Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: gofaster on October 16, 2002, 09:06:07 AM
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If I had picked up a spy novel that had this as a plot element, I would put it right back down and say "Too far-fetched to be believable. What nation would kidnap a civilian to use that person as a teacher?"
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TOKYO - On the tarmac of Tokyo's domestic airport, tears and long hugs contrasted Tuesday with the festive red- and-white Japanese flags and the homemade banners reading ``Welcome Home.''
Nearly a quarter-century in the making, the homecoming was one that many Japanese doubted they would ever witness: five Japanese citizens, snatched off beaches by North Korean agents in 1978, bundled into bags and taken away by boats, returned for the first time.
``He leaned down and hugged me and said, `I'm sorry to have worried you,' and then the long 24 years seemed somehow a bit shorter,'' Hatsui Hasuike, said after embracing her son Kaoru.
Last seen in Japan as a college junior, he returned Tuesday as a 45-year-old father of two. When his elder brother, Toru, asked him about the kidnapping, he deflected the question, saying: ``Not now. Let's talk about it later.''
In North Korea, Kaoru Hasuike and as many as 12 others - eight of whom North Korea says have since died - were pressed into service as Japanese language and cultural tutors for spies by the communist state.
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So the question now is, did those 8 resist their captors and were they killed while fighting for their freedom? If so, then they are heroes and it would be interesting to see what effect that would have on North Korea relations with South Korea and Japan.
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The koreans wanted to learn japanes so they stole some Japanese people off of beaches...my god. no wonder they are so screwed up.
Anyone else would take a holiday in japan.. Communists seem like they are from another planet or something.
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I need more info -- can you link to articles?
I wanna read what is the NK stance on this horrible crime.
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And that is only what we know. Do they have any americans or others snatched for their knowlege of culture or maybe science and technology?
miko
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That's a sure war crime! Poor Japanese.
UKUOKA, Japan
"I could never again wear a white smock," says Dr. Toshio Tono, dressed in a white running jacket at his hospital and recalling events of 50 years ago. "It's because the prisoners thought that we were doctors, since they could see the white smocks, that they didn't struggle. They never dreamed they would be dissected."
The prisoners were eight American airmen, knocked out of the sky over southern Japan during the waning months of World War U, and then torn apart organ by organ while they were still alive.
What occurred here 50 years ago this month, at the anatomy department of Kyushu University, has been largely forgotten in Japan and is virtually unknown in the United States. American prisoners of war were subjected to horrific medical experiments. All of the prisoners died. Most of the physicians and asistants then did their best to hide the evidence of what they had done.
Fukuoka is midway between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities that are planning elaborate ceremonies to mark the devastation caused by the United States'dropping the first atomic bombs. But neither Fukuoka nor the university plans to mark its own moment of infamy.
The gruesome experiments performed at the university were variations on research programs Japan conducted in territories it occupied during the war. In the most notorious of these efforts, the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 killed thousands of Chinese and Russians held prisoner in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, in experiments to develop chemical and biological weapons.
Ken Yuasa, now a frail, 70-year-old physician in Tokyo, belonged to a military company stationed just south of Unit 731's base at Harbin, Manchuria. He recalls joining other doctors to watch as a prisoner was shot in the stomach, to give Japanese surgeons practice at extracting bullets.
While the victim was still alive, the doctors also practiced amputations.
"It wasn't just my experience," Yuasa says. "It was done everywhere."
Kyushu University stands out as the only site where Americans were incontrovertibly used in dissections and the only known site where experiments were done in Japan.
On May 5, 1945, an American B-29 bomber was flying with a dozen other aircraft after bombing Tachiaral Air Base in southwestern Japan and beginning the return flight to the island fortress of Guam.
Kinzou Kasuya, a 19-year-old Japanese pilot flying one of the Japanese fighters in pursuit of the Americans, rammed his aircraft into the fuselage of the B-29, destroying both planes.
No one knows for certain how many Americans were in the B-29; its crew had been hastily assembled on Guam. But villagers in Japan who witnessed the collision in the air saw about a dozen parachutes blossom.
One of the Americans died when the cords of his, parachute were severed by another Japanese plane. A second was alive when he reached the ground. He shot all but his last bullet at the villagers coming toward him, then used the last on himself.
Two others were quickly stabbed or shot to death.
At least nine were taken into custody.
B-29 crews were despised for the grim results of their raids. So some of the captives were beaten.
The local authorities assumed that the most knowledgeable was the cap! tain, Marvin Watkins. He was sent to Tokyo for interrogation, where was tortured but nonetheless survived the war.
Every available account asserts that a military physician and a colonel in a local regiment were the two key figures in what happened next. What happened cannot be easily explained. Perhaps caring for the Americans was an impossible burden, especially because some were injured. Perhaps food was scarce.
