Text 29941, 53 rader
Skriven 2006-05-17 08:03:48 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
  Kommentar till text 29708 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
Ärende: WWII revisited
======================
Replying to a message of Ward Dossche to Bob Ackley:

 WD> The odd thing is that such questions also need to be answered by e.g.
 WD> Japanese while the appropriate question would be "Have you ever taken
 WD> part in the massacre of Nanking" (300.000 mostly civilians
 WD> slaughtered in 2 weeks) or "Have you been a guard during the marches
 WD> in Bataan?"

 WD> The Japanese got a very good deal out of the war ... Germany paid
 WD> billions and billions of reparation fees to e.g. Jews, Japan did not
 WD> do a thing. Paid not a singly penny, erased the bloody episodes from
 WD> its history and even glorifies its war-criminals which were sentenced
 WD> to death, and eventually executed, during the war-crimes tribunals of
 WD> the Far East.

While Homma was tried and executed for the Bataan episode, IIRC there was no
evidence that he'd ordered it or even knew about it until long after the fact. 
One basic doctrine in US military law is that one can delegate authority but
not responsibility (IOW one is always responsible for the actions of a
subordinate - the current administration should take note).   The point was
made many years ago - and I've forgotten where I read it - that the prisoners
were treated about the same as Japanese army recruits were treated (except for
the summary executions), and thus the Japanese soldiers and lower level
officers didn't consider that treatment to be wrong or inhuman or feel it
necessary to report anything to higher headquarters.

FWIW I've always considered those post-war tribunals to be a legal travesty and
a horrible
legal precedent.  If only because the standards were not evenly applied.  One
of the original charges against Admiral Doenitz was his conducting unrestricted
submarine warfare against Allied shipping; when his defense lawyers tried to
subpoena Admiral Nimitz, who was doing exactly the same thing against Japanese
shipping - and more effectively, by war's end over 2/3 of the merchant ships
Japan had at the beginning of the war had been sunk - that charge was dropped
(and, of course, no charges were brought against Admiral Pound, whose blockade
of Europe was far more effective than Doenitz' attempted blockade of Britain). 
Likewise, no charges were preferred against those who planned and executed the
fire bombings of Bremen, Dresden, or Tokyo (the firebombings of Tokyo killed as
many or more civilians as did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -
combined - yet people get far more incensed about the use of those two a-bombs;
AFAIC dead is dead, it doesn't really matter how).  When
the late General LeMay was told that if the Allies had lost the war he would
have been tried
as a war criminal for the firebombing of Tokyo he commented to the effect that
that was probably true, but fortunately (for him) the Allies did not lose the
war.

When one points these things out, one is immediately labelled an America-hater
by those
on the extremist right wing in this country.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:2905/3)