tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6576246045591350665.post942856559125381077..comments2024-03-18T16:12:26.134-07:00Comments on Gangsters Out Blog: The healthy man does not torture othersDennis Watsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06736981069304416233noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6576246045591350665.post-80832326649477257402014-12-14T05:29:59.989-08:002014-12-14T05:29:59.989-08:00The cannibalism thing is accurate. I have an excel...The cannibalism thing is accurate. I have an excellent book at home (which title I cannot recall at the moment) written by a man who fought on Guadalcanal and he describes the subject at some length.<br /><br />The Japanese Army rations basically consisted of rice, supplemented by local foraging efforts. After they were cut off by the "island hopping" nature of the US campaign in the Pacific, even that was not available to them. The Japanese soldier was by all accounts an excellent forager, but months long campaigns often left little to forage. Nothing like a few weeks of artillery barrages to scare away anything edible. There are reports of Japanese soldiers eating not only Americans but also each other.<br /><br />In addition there was a case where a US aircrew was shot down and captured, after being held for a while they were executed and members of the execution party ate the heart and other organs. The officer who ordered this was himself executed after the war.<br /><br />Japan has always had issues with what they did during the war. Modern schoolchildren are taught that Japan was forced into war by American actions, reports of rape and murder of civilians and captured enemies by Imperial forces are dismissed as propaganda.<br /><br />Note that Japanese culture is largely based on shame, sufficient of which is grounds for suicide. When you keep this in mind it's pretty easy to understand why they are not overly eager to acknowledge actions that are as shameful as they get.trailrunner78https://www.blogger.com/profile/06694102447472594355noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6576246045591350665.post-5565418525687530242014-12-14T05:02:00.238-08:002014-12-14T05:02:00.238-08:00The cannibalism thing is accurate. The Japanese Ar...The cannibalism thing is accurate. The Japanese Army always relied much more on local foraging to feed their troops than did the more modern US Army/US Marines which had prepackaged rations for issue to field personnel. The US strategy of "island hopping", where numerous smaller garrisons were simply bypassed and there by cut off from resupply led to some desperate actions by Japanese troops, many of whom eventually starved to death rather than perishing by bullet or bayonet. Likewise numerous of the island campaigns resulted in similar circumstances, where the US Navy dominated the ocean and the air and no resupply by Japanese ships was possible. <br /><br />There were also executions of American prisoners where members of the execution party were invited to eat the heart or other organs. I have books at home which detail the subject, one is academic in nature and describes the circumstances whereby an American aircrew was executed and such occurred, the other is a first person narrative by a man who fought on Guadalcanal and he describes the "subsistence cannibalism" which Japanese troops resorted to, not just against Americans but also against their own.trailrunner78https://www.blogger.com/profile/06694102447472594355noreply@blogger.com