21 Replies to “Lest We Forget”

    1. Thanks for that.

      I haven’t read of the defense of Hong Kong (and the horrors visited upon the POWs) for some time.

      With the giant myth making machine to our South, is easy to forget about our own heros. (fully agree on the history changing significance of pearl harbour and suffering wrought by evil leaders but we should not forget our neighbors too).

      1. The Hong Kong vets – those who actually survived the battle and subsequent horrors of Japanese prison camps – came home in much worse condition that vets from other theatres of war. It took many years, but eventually the government did acknowledge their problems and provided some compensation to help them keep going.
        Remember Hong Kong on 25th December. That’s the date the colony surrendered and the victorious Japanese celebrated by raping and murdering nurses, and bayonetting the wounded in their beds.

  2. Robert, thank you for posting that. And Mike, for your contribution. Some significant comments from the survivors. Unfortunately, much of the advice they offer is no longer being respected. Indeed, on this, the 78th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, this is the only mention of that Day of Infamy I have seen on this day.

    1. “Some significant comments from the survivors.”
      A compelling comment was the fellow who stated that America was completely unprepared for war.
      In fact the America had been ramping up for war due to the demands of Britain for military weaponry to aid them in their stand against Germany.
      Any unpreparedness was due to the need to placate a large portion of the American public which wanted nothing to do with fighting overseas battles.
      That segment of the American population was matched in Canada by the one province that stood firm against conscription in both WW1 & WW2.

  4. As my kids and grandchildren have grown up, I have exposed them to more world history than they ever received in public schools. I have quite a collection of history books, right along with the classics, poets, and other products a thoughtful men and women. If we don’t do it, not many educators will. And both our countries will be poorer for it.

  5. Though yesterday Canada celebrated Mark Lepine day and the news was full of stories about it, today on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl harbor, not a word about it.
    The powers that be are altering history at a rapid rate,now they’re erasing it. I wonder when remembrance Day will no longer be observed.
    A classmate of Mom’s was in the Winnipeg Grenadiers, sent to Hong Kong with the assurance they’d “be home by Christmas” As he ruefully said to Mom,”they didn’t mention that it would be Christmas five years later”. Bob went off to war a big strapping Manitoba farm boy weighing over 200 pounds, after four years as a prisoner of the Japanese he came home at under 100 pounds,a virtual skeleton.
    When the Japanese Prime Minister visited Canada in the 1980’s,he asked PM Mulroney if he thought Japan should make reparations to the few surviving HK/Singapore POW’s from Canada. Mulroney opined,”oh no it was a long time ago”, thus earning my eternal hatred for the son of a bitch,for whom I hope there is a special place in hell.

    What the hell has happened to this country that the media makes the 1989 shooting of 14 women by a Muslim misogynist a national day of mourning, but fails to even mention the sacrifice of thousands of young Canadian men,and women, at Hong Kong and Singapore?

    https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/second-world-war/canadians-southeast-asia

  6. God bless the West.
    Thank you, MikeT I did not know that Canadian aspect of the infamous day. Peace.

  8. It stands to reason that the memory of earth shaking events fades with each generation. I expect that will be true of 9/11 as well. The problem with forgetting the Japanese atrocities: the torture, starvation, and abuse of POWs; the civilian murder sprees across the southwest Pacific, is that America’s decision to drop the bomb, without of this context, becomes seen as the ultimate act of depravity.

    1. To be clear, I am not suggesting that the Hiroshima /Nagasaki attacks were revenge for the 10s of millions of civilians who died at the hands of the Japanese Empire or for the torture, abuse, and starvation of POWs. You should be aware, however, that,near the end of the war, the US had intelligence that the Japanese were murdering their POWS, forcing them into ditches, saturating them with gasoline, and lighting them on fire. It was this intelligence that prompted the launch of the 6th Army Rangers daring rescue of the Bataan Death March survivors. This intelligence and the fear of a civilian murder spree were known, but not the sole factors in the decision. I agree that the leading reason is the concern over the loss of both civilian and combatant life on both sides during an invasion of the Japanese homeland. Already, by the time I was in college in the 60s, history was being revised to be sympathetic to the Japanese.

      1. Re: Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and fire bombing: If memory serves, despite the bombings, Japanese civilian deaths represent a very small percentage of the civilian deaths that occurred in the Pacific Theater, possibly 5%. Maybe someone can look it up, I’m getting ready for a party and can’t take time out. Note that the deaths chalked up to the Japanese aren’t necessarily from bombing or execution but due to starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, disease and exposure to the elements.

      2. Sir Laurens van der Post was a Japanese POW for three years in Java (or near offer). In “The Night of the New Moon”, he writes of his experiences in the camp and of the growing fear that, as the Japanese were forced to retreat, the prisoners would all be slaughtered and their remains burned to remove all record. The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved them, as the Emperor’s assumption of authority and quick surrender stopped their guards from carrying out the atrocity.

  9. The attack on Pearl Harbour was and is a testament to complacency. It’s what happens when available intelligence is disregarded and misinterpreted.

    1. ‘available intelligence is disregarded and misinterpreted‘

      ”There is no longer any reason to perpetuate the cruel myth that Kimmel and Short were singularly responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor,” said Senator William V. Roth Jr., Republican of Delaware, who has led the struggle to clear the names of the two officers and restore their wartime ranks.

      ”They were denied vital intelligence that was available in Washington,” said Senator Roth
      (emphasis added)
      https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/26/us/senate-clears-2-pearl-harbor-scapegoats.html

  10. I have never read anything about the bomb being dropped as retribution for Japanese atrocities during WW II. I did read about American losses at Iwo Jima and Okinawa as the main reason pending a land invasion of Japan itself. American casualty estimates exceeded 1 millon.

    The Allies have been criticized down through the years for the loss of life in Japan from the atomic bombs and German loss of life in the bombing campaigns. These losses were a sad reality of war but the Allies were not responsible.

  11. “the Allies were not responsible”

    Victors are never responsible for atrocities, only the vanquished are.

    1. I agree.

      None of the wealthy and influential people in the Allied countries who had bankrolled Nazi Germany’s and Imperial Japan’s preparation for world conquest ever answered in any meaningful way for their crimes.

      The useful idiots were hanged at Nuremberg and Tokyo. The money men died in bed, unrepentant and unpunished.

      Why would their heirs have learned anything from the war, except how easy it is to get away with mass murder?

  12. Those that believe that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan was unnecessary and a form of overkill obviously have little or no knowledge of what had occurred in the Pacific war up to and including 1945. The defense of places like Guadalcanal and Tarawa provided a lesson that the Japanese were not prone to surrendering even when vastly outnumbered and outgunned. What took place on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the increase in kamikaze attacks only served to strengthen this fact. Only a fool would come to the conclusion that the invasion of the Japanese mainland would result in a quick and decisive victory for the allies. Admittedly the destruction of two cities is horrific but how many cities would have been destroyed by a concerted bombing campaign? How many lives would have been lost on both sides after the allies set foot on Japanese soil? Invariably the Japanese would have surrendered but the country itself would have been decimated in the process.

    1. Even worse was the fact that the Japanese figured out where the Americans were going to land and moved troops to those locations. They were ordered to die in place and to take as many of the Americans with them as they could. The objective was to make the invasion so costly that the Americans would sue for peace.

      FDR was shocked by the casualty rates for Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Truman was aware of the body count that an invasion would produce. The Americans simply didn’t have the manpower left to pull it off.

      John Batchelor interviewed the author of a book about what that invasion would have been like. It’s repeated once in a while and it’s worth listening to.

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