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The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

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Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#61

Post by hernan7 »

coryl wrote: post #14
chrischen wrote: post #10

Blind conviction to your country is nationalism. I don't see how he can be seen as a hero for that. Sure what he did was amazing, but I wouldn't encourage such patriotic behavior.

It wasn't just blind conviction though, he was a professional soldier. It was war time, and his commanding officer sent him in to conduct guerrilla warfare in the jungles. He was expected to be there for a long time and operationally independent. "You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we’ll come back for you. Until then, so long as you h…

Actually, if his orders included killing civilians, then those were unlawful orders. And if he was obeying them that would make him a war criminal, no?

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#62

Post by avar »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #53
avar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that policy's really derived from WWII I daresy they've completely missed the point. The Data Protection Directive wouldn't help if you Europe were to fall under Nazi control again. It's just a law that says the government can't process the data in certain ways, they still have the data though, and could start mining it by changing the law, or ignoring it. If they actually cared they wouldn't be gathering this dat…

"...but that's been changing in the recent decades since the FBI, NSA and others were founded." I wouldn't exactly characterize the last 6-8 decades as "recent". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsa

Relatively speaking. The first census was taken in 1790, the records being kept about US citizens today are a relatively recent thing compared to that.

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#63

Post by sliverstorm »

hernan7 wrote: post #61
coryl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't just blind conviction though, he was a professional soldier. It was war time, and his commanding officer sent him in to conduct guerrilla warfare in the jungles. He was expected to be there for a long time and operationally independent. "You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we’ll come back for you. Until then, so long as you h…

Actually, if his orders included killing civilians, then those were unlawful orders. And if he was obeying them that would make him a war criminal, no?

I don't think he was ever ordered to kill civilians. He figured the proliferation of 'civilians' on the island was a ruse, and they were actually soldiers in disguise.

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#64

Post by InclinedPlane »

roofone wrote: post #52
kaptainlange wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His belief that the Allies would go through so much trouble to stop a group of people who had killed relatively few people over a 30 year period is what makes him dumb. What troop movements was he observing? What logistics was he disrupting? How effective could he possibly be gathering intelligence if he couldn't even report his findings to his superiors? Even if the war was still going, his contribution to the war e…

Hiroo Onoda may be dumb, but I believe you can't tell that based on this story. To suggest otherwise is myopic. Apply Occam's razor: news of Japan's surrender is a (probably not uncommon) Allied trick vs. the US created a magic secret weapon that would force Japan -- a country so dedicated to winning they crash planes into boats -- to surrender shortly after Hiroo left it. In Hiroo's Japanse solider's shoes, which se…

In 1946, perhaps, in 1950? 1955? 1960? 1970? no. At that point, 5, 10, 15, 30 years after the fact the idea that Japan had not lost the war, the war was still going, and yet they had not reconquered the Phillippines doesn't pass the smell test.

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#65

Post by MichaelSalib »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #57
MichaelSalib wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not always true. Almost all wars are started for "defensive" reasons and oftentimes those reasons are just lies told to drum up support for the war. The Nazi regime convinced ordinary people that they had to fight against an internal Jewish threat. That was a lie. If ordinary Germans had let "the other guy" go to war, nothing would have happened because there was no internal threat. Likewise, if Americans had…

Whether the other guy starts a war based on a lie or not is immaterial to whether or not you are a: dead or b: living under his boot heel. As reference: see most of human history.

You miss the point. There may be cases where "the other guy" actually starts a war against us. But that doesn't seem very common. What is much more common is "the other guy" doing nothing but our own people making up lies about what "the other guy" is doing; you know, inventing a fictional war. In those cases, you're not going to end up dead or living under anyone's boot heel.

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#66

Post by scotty79 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #33
scotty79 wrote: post #27

> Now in the end, we might look at Onoda as a fool and worse, a murder of innocent people. In the end, he was both of those things, there is no denying it. Funny thing is that at war time being idiot murderer of innocent people is just fine. I think there should be much more footage from war zones. Maybe then people would stop looking at war as sane and sometimes appropriate option.

Worse option: letting the other guy go to war, and you don't. Its called surrender and can be worse.

I'm just curious. Do you have any example of country (region?) that had a real option of waging war against its enemy but chose to surrender and got worse then it would get if it choose to wage war? (by any reasonable prediction, of course)

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#67

Post by scotty79 »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #41
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse option: letting the other guy go to war, and you don't. Its called surrender and can be worse.

This is not always true. Almost all wars are started for "defensive" reasons and oftentimes those reasons are just lies told to drum up support for the war. The Nazi regime convinced ordinary people that they had to fight against an internal Jewish threat. That was a lie. If ordinary Germans had let "the other guy" go to war, nothing would have happened because there was no internal threat. Likewise, if Americans had…

> honorable war fighting

One part of me gets it how war can be honorable. Thoughts about protection, bravery, planning, cunning, destruction of evil enemy. On the other hand I think that this thoughts are cultural imprintment reinforcing primal instincts embedded by evolutionary means in times way before industrial age.

Concept of honorable war in our heads is with such contradiction with any serious war fought with modern equipment that I feel that it's one of these things that made sense in early days of humanity, like seeing danger in dark barely visible shapes, but unlike those harmless artifacts when mixed with modern technology our glitch that makes us think that war can be sane misguides us into doing really harmful and dangerous things.

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#68

Post by InclinedPlane »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #65
InclinedPlane wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether the other guy starts a war based on a lie or not is immaterial to whether or not you are a: dead or b: living under his boot heel. As reference: see most of human history.

You miss the point. There may be cases where "the other guy" actually starts a war against us. But that doesn't seem very common. What is much more common is "the other guy" doing nothing but our own people making up lies about what "the other guy" is doing; you know, inventing a fictional war. In those cases, you're not going to end up dead or living under anyone's boot heel.

I didn't miss your point, I rejected it.

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#69

Post by MichaelSalib »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #68
MichaelSalib wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point. There may be cases where "the other guy" actually starts a war against us. But that doesn't seem very common. What is much more common is "the other guy" doing nothing but our own people making up lies about what "the other guy" is doing; you know, inventing a fictional war. In those cases, you're not going to end up dead or living under anyone's boot heel.

I didn't miss your point, I rejected it.

The US started a war in Iraq that has exterminated about a million human beings so far and has produced 3 or 4 million refugees. We started that war because we believed lies. If taking actions that lead to a million corpses because we were insufficiently skeptical doesn't trouble you, well, I'd guess that our value systems are sufficiently incompatible so as to make discussion impossible.

Also, I dislike sociopathy.

Re: The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

#70

Post by JoeAltmaier »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #69
InclinedPlane wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't miss your point, I rejected it.

The US started a war in Iraq that has exterminated about a million human beings so far and has produced 3 or 4 million refugees. We started that war because we believed lies. If taking actions that lead to a million corpses because we were insufficiently skeptical doesn't trouble you, well, I'd guess that our value systems are sufficiently incompatible so as to make discussion impossible. Also, I dislike sociopathy.

Hm. Is that number pulled out of the air?

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

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