- Why so much turnover in mayor's office?
- Hearing on the Ruby Hill towers
- Let freedom ring
- Promoting socialized medicine
- Immigration Laws or Lack Thereof
- Atheist Diversionary Tactics
- The "Melting Pot" is unique to America
- Many mighty hearts covering the world
- Roan Drilling Bad for Colorado, country
- Americans entitled to universal health care
Japan's WWII behavior
This Speakout has not been edited
By Howard B. Walitt, Grand Junction
Re: "Comfort women' deserve some justice," Ellen Goodman's column published on 17 March 2007.
Following is my letter, recently published by The Grand Junction Free Press, regarding an issue related to the one discussed by Ms. Goodman.
"A recent George Will column, concerning the film, Letters, was published in the competing Grand Junction daily newspaper. It is a pathetic apologia for those who would forget or deny history. "Mr. Will, a man of great intellect and historical knowledge, should be ashamed of himself for writing this column. It is sad that he (as well as Clint Eastwood, director of the "Japanese perspective" film about the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, Letters) should succumb to such regrettable political correctness when dealing with the most unrepentant barbarians in the twentieth century, the Japs of 1930 -- 1945. (While it is no longer acceptable to use this term about our Far Eastern ally, that is the nomenclature used during their years of Banzai bestiality and Bushido.) It is now 60 years since the end of World War II, and the government of Nippon, and precious few of its citizens, has never acknowledged, much less apologized for, its frenzied barbarism during the 1930 - 1940s period of history.)
"Japanese school texts gloss over or fail to mention the almost unparalleled atrocities perpetrated by the nationalistic and imperialistic Japan of that age, which sought to create its euphemistically benign "Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."
"Lest we forget, as the Japanese would have the world do: the rape of Nanking (China); unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor (Hawaii); Bataan Death March (Philippines); "comfort women" (Korean sex slaves for Japanese soldiers); POW slave labor (e.g., Thai/Burma railways; Japanese mines and factories); Unit 731,and other sites (lethal germ warfare experiments, using POWs and Chinese civilians, in Manchurian "labs"); and on, and on ...
"Nearly 75 years after Japan began its foul and bestial campaign of aggression and conquest in Asia and the Pacific, they have yet to confess to the unspeakable misery, death and ruin that they wreaked on the world. It is unfortunate that it is politically incorrect to mention these historical facts because Japan is now an ally, a cultured people, a valued trading partner . one of the "good guys." [For those with a strong stomach, an instructive read is, The Rape of Nanking, The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," Iris Chang, Basic Books, 1997.] As a nation, they should be regarded as a pariah state, until they openly admit, both to their own people, as well as their victims, the sadistic inhumanity for which they bear total culpability."
"Yes, history is written by the winners, but that does not make it less true."
The 940... shelves in your library should have dozens of books about the Bataan Death March,POW slave labor camps.Hellships,building the Burma railroad.The beheadings for thrills.Medical surgical experiments on living prisoners.The failed efforts by American and Allied POWs to get compensation from Mitsubishi,Kawasaki,Mitsui,Nippon Steel, and 40 other Japanese companies.
Here are books on MAGIC,the decoding system that inabled intelligence agencies to know Japanese spies were at work on the West Coast.The agonizing decision made to remove all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast rather than reveal codes were broken.The shameless mining of that incident for money and monuments.