Whatever the reason, the colonel and doctor decided to make the prisoners available for medical experiments, and Kyushu University became a willing participant.
Teddy Ponczka was the first to be handed over to the doctors and their assistants. He had already been stabbed, in either his right shoulder or his chest. According to Tono, the American assumed he was about to be treated for the wound when he was taken to an operating room.
But the incision went far deeper. A doctor wanted to test surgery's effects on the respiratory system, so one lung was removed. The wound was stitched closed.
How Teddy Ponczka died is in dispute. According to U.S. military records, he was anesthetized during the operation, and then the gas mask was removed from his face. A surgeon, Taro Torisu, reopened the incision and reached into Ponczka's chest. In the bland words of the military report, Torisu "stopped the heart action. "
Tono remembers events differently. The first experiment was followed by a second, he says. Ponczka was given intravenous injections of sea water, to determine if sea water could be used as a substitute for sterile saline solution, used to increase blood volume in the wounded or those in'shock. Tono held the bottle of sea water. He says Ponczka bled to death.
Then it was the turn of the others.
The Japanese wanted to learn whether a patient could survive the partial loss of his liver. They wanted to learn if epilepsy could be controlled by removing part of the brain. According to U.S. military records, physicians also operated on -the prisoners' stomachs and necks.
All the Americans died.
"There was no debate among the doctors about whether to do the operations - that is what made it so strange," Tono says.
Word of the experiments eventually leaked out.
Thirty people were brought to trial by an Allied war crimes tribunal in Yokohama, Japan, on March 11, 1948. Charges included vivisection, wrongful removal of body parts and cannibalism - based on reports that the experimenters had eaten the livers of the Americans.
Of the 30 defendants, 23 were found guilty of various charges. (For lack of proof, the charges of cannibalism had been dismissed.) Five of the guilty were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment. The other 14 were sentenced to shorter terms.
But the attitude of the American occupation forces began to change largely because of the start of the Korean War in June 1950. The United States had less interest in punishing Japan, an enemy-turned-ally.
In September 1950, U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, as supreme commander for Allied Forces, reduced most of the sentences. By 1958, all those convicted were free. None of the death sentences was carried out.
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Whats is the source for this.
Thats sick....
I knew the Japanese where hard on prisoners... but yikes.
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Where did you find that? Was it in a book?
You should read "The Rape of Nanking" if you haven't already.
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Originally posted by GtoRA2
Whats is the source for this.
Thats sick....
I knew the Japanese where hard on prisoners... but yikes.
The basic underlying belief by military Japan was that prisoners were less than human because they had lost their honor by not dying for their country. That's why so many Japanese aviators unfastened their parachute harnesses after bailing out of their flaming planes.
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If its on the Internet, then it must be true, right? Anyone confirm this with the Baltimore Sun?
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~dyue/wiihist/germwar/uspow.htm
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That is a poor justification for the things they did.
I will never understand why the Germans are vilified for what they did to the Jews, but no one ever mentions what the Japanese did during the war?
Everyone did some horrific things, but Japan was not very far behind Germany, but hardly anyone I talk to knows.
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I don't know if it's true.
I know it's as probable as the holocaust, concidering.
Maybe none of it ever happened, or maybe one was filmed as the Allied war machine overrun the Nazi's, and this account was isolated in Japan and not easily verified.
One thing is clear. American's are a diffrent breed of human that won, thank God.
Something to think about in current war type ideals.
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I found that account on a couple of websites, some seemed to be quite reputable, including testimony of British and Australian POWs captured in Singapore and Indonesia, and American POWs taken in the fall of the Phillipines. Just do a web search on Yahoo on "Dr. Toshio Tono" and you should get a number of hits. He even wrote a book about it called "Disgrace" (translated title).
As disgusting as it all is, the key part is that it was a time of war, whereas the Japanese people taken by the North Koreans were civilians in peace time. Four of the Japanese were young couples spending an evening on a beach when they were abducted by NK operatives. Reparations should be interesting.
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the cannibalism bit is not neccesarily too far fatched - i've read that a japanese commander on one of the little islands near iwo jima or okinawa used the behead captured american airmen & eat their livers
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I've said it before, i'll say it again... the Japanese Culture has evolved the the most racist and remorseless of all human societys, surpassing even the french for arrogance and as such they are the most dangerous 'civilized' human sub-group on the face of this planet.
A huge mistake was made at the end of the war.. the Japanese culture should have been utterly, wholely and completly destroyed.. not the people.. just the culture. Every pagoda, ricebowl, kimono and samuri sword. Some social systems are just to damn evil to be left to propogate.
A re-emerging miltarist Japan with an army, navy and airforce is a very gawdamned dangerous thing to have laying around at your back.
