Did the Japanese deserve the Atomic Bomb?

Where was he captured? What was some other experiences he had in the camp? I am sure he liked the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Captured at Singapore on 15 February 1942, then shipped to Vietnam (then in French Indo-China) 6 weeks later where he and 1,000 or so other POWs were used as forced labour on the Saigon docks. 15 months later, he was in a group of 700 transferred to Thailand to work on the Burma Railway and remained in Thailand at a succession of camps (Kinsayok (No.2) Jungle Camp, Kinsayok Main Camp, Tamuang and finally Pratchai) until the end of the war.

His views on the film were something like this:!

Lots more experiences than that of course, but I don't want to monopolise the thread with too much about one man. I'll send you a private message (in the next day or two).

 

Rek even your "one" man is worth monopolising the thread with. Its good to celebrate those like him who would not normally get an airing... All power to his elbow for surviving that lot!
Dee

 

Thanks Dee! The older I get, the more overawed I become by lives of the WWII vets on this site and everywhere else, who gave so much but received so little gratitude from my and subsequent generations ... and I include myself in that rebuke!

 

I do think there is something wrong when posts more than suggest that the reason we should 'nuke' someone or other is because they were more than savage to us in the first place. Don't misunderstand me, to use any means necessary to kill and defeat an enemy I very much agree with but I'm not sure simply wanting to kill others because they 'started it' is the right reason. I suppose it could and will be argued that it doesn't matter a damn what the reason is as long as you kill them but if you want to claim, as many apparently do, the moral high ground then the many statements simply wanting to exact revenge should change. I do agree completely that the 'apologists' should shut up and go back to watching hollywood fight wars, much more civilised!

Suppose I'm your neighbour. At some point I decide I have a need for more land - your land - so I come into your house with a big stick and smash all your furniture and kill a couple of your cats just for the sake of it. What would you do? Bend over and ask for more? Or would you 'lend your eye a terrible aspect' and push me out of your house and make sure this would never happen again, and by the swiftest and most expedient means?

 

His views on the film were something like this:!

Lots more experiences than that of course, but I don't want to monopolise the thread with too much about one man. I'll send you a private message (in the next day or two).

I will look foward to reading about it and don't forget to mention why he didn't like the film. Probably because his and other's experiences was much worse than depicted in the movie.

 

ZA,
I'm not quite sure you have understood me and if that is the case I apologise. Let me try again: Should you do anything along the lines you have suggested I think you would meet a very sticky end, which is what you presumably wanted me to say. Also, as presumably you are alluding to a war situation it would be necessary for me to come to your house and kill you to stop such a thing happening again. That is not revenge, it is not a hatred of the Portuguese but a necessary action to prevent you doing the same again. Should you have committed such an act on someone else I would also feel the same way and would join an alliance if necessary to put a stop to your warlike tendances. Again it's not revenge or a wish to punish the Portuguese or even a 'you started it and I will finish it' attitude. It is simply pragmatic to put a stop to your warlike tendances. If I were to want to punish the Portuguese and hurt them badly, kill as many as I can and make them suffer just for the satisfaction of doing so then I believe that is wrong. I said what I did because I felt that some of the postings on the subject were doing just that. I can't take the moral high ground and pretend I'm better than you if I mete out the same savage and inhumane treatment and saying in effect I did it because I enjoyed inflicting it or they deserved it!!!
Make no mistake, I would visit upon anyone the utmost and most terrible act I could muster when protecting me and my own. I have said I would have dropped that bomb had I been able to. That is different to suggesting that I enjoy inflicting that carnage. I hope that clears it up.

 

I will look foward to reading about it and don't forget to mention why he didn't like the film. Probably because his and other's experiences was much worse than depicted in the movie.

Basically a few reasons:

1. The reason you give - i.e. that the reality was much worse than depicted (although the real thing would probably have been unwatchable). It's years since I last saw it, but I do recall the prisoners - even those in the sick huts - all looking remarkably well.

2. The Colonel Nicholson character (Alec Guinness) is shown to be a collaborator, because he goes out of his way to expedite the completion of the bridge when he does not need to. This is not true of the real life commander on the bridge, Philip Toosey, who became one of the most respected men on the Burma Railway. The many men who owed their lives to his courage and leadership qualities resented this depiction of their hero in the film.

3. Also, there are some rather silly assumptions and attitudes that pervade the film - e.g. suggesting that the Japanese did not know how to design a bridge, whereas in fact their engineers were very accomplished. I think though that this last point tended to amuse him rather than annoy him.

