On an Easter Sunday 73 years ago a sacrifice was made

[Lou Newton]

Easter came on April 1st 73 years ago and there were 50,000 casualties sacrificed to defeat evil and close to two hundred thousand died to defend evil.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...was-hell-25171

[redsoxmaloney]

Easter came on April 1st 73 years ago and there were 50,000 casualties sacrificed to defeat evil and close to two hundred thousand died to defend evil.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...was-hell-25171

Well worth the reading. I'm sure almost everyone in the US has forgotten about that. They have forgotten how to spot tyranny. They do not know how to look for truth.

[Lou Newton]

Thanks for the reply Tom. Notice how much more fanatical the ones who fought to defend evil were. They were willing to jump off of cliffs with their babies in their arms, and many did so. WHY ? Because Satan is the father of lies, sin and death. Jesus is the Truth, Righteousness and Life. So those who fought for righteousness were about Truth and Life instead of Lies and Death.

[RoyDavid]

Your take on this is too simplistic for me Lou. The vast majority of the 200,000 Japanese soldiers were just fighting to defend their home and families from an invading force. Laying your life down for that purpose is really quite honorable irregardless of nationality or religion. People do not knowingly give up everything for the glory of a corrupt king. An evil leader had duped them into thinking that a war with America was the patriotic and quite necessary thing to do in order to preserve their way of life. They were convinced that if they did not attack America, then America would attack them from the naval base in Hawaii. A huge brain-washing from elitists is always required to cause people to want to fight someone far away, whom they have never met, and have no quarrel. Young soldiers cannot be responsible for the lies and hidden intents of their leaders, but answer their nation's call based on their trust of the leader's words.

It would do us well to think about these brave and honorable Japanese soldiers' fate. Maybe after decades of nearly continuous war, Americans will finally stop to question OUR OWN leaders true intentions... before laying life and wealth down thousands of miles away in some corporate-financial-political war game. "White chiefs speak with forked tongue."

[Lou Newton]

Hi Roy, thanks for the reply:

The war did not start in 1941 for Japan, but Japan attacked China in 1931 and was at war with China until 1945 when the US put a stop to that war. Here is one account of the way the Japanese treated the people of China. This is why the people of China have a deep hatred for Japan yet today.

Japan has had a militaristic society for centuries. They worship their Emperor and think him to be God. They are taught from a youth that to fight for their Emperor is their purpose in life. If defeated in battle they were taught that was very shameful and the only way to overcome that shame was to commit suicide. This is from accounts of the people of Japan.

During the US attack of Okinawa thousands committed suicide. Mothers jumped off of cliffs holding their babies in their arms.

During Japans war with China many reported seeing Japanese soldiers throwing Chinese babies into the air and catching them on their bayonet while the mother watched and then killing the mother.

These Japanese soldiers were not defending their homeland, but taking the homes of others. They thought themselves to be the master race and looked down upon all others, including the people of the US.

Because of the way Japan treated the people of China, the US stopped selling oil to Japan. Japan could not continue their war without the US oil. The US told Japan that they would sell oil to them again as soon as they left China. Instead Japan decided to attack the US at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. Japan then seized the oil fields in the East Indies. They thought they had a right to the property of others.

My calling Japan evil was not without many years of study of the way they treated others. I have read hundreds of accounts like the one below:

THE RAPE OF NANKING OR NANJING MASSACRE (1937)

The Japanese invasion of China in 1937

Having already seized and annexed China's Manchurian region (1931) and Jehol province (1933), the Japanese were waiting for a pretext to invade and occupy the whole of China. That pretext came in July 1937, when tensions between Chinese troops and Japanese troops engaged in military exercises on occupied Chinese territory produced an exchange of firing near Peking (now Beijing). The Japanese used this incident as an excuse to wage all out war against China.


BURIAL ALIVE AT NANKING (NANJING) 1937
Chinese at Nanking (now known as Nanjing) are being buried alive by grinning Japanese troops who are competing with each other to invent new and more horrible ways to kill Chinese whom they regarded as sub-human. This photograph was taken by a Japanese and processed in a Japanese-owned photographic shop. A Chinese photographic technician made copies that were smuggled out of China.

Japanese armies invaded China's northern provinces and quickly captured the ancient Chinese capital Peking (now called Beijing). In the conduct of this war, the Japanese adopted a policy of deliberate savagery in the expectation that it would break the will of the Chinese to resist. Although poorly trained and equipped, the Chinese army and communist irregulars put up strong resistance to Japan's armies which enjoyed overwhelming superiority in numbers, training, and weapons. The Japanese troops responded to Chinese resistance to their invasion by embarking on an orgy of murder, rape, and looting that shocked the civilised world at that time, although it has now been largely forgotten in many Western countries where the rigorous teaching of history is becoming a neglected discipline.

While fighting was continuing in northern China, the Japanese launched a second front at the city of Shanghai on the eastern coast of China. Despite determined resistance by Chinese Nationalist troops, the Japanese captured Shanghai in November, 1937. As if to make an exhibition of their brutality to the Western world, the Japanese marched hundreds of Chinese prisoners of war down to the Bund, or river bank, and slaughtered them by machine-gun in full view of horrified observers aboard foreign ships moored in the river. Having captured Shanghai, the Japanese were then able to move up the Yangtze River and lay siege to the Nationalist capital Nanking (now called Nanjing).

It is not possible to document here the full extent of the horrors experienced by China at the hands of the Japanese between 1937 and 1945. Those who are interested in a detailed treatment of this terrible episode in China's history will find it in the books of Lord Russell of Liverpool, Iris Chang and Laurence Rees that are mentioned at the end of this chapter. I will mention here only the Rape of Nanking (now called the Nanjing Massacre) which is the best documented of Japanese atrocities in China owing to the presence of Western observers who were eyewitnesses to the mass slaughter, rape and looting that the Japanese inflicted on the unfortunate population of the Chinese capital. The Japanese murder, rape, loot, and burn in Nanking (Nanjing) 1937


The Japanese were infuriated by the strength of Chinese resistance, and when China's Nationalist capital Nanking fell in December 1937, Japanese troops immediately slaughtered thousands of Chinese soldiers who had surrendered to them. The Japanese then rounded up about twenty thousand young Chinese men and transported them in trucks outside the city walls where they were killed in a massive slaughter. Japanese troops were then encouraged by their officers to loot Nanking, and slaughter and rape the Chinese population of the city.

For six weeks, life for the Chinese in Nanking became a nightmare. Bands of drunken Japanese soldiers roamed the city, murdering, raping, looting, and burning at whim. Chinese civilians who were stopped on the street, and found to possess nothing of value, were immediately killed. At least twenty thousand Chinese women were raped in Nanking during the first four weeks of the Japanese occupation, and many were mutilated and killed when the Japanese troops were finished with them.

