterans of a legendary and ugly battle the ability reflect on the unthinkable with empathy for all who suffered through it, without the need to color their view with revisionist poppycock about everybody being equal in conduct and motive or romantic notions about good guys never doing evil. 
 
I think they would find some of the heat being generated here pretty sad, because that sort of heat leads to the fire they endured. 
 
 
 

[Erik Rutins]

Well, one thing's pretty clear - this thread has passed the point of no return. As interesting as some of the info posted here was and as much as I appreciate those who attempted to stay on topic, it's now become more of a negative than a positive.

The key thing to keep in mind is that this is ultimately a general discussion forum for wargaming. We're a company that publishes and sells games. We enjoy giving our customers a place to discuss their shared interests, but we have no interest in letting discussions continue where some or all of our audience ends up feeling like they aren't welcome here. Our only agenda is to make all our customers feel welcome and to promote our community as one where the only requirement to fit in is that you be a gamer.

There are plenty of discussion forums that are "no holds barred" but this isn't one of them. Yes, you all know what comes next... locking this up.

Regards,

- Erik