The G.I.'s Were Japan's Worker Slaves. Believe It.

[gkanai]

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Let's not forget this bit of WWII history.

SHENYANG, China, Sept. 18; The strangeness of it all was not lost on Robert Rosendahl as he walked through the humming Chinese factory, the place where as a World War II prisoner of war he had been a slave laborer for the Japanese. He had hated this factory, just as he hated the Japanese prisoner of war camp that took three years of his life.

This morning, Mr. Rosendahl, 82, was back for the first time. He and two other returning Americans walked tentatively through the compound as Chinese television crews crowded in. His wife, Bettie, asked him if he wanted to take a picture.

"I don't want to take a picture," he said. "Why the hell do I want to take a picture? I spent 59 years trying to forget this place."

Then he paused, laughing gently at his own bluster, and lifted his camera. Click.

He could not resist, just as he could not resist returning after six decades to this city in northeast China where he and roughly 1,500 other Allied prisoners endured forced labor, sub-zero temperatures and, if the allegations are true, a Japanese-administered germ warfare program that used them as guinea pigs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/19/international/asia/19CHIN.html?ex=1064548800&en=ab3b3c0a5957e234&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

[Taro Toporific]

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Let's not forget this bit of WWII history.... a Japanese-administered germ warfare program that used them as guinea pigs.

LEST WE FORGET....The day is especially remembered in China. as the NYT said: "...a symbolic day in Chinese history --- the anniversary of Sept. 18, 1931, the beginning of Japan's brutal 14-year occupation of Shenyang and of surrounding Manchuria, when untold numbers of Chinese were slain.


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Speaking of guinea pigs...

Prehistoric rodent a guinea pig Godzilla
Atlanta Journal Constitution, GA - Aug 19WASHINGTON -- A rodent the size of a buffalo? Researchers say they have found fossils of a 1,545-pound giant that thrived millions of years ago in a swampy South American forest.
"Imagine a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth ...

[kurohinge1]

Speaking of guinea pigs...

Prehistoric rodent a guinea pig Godzilla
Atlanta Journal Constitution, GA - Aug 19

Informally, the skeleton is called Goya ...

... "We know that there were crocodiles in the same location where we found this animal," said Sanchez-Villagra. "They were some of the largest crocs ever - more than 10 metres long."

Goya also had to worry about large carnivores called marsupial cats, and huge flesh-eating birds called phorracoids, he said ...

Wow! The drive-through animal parks must've been much more fun in those days!

[Taro Toporific]

Informally, the skeleton is called Goya ...

YIKES! The dread goya! The foulest & ugliest JPN veggie known to man.

[AssKissinger]

This is a good book to read about Unit 731. I've often wondered why The Rape of Nanking has received so much more press than this. Unit 731 was much more horrific and is indisputable mainstream history (not that there is any doubt about Nanking either).

BTW, did everybody see Taro's link to the American WW2 anti JPN, propaganda film (Brilliant link Taro, thank-you very much)? My feeling after watching that was that it didn't really portray the Japanese unfairly. I believe that's how the typical Japanese really felt back then. Any comments about that?

Here's the propaganda link again: http://www.archive.org/movies/download.php?id=724&download=0&stream=1&url=rtsp://movies.archive.org%2Fmovies03%2F0%2Fmovies%2FMyJapan1945%2FMyJapan1945_256kb.rm

[jingai]

BTW, did everybody see Taro's link to the American WW2 anti JPN, propaganda film (Brilliant link Taro, thank-you very much)? My feeling after watching that was that it didn't really portray the Japanese unfairly. I believe that's how the typical Japanese really felt back then. Any comments about that?

!!!!!!!!! Too shocked to comment

This clip is from the Prelinger archives. Check out the link, type in "Japan" in the search box and find "Children of Japan." It took place a few months before Pearl Harbor. Watch both vidoes and tell me which one better represents Japan.
http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php

[AssKissinger]

I think they both represent Japan at certain times equally well. And I'm sure both were true at the same time as well. People did normal things like go to school and bathe during the war. Clearly the 'Children of Japan' link is a lot closer to the Japan we've come to know living here today(thank God). But I don't think there's any doubt that Japan was in a state of hardcore nationalism during the war.