Last Japanese Soldier To Surrender Dies At 91

Dragonlayer

Aka Corporal Yakob
Dec 5, 2013
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There's dedication and then there's dedication. Regardless of politics, I can respect that: rest in peace Lieutenant.

EDIT: How appropriate (different theatre notwithstanding) that I was listening to Sabaton's Wehrmact while reading this? What about the men executing orders indeed....
 

chiefohara

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Sep 4, 2009
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Tanis said:
He's a war criminal, who should have spent his last years in a jail cell.

Instead it seems like his blind, dangerous, patriotism will be remembered fondly.

Shame really.
What war crime did he commit?

His last order was a lawful order and he followed it to the letter.

The reason he spent his last years teaching children as opposed to rotting in a jail cell is because he committed no war crime.
 

Dragonlayer

Aka Corporal Yakob
Dec 5, 2013
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chiefohara said:
Tanis said:
He's a war criminal, who should have spent his last years in a jail cell.

Instead it seems like his blind, dangerous, patriotism will be remembered fondly.

Shame really.
What war crime did he commit?

His last order was a lawful order and he followed it to the letter.

The reason he spent his last years teaching children as opposed to rotting in a jail cell is because he committed no war crime.
He was a Japanese soldier and a fighting member of the Axis: obviously he spent the last 30 years eating orphans alive!

P.S. Before anyone thinks their so clever for responding to this with accounts of war crimes and atrocities, I'm well aware of what the various Axis militaries got up to, thank you very much: I just don't go for universal guilt by association.
 

chiefohara

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Sep 4, 2009
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Geth Reich (Yakob) said:
chiefohara said:
Tanis said:
He's a war criminal, who should have spent his last years in a jail cell.

Instead it seems like his blind, dangerous, patriotism will be remembered fondly.

Shame really.
What war crime did he commit?

His last order was a lawful order and he followed it to the letter.

The reason he spent his last years teaching children as opposed to rotting in a jail cell is because he committed no war crime.
He was a Japanese soldier and a fighting member of the Axis: obviously he spent the last 30 years eating orphans alive!

P.S. Before anyone thinks their so clever for responding to this with accounts of war crimes and atrocities, I'm well aware of what the various Axis militaries got up to, thank you very much: I just don't go for universal guilt by association.
No man is responsible for the crimes of his father.

Besides there were plenty of atrocities committed by the allies as well.

The bombing of dresden being one particularly thorny one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

ps i know you didn't want links but since my intention was to support the point you were making rather than poke holes in what you were trying to say i assumed you'd forgive me :)
 

Dragonlayer

Aka Corporal Yakob
Dec 5, 2013
971
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chiefohara said:
Geth Reich (Yakob) said:
chiefohara said:
Tanis said:
He's a war criminal, who should have spent his last years in a jail cell.

Instead it seems like his blind, dangerous, patriotism will be remembered fondly.

Shame really.
What war crime did he commit?

His last order was a lawful order and he followed it to the letter.

The reason he spent his last years teaching children as opposed to rotting in a jail cell is because he committed no war crime.
He was a Japanese soldier and a fighting member of the Axis: obviously he spent the last 30 years eating orphans alive!

P.S. Before anyone thinks their so clever for responding to this with accounts of war crimes and atrocities, I'm well aware of what the various Axis militaries got up to, thank you very much: I just don't go for universal guilt by association.
No man is responsible for the crimes of his father.

Besides there were plenty of atrocities committed by the allies as well.

The bombing of dresden being one particularly thorny one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

ps i know you didn't want links but since my intention was to support the point you were making rather than poke holes in what you were trying to say i assumed you'd forgive me :)
Exactly: WW2 was a hell of a lot less black and white then its popularly portrayed as. I actually got an interesting book the other day looking at the experiences of the German populace under Allied and Soviet occupation - pretty harrowing stuff.

:D It's cool and your support is appreciated!
 

SeventhSigil

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Jun 24, 2013
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Tanis said:
He's a war criminal, who should have spent his last years in a jail cell.

Instead it seems like his blind, dangerous, patriotism will be remembered fondly.

Shame really.
Unfortunately that's what patriotism, or to be more specific, rigid viewpoint tends to do. Whether they are Japanese, German Nazis, or the American pilots who carried out the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interestingly, in the last example, I don't think there were any sort of consequences for those connected to that project either, no war crime charges, no jail time, things like that, even though the death toll was in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. It might be why his story didn't bother me so much, because frankly, if we were to start insisting on putting people in that situation in jail, I'd have asked those flight crews be at the head of the line. =P It just seems to be an inevitable requisite, and from a cynically practical point of view, makes a depressing sort of sense. Difficult to convince your soldiers to carry out these difficult, dangerous, morally questionable acts to support your country, if at a moment's notice they'll join the crowd of protesters in pointing fingers at you.