The Japanese troops were encouraged by their officers to invent ever more horrible ways to slaughter the Chinese population of the city. When the bodies of murdered Chinese choked the streets and the gutters ran red with their blood, the Japanese were forced to refine their methods of slaughter in the interest of preventing the spread of disease. Batches of Chinese civilians were rounded up and herded into slaughter pits. Here the grinning Japanese soldiers would either bury them alive, hack them to death with their swords, use them for bayonet practice, or pour petrol on the victims and burn them alive. The bodies of thousands of victims of the slaughter were dumped into the Yangtze River until the river was red with their blood. After looting Nanking of anything of value, the Japanese started fires that gutted one third of the city.

Independent foreign observers of the Rape of Nanking, including a German businessman and Nazi Party member named John Rabe, were appalled to see Chinese civilians, both men and women, the elderly, and tiny children, put to death by Japanese troops with horrifying brutality. Rabe tried to save as many Chinese as he could by creating a safety zone on his estate. He appealed to Adolf Hitler to intervene, but the Nazi leader rebuffed his appeal. Convincing independent proof of the horrifying scale of the Japanese massacre at Nanking emerged in 1996 with the publication of John Rabe's diary record of the massacre.

Japanese soldiers appeared to be quite willing to be photographed with raised swords beside their intended victims, in the act of bayoneting their victims, and posing with their dead victims in the slaughter pits. The atrocities committed by Japanese troops at Nanking were widely publicised by foreign observers, including newspaper correspondents. When the Japanese high command became aware of the full scope of the horror perpetrated by Japanese troops at Nanking, it went to considerable lengths to destroy evidence of the atrocity.

Iris Chang gives a very detailed account of the extent and appalling nature of the Japanese atrocities in Nanking in her book "The Rape of Nanking" (published 1997). The horrifying photographs in her book survived the attempt by the Japanese high command to cover up the Nanking atrocities because the perpetrators entrusted the "happy snaps" recording their vile behaviour to a Japanese-owned photographic shop in Shanghai for processing. A Chinese employee secretly made extra copies and smuggled them out of China.

CAUTION: Iris Chang's excellent history of the Rape of Nanking contains very disturbing text and photographs. This web-site does not recommend that it be read by young children.

The judges of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trials) were prepared to accept that at least 200,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the Japanese in the six weeks after Nanking fell. The judges were also prepared to accept that the death toll would be much higher if estimates of the number of Chinese burned alive by the Japanese in mass slaughter pits and bodies dumped in the river were added. Non-Japanese historians are prepared to accept that the slaughter at Nanking could have reached as high as 370,000 victims.

The appalling brutality displayed by Japanese troops at Nanking was by no means unique. It has been estimated by historians that several million Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were murdered in the course of Japan's undeclared war on China between 1937 and 1945.

Despite photographic and independent eyewitness evidence, the Japanese government still refuses to acknowledge or permit Japanese schoolchildren to be told the full story of the slaughter, rape and looting that took place at Nanking in 1937. In recent years, the Japanese government has made a small concession to the weight of international and local criticism of this censorship by permitting brief and vague references in history textbooks to the Rape of Nanking (Nanjing Massacre), but the atrocities are described as the "Nanjing Incident" and the text suggests that the victims died during the battle for the city, and not in a horrifying massacre that took place during the six weeks that followed the fall of the city to the Japanese.

Even these small concessions to historical truth are now coming under attack in Japan from militarists and neo-nationalists. The neo-nationalists, who include Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, prominent members of Japan's parliament, and senior academics such as Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka of Tokyo University, believe that these concessions have gone too far, and that school textbooks should be censored to delete all references to Japanese war guilt and atrocities, and to instil national pride rather than shame.

Students of history interested in pursuing this aspect of a particularly brutal war may wish to examine the books and web-sites listed at the end of this chapter.

[Lou Newton]

Here is another account by a Red Cross nurse:

THE BANKA ISLAND MASSACRE (1942)

Sister Vivian Bullwinkel at the time she joined the Australian Army Nursing Service in 1941 Sister Vivian Bullwinkel's Story

On 12 February 1942, with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese imminent, sixty-five Australian Army nurses, including Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, were evacuated from the besieged city on the small coastal steamer Vyner Brooke. In addition to the Australian nurses, the ship was crammed with over two hundred civilian evacuees and English military personnel. As the Vyner Brooke was passing between Sumatra and Borneo, Japanese aircraft bombed and strafed the overloaded ship and it sank quickly. The survivors in lifeboats were strafed by Japanese aircraft but some reached Bangka Island off the coast of Sumatra. Twelve Australian nurses were either killed in the attack on the ship or drowned in the sea. The remaining fifty-three nurses reached Bangka Island in lifeboats, on rafts, or by drifting with the tide.

Wearing their Red Cross armbands, and having protected status as non-combatants by convention of civilised nations, the nurses expected to be treated in a civilised manner by the Japanese when they reached shore. Their expectations were short lived. The lucky survivors were rounded up at gunpoint by the Japanese and herded into a building that was filthy and overcrowded. All of the survivors were tired, thirsty, and hungry. Some were suffering from exposure to the sun after many hours immersed in the sea, and some had been wounded in the attacks on the ship and the lifeboats. The Japanese were unsympathetic to their plight and only offered the survivors a bucket of water and a bucket of rice.

The unlucky survivors, including twenty-two Australian nurses, landed in lifeboats on the northern coast of Bangka Island and lit a bonfire to guide other survivors to them. Sister Vivian Bullwinkel was in this group of nurses. When the number of survivors at the bonfire reached about one hundred, it was decided that they should surrender to the Japanese. A party of male survivors went off to find Japanese. They were accompanied by civilian women and their children. The twenty-two Australian nurses stayed to look after the injured, and they made and erected a red cross to indicate to the Japanese that they were non-combatants.

A patrol of about fifteen Japanese soldiers arrived from the coastal township of Muntok. While some guarded the Australian nurses, the rest herded the male survivors, about fifty in number, down the beach and around a headland. The nurses heard gunfire from this direction, and shortly afterwards, the Japanese soldiers returned alone. Some were wiping blood from their bayonets.

The twenty-two Australian nurses were then ordered by the Japanese to form a line and walk into the sea. The women knew what was going to happen to them, but none panicked or pleaded for mercy. When the water had reached the nurses' waists, the Japanese opened fire on them. Sister Bullwinkel was hit in the back by a bullet and knocked off her feet. Upon discovering that she was only wounded, she pretended to be dead. After some time had passed, she risked a glance at the beach and saw that the Japanese soldiers had gone. She looked around for the other twenty-one nurses and saw none. She was the only nurse who had survived the massacre.

When she reached the beach, she was joined by an English soldier who had survived the massacre behind the headland. Private Kingsley had been bayoneted by the Japanese and left for dead. They were given food by the local village women, but after two weeks, they realised that their position was hopeless, and they decided to walk to Muntok and give themselves up. Shortly afterwards, Private Kingsley died from the bayonet wound.

Realising that the lives of all survivors of the Vyner Brooke would be at risk if the Japanese discovered what she had seen, Sister Bullwinkel concealed her wound from the Japanese and treated it herself. She survived harsh imprisonment to give evidence of the massacre at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947.

[Lou Newton]

There are countless accounts like these:

THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH

The Japanese invasion of the Philippines began when Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma landed on the main northern island of Luzon with two army divisions on 22 December 1941. American General Douglas MacArthur had dispersed his troops and supplies widely and thinly over nine major islands of the Philippine archipelago, and the Japanese were able to land with little opposition. Homma quickly broke through MacArthur's thin defensive line and forced the American and Filipino troops to withdraw and concentrate on the Bataan Peninsula. Because MacArthur had dispersed his supplies widely across the Philippines, his troops were immediately placed on half rations. Homma threw 20,500 Japanese troops into his attack on the defenders of Bataan, and when he pulled back his troops on 24 February he had less than 2,000 left on their feet and many of these were sick. Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo was furious with Homma. He had unwisely boasted that he would crush all American resistance in the Philippines within forty-five days, and he had squandered a full Japanese army division in the assault on Bataan without defeating the American and Filipino defenders. He was severely reprimanded by Tokyo and demoted by being placed under the overall command of General Yama****a.

When the Japanese renewed their offensive on 3 April 1942 with fresh troops supported by heavy artillery, tanks, and air attack, the survivors on the Bataan Peninsula were so weakened by starvation and disease that they were unable to offer any effective resistance. Trusting to the mercy of the Japanese, the commanding officer on Luzon, Major General Edward King, surrendered his troops on 9 April 1942. Infuriated and humiliated by the lengthy American resistance on Bataan, and the heavy losses they had suffered themselves, Homma and his troops vented their rage on their sick and exhausted prisoners of war whom they subjected to the atrocities of the Bataan Death March and the harsh conditions of Japanese "hell camps".

During the surrender discussions relating to Bataan, General Homma told Major General King that his troops would have to march from Bataan to their place of imprisonment at Camp O'Donnell, a distance of about 100 miles (161 km). General King pointed out to the Japanese commander that his troops had been on half rations since January (i.e. 3 months), and that all were starving and many were sick. He requested permission to drive the prisoners of war to Camp O'Donnell in American army trucks. Still smarting from the rebuke he had received from Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo and his demotion from overall command in the Philippines, Homma curtly dismissed King's request.

Immediately following the Bataan surrender on 9 April 1942, the prisoners of war were searched. Any prisoner found with Japanese equipment or other souvenirs was immediately killed. The Bataan Death March began at Mariveles on 10 April, and lasted for a week. During this hellish march, sick and starving prisoners were beaten randomly and denied any water. Any prisoner who asked for water was killed on the spot. When the Japanese guards needed a rest, they forced the prisoners to sit in the hot sun without any head covering. Any prisoner who fell behind or collapsed from heat, exhaustion and lack of water, was killed on the spot unless his comrades could carry him. During the week-long march, prisoners were denied food apart from a few handfuls of contaminated rice. At night, the prisoners were packed so tightly into enclosures that they were almost unable to move.

The US Army Center for Military History has estimated that as many as 650 American POWs and between 5,000-10,000 Filipino POWs were murdered by the Japanese during the Bataan Death March. The Japanese were particularly cruel to the Filipinos whom they regarded as American lackeys. Of 20,000 American troops captured by the Japanese in the Philippines, about half died in captivity before the Pacific War ended. Some were murdered swiftly, others were murdered slowly from starvation, sickness and brutal treatment.

After the defeat of Japan in 1945, Lieutenant General Homma was charged as a war criminal for his part in the brutal murders of American and Filipino prisoners of war following their surrender and during the Bataan Death March. He was convicted of war crimes in 1946 and executed.

[Lou Newton]

THE SANDAKAN DEATH MARCH

To protect the oilfields that they had captured on Borneo, the Japanese Imperial Army decided to build a military airfield at the port of Sandakan using forced prisoner of war labour. Fifteen hundred prisoners, mostly Australians who had surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore, arrived at Sandakan on 18 July 1942. The accommodation for the prisoners was appalling. Their water was drawn from a filthy creek, and their food was mostly a very small quantity of vegetables and a couple of handfuls of dirty rice each day.

Initially, security at the Sandakan camp was lax and several prisoners escaped into the jungle in September 1942. All of the prisoners who had remained in the camp were punished for the escapes by denial of food for a week. Camp security and punishments were then toughened. The Japanese Army guards routinely shot any prisoner who attempted to escape or was recaptured. Minor infringements, such as collecting a coconut to supplement the starvation diet while on a working party, or failing to bow deeply enough to a camp guard, were punished by severe beatings or locking the offending prisoners in cramped, open cages in the hot sun. The number of days spent in the cages was related to the gravity of the "offence". Exercise for the caged "offenders" comprised being taken out of the cage and beaten up by the guards, and then being returned to the cage.

A prisoner suspected of building or operating a makeshift radio or smuggling medicine into the camp could find himself in the hands of the greatly feared Kempei Tai, a Japanese military secret police unit that employed beatings and torture to extract confessions. Torture methods included burning flesh with lighted cigarettes, driving metal tacks under the nails of a prisoner, and forcing water down a prisoners throat until his stomach was distended. The Kempei Tai torturers would then stamp on the unfortunate prisoner's distended stomach. See Lord Russell's "Knights of Bushido" at pages 195-198.*

The arduous labour on the airstrip and seriously inadequate diet soon undermined the health of the prisoners. Most of the Australian prisoners became horribly emaciated from starvation, and many exhibited the bloated stomach associated with beriberi (a vitamin deficiency). During selection parades for working parties, the Japanese guards refused to accept the opinions of prisoner medical officers but would test for the presence of tropical ulcers by kicking at the bandaged leg of a prisoner. A plea to the Japanese for increased and better quality food rations by prisoner medical officers was dismissed by the Japanese commander who made clear his deep contempt for combatants who surrendered.

In early 1943, more prisoners of war arrived at Sandakan to work on the airstrip. These were mainly British.

