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Posted by: blonde milf on May 15, 2006 10:50 PM

"What does it all mean to me? It means that there's that much muscle in the argument to pay those who haven't suffered by the precident of those who have suffered being payed off."

Sorry, my English is not good enough to understand that sentence. Can you repeat in more simple terms? I am NOT being sarcastic or deliberately obtuse, I REALLY don't understand it. English is not my mother tongue, although I speak and write it fluently.
------------------------------

"Furthermore, when anyone critical of Israel -- even mildly -- raises his voice, the y shirt of the Holocaust is waved."

Where are you living? Israel is criticized ALL THE TIME and hardly ever mildly and if one dares to defend her -- even mildly -- The y shirt (whatever that is!) of anti-Holocaust is waved. THAT's how it is.
------------------------------

"They're automatically s."

They are what? Sorry and again seriously, I don't get your meaning.
------------------------------

"What does it all mean to me? I anyone having an "enhanced franchise"."

I don't understand that either. I guess it's a colloquialism I don't know.
------------------------------

"As to Mr. Finkelstein, is he a pot because he bucks the current conventional wisdom, that he disagrees with all those with agendas masquerading as "sound values", or is it simply because he disagrees with your preconceived notions?"

He is a crackpot because he is a *proven* habitual liar and has invaded fields of academia that are far beyond his means and qualifications. If his opinions weren't so universally welcome he would have been laughed off all campuses all around the world long ago.

I repeat: He LIES and that is a PROVEN FACT. That he disagrees with me is quite irrelevant in that context.

By the way, like so often it is not the crackpot himself who is so interesting, but the way the world reacts to him and his antics. That he is widely taken seriously and not regarded as what he is -- a charlatan -- THAT is what is remarkable, not the man himself.
------------------------------

"As to answering your question, I'll give you this one, this time. Try being a bit less strident and a bit more polite next time, and you'll get more answers more readily."

I knew you had no answers.

------------------------------
"Until then, down the volume on your indignation. It's unbecoming."

That's good news, albeit no answer to my points. I take it that "volume of my indignation" stands for "power of my arguments". Huffy sarcasm isn't exactly becoming either.

Just one personal remark. I don't see any specific merit in politeness in a debate, and I don't think that a discussion board is a coffeeklatsch. I realize, though, that this may be irritating to some and I am prepared for a certain amount of antagonism. But I can't help noticing that you are the one who started to be outright rude.

Posted by: Nora on August 19, 2003 04:59 PM

What does it all mean to me? It means that there's that much muscle in the argument to pay those who haven't suffered by the precident of those who have suffered being payed off. Furthermore, when anyone critical of Israel -- even mildly -- raises his voice, the y shirt of the Holocaust is waved. They're automatically s. What does it all mean to me? I anyone having an "enhanced franchise".

As to Mr. Finkelstein, is he a pot because he bucks the current conventional wisdom, that he disagrees with all those with agendas masquerading as "sound values", or is it simply because he disagrees with your preconceived notions?

As to answering your question, I'll give you this one, this time. Try being a bit less strident and a bit more polite next time, and you'll get more answers more readily.

Until then, down the volume on your indignation. It's unbecoming.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 19, 2003 03:05 PM

I forgot: Norman Finkelstein is a crackpot and not taken seriously by any respectable historian and any self-hating Jew with a grudge is welcome as a witness, even and specifically to those who usually don't believe a word if it's spoken by a Jew.

From Finkelstein to Ernst Zündel it's usually only one small step.

That misuse and exploitation of funds happen is nothing new. It happens everywhere where people are handling other people's money. (It is an old anti-Semitic cliché that Jews are expected to be better than everybody else and always to act without any transgression or offense.) That doesn't make the cause itself in the least less sound and just.

Posted by: Nora on August 19, 2003 12:14 PM

If it weren't for YOUR government and YOUR country you probably
-- presuming you were a child at any point in time after WWII -- had had to wear Hitlerjugend Uniform and as the winner of WWII and our most powerful ally they surely have the power, i.e. right, to coerce us into everything they like and the fact that I, personally, find that memorial an outrage doesn't change that one bit.

By the way, there wasn't any pressure needed, the opposite was the case. The Germans were falling over themselves to have that ridiculous monstrosity. They simply LOVE Jews - when they are dead, that is.

Of course my moral and ethical decisions are correct, simple and self-evident. For everybody with sound values, that is. Moral relativism will be the death of our civilization if we are not careful.

By the way, you haven't answered what all this means to you. For a case that does hardly concern you personally, or so I have to presume as you didn't answer my question, you voice quite strong opinions.

Posted by: Nora on August 19, 2003 11:39 AM

I wasn't aware that I was making any moral or ethical decisions FOR you. You can make all the moral and ethical decisions you wish...it would be polite, however, if you didn't automatically assume that your moral and ethical decisions were "simple" and self-evident, were objectively correct, for the rest of the Germans in the world.

That said, my original premise stands. Added to that, I believe that the "holocaust industry", as it's been called in some quarters (for one thing, in a book by the same name by Norman Finkelstein) is completely honest, nor do I think that their idea of justice is entirely just. For another, I resent my own government coercing the Germans -- as in the case of a holocaust memorial in Berlin -- into memorializing whether they like it or not.

But, you make your own decisons. Nobody is deciding "for you".

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 19, 2003 08:03 AM

Yes I am German, born and based, and I don't particularly like people 360 years removed from my roots making moral and ethical decisions for me. Oh by the way, and Realpolitik is just another word to excuse lack of the latter.

WHAT exactly is it to you? Peanuts or not, it's not YOUR money that is wasted, or is it?

That said, everybody has the right to his own wrong opinions.

Posted by: Nora on August 18, 2003 08:53 PM

"The mere fact that we STILL have to discuss such a simple matter of course
-- peanuts! -- speaks for itself."

...to you, the payment of reparations seems a just, "simple", and a self-evident truth. Because these payments are "peanuts", the shareholders of IG Farben, etc., many of whom had no part in the infamies of the 1940's, should just suck it up.

Just because you feel it just, however, doesn't make it just. Reread the post.

"And who is 'us', Bodvar? Are you German that you speak out for ... us?"

...I am part German, and largely Germanic (English as well), but my people stopped being European about 360+ years ago. Are you German, that you're now speaking as a mouthpiece for a people?

I think that reparations are wrong. I think that the guilt-layering that's been going on for nearly 60 years has run the course of its usefulness, and should be retired as a tactic.

Time for realpolitik.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 18, 2003 08:38 PM

Bodvar wrote:
"Let IG Farben, Volkswagen, and other slave labor "offenders", as well as AEtna and the folks who "profited by slavery" put their checkbooks away. Let them get on with business...which, incidently, creates jobs, plenty, and lots more stuff for us to feel guilty about."

The German companies who abused, tortured and killed human beings were slave labour offenders in capital letters, not in quotation marks and they profited by slavery in capital letters and not in quotation marks. And it was not done in ancient times in a foreign country by some uncivilized tribe, it was done right in the middle of Europe not more than sixty years ago by a civilized, cultured people and some of the victims are, in spite of the efforts of the perpetrators pre- and post 1945, still alive. And the reparations in question are far from endangering those companies' business, in fact they are - peanuts.

Payments should have made decades ago. It's a sneaky, twisted and dishonourable way to wait until the last victim is well and truly dead and thus shun one's responsibility.

The mere fact that we STILL have to discuss such a simple matter of course
-- peanuts! -- speaks for itself.

And who is "us", Bodvar? Are you German that you speak out for ... us?

Richard Poe wrote:
"I'm no fan of reparations. The demand for reparations is simply war by other means. It usually leads to renewed hostilities sooner or later. And, as Bodvar observes, reparations payments attract profiteers and scam artists as the smell of blood attracts sharks."

Mr. Poe, I would agree with you if you were talking about reparations between states. The raparations for slave labourers, however, are not of abstract, historical proportions but very real to those who suffered and whose post-war lifes might have been just a little bit more bearable with having just a little bit less to worry about money HAD the German industry coughed up in time as they should have done by all ethical and moral standards. We are talking about PEOPLE here, not political entities.

And the thing about reparations being the cause for hostilities later... this is a hot topic in Germany right now. Basically, it's about the question whether anti-Semitism is the Jews' fault or not. Jews don't have to "behave well" to be liked. (By the way, they won't be, anyway, but that is beside the point here.) They may -- and should -- ask for what is rightfully theirs and ßµ§§€& the anti-Semites and what they might think about it.

David Yeagley wrote:
"The only people I've banned from the Journal are Indian men who are preoccupied with attacking me personally. (Why, I let women get by with anything! It's a macho thing...)"

***BIG GRIN*** Funny, WHY don't I feel offended by this? I "ought to", don't I? I am seriously asking.

Posted by: Nora on August 18, 2003 08:20 PM

Well, rather than using ju-jitsu, one might simply walk away from the negativity in all of us. One problem with civil discourse today is that it isn't civil. It caters to the selfish, the venal, the victim and the lustful in us. Nothing good can come from starting from a bad position. Rise above it.

How can Indian people use the example you cite of Japanese apologies offered? Accept the apology or don't, and thrive and survive if only to spite the man offering it. He wants to wipe his soul clean. Let him know that he'd be wiser to stay out of your way while you set about building a native world in which the next generation is to live.

In other words, teach them Indian ways of dealing with eachother, and make them mindful of their own dignity when dealing in the white world. All of the apologies in the world won't change that.

As to the prominence of the Jewish Holocaust, they've always been a literate people, often in two or more languages. They write and record, which is why we know of their history back several thousand years, but only know of German history, for instance, in the words of others (e.g., from Julius Caesar and Tacitus) before about the year 800 CE or so.

Something might also be said of the self-fascination of the Jewish people, but it can be said of any people. They Jews simply do it in writing.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 17, 2003 04:50 PM

Bodvar, my approach to the "Indian problem" is based on the presumption that all people are prejudiced, because prejudice is the psychological manifestation of Gestalt perception. It's natural.

My approach is jujitzu, in a way. Take the stereotype, and learn to USE it. Trying to remove it is perhaps a great waste of energy. Why not USE the energy, negative or positive, that comes you way?

When Indians take the protest path (which in many cases around the rez is more than justified), it prevents the possibility of taking a positive approach to life. I just don't want to see that option denied.

The reason race talk is to frustrating is that no once concedes that prejudice is the most natural thing in the world. It should never be villified. It should be managed properly, that's all. Bad management is what should be villified, but not the basic nature of prejudice itself.

I've commented elsewhere on the fact that the Jewish "fame" regarding their holocaust is because maybe they cared more about themselves afterwards than other victims cared about their own holocausts. The Jews took themselves more seriously. I don't really know the answer as to why their holocaust is more well known. They made the effort to make it known. Did those few remaining Jews have such money as to make their Holocaust to be the one remembered most? That doesn't quite make sense, though it may have something to do with it. But I think they just took themselves more seriously than have others.

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 17, 2003 04:37 PM

Sorry. "Lapp" is not a "derogative" term for Saami. It's derogatory. Shows you what happens when you blog off the top of your head, without benefit of a spell-checker.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 17, 2003 03:36 PM

"Jack Eisner, the famous Jewish Holocaust survivor, told me recently (before his current illness set in) 'You are a naive young man. You know nothing about war, about the world...' He said it so kindly, so fatherly, it does make me want to throw in the towel in this contest of values. He could have said that to people twice my age, and probably still have been right."

What does this mean? That your opinions have no value because you've not seen what he or his generation have seen? That seems neither charitable nor "fatherly".

He survived the "Jewish Holocaust", which differs from the Cambodian Holocaust of the mid-1970's in being more mechanized and efficient; from the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 in being actually remembered by someone who isn't Armenian; from the Hutu/Tutsi Holocaust because someone actually gave a damn (well, not at the time, but now, certainly); and from the various Native American holocausts from the 16th to the 19th Centuries (and their sequal in Chiapas) by being document by survivors.

Human history is sadly replete with holocausts...some of which had no survivors. At the risk of being though churlish, I'd be more impressed with the writings of Mr. Eisner, Mr. Weisel and that sort if, at some point early on, they'd admonish us, as humans, to learn to duck.

Genocide isn't inconceivable, and wasn't in 1939. Jews themselves had only to look to their own history then to read of what happened to the original inhabitants of Canaan to learn what happens to people in the way of a people who think themselves the elect of some God, potentate or Fuehrer.

It would be better that they cautioned people to learn to duck. It's a valuable human skill. It's almost as valuable as fighting back.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 17, 2003 03:33 PM

Perhaps, Richard, they're motivated by a desire to resist being placed in the role of historical villain.

Either way, cheap or stubborn, they're not falling into the "victim of our success" trap which many victors -- and the Japanese were successful militarily in all they'd touched from 1904 until 1942, and put up a damned good fight when they lost -- which our nation seems to have done.

Witness the way that further killings, rocketings, grenade attacks, and the recent pipeline interdiction have been handled in the press. Where are the voices to call upon our forces to be reinforced and these villains to be punished, or at least stopped? Far from protecting homes and firesides from ruthless invaders -- who tossed out their in-house oppressor -- these are fanatics mobilized by the likes of the guys who bombed tourists in Bali and wished to smuggle anti-aircraft missles into the US for who-knows-what purpose.

In short, we tend toward the very theatrical "woe is me!" syndrome, rotting from within whenever we succeed. We're rich, so we're successful? No, we're wasteful, we pollute, and NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE are rich. Medical care in this country is the best in human history? No, because NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE get it, and it's too expensive. Murders are down? Well, police profiling is up.

...it's the old argument, "the food here is terrible, and the portions are so small!"

They give an apology and move along. If survivors wish to dip their pitchers into the presently shaky well of Japanese plenty, they'd be wise to big enough to accept the apology as given and be content with merely being survivors. Many didn't make it.

The survivors of Hiroshima, as has been mentioned, and the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden would be in line to cash in if this logic were to be honored.

In the end, history would be one long lawsuit, and those with the slickest lawyers would right the history books.