OT: I remember reading about this story a while ago, I wonder if he had the time to make a more detailed recording of what happened for those 30 years. His situation was certainly unique, and his survival skills were clearly second to none.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
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Tanis said:
He's a war criminal, who should have spent his last years in a jail cell.
Guess what? There are war criminals everywhere. Chances are, you probably met at least one in your life time. If not, you will. There are war criminals on all sides during wartime. But no one questions the victor. Only the losing side gets that label.
 

Soviet Heavy

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Jan 22, 2010
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Yeah, attacking civilians and noncombatants doesn't stick well with me, especially considering Imperial Japan's track record on that front. Thirty years is impressive, but interpreting your orders not to surrender as meaning "kill any non japanese you come across" just strikes me of the psychotic patriotism that dominated the Japanese regime.

There's a reason that every allied victory in the Pacific theater resulted in 99% fatalities for the defending Japanese forces. They never retreated, they didn't care if they died, so long as they killed more enemies. Wounded men would suicide bomb medics picking them up, banzai charge when they had no hope of victory, or commit seppuku suicide rather than be taken captive. Or in this man's case, survive thirty years fighting a guerrilla war against police and citizens.
 

Robert Marrs

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Mar 26, 2013
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Crazy. I was just reading about this guy the other day. I don't think its really fair to call the guy evil or a criminal. In his mind he was doing what he thought was right and I think its fair to say at some point he probably started to lose it. 30 years on an island almost totally alone all while thinking you are still fighting a war that ended 30 years prior has to take a mental toll.
 

wooty

Vi Britannia
Aug 1, 2009
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One more amazing tale to emerge from the last big war, must of taken some massive mental strength to keep going and going for all that time.

Almost reminds me of the man I met who ran the ryokan I stayed in in Fukuoka, he had some pretty interesting stories about the war too. It was rather refreshing to hear someone elses side of events that are so widely spoken about and overly polished in this country.
 

Moloch Sacrifice

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Aug 9, 2013
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Am I the only one who is reminded of the Soldier from Team Fortress 2?
Though he wanted desperately to fight in World War 2, the Soldier was rejected from every branch of the U.S. military. Undaunted, he bought his own ticket to Europe. After arriving and finally locating Poland, the Soldier taught himself how to load and fire a variety of weapons before embarking on a Nazi killing spree for which he was awarded several medals that he designed and made himself. His rampage ended immediately upon hearing about the end of the war in 1949.
Humorous coincidences aside, I think his life story is an unfortunate consequence of the meeting of nationalism and paranoia. I would have thought there would have been some sort of protocol for contacting deployed troops in the event of the hostilities ending.
 

Hardsuit

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May 20, 2011
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What most people forget is that at the time the countries involved were in a state of total war. Something that hasn't happened since WWII.

"Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of all available resources and population.

In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and civilians than in other conflicts, and sometimes no such differentiation at all, as nearly every human resource, combatants and civilians alike, can be considered to be part of the belligerent war effort." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

In order to even have the Nuremberg Trials they had to circumvent the rules set by the Geneva Convention.

OT: The dedication of the man can't be faulted but it does say something about the gov't and military leaders that couldn't provide him with proper orders that the war was over.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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ExtraDebit said:
He's a war criminal, why do you people wish him peace?
Actually, Japanese war criminals would be Pearl Harbor bombers, people above and beyond the call to war who cross the line from soldier to evil fuckwad. However, since a fair few of the most overzealous soldiers in Japan of back then were, say, kamikaze pilots, they're hard to punish, having been dead. A man who merely killed a bunch of people in wartime is nothing. There's no end of people in America who have done as much or more.

But if that's not good enough for ya, there is the fact that what we did to Japan is almost as bad as the Treaty of Versalles at the end of WWI. We neutered Japan, militaristically-speaking. After dropping the first two atomic bombs in war history on their soil, we denied them the power to make war at all, only to defend themselves. We punished that generation and - until this is repealed - all generations that follow. There would be no need to persue individual war criminals after we were through with them.
 

GonvilleBromhead

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Dec 19, 2010
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I find it pretty hard to condemn him. The western world and Japan have a different enough value system in the 21st century - the culture of Japan in the period Onodo would have been brought up is completely alien to our modern, western minds: highly militaristic , deferential and frankly brutal. We are all products of the society we are brought up in, and Onodo was no different - with Japan and indeed the Third Reich I aim my ire at those who (especially in the case of Nazi Germany) purposefully forced upon the people a cultural upheaval that utterly altered the values and ethics of the vast majority of people for their own personal ends.