As progress on the construction of the airfield slowed because of the increasing sickness and debility of the prisoner/labourers, the Japanese responded by increasing their brutality but not the meagre rations. To force the prisoners to work harder, the Japanese brought in a gang of tough older army guards who soon became known to the prisoners as "The Bashers". These guards always carried wooden pick handles or bamboo canes and appeared to take great pleasure in beating the prisoners whenever the whim took them. "The Bashers" often left their victims unconscious, or with broken arms or legs. Jim Milner led a work party of Australian prisoners working on the airstrip, and he was bashed by the guards on many occasions. He recalls:

"We had to bow to all the Japanese officers, which was very degrading. And any Japanese, no matter what his rank, could bash you if he felt like it, and they used to take great delight in it."

From "Horror in the East" by Laurence Rees, published by the BBC (2001) at p. 84.

In August 1943, with the apparent intention of facilitating control of the enlisted men by depriving them of their leaders, most of the officer prisoners were moved from Sandakan to Kuching on the western side of Borneo. After the officers were taken away, conditions for the 2,500 enlisted prisoners at Sandakan deteriorated sharply. Starvation level rations were further reduced, and even the sick prisoners were forced to work on the airstrip. By the middle of 1944, Allied advances were posing a threat to Japanese control of Borneo, and additional Japanese troops began arriving in northern Borneo to defend the vital oilfields. With additional Japanese mouths to feed, rations for the prisoners were cut again. The Japanese area commanders were aware that they were starving the prisoners of war but took the view that weak and sick prisoners would be no threat to them if Allied forces landed to liberate northern Borneo. The deliberate starving of prisoners, together with the heavy labour and beatings, caused the death rate to soar.

By the beginning of 1945, only 1,900 prisoners were left alive at Sandakan. Allied bombing had rendered the airstrip unusable, and the prisoners were of no further use to the Japanese as forced labour. With Allied landings on Borneo anticipated at any moment, the Japanese decided to prevent the prisoners being liberated by working them to death, starving them, or murdering them in cold blood. Knowledge that they were losing the war caused the Japanese prison guards to intensify their brutality towards the prisoners.

In late January 1945, the Japanese paraded the Australian prisoners to select porters for two of their battalions being relocated from Sandakan to the western coast of northern Borneo. Only 470 prisoners could be found who were thought to be fit enough to carry baggage and supplies. This was to be the first of the Sandakan Death Marches, and would require a 120 mile (192 kilometre) trek by the Japanese troops and their forced prisoner of war labour through marshland, dense jungle, and then up the eastern slope of Mount Kimabula. The journey would have tried severely the endurance of fit soldiers let alone weak, sick, and starving prisoners burdened with heavy loads. The Japanese guards were under instructions to kill any prisoners who collapsed or were too weak to continue the march, and they did so.

The trek was so arduous that even the Japanese found it exhausting, and they called a halt at the town of Ranau which is 100 miles (160 Kilometres) from Sandakan. Only 190 of the Australian prisoners had survived the first death march. The bodies of the rest lay scattered along the track where they had collapsed and been murdered by their Japanese guards. Although the surviving prisoners were all sick, weak, and exhausted from the trek, the Japanese immediately set them to work building huts for the Japanese and a temporary camp for themselves on the outskirts of Ranau. Some of the exhausted prisoners were forced to carry heavy loads from the centre of Ranau to the camp. Some were forced to carry heavy barrels of water up a hill to the makeshift camp from a nearby stream. The prisoners' food ration was cut to only four ounces (100 grams) of rice a day.

The Japanese undertook a second death march on 29 May 1945 with 536 prisoners who could still stand on their feet. The Sandakan camp commander, Captain Takakura, assembled these prisoners outside the gate and then they set off towards Ranau in groups of about fifty with Japanese guards at the front, rear and sides of each group. The Japanese guards had been ordered to kill instantly any prisoner who collapsed from exhaustion or tried to escape. The main camp was set on fire behind them to destroy any evidence of its existence.

The second Sandakan Death March lasted for twenty-six days. Only 183 prisoners reached Ranau. The remaining 353 prisoners had either died on the march from a combination of starvation, sickness and exhaustion, or were killed by the Japanese guards because they were too weak to continue the trek. On their arrival at Ranau on 24 June 1945, the participants in the second death march found that only six prisoners from the 470 who had left Sandakan in January were still alive. Although weak and exhausted, the survivors of the second death march were then put to hard labour and the death toll soared.

About two hundred and fifty prisoners were left behind at Sandakan after the departure of the participants in the second death march. These prisoners were so ill that the Japanese initially intended to leave them at Sandakan to die of starvation. However, they decided to send another group of seventy-five on a third death march on 9 June 1945. This group was so weak and sick that none survived beyond 30 miles (50 kilometres). When each man collapsed, he was instantly killed by a Japanese guard. Of those seriously ill prisoners who were left at Sandakan, all were either murdered by the Japanese guards or died from starvation and sickness before the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945.

As a result of brutal treatment and a starvation diet, there were only thirty-eight prisoners left alive at Ranau on 1 August. They were too sick and feeble to work, and the senior Japanese officer at Ranau ordered that these survivors of the death marches be shot. This order was carried out.

At the time of the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, only six prisoners had survived the horrors of the Sandakan prisoner of war camp and the Sandakan Death Marches. They had escaped into the jungle either during the death marches or at Ranau. 2,390 prisoners from the Sandakan camp had been murdered by the Japanese in cold blood or by starvation, sickness, and overwork.

FOOTNOTE: DESTROYING EVIDENCE OF JAPANESE ATROCITIES

When it became certain that Japan would have to surrender, extraordinary efforts were made to protect those responsible for Japan's atrocities, including Emperor Hirohito, by destroying incriminating evidence.

On 20 August 1945, the senior Japanese officer in charge of prisoner of war and civilian internment camps ordered camp guards to destroy all incriminating evidence of atrocities or brutal treatment of prisoners of war and civilians, and advised guilty camp guards to transfer or flee.

[Lou Newton]

MURDER AND CANNIBALISM ON THE KOKODA TRACK

It is clear from the historical source material to be found at the end of this chapter that cannibalism of Allied prisoners by the Japanese military was not a rare occurrence. In "The Knights of Bushido", Lord Russel of Liverpool cites examples of Allied prisoners of war being murdered and portions of their bodies served up at dinner parties attended by senior Japanese Army and Navy officers. Captured American pilots were not only more likely to be murdered but the eating of their flesh was made into something of a festive occasion in the Japanese officers' mess. Lord Russell includes the actual text of a Japanese document headed "Order regarding eating flesh of American flyers". See pages 233-240.