Let IG Farben, Volkswagen, and other slave labor "offenders", as well as AEtna and the folks who "profited by slavery" put their checkbooks away. Let them get on with business...which, incidently, creates jobs, plenty, and lots more stuff for us to feel guilty about.

As far as Japanese or blacks having "human feelings", it would seem that prejudice which dehumanizes is just microns beneath the surface.

Godrey Cambridge, the black comedian of the 1960's, once told a story about prejudice. He was being welcomed by his Scandinavian hosts (in Sweden, if I remember correctly) upon arrival to do a show. He was assured by one of the fellows who would be employing and escorting him around his country that, unlike the US, there was no prejudice in Sweden (or whereever). Then, abruptly, his host spat out "Except for the Lapps. They are awful people, park their reindeer on your lawn! Just the Lapps!"

His point was that prejudice awaits us all, oppressed and oppressor alike (as roles reverse regularly), because everybody's got some pet group of people they despise. For the Swede, it was the Saami (Lapp is a derogative term). For the Japanese, for many years (and probably today), it was/is the "garlic eaters" (Koreans), which is a prejudice firmly reciprocated. The Laos hate the Thais, and it's a sentiment returned.

This about sums it up for me:

"They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
the Whole world is festering iwht unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like Anybody very much."
("The Merry Minuet", Sheldon Harnick @1958)

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 17, 2003 03:20 PM

Thank you Richard, for chiming in. There is a grand Oriental "bong" resounding in this discussion.

I heard what I thought was a gesture of honor from the Japanese Priminister. Perhaps the politics of the modern world, however, are so complex that the primal "bong" is unrecognizable. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on my part, searching the human heart for dignity and greatness.

It has been said to me privately, "The Japanese don't have human feelings. At least the blacks have feelings." And, "The Japanese are out to destroy everyone but themselves." These are statements from the elderly, from that "Greatest Generation" who lived through WWII.

Jack Eisner, the famous Jewish Holocaust survivor, told me recently (before his current illness set in) "You are a naive young man. You know nothing about war, about the world..." He said it so kindly, so fatherly, it does make me want to throw in the towel in this contest of values. He could have said that to people twice my age, and probably still have been right.

For my readers, please look at Richard Poe's blog on this Japanese matter: http://www.richardpoe.com/blog_single.php?rowID=267

Interesting indeed.

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 17, 2003 02:13 PM

Bodvar writes:

So far, that I'm aware of, not a single Yen has crossed anyone's palm, and more power to the Japanese for that. Reparations are a scam.

I'm no fan of reparations. The demand for reparations is simply war by other means. It usually leads to renewed hostilities sooner or later. And, as Bodvar observes, reparations payments attract profiteers and scam artists as the smell of blood attracts sharks.

That said, I see nothing particularly commendable in the Japanese refusal to pay reparations to the living victims of their crimes. I suspect that mere cheapness has more to do with their refusal than any principled stand against the reparations industry. After all, the concept of atoning for serious crime through cash payment is well-known in Japanese culture.

I have read, for instance, that in Japan rape cases are commonly settled by cash payments to the family of the victim by the rapist's family. This seems a more constructive way to resolve such problems than to jail rapists at taxpayer expense.

Likewise, ancient Germanic tradition offers murderers the option of paying a wergelt or man-price to the family of the slain. This too seems a more civilized approach to murder than either our modern system of imprisonment and capital punishment or the more primitive tradition of the blood feud or vendetta, which obliges so many innocent men to die in defense of their family honor.

Posted by: Richard Poe on August 17, 2003 01:13 PM

Betty, I would never ban you from BadEagle! Let me check out what happened. You are obviously not banned from the Journal. I'll take a look at the forums.

The only people I've banned from the Journal are Indian men who are preoccupied with attacking me personally. (Why, I let women get by with anything! It's a macho thing...)

Prejudice exists. I say it is important to understand, and more important to learn how to deal with it. How can we do this unless we all lay our card on the table? Prejudice is part of human nature. Who can pretend he is without fault? That person may be more dangerous in the long run than a Klansman.

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 17, 2003 12:48 PM

Well, looks like I stepped on too many toes and overstepped my boundaries on this one. I see my posting privileges have been removed from badeagle.com.

It was a blessing to be here. Bye. And hey thanks alot Dr. Yeagley for all that I have done for you and supported you.

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 17, 2003 12:34 PM

Betty, the only parallel is that Indians resent what the White world did to us, just as America (and much of Asia) resents what the Japanese did to them. The only parallel is asking what are the living descendents of the evil doers supposed to do today? Are they supposed to try and make up for things they themselves didn't do? This is a major question. They enjoy the benefits of their evil ancestors, but they are not doing what their ancestors did, are they?

If this is pushed too far, today's Indians will be asked, "Do we deserve to inherit what our ancestors fought so dearly for?"

Also, I've always said the SIOUX are the images makers in Indian Country. Your circumstances are critical, and cutting edge. Lots of Indians out here don't agree with me at all. Each Indian nation thinks of itself as the center of the universe, as you know. I'm just ever-so-humble-enough(!) to try to see things objectively. I see the SIOUX as the pace makers (even though Comanches had the first bingo operation. Ha!)

I want to make sure our non-Indian readers understand some of these subterranian issues in Indian Country. I confuse things when I emphasize the SIOUX. The SIOUX circumstances do not represent all issues for all Indians, at all. Hey, I just think they're COOL, that's all! I offend many other Indians when I say this.

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 17, 2003 11:37 AM

"I just see a very similar situation. A parallel. The difference is that many Indians (if not most) continually suffer from mistreatment today, particularly on the reservations, as you know all too well."

"I'm just implying that we can't really expect white people to pack up and go back to Europe. That is the Ghost Dance. I don't think that will work. So, what do we really expect White people today to do? Just a practical question.

"Keep treaties? Pay what is agreed on? Give back land that has been illegally taken SINCE the treaties? All that? Okay. Fine. That's a lot."

"But I'm really thinking beyond that. Do we want total segregation? along with total economic, social independence? These are real questions, in my mind" Dr. Yeagley writes
---

*Pipedreamers with their pipedreams who do not fully understand the Indian nations and the Indian reservations.

*For many of us we understand and know why the reservations were created. Segregation. But this segregation process here in South Dakota has left nine distinct group of people alive and flourishing. East river; the last group of Santee Dakotas forced out of Minnesota, now calling the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe of the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation HOME. West river;
the first group to be forced onto reservations, the powerful and most precious the Teton Lakotas now on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, Standing Rock Indian Reservation, Crow Creek and Lower Brule Indian Reservations (both were sorta prison or concentration camps for Indians) and to the south the Yankton Nakota or Yankton Sioux Tribe. So in reality through segregation the people are surviving.

We understand that pipedreamers have this dream that the past will return, but for many who are still learning we understand and we teach our younger generations that it is time to enter American society, but retain their cultural identity.

And I for one do not want to be paralleled with the Japs suffering, nor do I desire to hear about all the greatness that the Japs bestowed on America....but then again US Soil is infested with them already.

