After Hiroshima - National Catholic Register Editorial

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vern humphrey:
However, the overwhelming majority of Japanese did fight to the death, or commit suicide rather than be captured.
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Yes. That certainly explains why we only had several thousand Japanese prisoners, many of whom came into our hands in a wounded condition. I have no idea for sure, but I’d think that a lot of the unwounded prisoners might have been Japanese sailors or airmen pulled from the ocean by us. I’ve not read that sailors or airmen had any particular record of personal fanaticism like their soldiers did.
 
Arba Sicula:
Yes. That certainly explains why we only had several thousand Japanese prisoners, many of whom came into our hands in a wounded condition. I have no idea for sure, but I’d think that a lot of the unwounded prisoners might have been Japanese sailors or airmen pulled from the ocean by us. I’ve not read that sailors or airmen had any particular record of personal fanaticism like their soldiers did.
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I think they all had it – Rigosenti were Marines, and part of the Japanese Navy (as our Marines are part of our Navy) and were certainly fanatical and willing to die to the last man.

On Okinawa, we found civilians with the same committment to death – and many of them were killed charging our troops with grenades or sharpened bamboo stakes. Others jumped from cliffs rather than be captured – including mothers with babies in their arms.

It’s very difficult to argue that men who had personal experience fighting the Japanese would not think they would fight to the death when the homelands were invaded.
 
vern humphrey:
Others jumped from cliffs rather than be captured – including mothers with babies in their arms.
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I read about this, too. A lot of those desparate women had been told, however, that the Americans were planning to kill and eat their children. I can see why death by suicide would be preferable to having one’s children on an American dinner plate.
 
Arba Sicula:
I read about this, too. A lot of those desparate women had been told, however, that the Americans were planning to kill and eat their children. I can see why death by suicide would be preferable to having one’s children on an American dinner plate.
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It takes a lot more than simply telling someone “The Americans are going to kill and eat your children” to produce mass suicides like that. Which is the point – the suicide mentality was so ingrained in the Japanese people that counter-propaganda wouldn’t have affected it. The Japanese would have fought to the death, and the high predictions of casualties on both sides from an invasion were realistic.

The Japanese, by the way, did kill and eat Americans. There are documented incidents of them doing that – including on Chichi Jima, where a young Navy pilot named George H.W. Bush was shot down and narrowly escaped that fate by getting out to sea before bailing out.
 
Joe Kelley:
Somewhere C. S. Lewis commented on the popular craze of criticizing WWI in the 20’s and early 30’s.
  1. It is easy to criticize the earlier faults of our people because we are part of that people so need show no charity in our criticism.
  2. It is easy to criticize the earlier faults of our people because we were not there when the wrongs were done so need take no personal responsibility.
  3. It is popular to criticize the past because it keeps attention away from the faults of the present for which we do bear personal responsibility.
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He also wrote a great essay called “Why I am not a Pacifist”…
 
Writer - Re He also wrote a great essay called “Why I am not a Pacifist”…

That one is also excellent.
 
Joe Kelley:
Somewhere C. S. Lewis commented on the popular craze of criticizing WWI in the 20’s and early 30’s.
  1. It is easy to criticize the earlier faults of our people because we are part of that people so need show no charity in our criticism.
  2. It is easy to criticize the earlier faults of our people because we were not there when the wrongs were done so need take no personal responsibility.
  3. It is popular to criticize the past because it keeps attention away from the faults of the present for which we do bear personal responsibility.
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Those are among the problems with apologies for the evils in the Church’s past - a far more problematic thing.

IIRC, the source is his essay “Dangers of National Repentance”, in the book “God in the Dock”. Every theologian and bishop should read him.

cslewisireland.org/cs_lewis_archive.htm - see item 51
 
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geezerbob:
The US, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and others had turned their entire industrial and agricultural output toward the war effort. Auto factories produced Jeeps, trucks and tanks. Appliance and toy makers made parts for those vehicles. “Rosie the Riveter” was just as much a part of that war effort as was the soldier in the field.
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I found out that factories that make the cardboard tube for toilet paper and paper towel rolls converted their equipment to make the sleeves for shells.
 
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mjdonnelly:
I found out that factories that make the cardboard tube for toilet paper and paper towel rolls converted their equipment to make the sleeves for shells.
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I was only six when the war ended, but I still have vivid memories of the shortages and other hardships we had to endure. Gas was rationed, coffee usually wasn’t available at all, sugar was in short supply, you had to know somebody to get new tires, the two Navy officers knocking on the door one night. The entire nation was involved in the war effort and I’m sure it was the same in all the countries involved. Today’s analysts all seem to be overlooking this total involvement.
 
I was five days old when the war started. We lived with my grandparents in Lake Charles, Louisiana. My grandparents rented out their spare bedroom – Lake Charles Airbase was a major bomber training base, and there wasn’t enough housing for those in training. We had a succession of bombardier trainers and their wives living with us.
 
vern humphrey:
I was five days old when the war started. We lived with my grandparents in Lake Charles, Louisiana. My grandparents rented out their spare bedroom – Lake Charles Airbase was a major bomber training base, and there wasn’t enough housing for those in training. We had a succession of bombardier trainers and their wives living with us.
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I had the opportunity to listen to a presentation at our local library a few evenings ago by a children’s writer named Brain Jacques (author of the Redwall series). One thing he mentioned was growing up in Liverpool during the Blitz when there was severe rationing taking place. He said that he remembered being so hungy as a child that he used to gaze longingly through his mother’s cookbooks and especially the pictures.
 
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Writer:
I had the opportunity to listen to a presentation at our local library a few evenings ago by a children’s writer named Brain Jacques (author of the Redwall series). One thing he mentioned was growing up in Liverpool during the Blitz when there was severe rationing taking place. He said that he remembered being so hungy as a child that he used to gaze longingly through his mother’s cookbooks and especially the pictures.
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It is very difficult for people who have never known war to understand war. I spent most of my working life teaching soldiers, and even the most basic concepts are difficult for them to grasp if they’ve never been under fire.

Similarly, civilians who have no memory of the sacrifices of WWII seem to see war as something like a debate, not a fight to the death.
 
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