Both Lord Russell and Laurence Rees in "Horror in the East" make it clear that the cannibalism practised by the Japanese military was not necessarily related to shortage of normal food. The following case of murder and cannibalism by Japanese soldiers is drawn from the Kokoda Track in 1942 and was in no way explained by shortage of rice or other rations.

Between 21 July and 26 August 1942, the Japanese landed 13,500 troops at the villages of Gona and Buna on the northern coast of Australia's Territory of Papua. Ten thousand of these troops were tough, jungle-trained combat veterans. The task facing this Japanese army was to cross the rugged Owen Stanley Range and capture the Australian administrative capital Port Moresby which was located on the southern coast of Papua. Port Moresby was at this time the last Allied base on the island of New Guinea, and its capture by Japanese troops would enable Japan to strike deeply with its bombers into the Australian mainland and intercept the vital lines of communication between the United States and Australia. The Japanese did not realise that the only path across the steep ridges and valleys of the Owen Stanley Range was a very narrow dirt path called the Kokoda Track. In the expectation that their troops would quickly brush the Australians aside, the Japanese allowed only ten days rations for the crossing of the mountains.

The initial defence of the Kokoda Track was undertaken by about five hundred militia troops of the Australian 39^th Infantry Battalion. These Australian militia troops were poorly armed, equipped and supplied, and the Japanese outnumbered them initially by at least ten to one. Many of the Australians were only eighteen and, although superbly led, they lacked both combat experience and adequate training. Despite these serious disadvantages, the Australians forced the Japanese to fight for every foot of their advance along the Kokoda Track.

The young militia soldiers of the 39^th Battalion blocked the Japanese advance along the Kokoda Track for five weeks and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.

On 26 August 1942, the exhausted and starving militia troops were finally joined on the northernmost ridge of the Owen Stanleys at Isurava by the first of three battalion from the 2/14^thBrigade. These were combat toughened Australian troops who had returned from the Middle East. Despite these reinforcements, the Australians were still outnumbered on the Kokoda Track by five to one, and were forced to carry out a bloody fighting withdrawal in which both sides suffered very heavy casualties. The Japanese advance ground to a halt on a ridge where they could actually see the lights of Port Moresby. The Japanese supply lines were in chaos, and the surviving Japanese troops were starving and exhausted. Unable to proceed, and denied reinforcements because of the critical situation facing the Japanese on Guadalcanal, the Japanese were ordered to abandon the capture of Port Moresby and retreat to their beachheads on the northern coast. They were closely pursued by fresh reinforcements from Australia.

An especially abhorrent aspect of the heavy fighting on the Kokoda Track during the Australian fighting withdrawal is the failure of any Australian taken prisoner by the Japanese to survive capture. The Japanese are known to have frequently murdered prisoners of war, singly and in batches, on little if any provocation. Resistance appears to have been especially effective in provoking murderous instincts in the Japanese military. The Japanese were infuriated by the strong resistance to their advance put up by the Australians on the Kokoda Track. They had suffered heavy losses, and the Australian fighting withdrawal had seriously disrupted their timetable for crossing the mountains and had caused their own troops to run short of food. In those circumstances, the Japanese would not want to waste their own food on prisoners of war whom they had been taught to despise. The circumstances point to a strong probability that all captured Australians were immediately executed by the Japanese. Even more horrifying, is the evidence that the Japanese killed and ate captured Australians when they had not exhausted their own food supplies.

As the Australians pursued the retreating Japanese along the Kokoda Track, they came upon evidence that the Japanese had been eating captured Australian soldiers. After a fierce clash with the Japanese at Templeton's Crossing, an Australian patrol was forced to withdraw and leave behind six Australian dead and four wounded. Reinforcements arrived on the following day, and the Australians were able to attack again and capture the Japanese position. The Australians troops were horrified to find that the Japanese had been eating both the wounded and dead Australians who had been left behind on the previous day. Corporal Bill Hedges describes the ghastly scene:

"The Japanese had cannibalised our wounded and dead soldiers..We found them with meat stripped off their legs and half-cooked meat in the Japanese dishes (pots)".

One of Corporal Hedges closest comrades was among the butchered bodies. He said:

"I was heartily disgusted and disappointed to see my good friend lying there, with the flesh stripped off his arms and legs; his uniform torn off him."

Shortly afterwards, the Australian corporal was appalled to discover that the Japanese had not resorted to cannibalism because of starvation. He said:

"We found dumps with rice and a lot of tinned food. So they weren't starving and having to eat flesh because they were hungry."

The quotations by Corporal Hedges come from "Horror in the East" by Laurence Rees, a BBC publication (2001). This book is essential reading for anyone hoping to try to understand Japanese war atrocities.

[Lou Newton]

SEX SLAVES OF THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY

Historians have estimated that as many as 200,000 civilian women were forcibly conscripted in Japanese-occupied countries between 1931 and 1945 and forced to serve as sexual slaves in Japanese Army brothels. The Imperial Japanese Army assigned these victims the euphemistic term "comfort women". The majority of these women were conscripted in China and Korea, but this barbarous practice occurred in every country occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army. As might be expected, successive Japanese governments have refused to frankly admit that Japanese Army troops committed these terrible crimes against women.

This example is drawn from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and it is the story of a courageous Dutch girl who survived the sexual slavery forced on her by the Japanese Army that occupied Java in 1942.

Jan Ruff was in her late teens when Java was surrendered to the Japanese invaders on 8 March 1942. The Dutch civilian population was rounded up by the Japanese and interned in camps where the living conditions were often as bad as in the prisoner of war camps. The interned women were fed so little by the Japanese that they were forced to eat snails and rats to survive. They were arbitrarily beaten or forced to stand in the sun for hours by the Japanese guards whenever the whim took them.

After two and a half years in an internment camp, conditions for Jan Ruff took a dramatic turn for the worse when Japanese officers entered the camp and ordered all girls over the age of seventeen to line up for inspection. The Japanese officers then physically examined each girl as if she was an animal put up for auction at a cattle sale. When the line had been reduced to ten girls, the Japanese officers ordered these girls to pack a suitcase and get into a truck waiting at the camp gate. Protests by their mothers were ignored. The truck was then driven to a large house in Semarang, the capital of Middle Java. This house was surrounded by a high fence and guarded by Japanese soldiers. Jan discovered the terrible nature of the ordeal she was about to endure when the Japanese told the girls that they would live in this house and be required to provide sexual services to the Japanese military. Jan felt at the time as if her whole world had collapsed. In response to their protests, the girls were told that the Japanese would treat them in any way that they pleased.