And you are right Tom, one cannot speak for the whole 500 Indian nations. Speak individually or don't speak at all.

And finally, perhaps in time the children of World War II veterans will come to terms with the pain of hearing the war stories from combat soldiers and maybe one day I will forget and forgive the Japs, but then that day will be when I have no more breath left in my body.

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 17, 2003 11:20 AM

"Bodvar, get a copy of _Infamy_ and read it from cover to cover. I somehow doubt Mr. Toland is one of the tin foil hat/ black helicopter types."

Actually, Toland is laughable. People who've read his work on Hitler can't recognize either the man or the period. He is to historiography what Michale Moore is to the documentary.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 17, 2003 09:29 AM

"I just see a very similar situation. A parallel. The difference is that many Indians (if not most) continually suffer from mistreatment today, particularly on the reservations, as you know all too well."

"I'm just implying that we can't really expect white people to pack up and go back to Europe. That is the Ghost Dance. I don't think that will work. So, what do we really expect White people today to do? Just a practical question.

"Keep treaties? Pay what is agreed on? Give back land that has been illegally taken SINCE the treaties? All that? Okay. Fine. That's a lot."

"But I'm really thinking beyond that. Do we want total segregation? along with total economic, social independence? These are real questions, in my mind"

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I guess any and all of those are feasible options but they're ones can only be made INDIVIDUALLY. I would be wary of any one claiming to speak out for an entire group of people.

Total economic independence would be an attractive option but is it one that most Indians are willing and able to exercise?

Posted by: Tom Paine Maru on August 16, 2003 11:30 PM

"But I ask the rest of you, What do you want the Japanese to do now?"

For me, personally nothing. Even my grandmother who lost several of her children because of the japs' bombing do not want anything from them But she would be happy if the nips were to acknowledge that it was they who were the perpetrators--and not the victims of the Pacific War as it is known over there. This whitewashing of history has become a sore point for many of the LIVING survivors there and rightfully so.

For me , as an American, all I would want from the nips is to quit THEIR whining and bitching about our bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. For them to quit masquerading as victims of foreign hostitlity............

And as a freedom fanatics, I would like folks to study the jap (and Nazi) atrocities of WW2 and realize that this is what happens to any group of people who are naive enough to allow themsleves to be disarmed.........

Posted by: Tom Paine Maru on August 16, 2003 11:24 PM

"That Roosevelt knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance is "a well established fact"?

"Had they practical military helicopters in 1941, I'd bet some here would've sworn that they were black"
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Bodvar, get a copy of _Infamy_ and read it from cover to cover. I somehow doubt Mr. Toland is one of the tin foil hat/ black helicopter types.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385145594/webleywebdesignk/102-9823578-4504949

" My point is that the Japanese have nothing any longer to repent of. Deeds done 58 years ago should be considered over. The Japanese nation has contributed greatly to the world community over these past 58 years. Their "rotten" leaders were routed out 58 years ago"
----------------------------------------------------------------
Then the nippos should quit their bitching and moaning about the Hiroshima and Nagsaki. Hell, to hear them tell it, they were the victims of unwarranted foreign aggression rather than it's perpetrators.

And while restitutions are not being universally sought in Asia, it is a sore point for many of Japan's past victims that both the nip gov't and their youth indoctrination centers (AKA "schools") are attempting to whitewash their inhuman--and subhuman--conduct during the war years while portarying themslves as the innocent victims of aggression and American and Chinese machinations.

" In "Ways That Are Dark" by Ralph Townsend (U.S.Vice Consul in Shanghai) which was written before the war, says that a surprise attack was the only type of attack the Japanese could make because of their total lack of national reserves. Basically, they could not feed their own people and had little to sustain them in war, so they were basically adverse to war with America."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, the lack of national resources would have meant a humiliating stalemate--and possible withdrawal from their newly acquired conquests in coastal China.

" The Manchurian issue was about China not fulfilling their business contracts, killing Japanese resident aliens and putting all Japanese citizens in China at risk. "
---------------------------------------------------------------
Those "business contracts" were forcibly extracted from China after Japan's victory during the Sino-Japanese war of 1896 and those agreements were made with the Qing administration who are deposed and replaced by the Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang by the time they had made their moves into Manchuria in the 1920s and 30s. Others were concessions won from local administrators when they seized Tientsin from the Germans--the Japanese fought on the side of the allies during WW1. In none of those cases were the agreemnts made with the KMT. The nips DID have an arrangement with the elder Marshall Chang but he was murdred by nip agents--and all of Manchuria was seized and remade into a nip puppet states under deposed prince Puyi-- when he didn't play ball to thier satisfaction--hardly something one can use to legitimaze the nips' claim of being in the right--and his son Chang Tso Lin had decided to throw in his lot with the KMT.

As for the killings of Japanese in Manchuria--they WERE the invaders. The killings were reprisals for their arrogance and casual brutality with which they subjected the local poplulation to. What would YOU expect of folks who are being treated as second class citizens in thier own homeland while their leaders are killed of by interloping foreigners?

"They are now a modern democratic nation with high ethical standards."
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That is also open to debate [see articles]

Nipponese, Ted! by L. Neil Smith

I take second place to nobody in my admiration of things Japanese. Like nearly everyone I know, I own a Japanese car and the bulk of my household electronics were crafted in the Land of the Rising Sun regardless of what it says on the cabinet. I believe that Japan's standards of quality control (instilled, ironically, by American mentors after World War II) should be everybody's standards. I favor free international trade, without a hint of regulation or restriction, and the utterances of its Japan-bashing opponents often make me feel ashamed of my own country.

That said -- and it needs saying -- it's time to strangle in its cradle a particularly vile notion being pushed on us now by the minions of Ted Turner, that the Japanese have anything at all to teach us about civilized conduct, violence, or the ownership of weapons.

At issue is the sad case of a Louisiana man who mistook a costumed non-English-speaker on his doorstep, a Japanese student looking for a Halloween party, for an intruder, and shot him to death. CNN and the Japanese talking heads were giving it plenty of play before the trial, but when the shooter was acquitted, they flew into a frenzy of America-bashing which made Joseph Biden's gibbering diatribes on Japanese trade practices sound lucid by comparison.

In Japan, we're endlessly informed, guns have been forbidden since the 1500s. And there's good reason for Turner's sudden interest in Japanese culture. England, the traditional gun-control utopia, is falling apart. The general disintegration of what was once the greatest civilization in history (back when Dr. Watson was free to slip a .455 caliber "life preserver" into his greatcoat pocket) is tragedy enough. What's even more tragic -- and stupid -- is the perfect correlation between its increasingly and gratuitously stricter gun laws and a skyrocketing rate of violent crime which our media never quite get around to telling us about.

Another thing they won't tell us about is the history of Japanese gun control. Following their "discovery" by the Portugese in 1542, the Japanese took to firearms rather enthusiastically, and today, scholars still debate exactly what made medieval Japan return, en masse, to pointy, sweat-powered weapons and "give up the gun". Some idiots believe it was a Noble Experiment, akin to the development of American democracy. But are you aware of what a technically-upgraded peasantry usually does to expensively-armored aristocrats whose ancestors have invested whole lifetimes learning to wield cumbersome, inefficient weapons for no other purpose than to "protect" those peasants out of everything they've got?

