If (as the Left keeps pointing out) America is uniquely evil in the world - we dropped two Atomic Bombs, after all - why is America so popular in the Philippines? Some of the answer goes back to the Manila Massacre in February 1945.
General Douglas MacArthur had vowed that he would return, and he had - leading 200,000 troops. The invasion dwarfed D-Day, and took 700 ships to pull off. It was much more ambitious, too - not crossing 100 miles of English Channel, but a thousand miles of Pacific Ocean. The Imperial Japanese Army was badly outnumbered, out gunned, and out supplied.
They tried to make up for it with ruthlessness. The massacre wasn't a breakdown in military discipline, where the commanding officers lost control of their troops. The commanding officers employed the troops against civilian Philippinos, to let their troops vent their frustration. 100,000 dead later, the American Army freed the population, essentially exterminating the Japanese Army (who fought essentially to the last man).
Perhaps most notorious at the time was how the Japanese broke into the chapel at a Catholic school. They bayoneted everyone, leaving them to bleed to death. They raped some of the women as they bled to death.
How very odd that the Left never speaks of these things, saving all their contempt for the twin Atom Bombs. Odd that the warm relations between the U.S. and the Philippines are never mentioned. We are, after all, Patriarchal European oppressors of brown-skinned peoples. Those peoples, we're told, would be better off in a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Or something.
How very strange that the people of the Philippines don't seem to agree.
Inspired by I Want A New Left.
3 comments:
Several years back I read "Miracle of Deliverance" by Stephen Harper. In it he chronicled all of the things that likely didn't happen and all of the people that didn't die because of those two "evil" weapons.
In addition to not having to invade Japan, the British didn't have to invade Malaya and Singapore. Millions of Japanese lives were saved in addition to those of hundreds of thousands of allied troops.
As we say in medicine, everything is always clear through the retrospectroscope.
I love that you're doing this series of posts, Borepatch! Keep up the good work.
Well said, Borepatch. I would amend/change one paragraph:
The Japanese did not try to 'make up for it' (being outnumbered) with ruthlessness. They were ruthless, sadistic and vicious and would have been so whether or not they were outnumbered. Just part of the culture.
Post a Comment