The Japanese photographed each girl and assigned her a Japanese name. The photographs were then posted on the verandah for scrutiny by any Japanese soldier who wanted to rape a Dutch girl. The girls were then told to go to the rooms in the brothel assigned to them, but they clung to each other. The house filled with Japanese soldiers, and as each girl was dragged off to a room, her humiliation was treated as a matter for laughter by the Japanese. Eventually, Jan Ruff's turn came. She was dragged to a bedroom by a Japanese officer who threatened to kill her with his sword if she didn't submit to him. He tore off all her clothes, threw her on the bed, and raped her. Other soldiers were lined up waiting, and she was repeatedly raped throughout the night. She had been a virgin before the Japanese raped her. Speaking of this terrible experience many years later, Jan said: "By raping me the Japanese took away everything from me - my self-respect, my dignity, my possessions, my family. I really wonder how I coped. It's amazing how strong you can be. My strong belief in God, and my faith and prayer helped me through".

From "Horror in the East" by Laurence Rees, published by the BBC in 2001.


Once a week, the ten Dutch girls had to submit to a humiliating physical examination by a Japanese Army doctor who allowed Japanese soldiers to amuse themselves by watching these examinations. Jan Ruff was raped by this doctor on every occasion that he examined her.

After three months of serial rape by Japanese soldiers, the girls were told to pack their belongings. The Japanese told them that they would not be returned to the camp from which they had been taken but would go to a different camp. They were warned that they and their families would be killed if they told anyone that they had been forced to work in a Japanese Army brothel.

Jan Ruff only broke her silence when the war ended and she was reunited with her family. Her parents were devastated when told what the Japanese had done to her. She had wanted to become a nun, but when she told a Catholic priest that she had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army, he informed her that it would not be appropriate for her to become a nun. She felt dirty and ashamed when the priest said this to her, and his words cast a dark shadow over her life until 1992 when she heard that her terrible experience had been shared by as many as two hundred thousand women in countries invaded by the Japanese between 1931 and 1945.

When Jan Ruff discovered that these female victims of gross sexual abuse by the Imperial Japanese Army were demanding an apology from the Japanese government, and that the Japanese government was refusing to acknowledge this vile behaviour of the Japanese Army with a public apology, she decided to tell her own story and join the battle to compel the Japanese government to make a full and public apology.

It can be fairly said that whenever a Japanese Prime Minister, including Junichiro Koizumi, pays homage to Japan's war dead, including Japan's worst war criminals, at the infamous Yasukuni Shinto Shrine in Tokyo, it is equivalent to a slap in the face for every women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army.

[RoyDavid]

Thanks for enlightening me Lou, but you did not need to post 65 paragraphs to convince me of Japanese war atrocities. The Chino-Jap war was an ongoing feud for ages, and it is disingenuous not to acknowledge the crimes on the other side of it. (Perhaps it just makes us all feel better about Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Every war has atrocities. And every army commits them..especially the invading ones. It is part and parcel of living by the sword. And every country seeks to cover their own crimes up while attempting to demonize their enemy's actions. All of this is very important for a governmental war machine to drum up popular support and enlist new machine gun fodder. America is not exempt. We need to look no further away from home than Sherman's march to the sea at the close of the Civil War. In the North they called it a brilliant tactical victory. In the South they called it stealing, pillaging, raping and murdering of noncombatant civilians. Is that what military heroes do? Oh I know..just some collateral damage to expedite the war.

Atrocities are the bitter poison that wars produce. A perfectly kind and decent young man who goes to church on Sundays and helps little old ladies across the street during the week, is enlisted in the army and is rigorously trained to be a killing machine. Upon his arrival in a foreign land, he is soon brought under enemy fire and watches his best friends be maimed and killed. Hitting him like hot lead, reality shows him that he is scarcely prepared and this is not what he had expected. The ultimate culture shock and time warp engulfs his mind and bayonets his emotions. Taught to be kind and decent from childhood, he now is faced with kill or be killed by people that yesterday he had no grudge. Soon, hate for the enemy takes over his being, and he realizes that absolute embedded hate is the emotion that keeps him alive, protects his friends and justifies his actions. At this point it becomes a very short journey to also hate his enemy's parents who conceived him, and all his enemy's family and friends who support him. The atrocity fruit ripens and emits its toxic stench, and sends its flowing poison through the ranks. At the end of the day, another reality hits deeper and wider than the others.."He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Now great remorse enters him and guilt consumes him like a cancer. Another victim of atrocity.

I do not think that your statement that the Japanese worshiped their emperor is significantly different from mine when I said that people must be deceived in order to lay everything down for a corrupt leader. Is not worship of another human the ultimate deception? And while we are about it, are not ALL soldiers pledged to obey their commanding officers without question? Is not the president, emperor or king also the commander in chief? Is it not dishonorable to disobey and punishable by death? What if the regime gave no choice whether to enlist?.. join or die? The battlefield offers small opportunity for fasting, praying and seeking God's will..someone else has done all that for you. Face the enemy in battle or be shot in the back by your officer. Not such easy choices. Yet we demonize these young men thrown into hell's own cauldron because they are a little different from our own boys..but not very much.

Maybe war stuff like this is why King David (honored as a man after God's own heart) was not permitted to build the Lord's temple.


For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood,
But against principalities, against powers,
Against the rulers of darkness of this age,
Against spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places. (Eph 6:12)


Don't criticize and speak evil about each other, dear brothers.
If you do, you will be fighting against God's law of loving one another
And declaring that He is wrong.
But your job is not to decide whether this law is right or wrong
But to obey it. (James 4:11)

[glen smith]

Your take on this is too simplistic for me Lou. The vast majority of the 200,000 Japanese soldiers were just fighting to defend their home and families from an invading force. Laying your life down for that purpose is really quite honorable irregardless of nationality or religion. People do not knowingly give up everything for the glory of a corrupt king. An evil leader had duped them into thinking that a war with America was the patriotic and quite necessary thing to do in order to preserve their way of life. They were convinced that if they did not attack America, then America would attack them from the naval base in Hawaii. A huge brain-washing from elitists is always required to cause people to want to fight someone far away, whom they have never met, and have no quarrel. Young soldiers cannot be responsible for the lies and hidden intents of their leaders, but answer their nation's call based on their trust of the leader's words.

It would do us well to think about these brave and honorable Japanese soldiers' fate. Maybe after decades of nearly continuous war, Americans will finally stop to question OUR OWN leaders true intentions... before laying life and wealth down thousands of miles away in some corporate-financial-political war game. "White chiefs speak with forked tongue."

RoyDavid, your points should be taken in context as overwhelming presented by Lou, but they also ought to be in the context of the individual as you have presented them. As RoyDavid stated, "Atrocities are the bitter poison that wars produce" and people must be deceived in order to lay everything down for a corrupt leader" or a supposedly honorable leader. This is called propaganda. Every side in a war uses propaganda (brain-washing) to erase the hesitation to kill the enemy. RoyDavid is right, not every Japaneses was a Jap or every German a Kraut. Also, the victory writes the history and ignores their own atrocities.