Self-appointed bigwigs anywhere always have a vested interest in disarming their potential victims. Japan's noble gangsters (of which Hideyoshi Toyotomi was the boss in 1592) were a bit quicker on the uptake -- and a whole lot fast-and-fancier-talking -- than the Tammany in control of medieval Europe. Japanese peasants let themselves be conned and threatened out of their guns by the Al Capone of their culture, condemning themselves to centuries of bullying by thuggish Samurai, one savage dictatorship following another, and a state-sanctioned race hatred and class-prejudice which today constitute Japan's greatest problem. Finally, they let themselves be herded by fascists into a disastrous war which ended in the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Am I actually claiming that gun control is the ultimate reason that two great and beautiful cities were incinerated by American atomic bombs?

You bet I am.

Our media don' t talk very much about contemporary Japanese crime, either, but I'll give you a clue: without victim disarmament laws, today's Japanese might not be dependent on machinegun-toting Yakuza (for which read, "Japanese Mafiosi") for patrolling the Ginza and making it the only safe street in Tokyo after dark.

America's gun laws, too -- 20,000-plus of them -- are historically rooted in race hatred and class prejudice. When you don't like someone, however evil or irrational your reason, the last thing you want him to have is a gun. In the 19th century, Italians, Chinese, the Irish, and above all blacks had somehow to be disarmed, or society's overlords (who had plenty of guns themselves) wouldn't feel safe. Today, Turner, his wife, and other liberal advocates of victim disarmament are notorious for owning guns themselves, but "deeply concerned" with keeping them out of the "wrong hands" -- meaning those of the American productive class.

Yet the Second Amendment was written so that Americans might never be dominated by the breed of criminals who ruled classical Japan, and, for the most part, it's worked. And when Japanese tourists arrive, the first thing many of them do is go out to a target range to rent one of those repulsive implements that make America so detestable. And when evening shadows fall, or they're just out of ammunition, they're happy, exhausted, and not too terribly anxious to return to a land where such marvelous toys are prohibited.

Maybe they'll learn about gun ownership the same way they learned about quality control. I suspect that's what Turner and his Japanese symbiotes are really afraid of.

So shut up, Ted, you mealy-mouthed, gun-toting hypocrite. America may be "the only country in the world that allows such easy access to weapons", as your henchbeings are so fond of pointing out; it's also "the only country in the world" that enjoys formal separation of church and state (and thus avoids violent religious conflict) -- not to mention an unfettered media on which you've grown obscenely rich. It's "the only country in the world" in lots of ways, and nobody's going to let you turn it into a replica of disintegrating England, socialist Europe, or medieval Japan.

Shut up, Jane, the same to you, squared.

Shut up, CNN and Headline News.

And with all respect, shut up, Japan.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Remember Pearl Harbor

By L. Neil Smith
lneil@lneilsmith.com

You may not believe it, but I find it difficult to advertise myself, a pursuit which is nevertheless necessary for survival in my profession, especially for a novelist as politically incorrect as I am.

I bring this up because I've had an idea about defending the philosophical borders of the United States (under attack more brutal and unrelenting than any merely physical borders) and if there were a better instrument handy, I'd choose it, rather than what I'm about to suggest.

Liberals and conservatives claim to agree with one another that the application of Libertarian political and economic principles would be a disaster for any country foolish enough to adopt them. I don't believe them. I believe they know that Libertarianism would bring about a century of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and progress, which would be a disaster for politicians, not to mention the mass media.

Another thing liberals and conservatives and everybody in between claim to agree on (and this time I do believe them) is their bitter and implacable hatred for all things Japanese. From Michael Crichton, to Pat Buchanan, to Jack Valenti, to Ross Perot, everybody of every conceivable stripe, check, or tartan is eager to start dropping nukes on Nippon again. How dare those little buggers sell us all those beautiful, inexpensive, reliable radios, VCRs, TVs, and gasp!, automobiles!

Sad to say, I'm not too crazy about the Japanese myself these days (or at least their corrupt and peculiar government). These worthies -- who own and operate a culture that allowed its troops during World War II to eat its prisoners of war, a culture infamous for savagely beating any tendency toward individualism out of preschool children before they're four years old, a culture where cops inspect private homes for drugs and guns twice a year and torture suspects to obtain confessions, a culture more steeped in bigotry and racism than South Africa was ever accused of being by its worst enemies -- appear to be laboring under an impression that they have something legitimate to say regarding the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

What we're talking about is my unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission, and I take it very personally. It isn't enough that these fish-nibblers opt to ally themselves with Comrade Ted Turner, Hanoi Jane, and the Communist News Network to annoy us with stupid petitions and biased "news" stories that would make most pathological liars blush with embarrassment, now they're attempting to use the United Nations to push a worldwide scheme of victim disarmament. (Supplying us with yet another good argument for giving the U.N. 24 hours to get out of town.)

I say it's time we started shooting back (metaphorically speaking) and that liberals and conservatives had better be prepared to help or face exposure as the hypocrites and fourflushers we suspect them to be anyway. They have lots of ugly things to say about Japan, but where's the action to match their words? Personally, I like radios, VCRs, TVs, and cars made by the Japanese. (My yearning to possess a Land Cruiser is physically painful.) I like their prices and I like their quality.

What I don't like is their attitude.

I mean to put a stop to it.

And I know just how to do it.

As individuals, Japanese love science fiction. Japanese -- as individuals -- love guns. Japanese love anything American -- as individuals. And I am the gunniest, most individual SF writer in America.

While the Japanese do their level best to reduce us to what P.J. O'Rourke calls "bedwetting liberalism" (the actual agenda is stealth feudalism), I propose to export intransigent I-won'tism to them. What do I offer as a delivery vehicle? Only the most strident and obnoxious, colorful and noisy, socially irredeemable and unapologetic celebration of armed-to-the-teeth rugged individualism I know of, my own 1980 science fiction novel, recently republished by Tor Books, The Probability Broach.

As I indicated earlier, I feel self-conscious about advertising myself, but desperate times call for desperate measures. If liberals and conservatives believe Libertarianism will wreck the nation that adopts it, they should be enthusiastic about this idea, eager to buy as many copies of Broach as they can and send them to somebody in Japan.

Everybody knows somebody in Japan; if they don't, I'll bet the International Society for Individual Liberty [(415) 864-0952 or 71034.2711@compuserve.com] will be happy to supply some names and addresses.

In a nation where young folks are increasingly fed up sacrificing themselves to the industrial collective and getting nothing in return but more regimentation, each copy will start a brushfire that Japanese authorities will have a hell of a time stamping out, which will give them something to do instead of bothering us. During a depressing year -- as election years go -- when our choice comes down to a couple of fascist thugs and a wet noodle, it gives us something to do, as well.

