I read 30 Seconds Over Tokyo when I was still a war-playing kid, before I would understand the mischievous consequences of the Doolittle Raiders B-25 bombers deploying without their bombsights. This was to prevent US war-making advantages falling into enemy hands but it also precluded dropping bombs with accuracy. I'm pretty certain the account for young readers also didn't explain why over a quarter of the squadron's bombs were of the incidiary cluster variety. Readers today know what those are for. Doolittle claimed to be targeting military sites in Japan's capitol, but "invariably" hit civilian areas including four schools and a hospital. Of the American fliers captured, three were tried and executed by the despicable "Japs", who considered the straffing of civilians to be war crimes. After the war, the US judged the Japanese officers responsible, as if their verdict was a greater injustice against our aviators' "honest errors". Today we rationalize our systemic overshoot policy as "collateral damage". 39484
Tag: World War II
WWII vet, age 92, finally diagnosed with PTSD why, because we care?
Sgt. Stanley Friedman, a 92 yr-old veteran of the WWII North African campaign, was finally diagnosed with PTSD. Pro bono lawyers couldn't even verify his service records, but after sixty years of denying his claims, the VA has at last been forced to grant Friedman compensation. Is this really the result of crafty legal work, at long last, or of a PR climate now overrun by Big Pharma, whose PTSD drug market windfall needed a poster boy for the baby boomer set, the type of veteran Americans favor over those from less "good" wars?
The guard towers of Camp Amache, CO, Japanese-American internment camp
Visitors to what remains of the WWII-era Granada Relocation Center located on Highway 50 past Lamar, are tempted to conclude that the remote location was isolation enough to restrict the movement of its 7,000 Japanese-American internees. Gone are all 560 buildings except their concrete foundations; the few remaining photographs depict a vast layout of spartan barracks, playing host to ordinary civilian lives, minus the atmosphere of incarceration. Were there cyclone fences and watch towers? The answer should not surprise you. Of course. Camp Amache was ringed by the usual multiple perimeters of prison fences, including six watch towers manned by military police, who were there, it was explained, for the internees' protection. I think plans to further restore Amache need to begin with the security fortifications. If such blights on American history as these race-based detention centers are memorialized in the hope that our nation not do it again, it dishonors our victims, and blunts the lesson, not to illustrate our heavy hand. 26982
Your father’s Lili Marlene, specifically
On the subject of historical misconceptions, you might say I'm hugely sentimental. So the tale of Lili Marlene catches me up like a honey trap. What does the name conjure for you? A Nazi Mata Hari? A fictional musical persona beloved by soldiers on both sides of the Good War? While even antiwar sentiments wax nostalgic about its universal love-conquers-all popularity, the WWII melody evokes romantic memories fueled by dueling propagandas. And when a victorious meme writes the history, it can erase its footprints, leading from what was effectively a literary rape. 21092
Rekindling Hiroshima: Shock and Awe
The 65th anniversary of dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima marks the first time the US will send an emissary to Japan for the commemoration. Will it be to reconsider remorse for committing history's most time-compressed crime against humanity, or as part of the fear-nukes campaign being waged against Iran? While anti-nuclear activists forever protest against arms buildups and proliferation, the US government is pleased enough to rekindle the specter of the bomb. Witness the Zionist crockumentary COUNTDOWN TO ZERO, this year's anti-Islamic OBSESSION, focused not on who has too many WMDs, but on the axis of evil smoking gun mushroom cloud.