After the Vietnam War, I thought America had learned a lesson about war a lesson in the cost in lives, money, and international leadership. For the few years after the Vietnam War the use of military force was no longer acceptable to advance the American political will. What surprised me was how soon the war mongering returned. The passing of the WWII veterans in Congress is a serious loss.

The points made by RoyDavid is best demonstrated in the reunions of former enemies who now no longer hate each other but have come to recognize they played a role which was determined for them by their leaders. And as combat soldiers, combatants have more in common than they have in differences - that is more in shared memories of trauma.

However, it is not possible for me to buy Bayer products or German autos or Japaneses autos even though I know many other consumer products are produced by companies guilty of war crimes. Of recent note - American psychiatry has dropped the term Asperger syndrome because of the Nazi doctor who first described the condition.

RoyDavid, the problem with your above post is that soldiers who thought like this do not make the best killing machines. This is why the young and uneducated make the better soldier - they are easy to brain wash into zealous patriots. How is it that we forget the the United States of America is a temporary nation?
I am glad my citizenship is of the Kingdom of God and my zeal is for Christ my leader.

[Lou Newton]

Thanks for enlightening me Lou, but you did not need to post 65 paragraphs to convince me of Japanese war atrocities. The Chino-Jap war was an ongoing feud for ages, and it is disingenuous not to acknowledge the crimes on the other side of it. (Perhaps it just makes us all feel better about Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Every war has atrocities. And every army commits them..especially the invading ones. It is part and parcel of living by the sword. And every country seeks to cover their own crimes up while attempting to demonize their enemy's actions. All of this is very important for a governmental war machine to drum up popular support and enlist new machine gun fodder. America is not exempt. We need to look no further away from home than Sherman's march to the sea at the close of the Civil War. In the North they called it a brilliant tactical victory. In the South they called it stealing, pillaging, raping and murdering of noncombatant civilians. Is that what military heroes do? Oh I know..just some collateral damage to expedite the war.

Atrocities are the bitter poison that wars produce. A perfectly kind and decent young man who goes to church on Sundays and helps little old ladies across the street during the week, is enlisted in the army and is rigorously trained to be a killing machine. Upon his arrival in a foreign land, he is soon brought under enemy fire and watches his best friends be maimed and killed. Hitting him like hot lead, reality shows him that he is scarcely prepared and this is not what he had expected. The ultimate culture shock and time warp engulfs his mind and bayonets his emotions. Taught to be kind and decent from childhood, he now is faced with kill or be killed by people that yesterday he had no grudge. Soon, hate for the enemy takes over his being, and he realizes that absolute embedded hate is the emotion that keeps him alive, protects his friends and justifies his actions. At this point it becomes a very short journey to also hate his enemy's parents who conceived him, and all his enemy's family and friends who support him. The atrocity fruit ripens and emits its toxic stench, and sends its flowing poison through the ranks. At the end of the day, another reality hits deeper and wider than the others.."He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Now great remorse enters him and guilt consumes him like a cancer. Another victim of atrocity.

I do not think that your statement that the Japanese worshiped their emperor is significantly different from mine when I said that people must be deceived in order to lay everything down for a corrupt leader. Is not worship of another human the ultimate deception? And while we are about it, are not ALL soldiers pledged to obey their commanding officers without question? Is not the president, emperor or king also the commander in chief? Is it not dishonorable to disobey and punishable by death? What if the regime gave no choice whether to enlist?.. join or die? The battlefield offers small opportunity for fasting, praying and seeking God's will..someone else has done all that for you. Face the enemy in battle or be shot in the back by your officer. Not such easy choices. Yet we demonize these young men thrown into hell's own cauldron because they are a little different from our own boys..but not very much.

Maybe war stuff like this is why King David (honored as a man after God's own heart) was not permitted to build the Lord's temple.


For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood,
But against principalities, against powers,
Against the rulers of darkness of this age,
Against spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places. (Eph 6:12)


Don't criticize and speak evil about each other, dear brothers.
If you do, you will be fighting against God's law of loving one another
And declaring that He is wrong.
But your job is not to decide whether this law is right or wrong
But to obey it. (James 4:11)

Hi Roy,

Yes war is hell and I am very thankful to have never fought in one.

But The Lord Jesus told Adam and Eve that war would be a result of their sin:

¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust ----- FAMINE
all the days of your life.
¹⁵ And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,----- WAR
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,----- DISEASE
and you will strike his heel.”

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.---- DISEASE
Your desire will be for your husband,---- FAMINE
and he will rule over you.”-------WAR

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it----WAR
all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,-------------FAMINE
and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”-------THE FINAL DISEASE, DEATH

God did not bring war to mankind, man did by his sin. But God did send Israel to war against those nations that had let their sin go too far. So one could say God declares war on nations that let their sin go too far.

Ecclesiastes 3 (NIV)

A Time for Everything


3 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

After all Jesus is the Lamb but also The Warrior that comes to save.

While all men are evil, certainly there is a vast difference between those nations that worship idols and reject the One true God, and the nations that are based of the Christian faith.

While our government is filled with evil men, it also has many man who try to follow Christ.

The communist nations of Russia and China were far worse places to live than the US. Moa killed probably 100 million of his own people. Millions starved while he over ate so much that he became fat. Stalin also killed millions of his own people.

Hitler was very evil and killed millions of Jews, but no one would compare the German soldier to the Japanese soldier that saw both armies in action. The SS troops were very cruel, but the rest of the German army could not compare to the SS.

The Japanese soldiers were cruel beyond anything seen in modern days. Of course there are exceptions, but the bulk of them thought themselves superior to anyone that was not Japanese. They murdered, starved, beat, did not provide food or medicine, or even water to captives. The leaders took captive women and made them sex slaves for their soldiers. They even ate the flesh of their captives when they had other food. These are not isolated events; but events that were sanctioned by the leadership and the soldiers alike.

Our soldiers did not murder millions of innocent people. Many gave food to the civilians of the enemy. German soldiers did the same in Russia. The Japanese shot Philippine citizens who gave water to our soldiers on the Bataan death march.

The Japanese Empire was a very evil empire that was run by very evil men, and the people also had become very evil. Further the Japanese government has never apologized for these acts.

The left in this nation has tried to teach our children that the US was at fault for the war with Japan. That is just lies.

While FDR was an evil man, he did not compare to Hitler or Tojo.

