Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: FiLtH on January 10, 2005, 02:42:38 PM
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Has anyone read this book? I know its been out for a year or so but I got it for Christmas. I couldnt put it down. Its the best book Ive read in awhile.
At first, some of the things he said kind of made me a little angry, but as I read it, it really shined a light on the US's part in molding the way the Japanese developed into the way they did before WW2.
To me racism was something where you thought less of the other race than your own. The book made me realise its much deeper than just that. Where not only do you dislike them, but you NEVER want them to achieve parity with your race, and do whatever it takes to keep them at a lower level. Forgive me if this is obvious to you, it wasnt to me. Atleast with the Japanese. They tried to copy the way the west "expanded" their territories, by military might, but when they tried it on China, the West said "No!!..thats not how civilized nations act."
The book focuses on the lives of navy airmen shot down at Chichi Jima. Their pre-war lives, training, capture and executions. At the end of the book, it tells of one Japanese man who befriended one of the captured US flyers, and was saddened by his execution. How he would somehow find a way to keep his memory alive. Apparantly he took the flyers first name as his own after the war. WHen I finished reading it, my wife sitting beside me on the couch, I had all I could do to keep from balling right there.
Ive read alot about WW2, but never anything so vicious, but at the same time human before. I recommend it to anyone.
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I concur, it's an excellent book. All of your comments are right on. In addition, I really liked the thorough explanation of the change in Japanese military thinking from the Samurai days to the post Russian war military culture. I never realized these things before.
I too was mad about some of the statements in the first few chapters, but had a new perspective by the last chapter......
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Read the Advanced Readers Copy my brother gave to me more than 2 years ago. Awesome read.
Karaya
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Did anyone read Irvine Shaw's "Young Lions" ?
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It took me a while to get through "Flyboys" because I'd have to put it down for a while when it got so disturbing. Eating human flesh to prove your worthiness as a warrior?
And what the white settlers did to the natives in North America was far beyond simple cruelty, and I sure never learned much about those massacres when I was taught U S history.
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Exactly Oboe, history is taught by the victors..we've all got dark spots in our histories.
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I read it last year. It was an excellent read, but slow at the beginning. I'm not much of a fan of the previous history before WWII, but it was interesting nonetheless.
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I barely made it through it ...
Seemed like the author was trying to justify 20th century barbaric Japanese behavior by comparing to 19th century behavior of others ...
To compare them was in many ways a stretch at best and usually ludicrous
I think his writings push his agenda:
http://www.jamesbradley.com/scholarships.cfm
read the reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316105848/qid=1105414622/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-9401484-6814455?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
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Eagler thats exactly the attitude I had at first. But you have to agree that we have done some nasty sh-t ourselves. There was a period in our expansion that was on par with some of the most brutal acts of other civilizations throughout history.
Believe me..I was weened on John Wayne movies, and as gung-ho patriotic as the next guy...but I wont deny the fact we stole the land from the American Indians as well as treated people in other countries terribly (Phillipines) as well.
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FiLtH, havent read it yet but it just got bumped up to next on my list of acquisitions. Thx for the recommend :).
Re: racism/barbarity. I don't think there's a people on the planet, or ever been for that matter, that doesn't have that in their histories or future - mine included. We're still not that far removed from the cave even though we've got some pretty cool toys. It's gonna be awhile unfortunately.
Cheers,
asw
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A great read is "A Question of Honor" by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud. It is about the Polish 303 Squadron. Awesome book.
Another would have to be "Given Up for Dead" by Bill Sloan. It is about Wake Island right after Pearl Harbor. Even more astounding.
Karaya
PS - I used to communicate with James Bradley through his website. Now, we just email each other from time to time. He is a nice guy.
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That book really enlightened me. I didn't know a thing about Japaneese culture before I read it.
Great book, I would reccomend reading it to those who haven't.
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Paul
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Originally posted by Eagler
I barely made it through it ...
Seemed like the author was trying to justify 20th century barbaric Japanese behavior by comparing to 19th century behavior of others ...
To compare them was in many ways a stretch at best and usually ludicrous
I think his writings push his agenda:
http://www.jamesbradley.com/scholarships.cfm
read the reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316105848/qid=1105414622/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-9401484-6814455?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Hmmm, it was Sept. 1901 when the US Army executed every male age 10 or older in captured Phillipine villages.
Only 38 years before WII formally started.
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I know what he was getting at and most points were valid (though unpleasant), but he did reach on a few. The Bismark Sea for example, which he sees as another "war crime" type activity.
He talks about the Japanese unwillingness to surrender. And yet, here are thousands of combat troops floating in the sea, many in life boats and rafts and with their small arms, within a not unreasonable sailing distance of where they were heading for on the transports.
They were strafed. but, what was the alternative?
1. Try to capture them and take them prisoner? You just end up shooting them one at a time or in smaller handfulls.
2. Let them make shore? Kinda defeats the point. [As it was 1,000 (of the 9,000) did make it ashore at Lea]
3. Let them float around in the sea lanes?
Combat troops, in sailable craft, in a war zone who are unwilling to surrender are still combatants.
Still, for all the culutural relavatism (some accurate some forced) he did lay the blame squarely on the Japanese leadership and did feel the bombing campaigs and atomic bombs were the only valid alternatives -- which caught me by surprise given the first half of the book.
Charon
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Ya Charon...omce the war was on, gloves off..but what I found most interesting was the mind set that the Japanese had, to make the decisions they made.
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Originally posted by FiLtH
....but what I found most interesting was the mind set that the Japanese had, to make the decisions they made.
didn't realize "insanity" was a mind set
that "Divine Wind" really protected their crazy arses that time round, didn't it ...
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No it didnt...but another thing I read, that I didnt know before, was shortly after the Japanese surrendered, in October 45 IIRC, a huge typhoon blew thru and waxed hundreds of ships in that area. Imagine if we had waited until that time to invade (which would have been that time) and the men and ships that would have been lost in the assembly areas. Imagine what that would have done to the Japanese morale at that point? They NEVER would have surrendered then! Thank God for naphalm, and the Soviet Union!
PS...The Emperor should have been hung!
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I read the book and found that I couldn't put it down once I got into it. The part that affected me the most was sitting there reading the book with my 20 year old son sitting across the room. As many of the pilots that were executed were right at about his age, it brought home to me just how brutal war must actually be - when you kill off the best and brightest of your youth like that. When they described the Corsair pilot who insisted on rolling down his own shirt collar before they beheaded him, again, I couldn't help comapring that young pilot to my son and wondering if he would have been so brave at the moment he knew he was about to be killed.
It was very disturbing to me to read the parts about "kimo". As one who has lived and worked in Japan for many years, I struggled for many days with the thought of the people that I had grown to love acting in that fashion. I finally realized, however, that the Japanese people that I know today are several generations removed from those who practiced blind obedience to the Emperor.
All in all, a good read and one that gives you a much different perspective on the Pacific war than what we are usually taught.
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Read that. Currently reading GHOST SOLDIERS, by Hampton Sides.