Generally former prisoners disliked the film for these sorts of reasons, but their dislike of the film was not unqualified. Until the film's release, remarkably few people (in the UK at least) had any idea at all of what these former POWs had been through, so at least the film drew some attention to these issues.

Trying to put myself in their shoes, I'm not sure what would annoy me more: nobody having the foggiest ideal of what I had gone through or people having seen a very watered-down depiction of it!

 

Suppose I'm your neighbour. At some point I decide I have a need for more land - your land - so I come into your house with a big stick and smash all your furniture and kill a couple of your cats just for the sake of it. What would you do? Bend over and ask for more? Or would you 'lend your eye a terrible aspect' and push me out of your house and make sure this would never happen again, and by the swiftest and most expedient means?

We need to make a heck of a lot of assumptions to be satisfied that this is a good parallel for the Hiroshima situation but, assuming all those criteria are in place, then I think we all agree that Fireman can (and should) use "the swiftest and most expedient means".

I think the point though (which I hope is consistent with Fireman's earlier post) is whether his justification for doing this is:

(a) that it is the course of action which results in the least long-term harm; or

(b) revenge.

Obviously (b) is tempting (and I have no particular problem with it), but (a) must I believe also be present if whatever Fireman is going to do to you is also going to happen to your own (completely innocent) cats!

 

May I, in all seriousness, ask that whoever is still around on this site in the distant future and who also believes that I was right, re-prints this article occasionally so that one of my generation's views may still be heard ?

With many thanks

Ron

I will do so, Ron, and I'm sure that many others here will be very happy to do so too. It cuts straight through all the populist drivel and says everything that needs saying in a few short sentences.

We'll also make sure that there's someone here on the site to re-publish it when we're all gone!

 

Ron and Rek, I hope that in that future of yours the Japanese will be aware of what they did and acknowledge it instead of playing their victim part because they were on the receiving end of the best America could offer at that time.

Personally I consider the Japanese of those days and modern times the worst mankind has produced. At least the Germans acknowledged IN GENERAL what they did and therefore could move forward. That is therefore now part of history.

Seeing a documentary about Japan’s systematical rape of 10 year olds in brothels and then a news item about them bowing before a temple to their ‘heroes’ pisses me off no end. A nation of people who care about honour?

Modern Japanse way of thinking for me is nicely illustrated in a documentary where Japanese students interviewed a Camp commander who stated that all those Europeans working under him died because they could not digest rice properly. Reaction of the students? Admiration and respect in their eyes, bowing and saying ‘hai’.

Acknowledge your past and until then walk with your head down in same and refrein from questioning the actions of others!

Regards,

Marco

 

It's not just the Japanese who are in denial. There are a few European scumbags as well.

BBC News - Le Pen among Euro rightists in Japan WWII shrine visit

 

I wonder if any one has tried to contact LostKingdom and let him know how his thread is coming on? He's not been here for over 6 years

 

I thought I would post this here hope thats ok BBC News - WWII veteran takes comfort from VJ Day service

 

REK

Many thanks !

Ron

 

Over the weekend I rewatched a doco on the Tai/Burma railway. I would suggest that anyone who watched that program could not ever ask the question which is the subject of this thread.

People of my genaration truly do not know we are born when you see the cruelty inflicted on those poor souls who found themselves being systematically and sadisticly destroyed. I can only thank those who gave so much for our freedom.

Lest we forget, for I will never forget.

Regards,
Cliff

 

Thanks, Adam. Very well put.

 

I wonder if any one has tried to contact LostKingdom and let him know how his thread is coming on? He's not been here for over 6 years
All he did was post and ghost, 3 posts in all. Look at all the dust he stirred up. It needed it.

 

Thank you Vp

The reason why explained in photos.

 

Earlier today, I heard Alastair Urquhart, a Gordon Highlander captured at Singapore, talk about his recently published memoirs, The Forgotten Highlander, at the Edinburgh Book Festival. He is a superb speaker, who dividly described the appalling sufferings of himself and his comrades in captivity.

He worked on the notorious railway, including the first bridge, which fell down when the first engine crossed it, and was then sent to Japan on one of the Hellships. It was sunk, but he was picked up by a Japanese ship, and was then held near Nagasaki. He saw the B29 that dropped the atomic bomb, and pointed out that, without it, he and all the other PoWs of the Japanese would have been murdered when the Allies invaded Japan.

He thought that the film The Bridge on the River Kwai was 'a load of rubbish.'

The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East: Amazon.co.uk: Alistair Urquhart: Books