When you consider the militarism, honour system, and deference to superiors in the period, the fact that every soldier in every army (even today) is trained only to follow orders that originate from official sources (false orders given by the enemy is a common, and legal, ruse de guerre), and the fact that the official sources he would have trusted were dismantled in the immediate aftermath of the surrender (I can no more see an officer commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Army accepting an order from Japan Ground Self Defence Force than I can see an officer commissioned in the United States Marine Corps trusting an order from something called the North American Coastal Defense Infantry Command), and his actions become completely understandable.
 

-Dragmire-

King over my mind
Mar 29, 2011
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Soviet Heavy said:
Yeah, attacking civilians and noncombatants doesn't stick well with me, especially considering Imperial Japan's track record on that front. Thirty years is impressive, but interpreting your orders not to surrender as meaning "kill any non japanese you come across" just strikes me of the psychotic patriotism that dominated the Japanese regime.

There's a reason that every allied victory in the Pacific theater resulted in 99% fatalities for the defending Japanese forces. They never retreated, they didn't care if they died, so long as they killed more enemies. Wounded men would suicide bomb medics picking them up, banzai charge when they had no hope of victory, or commit seppuku suicide rather than be taken captive. Or in this man's case, survive thirty years fighting a guerrilla war against police and citizens.
I imagine if that were their interpretation, those 4 military people probably would have killed more than 30 people in 30 years.
 

Movitz

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Jan 30, 2013
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I Think I have a new mancrush.

But he didn't have to serve any time after all the things he did?
 

Robot Number V

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Adam Jensen said:
-Dragmire- said:
While I can't relate to him in any way, that's quite the dedication that guy had.
That's one way to put it. Another way would be to call him a servile idiot.

Yeah, that works better.
Yeah...pretty much this. People are saying he was "dedicated", but....Dedicated to what? The war was OVER. He was dedicating himself to something that no longer existed. More importantly, he was KILLING for something that no longer existed.

How exactly is that praiseworthy?
 

Commissar Sae

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Nov 13, 2009
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Soviet Heavy said:
Yeah, attacking civilians and noncombatants doesn't stick well with me, especially considering Imperial Japan's track record on that front. Thirty years is impressive, but interpreting your orders not to surrender as meaning "kill any non japanese you come across" just strikes me of the psychotic patriotism that dominated the Japanese regime.

There's a reason that every allied victory in the Pacific theater resulted in 99% fatalities for the defending Japanese forces. They never retreated, they didn't care if they died, so long as they killed more enemies. Wounded men would suicide bomb medics picking them up, banzai charge when they had no hope of victory, or commit seppuku suicide rather than be taken captive. Or in this man's case, survive thirty years fighting a guerrilla war against police and citizens.
Well that and they received word that American troops killed Japanese POWs, the number were inflated but there are several cases of Japanese POWs being mass executed by Americans, often having been tortured or having to live through horrible conditions before hand. There are eyewitness accounts from American marines saying how some of their fellow soldiers would open the mouths of wounded prisoners to check them for gold teeth, and often ripped teeth out even if they weren't made of gold. The Japanese have a pretty horrific track record for poor treatment of POWs as well so I am by no means trying to brush that off, but the Pacific front became much more a war of hate than the western front.

Glad he was able to find some peace and live well in the years afterwards.
 

List

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Sep 29, 2013
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If anything i believe the CO is the Ahole here...

"It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we'll come back for you. "

He did no such thing... he completely forgot about him... it took him 30 years...
 

irishda

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Dec 16, 2010
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Robot Number V said:
Adam Jensen said:
-Dragmire- said:
While I can't relate to him in any way, that's quite the dedication that guy had.
That's one way to put it. Another way would be to call him a servile idiot.

Yeah, that works better.
Yeah...pretty much this. People are saying he was "dedicated", but....Dedicated to what? The war was OVER. He was dedicating himself to something that no longer existed. More importantly, he was KILLING for something that no longer existed.

How exactly is that praiseworthy?
First, he was dedicated to his duty as a soldier. In the words of Tennyson, "theirs is not to reason why/theirs but to do or die." Some people would call that servile, and to that I'd have to say of course it is. That's exactly how a military functions. Unit cohesion is entirely dependent on soldiers carrying out their orders rather than questioning them. More than that, how was he to believe the war was over? In carrying out his orders, that meant living off the grid deep in perceived enemy territory. Any attempt at persuasion could have easily been seen as propaganda.

Second, you don't evade capture or death for 30 years by being an idiot.