So come on, liberals and conservatives, come on Mike, Pat, Jack, and Ross. Put your money where your mouths are. It'll feed my family and help you get revenge. Unless you secretly believe that reading my books and adopting my political philosophy will actually help the Japanese.

Hmmmmm?

Posted by: Tom Paine Maru on August 16, 2003 11:11 PM

Almost everyone expressed deep distrust and anger at the Japanese for their historical crimes. What are the Japanese people of today supposed to do? They did not commit these crimes.

Indians feel anger toward White America, even today, for the horrible tragedy of the past. What do Indians today expect from White America today? Most of whom are uninformed, not only of what happened in the past exactly, but also of what's going on today.

I just see a very similar situation. A parallel. The difference is that many Indians (if not most) continually suffer from mistreatment today, particularly on the reservations, as you know all too well.

I'm just implying that we can't really expect white people to pack up and go back to Europe. That is the Ghost Dance. I don't think that will work. So, what do we really expect White people today to do? Just a practical question.

Keep treaties? Pay what is agreed on? Give back land that has been illegally taken SINCE the treaties? All that? Okay. Fine. That's a lot.

But I'm really thinking beyond that. Do we want total segregation? along with total economic, social independence? These are real questions, in my mind.

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 16, 2003 10:56 PM

"I ask Indians, what do you want White America to do now?" Dr. Yeagley writes.
--

Depends on what you have in mind, Dr. Yeagley. The thread is on the Japs and the Prime Minister and somehow it jumped now to what the Indians want white America to do??????????

Can you be more specific?

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 16, 2003 10:46 PM

Well, as long as everyone understands I had no intention of any trick here, to bring out ill feelings toward the Japanese!

Perhaps people should actually read carefully the article I linked to, the actual news article about the 58th anniversary of Japanese "surrender." The words the JPM spoke were to the world, as I understood them.

Further more, he apologized to the Japanese people for the hell the government had brought to them--a bit of sentiment NEVER expressed by any other government to it's own people, as far as I now. Do any of you see Clinton apologizing for the moral disgrace he caused? No. He justifies himself where he WAS wrong, and "apologizes" for things he had nothing to do with. Apologizing to "blacks?" He should have congratulated them for their upward trend, which began the minute they arrived on these shores. (Slowly upwarde, but steady.)

Also, my mother's brother, retired Lt.Col. of the USMCs was a decorated Comanche war hero. He led the battalion that made the beachhead on Guadacanal, I believe. Many great stories from him! He was on Okinowa, Guam, all over the place.

But I ask the rest of you, What do you want the Japanese to do now?

I ask Indians, what do you want White America to do now?

I will say, I never hear of any Comanche ever feeling guilty, much less apologizing, for brutally kicking everyone out of what became Comanche land. Comanches kick out whites, hispanics, and other Indians!

Remember, this guilt thing is a European Judeo-Christian thing. Of course, living in this culture for so long, Indians can feel it, but, I think in our case, it's revenge. If we are powerless to "get even," then we want the whites to feel GUILTY for their deplorable conduct, past and present.

But this is trying to use their own weapons on themselves. Do our own arrows no longer work? I say in is some how not honorable to hold white people to account by their own standards. Those aren't OUR standards. This is a weak position, really, unless we Indians fully believe and abide by those white standards, THEN we can hold white people accountable by them.

Whew! What a thread! Patience, all.

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 16, 2003 10:27 PM

"(I don't hear anyone apologizing for the 2 million German POWs starved to death by Eisenhower after WWII or the displacement of ten million German civilians after the war which lead to the deaths of additional millions. Many peoples have reason to hate others based upon the deeds done to them.)Why is it that these atrocities have happened so often in history?" George writes
---

Only a fool would apologize in my eyes and America is no fool.

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 16, 2003 10:16 PM

"Nazis in the European Theater of the war," Tom writes
---

And my father fought in the European Theater. I have all his medals right here along with his burial flag.

And I realize the attack on Pearl Harbor was not news to the upper people in power. But that does not change the fact that many of our US Soldiers suffered at the hands of the enemies and no one on this earth can tell me to find honor in the enemy. The wounds for many of children who were born of the World War II veterans, will never heal, for our fathers never found the ways toward healing their own spirits of seeing combat battle and meeting the enemy face to face....we are a part of that history and it cannot be forced under a rug or under the bowing of some Jap Prime Minister in celebration of the surrender of this country, 58 years later.

Now we have foreign doctors using our veterans as subjects of research...where is the rights of this land to keep our ex-veterans away from the enemy in the medical fields? They are at the mercy of these foreigners. What's wrong America?

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 16, 2003 10:09 PM

Japs? Nips?

That Roosevelt knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance is "a well established fact"?

Had they practical military helicopters in 1941, I'd bet some here would've sworn that they were black.

This thread is swerving from the point and is descending into a pit. This is prejudice on parade.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 16, 2003 09:52 PM

I had a college prof who often said, "weep for old neaderthal." We simply can't right the wrongs of the past, but need to live better TODAY.

Why should be have reparations? History shows that reparations lead to war! Vengeance and extractions from the loosing party always leads to more suffering in the long run.

Israeli's have made an art form of suffering (and not forgiving)and extracting reparations for past deeds done. The holocaust industrial has meant riches and jobs for many. But why should we still pay for so much aid to Israel (a strategic friend in the Mid-East I don't buy)and why should the present German citizens pay billions still in reparations to Israel? 58 years is enough already! A backlash could come (which I would like to see avoided).

My point is that the Japanese have nothing any longer to repent of. Deeds done 58 years ago should be considered over. The Japanese nation has contributed greatly to the world community over these past 58 years. Their "rotten" leaders were routed out 58 years ago. They are now a modern democratic nation with high ethical standards.

What would our modern lifestyle be like without all the appliances,electronics, vehicles, etc. that they have produced. How much foreign aid do we give them?

Alot of the goods we enjoy have been made cheaper and better so we could enjoy them. Probably those who have posted (vengeful of Japanese) on this website own alot of Japanese produced or engineered products which make their lives better.

Its a well established fact that FDR incited Pearl Harbor and knew of the eminent attack. Military intelligence was withheld from Kimmel and Shorter so they were unprepared for an eminent attack. Without FDRs traitorous actions there never would have been a war.

(I don't hear anyone apologizing for the 2 million German POWs starved to death by Eisenhower after WWII or the displacement of ten million German civilians after the war which lead to the deaths of additional millions. Many peoples have reason to hate others based upon the deeds done to them.)Why is it that these atrocities have happened so often in history?

In "Ways That Are Dark" by Ralph Townsend (U.S.Vice Consul in Shanghai) which was written before the war, says that a surprise attack was the only type of attack the Japanese could make because of their total lack of national reserves. Basically, they could not feed their own people and had little to sustain them in war, so they were basically adverse to war with America. The Manchurian issue was about China not fulfilling their business contracts, killing Japanese resident aliens and putting all Japanese citizens in China at risk.

I believe what we need is true history and the truth about current events. There is too much propaganda spread around by all media forms. As a result public opinion is severely manipulated. Its easy to have an opinion but to have one based upon facts is difficult.

