Japanese sailor regrets vivisection...

[TreasonousBastard]

For 62 years Akira Makino spoke not a word of what he had done. But to those who knew him well it must have been obvious that he was a man with a tortured conscience. Why else would he have returned so often to the obscure, mosquito-blown town in the southern Philippines where he experienced such misery during the Second World War? He set up war memorials, gave clothes to poor children, and bought an entire set of uniforms for a local baseball team.

Last year, at the age of 83, he embarked on a gruelling pilgrimage to 88 Buddhist temples in Japan. After number 40 he collapsed from heat exhaustion, having permanently injured his knees. “My wife didn’t like me going back to the Philippines — she called me ‘war crazy’,” said Mr Makino, a frail old man who lives alone in Hirakata, near Osaka. “But she let me go anyway. Right up until she died three years ago, I never told her. But over time I think she realised.”

Only in the twilight of his life has Mr Makino begun to talk about the secret he carried for more than 60 years. In 1944, as a medical auxiliary in the Imperial Navy, he was stationed on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. There he was party to one of the most notorious and poorly chronicled cruelties of the Japanese war effort — the medical dissection of living prisoners of war.

<...>

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1437667.ece

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. I forgive him.

Peace

[rockymountaindem]

2. I'm glad he feels remorse, but when will the Japanese government apologize

and make reparations?

[soothsayer]

4. dunno. VA only apologized for slavery in the US just this week.

Might take awhile...

[AtomicKitten]

3. Better late than never, I suppose.

I'm sure many soldiers across this planet and time have appalling stories.

Perhaps we lost our soul in the process of evolution because this is further evidence that the animal kingdom is superior to human beings.

[GreenZoneLT]

6. Y'think?

I dunno, my kitty cat thinks vivisection and torture are GREAT. Pretty heinous what he does to a chipmunk or lizard.

[AtomicKitten]

8. when my Renfield does it

... it's instinctual. Leaps and bounds from "thinking it's great."

[TreasonousBastard]

10. True-- cats are "designed" to play with their food, and have...

no choice in the matter, although I'll admit that I'm sometimes taken aback by anthropomorphising my cats when they seem to be having so much fun. And bringing me "gifts."

But, we have a choice. And we have the ability to be upset by our pets acting naturally, and even more upset when we act barbarically ourselves.

[dos pelos]

7. There is no moral equivalence,we were and still are morally superior......

I say this knowing of the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo.I say this knowing of Abu Graib.I say this knowing of the use of depleted uranium,knowing of the use of agent orange defoliants in Viet Nam.
We have lost our moral clarity since WWII.We are increasingly sullied and blunted in the clarity of our purpose,used for ignoble ends,by leaders unworthy of us.NEVERTHELESS,we were and yet still are above
such as the WWII Japanese by whom:

Up to 300,000 Chinese were killed by biological weapons between 1938 and 1945

— 200,000 women are thought to have been made to work in Japanese military brothels during the war

— The construction of the Railway of Death, linking Thailand and Burma and including the bridge over the River Kwai, cost the lives of 13,000 prisoners of war and up to 100,000 civilians Between December 1937 and March 1938 Japanese troops occupying the Chinese city of Nanjing killed an estimated 275,000 people, many of them women and children.

Of particular note,Nanjing,then known as Nanking,in 1937,lost,at least 275,000 men women and children,most at the point of a bayonet.Not to mention Manila.In no instance in WWII or since has a US force behaved in such a manner on such a scale.We have the Nuremberg precedent,the obligation,the responsibility to refuse an unjust order.We have,yet,a populace willing to oppose a tyrants will to use a military for wrong.We have an officer corps with some residual sense of tradition and integrity,yet unwilling to bend to the ignoble purpose of a malign leadership.
We are debased in comparison to what we were.Even debased,we are morally still far superior the the Japanese of 1935-1945.Harry Truman gave them hell.They had it coming.There is no moral equivalence.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Really, now...

this story is about one guy seeking his personal redemption for a great "sin" he committed years ago and still haunted him. Not about who's "morally superior." None of us are.

The lesson is not about the Japanese being the bad guys, we know they were back then, but about how any one of us can turn into the monster that he found himself to have been.

[Kiouni]

5. screwed up but fascinating

The article gives a good overview of Japanese atrocities but I wonder if there are any books on this subject I would love to learn more about the barely remembered atrocities.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. Iris Chang is the best known author addressing

the atrocities in Manchuria.

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.12.96/cover/china1-9650.html

Haven't read the book but heard her speak, and she is awesome.

Don't know of any other books specifically about Japanese atrocities during the war, but many histories and memoirs refer obliquely to them. It's not the sort of thing you normally write a book about. It's the sort of thing you try to forget.

[NuttyFluffers]

12. may he find peace in his penance

it is what we all want when we seek forgiveness from our transgressions. and the path to forgiving oneself is perhaps the hardest path of all.