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Echo 
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Joined: May 2008
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 3:57 pm |
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Although Dec 7, will live in infamy - Dec 8th when the Japanese invaded the Philippines goes largely unmentioned, but in my family we remembered, with my Dad's Brother dead on Corregidor and my Grandma's brother lost on the Bataan Death March 4 months later as a result, and even in 1975 my Great-Grandmother pausing to look out the window and sigh and say "I keep thinking one day, I'll look out the window and there he'll be, walking up the lane"
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If Light is in your heart, you will find your way Home. (Rumi)
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. Chinese proverb
http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/
http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/
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| Post Number: 2
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burntfoot
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 4:47 pm |
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My wife's mother's birth certificate was lost in the devastation in Manila due to war destruction. She was born about that time.
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I love the mountains!
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| Post Number: 3
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Old Frank
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 5:01 pm |
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I worked with a guy in the 60's who had survived the Bataan death march and imprisonment. His best friend was beheaded by one swing of an officers sword on the march, for no apparent reason, except for contempt of a soldier who would surrender.
He said he weighed 90 pounds when liberated.
He said the best Thanksgiving meal he had in his lifetime was a rat he caught while in the camp.
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My favorite compliment: "GrandPa, I've seen other old men, and their faces are a whole lot cruddier than yours is".
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| Post Number: 4
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Ben2World
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 5:05 pm |
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Historically, until WWII, there had never been any bad blood between the Japanese and southeast Asians. The Japanese planners were smart enough to hoist slogans like "Asia for Asians" and "Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Zone" -- and got quite a lot of enthusiastic support from the local populations. Many saw the Japanese as liberators.
But the savagery (there is no other word to describe the Japanese occupation) was such that a mere 3 years of occupation aroused so much hatred among southeast Asians that it overturned all feelings against centuries of European colonization and oppression! Without a single exception, southeast Asians in every state helped their erstwhile European colonial 'masters' -- every which way they could -- to rid the Japanese!
Even today, folks in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia... still bristle at the barbarity of the Japanese occupation.
Also very telling how even today, despite Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, and despite decades of Japanese largesse in monetary aid -- a now democratic Japan still finds it hard to be treated as a trusted friend and ally in both East and Southeast Asia.
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The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page. -- St. Augustine
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| Post Number: 5
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wwwest
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Joined: Dec. 2002
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 6:02 pm |
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Gives you a little insight as to what can happen when the redneck warrior part of a culture gets full control of political and military power in a country doesn't it??
Do those same Asians hate Pol Pot, or do they generalize to Cambodians? Of course, he did not get to wreak his insanity on a very wide scale compared to the Japanese.
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| Post Number: 6
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Echo
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 7:55 pm |
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(Old Frank @ Dec. 08 2012, 2:01 pm)
QUOTE I worked with a guy in the 60's who had survived the Bataan death march and imprisonment. His best friend was beheaded by one swing of an officers sword on the march, for no apparent reason, except for contempt of a soldier who would surrender.
He said he weighed 90 pounds when liberated.
He said the best Thanksgiving meal he had in his lifetime was a rat he caught while in the camp.
That sounds familiar to the part of the story I had not mentioned. A survivor, and former friend came to my Great Grandmother once and told he that he had seen my great uncle, exhausted, and saying " I have to stop" slump down next to a tree and he said, "the last time I looked back I saw a soldier coming up behind your son's tree, with his sword up"
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If Light is in your heart, you will find your way Home. (Rumi)
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. Chinese proverb
http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/
http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/
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| Post Number: 7
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Echo
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Joined: May 2008
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 7:58 pm |
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My Dad was stationed on the Phillipines himself for three years as a morse code operator, but he was the youngest of 12, and it was 15 years later. He said the people of Manila were very friendly and welcoming to Americans while he lived there.
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If Light is in your heart, you will find your way Home. (Rumi)
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. Chinese proverb
http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/
http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/
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| Post Number: 8
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Ben2World
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 8:25 pm |
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(Echo @ Dec. 08 2012, 4:58 pm)
QUOTE My Dad was stationed on the Phillipines himself for three years as a morse code operator, but he was the youngest of 12, and it was 15 years later. He said the people of Manila were very friendly and welcoming to Americans while he lived there.
Actually, friendships as well as friendly superior-subordinate relationships were quite common. As were seething feelings of injustice. In most all societies, "contradictory" emotions often coexist and persist.
Read the histories of southeast Asia - oh heck, most any occupied places the world over -- and stories abound of roving bands of 'natives' out to kill the occupiers (on the one hand) -- and also 'natives' risking their lives to protect said occupiers -- out of loyalty and sometimes genuine affection.
Interestingly, more often than not, ex-colonies who had fought tooth and nail to rid themselves of their occupiers later develop deep, deep nostalgia and affection for their erstwhile colonizers! North Africans today speak better French than most people in France. Filipinos adore American culture -- just as Americans go 'ga ga' over the British royalty in ways that would make most Brits gag.
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The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page. -- St. Augustine
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| Post Number: 9
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Ben2World
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 8:40 pm |
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But before we get too romantic about native affection and all that... it should be noted that our textbooks pretty much gloss over the early years of our occupation of the Philippines -- and how the Filipinos fought for ten years against their new occupiers -- with deaths ranging from a low of tens of thousands -- to upper ranges in the million! Feel free to read up on the history of Filipino resistance.
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The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page. -- St. Augustine
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| Post Number: 10
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High_Sierra_Fan
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 8:55 pm |
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One still present artifact of those early days of resistance, recently upgraded in fact: the United States Pistol, Caliber .45, Model 1911.
So many anniversaries on the calendar. Some a lot happier than others.
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| Post Number: 11
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Chuck D
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Posted on: Dec. 08 2012, 9:09 pm |
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My Scoutmaster was a survivor of the Bataan Death March and the POW camps, at the end of the war he was working in mines in northern Japan
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Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
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| Post Number: 12
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Altarboy
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Posted on: Dec. 09 2012, 6:21 pm |
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It's odd how frequently historians seem to gloss over the atrocities commited by the Japanese. I remember reading that the mortality rate of our pows under the Germans was around 4% and upwards of 60% under the Japs. We frequently hear of our internment of the Japanese-Americans but little of the German-Americans we also detained for four years. All in all it was a terrible time for everyone.
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| Post Number: 13
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BradMT
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Posted on: Dec. 09 2012, 6:28 pm |
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I don't think historians "gloss-over" Japanese atrocities at all... it's all on record for the viewing.
OTOH, American History usually "gloss's over" our atrocities, which are many.
History belongs to the victor.
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Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. – Socrates
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| Post Number: 14
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Altarboy
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Posted on: Dec. 09 2012, 6:38 pm |
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Perhaps 'gloss over' was not the right phrase. I just think the history channels spend more time showing documentaries of Nazis than Imp. Japs and Stalinist Purges combined.
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| Post Number: 16
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ataylor
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Posted on: Dec. 12 2012, 9:38 am |
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My father was in the Navy and in the Philippines where he was captured and held in the POW camp at Cabanatuan. He almost starved to death. Dad was rescued by US Rangers in the mission documented in the film The Great Raid. He always spoke fondly of the Filipinos and of the beauty of the Philippines.
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Survival Skills 101 • Eat Better