You say that the war between China and Japan had been a feud for years. China has never landed on the islands of Japan. It was also the Mongols that attacked Japan ( but were not successful) and they were not Chinese. Japan took northern China and killed thousands of Chinese. But later attacked the rest of China and killed 10 million Chinese people. It was these murders that the US stood against and told Japan that we would not sell them any more oil until they got out of China.

This war was not only supported by a few evil leaders in Japan. The war had popular support from the people of Japan.

I fully believe ( after years of study) that our nation was sent by God to stop Hitler and Japan.

[RoyDavid]

Good morning Lou, my friend and brother,
I think that I should begin by saying that I too believe that there is a time for war, a time for a just war, a war actually ordained by God to punish the wicked and rescue the weak. I see the distinct possibility that WWII was one of those times. However I do not believe you are qualified to make that distinction despite your vast studies and advancing years.

For one, I am reasonably certain that your studies were from an English speaking perspective and thus an Allies bias. How much Japanese, German and Italian can you read? Secondly, I find it peculiar that a God-ordained war for justice would need to enlist the assistance of Josef Stalin and then give him the lion's share of the spoils of war. Our version of history wants to excuse this Bloody Butcher from murdering millions of his own people, and who arguably committed more atrocities that all the other Axis Powers combined. Roosevelt and Churchill both extolled his great virtues in order to gain public approval to enlist his aid. But God says NOT to be unequally yoked with evil and said there is NO fellowship between Christ and Satan. God says NOT to trust in horses and chariots, but to trust in Him alone. All the poor people that were given over to his tyrannical rule by FDR and Churchill may question your analysis of a successful Holy World War II. As in any war, it is the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak that bear the greatest suffering. Would not Jesus care about their viewpoint? Thirdly, I find it interesting that Sweden suffered the least of any European nation by maintaining neutrality. They defended only their own border, and refused to participate in the war or any of its atrocities. Could it be "Blessed are the Peacemakers" applies here??

Irregardless, I believe that the results of WW II could very well support both of our positions. From your perspective, a great amount of evil was stopped in its tracks. From my perspective, many relatively innocent and peace-loving people (no worse than either you nor I) had been deceptively duped into serving evil regimes and became the minions of Evil itself. It should be a lesson to all of us how easy it is to mislead a bigoted nationalistic people who refuse to consider the legitimate concerns of the other side. Since the disposition of their leaders, these Axis soldiers of great evil returned to their homes and families and have lived in virtual peace for over 70 years. Compare that to the nearly constant wars that the old Allied nations have been participating in during those same 70 years. How much different are we from them? We would do well to listen to our liberal left leaning friends to consider our own faults, as well as the virtues, positions and frailties of our neighbors BEFORE we bring the fruits of the war machine to bear.

[Lou Newton]

Good morning Lou, my friend and brother,
I think that I should begin by saying that I too believe that there is a time for war, a time for a just war, a war actually ordained by God to punish the wicked and rescue the weak. I see the distinct possibility that WWII was one of those times. However I do not believe you are qualified to make that distinction despite your vast studies and advancing years.

For one, I am reasonably certain that your studies were from an English speaking perspective and thus an Allies bias. How much Japanese, German and Italian can you read? Secondly, I find it peculiar that a God-ordained war for justice would need to enlist the assistance of Josef Stalin and then give him the lion's share of the spoils of war. Our version of history wants to excuse this Bloody Butcher from murdering millions of his own people, and who arguably committed more atrocities that all the other Axis Powers combined. Roosevelt and Churchill both extolled his great virtues in order to gain public approval to enlist his aid. But God says NOT to be unequally yoked with evil and said there is NO fellowship between Christ and Satan. God says NOT to trust in horses and chariots, but to trust in Him alone. All the poor people that were given over to his tyrannical rule by FDR and Churchill may question your analysis of a successful Holy World War II. As in any war, it is the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak that bear the greatest suffering. Would not Jesus care about their viewpoint? Thirdly, I find it interesting that Sweden suffered the least of any European nation by maintaining neutrality. They defended only their own border, and refused to participate in the war or any of its atrocities. Could it be "Blessed are the Peacemakers" applies here??

Irregardless, I believe that the results of WW II could very well support both of our positions. From your perspective, a great amount of evil was stopped in its tracks. From my perspective, many relatively innocent and peace-loving people (no worse than either you nor I) had been deceptively duped into serving evil regimes and became the minions of Evil itself. It should be a lesson to all of us how easy it is to mislead a bigoted nationalistic people who refuse to consider the legitimate concerns of the other side. Since the disposition of their leaders, these Axis soldiers of great evil returned to their homes and families and have lived in virtual peace for over 70 years. Compare that to the nearly constant wars that the old Allied nations have been participating in during those same 70 years. How much different are we from them? We would do well to listen to our liberal left leaning friends to consider our own faults, as well as the virtues, positions and frailties of our neighbors BEFORE we bring the fruits of the war machine to bear.

Hi Roy, Thanks for the reply.

First was not talking talking about the war in Europe, but only the war against Japan. Second, I did mention the terrible murders of Stalin and certainly have never gave any approval of Stalin, ever. He was a butcher and murderer of his own people and many others.

I did not make a judgement, but only gave my opinion, of which I am certainly entitled too. While I do not speak Japanese, Chinese or any other foreign language, I have read many accounts and watched many videos of people from Japan, and these other nations, tell their story and also gave their opinion of the wrong their nation did. I trust if the translation was wrong, someone would have protested by now. Also some of these spoke in English. History is hard to tell what actually took place, but sometimes the testimony of almost all sides agree. The only testimony that disagrees is the leaders that were being tried for war crimes. But even some of them admitted to all of these crimes. They seemed to be proud of these crimes.

The leaders of Japan not only murdered millions from other nations, they also did not protect, and in fact ordered women and children to fight the US guns with bamboo spears. The Japanese soldiers wore women's civilian clothes which caused the death of many civilians. They took cover in caves and the Japanese soldiers forced them out of these caves to their death so that the soldiers could take cover in the caves. This was during a US Navy bombardment that the Navy warned Japan that it would take place on that day. This is from testimony of the few Japanese children that survived. They testified that their own soldiers forced them out of the cave at gun point to the death of most of them. This is one reason 200,000 died on Okinawa.

It is the opinion of many historians that if the US would have had to attack the mainland 10's of millions of civilians would have died.

While I am certain that some US soldiers were very cruel. There are few accounts of that taking place. Many US soldiers had a complete emotional breakdown from having to kill so many people. Many of them begged the Japanese to come out of the machine gun nests and caves and even promised that they would be treated kindly and given food and other care. But most chose death instead. I fail to see how suicide is defending your family or homeland.

The war was very popular with the people of Japan. But the people were not so in favor of it after their homeland was destroyed, as they had destroyed the homeland of others.