De Gaulle urges resistance in occupied France, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan
June 18 marked the 70th anniversary of the Free-French General de Gaulle's famous 1940 radio address when he urged occupied France to resist because victory over their invaders would be inevitable. Does the western media commemorate de Gaulle's message without an inkling of irony? Of course, today's occupied peoples cannot be offered the same assurance, that help is on its way. Just as Europe was overwhelmed by Hitler's superior force, de Gaulle knew that US industry would trump that. There will be no white knight to rescue Iraq and Afghanistan, but "L'Appel du 18 Juin," celebrated in 2010, reaffirms every people's right to resist foreign invaders. And not nonviolently. 18267
Ignoble WWII bombing of Coventry commemorated with coined slur, ours
Here's a bit of WWII distortion the History Channel is passing off as, um, history. Did you know that those dirty Krauts leveled the English city of Coventry so completely that they coined a word to celebrate it? Apparently that term was "Coventrated." Oh, it's a real verb alright -- trouble is, it's English. The British intelligence office seized upon the conjugated Coventriert to mean: subjected to heavy bombardment, and pretended the Huns were such bastards they commemorated the atrocity by mocking their victims in the Teutonic dictionary. 15479
You have forgotten what to remember
Can someone please explain to me what it means to fly this flag? The POW-MIA flag is ubiquitous these days around veterans. Our town hall flies this black flag halfway below the Stars and Stripes. When the latter is at half mast, the former hangs indecorously low. Which reminds me of a pirate ship stalking a wavering Old Glory. I understand POW and MIA, and "you are not forgotten." But there is no flag for the veterans, the dead or wounded, to whom does this lone flag speak and why? 11342
Armed UAS drones need no defending
I was curious about the etymology of the term "drone" applied to military (& DHS) Unmanned Aerial Surveillance aircraft, these days, mostly Armed. Obviously Armed UAS are not named after the stingless unproductive bees whose task it is to impregnate the queen, nor lazy idlers, nor clueless computer sales techies, nor thankless menial worker drones. Anyone who's been around Radio Controlled model planes knows drones are named for the sound they make, a steady drone as they labor across the sky. While military aerial surveillance predates the Wright Brothers, and RC model airplanes have been around for half that time, it took the advent of asymmetric warfare to open the window to military drones. Their constant buzz offering the most intractable reason. 10511
Top 10 secret armies of the CIA
Found this on the web, will try to retrace provenance, worth a read: The United States have a well known history of providing military support to countries in need. But from time to time, the US Government has provided secret forces. While many are successful, there have also been a number of failures. This is a list of the ten top secret armies of the CIA. 7782
How to spot a Jap in Afghanistan
This is an excerpt from the WWII training manual "HOW TO SPOT A JAP." Can you doubt our military blimpnecks aren't giving the same xenophobic advice about how American servicemen should be sizing up their robe-clad insurgent adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Who owns images of American dead?
AP photographer Julie Jacobson was reticent to publish her picture of dying US Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard. Though his father was opposed, the Associated Press overruled. But this was no victory for the public's right to see a true reflection of war. The D.o.D. is still indignant, but I suspect Jacobson's report was ultimately vetted in their favor. Military propagandists need to represent America's growing losses in Afghanistan. Jacobson's image provides their limited hangout. Like the other photographs of casualties which have escaped through embeds, the image of Lance Corporal Bernard is desaturated of blood, and the surrounding events fit the military endorsed narrative. 8643
Unseen 1945 Hiroshima Ground Zero pics loosed from personal stash
Let's file this under more soul-less disregard for your fellow travelers. Never before seen photographs of Ground Zero at Hiroshima have emerged in time for the 64th anniversary of the record-setting war crime. The US army photo record, which had escaped the government's suppression efforts, remained in someone's personal stash for decades. The damning documentation his to neglect, and, fortunately, to accidentally discard. 8338
Next to the White House
While visiting Washington DC in March, I found it interesting to note the edifices closest to the White House. 7252
