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Tortured by the Japanese in WW2, a former POW met his tormentor 50 years later
- mercurial 13y agoInteresting story. The ingenuity prisoners display is often remarkable. Of course, this goes pretty much against the current mood in Japanese politics (or at least what I, as a foreigner living abroad, reads about), which goes more along the lines of "our brave soldiers never did anything wrong when they were expanding the Co-Prosperity Sphere".
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- StavrosK 13y agoAre American politics any different, when "liberating" Iraq?
- lovemenot 13y agoTwo wrongs don't make a right. And what does America have to do with this anyway? The protagonaists were British and Japanese.
- StavrosK 13y agoMy point was that most countries' politicians will support their atrocities, and that it's not a phenomenon specific to the Japanese.
- mercurial 13y agoNo, but Germany, for instance, isn't trying to whitewash history in its schoolbooks.
- sitkack 13y agoI hope in 50 years (if we are still around), that the American people and the American Government show a similar level of maturity.
- lovemenot 13y agoYou did not bother to elucidate the point that you claim you were making. Instead providing just a single supporting example to illustrate an argument to generality. Even if we allow that "most countries' politicians" is supported by that single example and that the example is apt, your position on Japanese / US behaviour is only implied. I read it as "it's OK for [smaller country] as long as [bigger country] does it." My interpretation might well be wrong, but you could certainly do better in saying what you mean.
- NIL8 13y agoMy response is about your comment and not the topic. I am going to use your response as a template to use for the rest of my life. It's perfect. Thank you in advance for the time and trouble you have saved me.
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- BrandonMarc 13y agoI keep finding rumors the movie will be released in the US in a few months, but nothing concrete. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2058107/releaseinfo http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2058107/releaseinfo
- lsh 13y agoIt has been advertised on the London underground here for a few weeks now with a January release date.
- ninguem2 13y agoAs far as films go, the plot is almost identical to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085933/?ref_=nv_sr_4 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085933/?ref_=nv_sr_4
- fromthefuture 13y agoMaybe Murnat Kurnaz can come back to America in 50 years and make friends with his former torturers, too. And then a movie. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantanamo-survivor.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-...
- rotub 13y agoMy brother and sister walked 325km from Ban Pong to Sangkhla Buri along what exists of this very railway. It was in memory of a POW my brother met at our church who worked on the railway during his time in the war. My sister wrote a book about the experience called Norn Lup? A Journey Of Railways, Roads, & Wats. http://intrepid-girl.com/blog/writing/buy-the-book-norn-lup-a-journey-of-railways-roads-and-wats/ http://intrepid-girl.com/blog/writing/buy-the-book-norn-lup-... And my brother made a documentary http://www.lukenowell.com/projects/lukenowell/thailandtrek/ http://www.lukenowell.com/projects/lukenowell/thailandtrek/ Hope people don't mind these plugs but they both add value to the story behind this railway and the people who worked on it against their will. You can read about their expedition here http://www.deathrailwaywalk.com/ http://www.deathrailwaywalk.com/
- VMG 13y agodo yourselves a favor and don't read the comments on the site
- jbm 13y agoThe title originally may have contained a racial epithet, based on one of the trackbacks; although I'm not sure (the trackback author may have changed the title) The comments are internet cancer.
- girvo 13y agoJesus that's bad. Like, I've seen terrible comments, but that really takes the (racist, bigoted) cake.
- emmelaich 13y agoMy grandfather was POW at Changi for four years. He saw many of his friends die; many tragically just after the war when they rashly ate too much of the wrong thing. During his captivity his family didn't know whether he was dead or alive. He never knowingly bought a Japanese product. He never spoke about his experience much. I'd like to think things would have been a lot better had he had the opportunity to meet some genuinely apologetic Japanese.
- StavrosK 13y agoWhat do you mean by "ate too much of the wrong thing"?
- rurounijones 13y agohttp://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100610110110AAtiotJ http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2010061011011...
- StavrosK 13y agoThat explains a lot, thank you.
- m0nty 13y agoAfter a period of malnutrition, you need to start taking small amounts of relatively low-calorie food and building up from there. It is a well-known phenomenon that eating too much calorie-packed food can be fatal. In his book The Forgotten Highlander, Alistair Urquhart records the same thing happening on the ship which transported former POWs home.