Posted by: George on August 16, 2003 09:27 PM

"WWII greatly reflected the true honor of the Japanese warrior that is hidden behind the facade of their superior honor. I beleive you are wrong in your statment that " It is the antithesis of a Bill Clinton apology, which is nothing more than a narcissistic indulgence, or grandstanding, or dramatizing for political effect.", David. I find myself wonder what "smooze" is in the of the Japanese leaders now. It always seems like when another counrty "bows their head in honor" to the US it is usually because they need our presense or assistence in some form or another, yet when they do not want something from us we are in need to watching our backside."
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EXCELLENT point, Raven. I hadn't even considered that possibility but upon reflection the nips are no doubt hoping that we'll shed OUR blood on their behalf in regards to the North Korean situation. And while we can rightfully condemn the NK regime for it's brutal excesses, we should also acknowledge that their hositility and simmering anger--to mention nothing of their distrust--of the Japanese stemming from their six decades of brutal occupation (which included the use of Koreans for their infamous biowar experiments in Manchuria and the use of Korean conscripts a cannon fodder in the most dangerous areas of operation in China....) strikes a chord with ALL Koreans --North AND South-- as well as most other Asian nations.

In fact, the overriding reason for the ROK's seeming lack of alarm over NK nukes is the view that the day the two Koreas re-unite those North Korean nukes will become KOREAN nukes. And a Korean nuclear capability will not only ward off any future jap aggression but it will also ensure that neighboring nuclear powers such as China and Russia.

Betty Ann, I completely agree. What the nip PM is doing is attempting to save face. This is NOT the same as acting honorably.

And I can relate to where you're coming from. A grandmother of mine had a miscarriage of the twins she was carrying which resulted from the trauma of jap bombings. Air attacks on centers of civilian populations was considered a legitimate conduct of war --along with mass rape, torture and murder of women and children--by the nips. And while those of my ancestors/relatives who had become naturalized Americans were busy fighting the Nazis in the European Theater of the war, those who were living China were fighting a desperate guerrilla war against an enemy whose savagery shocked even the Nazis. In fact, an uncle of mine spent his teenaged years as a member of an underground cell that sniped and car bombed japs throughout the war in Shanghai which was the HQ of the jap High Command in Occupied China......

Posted by: Tom Paine Maru on August 16, 2003 06:44 PM

See the way this Jap Prime Minister bows his head and the way he is standing? Next time when you look at this horrid photo, remember the way our US World War II soldiers stood in front of the enemy; their knees bending and their spirits falling on Mother Earth as their lives were at the mercy of the enemy. Remember that.

And remember all the scars, wounds and pain that the survivors of the POW camps, our World War II soldiers brought home with them. Remember that before them crocodile tears swell up in your eyes Dr. Yeagley for the enemy!

But most of all Dr. Yeagley remember us the children of the World War II veterans; the welcomed suffering we endured with our veterans. Just for a minute remember that. And remember the wives of these soldiers. And remember that red, white and blue that flies so brilliantly in this land we call home, America.

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 16, 2003 04:41 PM

Great post Raven. Never will I ever accept the Japs hand of apology or friendship for what they did to our World War II soldiers. We have MIA's, KIA's at the Japs hand and Dr. Yeagley has the courage to write on this vile Jap creature.

Many blessings to all of you who have relatives who survived the Baatan Death March and those who never returned home from World War II!

These Japs and the Jap girl who stated this to Yeagley, know where to go as far as I am concerned. They are the enemies of the past and will continue to be the enemies of today and the future. You just ask any World War II veteran, their offsprings who had fathers and mothers at the mercy of the Japs......this should have never been posted Dr. Yeagley, it is truly a symbol of your love for the enemy and your unpatriotic heart.

Blessings to your US World War II soldier Raven and your family...many deep felt blessings. May we never forget or forgive.

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 16, 2003 04:27 PM

I think this is a very "thorny" subject! My sentiments on the "sentiment of remorse that was expressed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi" greatly reflects those stated by Betty Ann.

WWII greatly reflected the true honor of the Japanese warrior that is hidden behind the facade of their superior honor. I beleive you are wrong in your statment that " It is the antithesis of a Bill Clinton apology, which is nothing more than a narcissistic indulgence, or grandstanding, or dramatizing for political effect.", David. I find myself wonder what "smooze" is in the of the Japanese leaders now. It always seems like when another counrty "bows their head in honor" to the US it is usually because they need our presense or assistence in some form or another, yet when they do not want something from us we are in need to watching our backside.

"(I just forget about what a Japanese girl told me one time. "If you want to win, you must always apologize!")"

The value of an apology is lost when it is not given in the time set and by those directly involved with the insult. The powers of an apology is not neccessarily a "win" in superior honor or in humility, but all to often a tool of manipulation that has nothing to do with remorse. It is like having someone else apologize for another without who inflicted the insult or the damage. What value is this? To me, an apology now is an insult to the American soldiers and their families who lost and endured so much as a result to Japan's "anything but honorable" conduct during WWII.

I am glad that Betty Ann's uncle made it home to the arms of his family and did not die so far from home and those loving arms. My Uncle Ernest "Tuck" Wallace was not so fortunate. He also endured the Bataan Death March and the brutality at the hands of the Japanese, but he was lost along the journey out after being rescued. Prior to captivity Tuck had married a young local women and they were expecting a child. Tuck never got to hold or see his daughter who was brought into the world in the midst of war, a daughter who became another causualty of war when she was 2 1/2 months old.

At the death of my grandmother, Tuck's sister, the last of Tuck's possessions and recorded memories were given to me to preserve. Last night I re-walked the path of his memory; the war insignias, the letter of appreciation for duty signed by Roosevelt, the American flag that was given to his mother, the entries of my Gr-Grandmother's diary where she kept all her fears and worries about Tuck, and the enless pictures of Tuck from when he was a newborn to that of an American soldier. For my family, in the memory of Ernest "Tuck" Wallace, a young man who always seemed to have a big toothy smile.....the apology is too little and to late.

Raven

Posted by: Raven on August 16, 2003 03:36 PM

I hate to put the thorn in this nice postings on the Jap repenting....I see no honor in the Japs nor this leader who professes to feel remorse for what happened in the past.

Call me racist or unforgiving, but this Jap can bow his head many times, but I for one will never forget how the Japs treated our American POWS during World War II. My uncle walked the Bataan Death March and was taken prisoner by the Japs and placed in a coal mine. I remember the stories like it was seconds away from my spirit and I for one will never see any honor in this leader, but only honor, courage and bravery for all our past US Soldiers who were killed by the Japs, tortured and placed in concentration camps and tortured and killed. Remembering my uncle Robert (US American Soldier POW).

Betty Ann

Posted by: Betty Ann on August 15, 2003 11:45 PM

If one wishes to study honor in defeat, one should read of the actions of General R. E. Lee in the last years of his life. He never hated his enemy -- referring to them as "those people" -- and felt it his duty in defeat to abide by the parole issued him by the Army of the Potomac (in the face of calls for his trials as a "war criminal"). He admonished his former soldiers repeatedly to go home and rebuild their region and find a way in a new world. He was an example of honor in defeat.