UCSB Prof William Robinson pro-Semite
Wouldn't you think it bad form for Israeli militants to behave like Nazis, while immunizing themselves with the self-righteous indignation that any criticism of their actions can simply be dismissed as "anti-Semitic?" Photographs and confessions emerging from the IDF's atrocities in Gaza just beg comparison the German Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Earlier this year UC Santa Barbara professor William Robinson forwarded an email photo essay to a UCSB listserv, the already much-circulated side by side comparison to the WWII atrocities. Two students complained, plagiarizing stock IDF lingo. Now the Anti-Defamation League wants Robinson to recant. With IDF propagandists pouring on the bullshit, let's revisit the documents. 7589
One man’s Guerrier, another’s Terroriste
WELL LOOKY WHAT I FOUND! Published in France just after the war, this book is about "LES TERRORISTES." Can you tell by the cover art, who play the title role? 7509
Warmongers do end run on Vietnam Wall
WASHINGTON DC- Who knew it wasn't just the Vietnam War veterans who had misgivings about Maya Lin's design for a memorial? Fair enough it doesn't celebrate the achievements of our armies. This peripheral statue offers the more conventional bronze tribute. It depicts as addendum, three survivors emerging from the woods, disheveled and still brandishing assault rifles. They appear to regard the wall and its visitors with wariness. I recognize the faces now, they are the chicken hawks who didn't go, but still want to wage war, and had to figure out how to get America over that wall. 7115
Hummel volunteers were unfit for Nazis
Godmother Superior of kitsch, Maria Innocentia Hummel, intended her “Volunteers” to be a plea for peace. The forlorn would-be soldiers were an insult to Hitler, but a half century later, the United States would pervert Hummel’s satire and enlist the little boys into the war against Iraq.
Bishop Williamson must RECANT says Pope
At the behest of the Vatican, Bishop Richard Williamson apologized for offense caused by his statements regarding WWII historical records of the Nazi concentration camps. But Pope Benedict weighed the bishop's statement as insufficient. Now he's demanding a full retraction before he will reconsider the latter's excommunication. Being urged to recant may be a scandal in papal circles, but history buffs and cineasts have only ever seen truth-clinging heretics assailed with cries to "RECANT!" 6744
Wikipedia and those romantic Zionists
In researching the evolution of Zionist terrorism, from clandestine militias like Bar-Giora, to Hashomer, Haganah, Etzel, and the pro-Nazi Stern Gang, I came upon this opening paragraph in Wikipedia. Describing Bar-Giora, it began: "On September 28, 1907, a group of activists from Poalei Zion gathered in Yitzhak Ben-Zvi's tiny Jaffa apartment. There was no furniture, the men sat on the floor in a circle and used a crate for a desk." Some helpful Wiki elf was obviously feeling sentimental. 6446
Bishop Williamson and Auschwitz 1.0
I am curious as to why a Roman Catholic bishop would risk a second excommunication over the historic particulars of the Holocaust. Bishop Richard Williamson is being labeled a "Holocaust Denier" because he questions the extent, and mechanism, of the official version of the Holocaust. Because Williamson is also criticized for his skepticism about the official 9/11 narrative, and for his praise for the Unabomber's manifesto, I want to take a closer look, and wonder what is he reading? 6392
American arrogance
Protests as US warship docks in Nagasaki What incredible arrogance and bad taste! This is your military and government, Americans! Look in the mirror and weep!
Gaza is not the Holocaust that the Jews suffered in the Warsaw Ghetto of WWII
"Pointing out that the suffering endured by Gazans is not comparable in scope to the Holocaust or other well-known genocides, does not diminish it. However, it is crucial to provide accurate historical context to the current conflict, for two reasons. If Gaza is today's Warsaw, then Palestinians have no hope. 6348
Holocaust Remembrance Day inaction
I'd like to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, with this photograph of modern day Israelis, who came to a hilltop overlooking Gaza to watch the IDF soldiers do their work. 6205
Actual Holocaust revisionists unmasked
In the face of escalated Israeli atrocities and war crimes against the inhabitants of Gaza this week, is the Zionist Holocaust Remembrance juggernaut losing its nerve? A major publisher has canceled plans to distribute a WWII concentration camp memoir when it was discovered that key elements of the tale were untrue. But that never stopped Holocaust Rememberers before. 5870