- StavrosK 13y agoOh wow, that is tragic. I was aware that, after being starved, you shouldn't gorge yourself, but I didn't know you could die from eating even normal portions... Thank you.
- smegel 13y agoWe dont seem to be so generous to Nazi torturers and murderers. They are still being hunted down apparently.
- ramblerman 13y agoIt is an interesting comparison. I wonder if it's because of the sheer numbers that died in the camps or the power of the jewish lobby post world war II.
- znowi 13y ago> I wonder if it's because of the sheer numbers that died in the camps or the power of the jewish lobby post world war II. I think it's both, though the Jewish community has indeed been very vocal in popularizing the Nazi atrocities and establishing the term "Holocaust" to mean specifically the genocide of Jews in WW2. It is a crime to deny it in many countries. It may seem as if the Jews were the focal point of the Nazi Aryan doctrine, however, the other sub-humans on the bottom of the racial ladder were the Slavic people and people of color. Russian death toll in the WW2 was more than 20 million people. Although, I never heard of the "Russian Holocaust".
- lsh 13y ago> were the Slavic people and people of color. ... and the artists, and the gays and the communists and the ...
- sanoli 13y ago...gypsies. About one quarter of them died in WWII. But hey, who gives a crap about gypsies? To this day, nobody seems to give a dammn. "It is not known precisely how many Roma were killed in the Holocaust. While exact figures or percentages cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their allies killed around 25 percent of all European Roma." Source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005219
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- LeeHunter 13y agoOne of the most astonishing books I've ever read is Unbroken, which is the true story of an American pilot (and Olympic athlete) who went through a similar experience as a POW of the Japanese. Well worth checking out.
- zalew 13y agohttp://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rozmowy_z_katem http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rozmowy_z_katem http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpl.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRozmowy_z_katem http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=...
- nl 13y agoThere, he was locked in a 5ft cage that soon became full of red ants, mosquitoes and his own filth. ... A towel was put over his mouth and nose. Then one of the guards picked up a long rubber hose, turned a faucet on full force, and directed the stream onto the towel. The water soaked through, blocking Lomax’s mouth and nose. He gagged and frantically gasped for breath as water filled his throat. His stomach began to swell. He was drowning on dry land. When the towel was finally removed and Lomax had recovered from his delirium, he still refused to confess and name his confederates. The water torture began once more. Sounds horrible. The memorandum describes in detail each of the techniques proposed as generally used, including attention grasp, walling, facial hold, insult slap, cramped confinement (large and small and with and without an insect), wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding. The Bybee Memos, authored by the Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States and signed by Assistant Attorney General[1]. These techniques were used by the US on suspected terrorists. I hate how the line between the good guys and the bad guys is so blurred I sometimes question if it exists at all. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bybee_Memo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bybee_Memo
- StavrosK 13y ago> I hate how the line between the good guys and the bad guys is so blurred I sometimes question if it exists at all. What? You still believe in Hollywood-style good guys and bad guys? Do you think that the Japanese believed then that they were the bad guys? I am very surprised to see the good guy/bad guy mistake here. Everyone thinks they are the good guy, because everyone has reasons for what they do, otherwise they wouldn't do it. Even the nazis were exterminating Jews for the good of their country, or so they told themselves.
- kremlin 13y agoI agree completely. There's a great set of posts on lesswrong about that. http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0/are_your_enemies_innately_evil/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0/are_your_enemies_innately_evil/ "Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story."
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- brendan_gill 13y agoExtraordinary story. This reminds me somewhat of a 1955 reunion[1] of Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, and a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb in an episode of "This is your life". I can't say the whole show is tasteful but I found the meeting incredibly emotional to watch. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0m8D6APp64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0m8D6APp64
- jpatokal 13y agoServer seems to be buckling under the load, but archive.org has a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20131027021454/http://www.abroadintheyard.com/tortured-by-japanese-ww2-former-pow-met-chief-tormentor-again-50-years-later/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131027021454/http://www.abroad...
- fforw 13y agoSomething tells me there will be no meeting 50 years after the torture in US secret prisons -- especially none with any insight into the wrongness of it.
