My Father, World War II, and Sumo Wrestlers.

[Sonnar Brian]

My Father saw Japanese Sumo Wrestlers during World War II. They were interned at the POW camp on Tinian. The Other Japanese prisoners kept them well fed, and they in turn practiced their sport. My Dad and the other Airmen also were spectators, and brought them part of their rations. The Japanese POW’s wondered why the Americans treated them so well, after all they had expected to be executed after being captured. My Dad and others explained that they were prisoners, and that’s not how prisoners were treated.

Americal fliers captured by the Japanese were not treated so well. They were routinely beaten after Air Raids. At the end of the war, many were executed after word of the surrender came out. The Imperial Japanese run POW camps were no better than the Nazi German Concentration Camps. That’s a cultural difference.

 

[Carzee]

My Father saw Japanese Sumo Wrestlers during World War II. They were interned at the POW camp on Tinian. The Other Japanese prisoners kept them well fed, and they in turn practiced their sport. My Dad and the other Airmen also were spectators, and brought them part of their rations. The Japanese POW’s wondered why the Americans treated them so well, after all they had expected to be executed after being captured. My Dad and others explained that they were prisoners, and that’s not how prisoners were treated.

Americal fliers captured by the Japanese were not treated so well. They were routinely beaten after Air Raids. At the end of the war, many were executed after word of the surrender came out. The Imperial Japanese run POW camps were no better than the Nazi German Concentration Camps. That’s a cultural difference.

Interesting info -reads like something fascinating you discover in a James A Mitchener novel.


.and my own favorite war trivia... Churchill's memoirs - when he first heard the USA had finally entered WW2: "Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force." You can read the sheer relief. His satisfaction. He was saved and the world had been saved. And of course, it was a delusion after all: the USSR was not yet an issue. But just 3 years later...


and a personal observation. August 1995. 50th Anniversary of A -bombs on Japan. The obligatory TV special airs: Enola Gay's navigator says he got a break in the cloud cover at exactly the right time and got the bombsites right on the Mitsubishi Steel Works knowing that a few seconds after he pushed the button it would be totally obliterated and wiped off the face of the earth. I watched that on my Mitsubishi TV...

 

[VinceC]

The first time I lived in Germany (then West Germany), in the early 1980s, near Bremen, several times I met men in their 60s who, upon learning I was American, told me they had been soldiers in World War II and had been captured by the Americans and sent to POW labor camps in the United States. They all said they had been well-treated and had good memories of Americans because of that. Most of them worked on farms in the U.S., probably because of a wartime labor shortage.

 

[raid]

Things don't always stay the same way, my friends. The Iraqi Army used to be trained by the Brits, and the Iraqi officers were first class in overall gettlemen behavior. The same applies to other countries. What applied to the times of our fathers and grandfathers may have shifted over time. Let's leave it at this.

 

[rpsawin]

My Father saw Japanese Sumo Wrestlers during World War II. They were interned at the POW camp on Tinian. The Other Japanese prisoners kept them well fed, and they in turn practiced their sport. My Dad and the other Airmen also were spectators, and brought them part of their rations. The Japanese POW’s wondered why the Americans treated them so well, after all they had expected to be executed after being captured. My Dad and others explained that they were prisoners, and that’s not how prisoners were treated.

Americal fliers captured by the Japanese were not treated so well. They were routinely beaten after Air Raids. At the end of the war, many were executed after word of the surrender came out. The Imperial Japanese run POW camps were no better than the Nazi German Concentration Camps. That’s a cultural difference.

Brian,

Way off topic, but my mother was an army nurse on Tinian during the same period. You are the only other person I have come across who made reference to it.

Bob

 

[VinceC]

>>Things don't always stay the same way, my friends.<<

Sadly, that's quite true, Raid.

 

[Mr Ho]

Interesting info -reads like something fascinating you discover in a James A Mitchener novel.

Read King Rat by James Clavell for a chilling perspective on life in a Japanese POW camp - Changi Prison in Singapore. The author himself was imprisoned there during the occupation and he touches upon the moral/cultural relativism issue that B. Sweeney posits above.

While the Japanese certainly did some harsh stuff during WWII, so did others. Basically, war sucks and rules and men get twisted and broken. It's still happening today at Guantanamo and hidden "POW" camps across Europe, no? How will the world look back at the U.S. and its methods 60 years from now?

 

[raid]

As I said above, let's leave it at this. Photography is a safer ground for discussions.

 

[FrankS]

While the Japanese certainly did some harsh stuff during WWII, so did others. Basically, war sucks and rules and men get twisted and broken. It's still happening today at Guantanamo and hidden "POW" camps across Europe, no? How will the world look back at the U.S. and its methods 60 years from now?

Got to agree with this.



Also, one needs some historical/cultural perspective: consider the practice of medieval samurai warriors committing suicide rather than losing face/dignity at being captured, or for simply for causing a disgrace to their lord. They acted from a totally different mindset. Do I agree with or condone how the Japanese treated WWII prisoners? No of course not, because I have a western mindset. Is it possible for me to understand why they acted as (brutally) as they did? Yes I can.

 

[FrankS]

Agree also with Raid. I was typing and posted before reading his post #8.

 

[Jocko]

There seems to be a consensus that this thread should not continue, but I would like to add a couple of points - firstly that I can well understand why Brian posted and endorse his sentiments completely.

Secondly, as Raid observes, things do not stay the same. The Japan of the "China Incident" and the Pacific war was a brutalised, disoriented society manipulated by a viciously self-interested clique. Parallel cases will immediately suggest themselves.

Yet as this suggests, such things have happened in many times and places, and I am rather dubious about any intrinsic difference between western and oriental mindsets. If we look at the greatest work of Samurai literature - the Hagakure of Jocho Yamamoto - we find four great rules for the true warrior: "to never fall behind in the way" - that is to develop ones' nature to the fullest, to serve just and lawful authority, to love one's parents and, above all, "to be deeply compassionate and help all human beings". Indeed, the whole book is marked by such kindness and sanity that I wish everyone had read it.

Human beings, being what they are, will often take the easy way out - the path of stupidity, cruelty and sloth. But evolution, biological and spiritual, is sustained by exceptions, not conformity. Curiously, having known many veterans, I have found that Jocho's virtues are particularly marked amongst them, undoubtedly because of their experiences of the potential opposite.

As for the rest of us, let's not fall behind on the way.

Cheers, Ian