In defense here of the Germans, allow me to point out that many of the Germans of the World War II generation were and (such as survive) are firm friends of the West, particularly of the nation which rebuilt them and fed them during blockades, who kept Churchill from wiping their country off of the map as he'd suggested. The later generations of Germans, raised in a world of plenty, politics muddied by the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland and East German Communist sponsored Greens, by fashion-politik and idle university educations, are moral relativists, and many are not Germans but "Europeans". A pox on the breed!

Mr. Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" was not merely in the US. It was in Britain, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia and elsewhere in the 1940's...almost everywhere...except, it seems, France.

A good bit of the "betrayal" you speak of here was the work of folks indigenous to those areas the Nazis rolled over. The Waffen-SS never had trouble recruiting Dutchmen, Danes, Ukranians and in guiding Polish and Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovaks and others in the rounding up and "evacuating" Jews and other "undesirables".

One thing which many wish the Japanese to address with apologies and, of course, restitution is a history of what is considered the inflexible Japanese ethic of harshness with surrendering enemies and non-Japanese neighbors. They captured and used Korean women as "comfort women" for their troops, used Chinese prisoners for bayonet practice, and treated Allied prisoners horribly BY WESTERN STANDARDS. (We all might wait until the next Ice Age for the various Communist nations to be held to account for THEIR treatment of opposing forces prisoners, but, then, they have many political and academic enablers to apologize for them.)

So far, that I'm aware of, not a single Yen has crossed anyone's palm, and more power to the Japanese for that. Reparations are a scam.

Still, if anyone wishes a weepy apology from this nation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd personally offer it myself, prostrate on the ground...as soon as the Japanese apologize for Nanking, Shanghai, biological weapons testing in Manchuria, Pearl Harbor, Wake Island and planned biological weapons usages on the US West Coast.

The only thing tougher than winning a war is losing it. Both can be done well, and both can be done badly. This nation has a history of winning...foolishly...and of learning nothing from it.

-- B

Posted by: Bodvar on August 15, 2003 09:25 PM

Thank you TPM. What you have said is quite true, with only one real difference. The Jews were "foreign" to Europe, not indigenous. When the Japanese invaded other nationalities, that was a different sort of crime than Hitler's trying to rid Europe of foreigners. War is always such a wild thing.

But I wouldn't say the Jews have less of a complaint, however, nor would the Poles, the Czechs, or any other country Hitler invaded. The Jewish situation was simply historically different. We can't say their country was being invaded. We can say, though, that the countries which they definitely helped build for centuries, in every significant way, were turning against them, and cooperating with Hitler to uproot them.
They were "betrayed," to name the crime more accurately, not invaded.

Nora, this thing about honor and nobility is highly or "deeply" emotional and psychological. In the warrior code, it is an honor to acknowledge your own defeat, and it is a disgrace to deny it. Denial is what makes many people tick, though. Many American Indians are in a kind of denial. Many are averst to the word "defeat." Thus, there is no closure, there is no chance of a pro-active approach to life. All is based on "historical justice," or, a looking backwards.

I think one has to bow to reality, in order to see clearly the best move to follow. It is like a martial art, Jujitzo, to relate to reality. A blow comes at you. What do you do? Resist it, take it on the chin? Or try to manoeuver it, direct it, using its force either against itself, or somehow in your favor. Reality is coming at you, for sure. What will you do?

I believe that American Patriotism is the best move for American Indians, and that's how I got into politics. Most prefer to meet blow with blow, or to resist. It's 260 million to 2 million. I say Indians need to use Jujitzu!

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 15, 2003 08:04 PM

"An apology from such a man is not an apology, but an honor."

It is both, isn't it? I'm sure if he meant it seriously (and I think he did) he would want it to be understood as an apology as well, don't you think?

Your views have opened a totally new way of thinking to me, for example that it is not humbling but an honour to be defeated by a valiant enemy (like the Indians by the White). That is obviously what the Japanese seem to have finally understood and they have the MIND to understand it. Germans are different. The outbreak of anti-Americanism of the nastiest sort we are currently going through shows that the Germans haven't understood A THING. They took the Americans magnanimity they treated us with after WWII as a sign of weakness. Any apology from here is a despicable, politically correct lie.

Winston Churchill said something to the effect that you have a German always either at your throat or at your feet. That is true. Real pride is to be proud in victory and in defeat, or at least so I think.

And to Bobby: You wouldn't believe how Hiroshima and Nagasaki are instrumentalized here as an arbitrary weapon against America.

"With my hand to God, I wish those strident morons could live one moment in the world they're trying to create!"

Amen to that!

Posted by: Nora on August 15, 2003 07:33 PM

" Yet, all the other Asians are still ticked off at Japan! Oh, they're coming on just like all the "minorities" in America. "You owe us everything! You can never pay us enough! You can never make up for it!" Perhaps this is all true. Perhaps historical wrongs can never be made right. That's what the Judgement Day is for."

Perhaps, I would agree if the other Asian nations were still "ticked off" at the Mongols and the Hsiung Nu whose conquests were far more widespread and lasted far longer.

From what I gather most of the folks seeking restitution from the Japanese are those LIVING victims who survived their brutal occupation (i.e Korean "comfort women", survivors of the Nanjing / Manila massacres, victms of the Bataan Death March etc.) not some distant descendants of long dead victims. In this, they are no different than the Jewish holocaust survivors.

As for the Chinese, if they were "coming on just like all the "minorities" in America", then thye would also be blaming the Manchurians--who, unlike the Japanese, managed to SUCCEED in their bid for conquest and ruled most of China for nearly four centuries before being deposed.

Another thing that separates the Asians there from our homegrown minoroties is the fact that they do NOT blame all their ills on whites and correctly view European colonialism for what it is--past history.

Posted by: Tom Paine Maru on August 15, 2003 06:43 PM

Not every warrior race is able to bear these subterranean roarings of remorse, doubt, and disquietude. There's too much "civilization" crammed into the German mind, for instance, so that any such feelings are immediately articulated in sophisticated terms, so artful that one might not expect the German to be so openly, dramatically remorseful as the Japanese leader.

Not that the Japanese aren't marvelously civilized, but, they are more closely in touch with their primal intuitions, I believe. Now that may be a "Mongolian" thing! Who knows?

America has trouble articulating such deep psychal rumblings as well. Think of the Indian experience. Of course America consciously feels a little squeamish about it. But there is deep remorse also, but it just doesn't get said. I think such feelings of remorse come out in strange things like mascots, Indian logos, names, lore, images, etc. There is all kinds of admiration. Yet, to really be sorry would mean Americans would all have to pack up and go back to Europe!

That ain't gonna happen, so, we all have to work it out here and now.

Posted by: David Yeagley on August 15, 2003 03:20 PM

Here in the People's Republic of Eugene, I saw a bunch of Lefties down at the Courthouse the other day. They were protesting the "Genocide" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

With my hand to God, I wish those strident morons could live one moment in the world they're trying to create!

Posted by: Bobby on August 15, 2003 01:54 PM

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