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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Brad Witt, Former President Trump, Henry Heimuller, Joe Biden, Pat Robertson, Joe Biden’s dogs, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone.
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Japanese Officer beheading an Allied POW
War Crimes I thought doing a Take on War Crimes might be interesting this week. We all know what kind of crimes Hitler and The SS did to these groups of people. Roma (Gypsies), people with disabilities, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and Afro-Germans, and Jews. The Nazis also identified political nonconformists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and so-called anti-socials as enemies and security risks either because they intentionally opposed the Nazi regime or some aspect of their behavior did not fit Nazi perceptions of social norms. The Germans were not the only ones who carried out atrocities against the Allies. Japan was cruel and barbaric. The Japanese captured approximately 350,000 prisoners of war, more than half of whom were natives. For propaganda purposes most of the native prisoners were released while 140,000 white prisoners---mainly from Britain, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Canada---were kept. The death rate among Japanese POWs was 27 percent, compared to 4 percent for Allied prisoners held in German and Italian camps. Nearly 50,000 U.S. soldiers and civilians became prisoners of wars. Nearly half were forced to work as slave laborers. About 40 percent of American POWs died in Japanese captivity (by contrast only 1 percent died in Nazi camps). Allied prisoners tried to stave off disease by constructing spotless kitchens and latrines; using bamboo pipes, which brought in cholera-free water from springs miles away: and burning the dead in funeral pyres so they wouldn't contaminate the living. The prisoners carried out these tasks after torturous, 16-hours work stints, during time they could have spent sleeping. In many cases their efforts proved futile. Scores were dispatched by malaria, dysentery, cholera or starvation anyway. The Japanese were very brutal to their prisoners of war. Prisoners of war endured gruesome tortures with rats and ate grasshoppers for nourishment. Some were used for medical experiments and target practice. About 50,000 Allied prisoners of war died, many from brutal treatment. Americans were shocked by a photograph run in American newspapers showing a Japanese soldiers raising his sword to behead an Allied prisoner of war, bound and tied and bent over on his knees. Captured airmen shot down over Japan were "beaten to death, beheaded, buried alive, cut into pieces for medical experiments and in a few cases eaten by vengeful Japanese." Some POWs were publically displayed naked in 4-x-5-foot cages. Captured B-29 bombardier Raymond "Hap" Halloran shrunk from 215 to 122 pounds and was displayed naked in a cage at the Tokyo Zoo, where people cursed and threw things at him. The idea that a soldier would surrender rather than die, or stay alive in a prison camp rather than kill himself, was just alien to the Japanese." Allied prisoners liberated from Japanese POW camps looked like those liberated from Auschwitz. At the end of the wars Japanese soldiers at prisoner of war camps were told to behead, stab or shoot the 100,000 or so remaining Allied prisoners the moment an invasion began. While history remembers what the Germans did to the Jews and other people in Europe, history seems to deflect what the Japanese did to Allied troops. I wonder why that is? Why has the United States historians kept mum about the cruelty of the Japanese military against the Allied POW’s. Why have they left out that the Japanese did experiments on soldiers just as gruesome as the Nazi’s. And was even crueler and more barbaric. Or the murder and destruction of entire town’s of Chinese murdering woman and children, raping old women and young girls. The Nazi’s were n ot the only devil in WWII.
Tammy
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