As for the NK swiping folks to make 'em into teachers.. and it being too damn unbelivable for even a novel plot... read Nelson DeMile's 'The Charm School' ...Plot based on the 4,500 Korean War GI POW's that the chinese turned over to the Russians.... and were never heard from again. One of the great Crimes of OUR gopvernment was in NOT pursuing with the communists the fate of those americans that 'vanished' while POW's.
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Originally posted by GtoRA2
Everyone did some horrific things, but Japan was not very far behind Germany, but hardly anyone I talk to knows.
I would even argue that Japan was even worse than Germany in it's treatment of prisoners. It is very rare that I ever hear or read of Japanese held POWs that were treated even remotely humane. In spite of the Holocaust, thousands of prisoners held by Germany received reasonably humane treatment.
The very worst of German behavior would have been considered standard operating procedure in Japan.
eskimo
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Hang
Did that really happen? Do you know of any books about it other then the fiction?
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Right, If I had a choice of being an airman and being captured by the Germans or Japanese, the choice is clear! The Germans treated western prisoners fairly well.
How many civilians did the Germans kill?
How many did the Japanese, in China?
I learned what I know of this from reading, none from history classes and that is disturbing to me.
Do I think we should hold it against them now? No, not at all but it needs to be remembered. Our Kids need to know what happened in these wars.
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why not hold it against them....wage war on them...seize their industy and use it to make cool gadgets for the kids back home?
might as well..its not like they can defend themselves or anything.
:p
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Yup they're really fediddleed up, just look at their porn:
- its illegal to show pubic hair and squidgy bits in Japanese porn
- its legal to show underage girls as long as the above rule is not broke
- hentai cartoons often depict underage girls getting raped by multi-noodle-versions of Creamo
- that wierd gas-mask porn fetish they have
- Japanese businessmen are the biggest customers for the barely legal and not so legal prosititution markets in Cambodia
I mean I like my porn, but that Japanese stuff is just wayyyyyy out there.
Originally posted by Hangtime
I've said it before, i'll say it again... the Japanese Culture has evolved the the most racist and remorseless of all human societys, surpassing even the french for arrogance and as such they are the most dangerous 'civilized' human sub-group on the face of this planet.
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Yeah, damned dirty japs, it's great that the North Koreans kidnapped them.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
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its aslo legal to buy it at any age. they have them in candy dispensers!
Originally posted by Vulcan
Yup they're really fediddleed up, just look at their porn:
- its illegal to show pubic hair and squidgy bits in Japanese porn
- its legal to show underage girls as long as the above rule is not broke
- hentai cartoons often depict underage girls getting raped by multi-noodle-versions of Creamo
- that wierd gas-mask porn fetish they have
- Japanese businessmen are the biggest customers for the barely legal and not so legal prosititution markets in Cambodia
I mean I like my porn, but that Japanese stuff is just wayyyyyy out there.
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Any country that puts beer in a vending machine can't be all bad.
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eskimo, germans were very good towards western nations prisoners. Russians however were a quite a different story.
Also, number of medical experiments matching those of Japanesse was carried out in different concentration camps thoughout europe.
As for civilian casualties, i don't know exact numbers, but trust me, you didn't want to be a civilian wrapped up in german invasion either.
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Yeah, both the Japs and Krauts intentionally infected POW's and civilians with various different diseases. Quite sickening to read the survivours accounts of the testing.
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I hope it's a joke Hang ...
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Originally posted by Hangtime
"I've said it before, i'll say it again... the Japanese Culture has evolved the the most racist and remorseless of all human societys, surpassing even the french for arrogance and as such they are the most dangerous 'civilized' human sub-group on the face of this planet."
I can only say what ive experienced personally. The racism part is pretty accurate imo. remorseless... dunno, that falls under the cultural category i think. From what i know, backing down or admitting a mistake when you are a superior is a great shame and thus is avoided at any cost.
"A huge mistake was made at the end of the war.. the Japanese culture should have been utterly, wholely and completly destroyed.. not the people.. just the culture."
Work in Progress.
"Some social systems are just to damn evil to be left to propogate."
Didnt bin laden say that too? :eek:
"A re-emerging miltarist Japan with an army, navy and airforce is a very gawdamned dangerous thing to have laying around at your back. "
any militarist nation is dangerous. You could say that applies to the USA as well, but as always, its a matter of circumstances.
Back on topic, this kidnapping isnt a new idea either. The USSR had "American Towns" built where people lived, talked and dressed the american way.. and their spies were trained there. Im sure the US had its ways to train their own operatives. After all, what good is a spy if even a commoner can spot he's a foreigner?
Man its like going to a restaurant in france and using the wrong fork to eat the salad. ;) :D