- wila 13y agoIt's an impressive story and hard for anybody of us to even imagine in this day and age. These days I live in Bangkok and have been fortunate enough to take the train that rides over the track these POW have made. It was a very humbling experience. Especially the parts where the train drives through rocky areas where the walls have all been cut by human force, no explosives have been used. It takes a whole day to drive the track which is among the parts that make it so hard to believe it has all been made by hand and that so many people have died while making it. See also: http://www.seat61.com/Bridge-on-the-River-Kwai.htm http://www.seat61.com/Bridge-on-the-River-Kwai.htm If you ever get a chance to visit, then I can highly recommend it. Unfortunately looking at what these POW achieved is one of the few things we can do to honor those who suffered there.
- mercurial 13y ago> It's an impressive story and hard for anybody of us to even imagine in this day and age. The torture part is very easy to imagine, in this day and age, unfortunately.
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoI find it strange that if Mr. Nagase had been a rather indifferent PoW camp "administrator" who did not actively participate in torturing him, the late Mr. Lomax would likely feel no great urge to meet him and make friends with him. I' ve read that a kind of bond is almost always formed between the tortured and the torturer. Something for psychologists to explore I guess.
- jotm 13y agoIsn't that a form of Stockholm syndrome?
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoPerhaps, in a broader sense. One particular account I've read in a autobiographical book by a person who fought in a distant civil war and had been on both sides of the table, so to speak, recalls how he felt the same kind of bonding - "closeness" as he puts it - both with the people who tortured him and those who he, himself, tortured.
- haberman 13y agoI cannot begin to understand how a person can be subjected to that much pain/torture and yet still remain defiant. It is unimaginable to me.
- grifpete 13y agoIf you want to reflect on something truly heinous bear in mind that during torture sessions these days it is customary to have a doctor on hand to ensure that the victim is not actually killed. The objective is to inflict ongoing pain and killing would defeat the objective. So a doctor of all things witnesses the process and keeps the victim alive so he/she can be tortured more. Apparently you can get any professional to do anything no matter how wildly those actions may seem to be to the most fundamental values of their profession and the oath they swear to practice it.
- notastartup 13y agoSo assassinating ex-Nazi torturers is kosher but not ex-Imperial Japan Army torturers, coercing Korean women as sex slaves for the Japanese army, massacring an entire Chinese city, conducting live human experiments with germs and chemicals?
- a8da6b0c91d 13y agoIf you read into the "comfort women" thing a lot of it turns out to be dodgy. The imperial army bought into and regulated existing prostitution rackets. (The US Army effectively did this, too.) After the war a lot of hookers suddenly became sex slaves to the evil Japanese. You have to keep in mind that even before the war in parts of Asia this was an era where a poor farmer might sell a daughter to pimps. This is stuff that was happening whether the imperial army was involved or not.
- notastartup 13y agoNever mind the testimonials from the victims themselves. Never mind the fact that Japanese politicians go out of their way to deny what went down. doesn't make it any less illegitimate and immoral. Oh, and it wasn't just Asian women, they enslaved European women too which made some part of the "Comfort Brigade". Surely, Dutch women weren't being pimped out by their own mothers? So this, "but everyone was doing it" from the mouths of the perpetrating nation themselves is claim which is dodgy in itself and and a lame excuse to cover up a war crime and crime against humanity and women. Your argument would be like saying it's somehow joie de vivre of the times, no, no other army conscripted armies of sex slaves to keep the morale of their troops in a losing battle against Allied forces. Do you want to deny the holocaust too because "people just didn't know better back then", "scapegoating and suppressing and massacring minority population cuz thats what dictators do" so the fact that it happened is now questionable? Never mind the victims of holocaust themselves voicing their horrible experiences? I can't believe I'm hearing garbage like this, out of all places, on hacker news.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y agoI absolutely do discount victim testimonials. Especially when there's money at stake. I mean, after the holocaust, and to this very day, some jews claimed people were processed into soap and leather products. This and many other claims by victims throughout history have been nonsense.
- dferlemann 13y agoI am certainly touched by this. I'd forgive a guy like that and many other Japanese who admit to their horrific acts. I don't like generalization such as saying I forgive Japan, nor would I say Japanese are monsters. So long the stubborn politicians still exist, there will always be sting on Japan's reputation as a country.