We Surrender Don’t Shoot! What Changes?
Posted by jaybeacham on 30 Jan 2016 | Tagged as: blog
Several years ago I worked for a city utility with the power company.
Part of my duties were in the power plant assisting the operator.
He was a cousin of my father’s and a jolly fellow. Always telling stories and joking.
He was kind hearted too.
My mother’s two brothers served in the Army during WWII as did a couple of her brothers-in-law.
Her brothers never talked about the war. One of her brothers-in-law did tell stories about his war experiences and so did my father’s cousin.
He had been in the Navy.
He once told of strong young men getting ill and dying quickly, then their bodies
sliding overboard to a watery grave.
He said the strong ones seemed to get ill and to go faster than others.
The story I remember the most is about the Japanese submarine they captured.
The crew of the sub came out of it with hands held high in surrender.
The captain ordered that they all be machine gunned on the spot saying, “We have no room for prisoners.”
That sounds very bloodthirsty and cruel.
Even though atrocities had been done by the Japanese armies and the Japanese people had been demonized by the American propaganda, this was not the kind of thing our service men should have done to the enemy.
Do things change?
I looked at the video of the FBI murdering the man in Oregon when his hands were held high in surrender and think,
“No, things have not changed.”
Here is a rendering of a WWII Japanese Submarine: