I"m gonna go out on a limb, rather than take the more sensible tomndebb approach(which I should do).
I got into this just now, have only casually read the thread and some of the links, but it reads like a joke.
How the purported Japanese officer decided that their were 600 dead gallant soldiers just before he committed “Hari-Kari” strikes me as strange.
Why the Pentagon forwarded the photo to the Secret Service to be authenticated is also strange. I haven’t done the work, but WHY would the Secret Service be able to authenticate this?
My antagonism towards the Secret Service goes back to when I bought, in good faith, some counterfeit rare coins. I had to deal with them, as they are the branch of gov’t that deals with counterfeit money. But they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to counterfeit coins. They may know loads about counterfeit bills, but I know more about counterfiet coins than they do.
So the “fact” that the Secret Service" authenticated the photo, I would take with a grain of salt.
Well, the site created for Mr. Rubitsky says that the Secret Service says it was authentic, despite the fact that it used American dates, it attributed the slain Japanese to a single soldier when Rubitsky’s version has him using three weapons and jumping around specifically to hide the fact he was alone, that the Japanese used the American term for the area (“the Triangle”), and the Japanese officer has already concluded, along with his superior officer, that the war was lost, even though neither New Guinea nor Guadalcanal had been taken by the Americans at that point and the Japanese had not yet surrendered any ground in that particular campaign. (The Japanese had not reported their earlier loss at Midway below the highest command ranks of the Army or the civilians.)
All of this is possible.
According to the story, the Pentagon asked the Secret Service to confirm that the soldier in the photograph was the same as the person identified; the story then says the document was authenticated, a subtle but significant shift. Do we have an independent report from the Secret Service that the message is real? Or do we have only Rubitsky.com’s claim that the Secret Service was even involved?
While this is possible, the campaign history from the U.S. Army (pp 35 - 36) indicates that General Eichelberger arrived at the Urbana location on December 1, watched a dismal attack by U.S. forces on December 2, then ordered the command staff changes following the failure of that attack rather than shuffling assignments from behind the lines and sending the paperwork up to follow the troops when it could get there.
I’m skeptical that six companies of Japanese soldiers were unable to overrun a position held by a single soldier, given that at this stage of the war, the Japnese were more than capable of infiltrating behind allied lines when held by large numbers troops.
just a few of the weak points…
“the same anti-Semitism that denied him the medal came out once again. Some people in southern Wisconsin wrote letters to the local newspapers questioning David’s honesty.”
Now if the fact that someone questions a man’s hard to believe story isn’t antisemitism, i don’t know what is!
“One called him a congenital liar.”
Nazis were the only people who ever called anyone a congenital liar, as we all know.
“One night when Rubitsky came home he found a swastika on his front door and his car riddled by a shotgun.”
obviously, it was done by the same group that denied him the medal.
Also, Smith’s abbreviated statement makes me doubt that his full testimony was put into this story.
BTW, did anyone look at NPR logs to see if there even was such a story?
I also don’t think that the secret service would be contacted by the pentagon for verification of a faked document. I think that they would have used the fbi, cia or oss if not their own military intelligence units. If rubitsky presented a 20 dollar bill with writing on it, they might have, but not otherwise.
also, i like the fact that the letter on back of the picture has the entire story printed on it. i’m surprised that the hari kiri lad didn’t go ahead and name rubitsky by name-maybe he was just too embarrassed to ask the mighty warrior his name.
i would point out other holes in it, but i am too lazy to go back and read it; also, my computer is too slow!
send the boy home.
Well, his claim beats that of SGT. York’s from WW I, and I think that if it was legitimate that he’d at least have gotten the same kind of recognition that York did.
Could any of this be loose American translations? The Germans use (IIRC) Deutschland to refer to their country. We call it Germany. If a document is translated the translation will likely use the American name rather than the name used by whoever the document was translated from. Mind you I’m just throwing out possibilities here so corretc me if I’m worng (as if you need my say so to do that ).
The whole December 2 thing doesn’t bother me at all. Even given your timeline of the change in command staff doesn’t help Mott by pointing to Rubitsky. This whole story ended on December 2. It is still quite possible Mott didn’t know he had been relieved yet and regardless Rubitsky’s actions, if true, still wouldn’t have altered Mott’s fate in this regard.
Sure. I’m sure that the waiters at the Beni-Hana restaurant (who provided the translation, initially), knew that the the battle lines at the Duropa Plantation near Buna in Papua New Guinea had, for about six weeks along a two-mile long front, out of a two year and 1,100 mile campaign for New Guinea, a defensive salient that the Americans from two regiments facing it happened to call “the Triangle” and so they translated the Japanese reference to that fortified position from whatever it was in Japanese to “the Triangle.”
(Do you happen to know what the Germans called Bastogne when they attacked it? How about the Japanese colloquial name for the hold-outs on the Bataan Peninsula? Any idea what the Japanese called the area surrounding Henderson Field on Guadalcanal?)
There are many possibilities, but my guess is that ol’ Fr. Ockham is sharpening his razor with delight regarding this claim.
Regarding Mott: Certainly, he could have refused to pass on a medal recommendation, regardless. However, the timing becomes more important when we look at the larger picture. Eichelberger arrived in the area the day before the purported action. He then went around inspecting the front, watched the troops make a pretty miserable showing during an attack on the day following the purported action, and began chopping off heads of his senior officers, immediately. Evidence of a massive onslaught with 600 enemy casualties would have been the sort of news that Mott would have wanted to proclaim, even if he did not give Rubitsky credit. Even if it did not show that his troops were sufficiently gung ho, it would have demonstrated that he was facing extremely stiff resistance, justifying the lackluster appearance of his troops.
Almost certainly the guys at Beni-Hana didn’t know the area was called ‘the trangle’ (although do you know the Japanese didn’t refer to it that way?). However, the people the waiter was translating to almost certainly did know and use that name. Maybe the direct translation was, “miserable fucking swamp” and the guys it was read to thought, “That’s the triangle!” When they went to write down the translation whatever words the Japanese officer used were re-worded to ‘the triangle’. Seems to hold just fine with Occam to me.
Clearly there was massive resistance. Mott troting out that he was attacked at one point by 600 Japanese isn’t going to surprise Eichelberger any. From your description Eichelberger was not happy at the leadership of our troops in the face of stiff enemy resistance. Also, as I previously mentioned, I can only imagine that Eichelberger wouldn’t be overly impressed with Colonel Mott at having one guy left alone to face 600 enemy soldiers. That the one guy presumably did what he did is beside the point. Were I Eichelberger (and assuming Rubitsky did as is suggested) I’d nominate Rubitsky for a medal while at the same time kicking the Colonel (and maybe a few others) out of the military…or at the very least remove them from front-line command.
I suppose. As I noted, there are lots of things that are possible. You’ve still got the team from the university “confirming” the translation and not (as I would have done) rendering the actual translation and then adding a footnote to indicate that “miserable fucking swamp” is presumed to mean the Triangle (capitalized, no less). You still have Col. Yamamoto going out to commit ritual suicide in the midst of a battlefield where he could have been killed before he accomplished the deed. You still have Col. Yamamoto requesting of whoever found his photo and note (who turned out to be souvenir hunting Yanks) that they send his bones back to Japan, rather than simply committing suicide at the command post and having his orderly or the company surgeon arrange to send the bones home. You also have Col. Yamamoto deciding that the war had been lost at a time when the war was still a contested issue (it would be almost 18 months before New Guinea was lost by the Japanese). And, as I notice, you have Col. Yamamoto referring to his superior officer by a navy grade that is actually lower than his own rank. Yeah, I know, he probably meant “commander” in the loose sense of superior officer rather than simply mentioning Yasuta’s actual rank the way a respectful soldier would do.
As I noted way up above, I am not persuaded one way or another regarding whether Mr. Rubitsky actually held off an attack on December 1 - 2, 1942. However, on the issue of considering the story as presented, there are certainly more than a few odd claims. While one can find ways to answer each suspicion, the fact that there are so many issues to answer just might indicate that the claims as presented are not perfectly accurate.
I understand that taken together a lot of minor issues call into question the veracity of the larger claim. Still, maybe just for me to be a nitpicker, is it possible that Colonel Yamamoto (regarding what you mention above) was referring to the immediate battle at hand (or the somewhat larger idea of the battle for the island) and not the overall scope of the war? My initial reading of it assumed as much but I admit I wasn’t being overly critical of what I was reading.
600 men and they didn’t have a single machine gun to lay suppressive fire? No mortars? No grenades? No smoke?
I know that sometimes the Japs would use the ‘heroic’ charge to overrun positions but this is silly.
Another question. How much ammo would it take to stop an attack like that, even if they all did come neatly in rows screaming Banzaaai?
This just sounds like propaganda cartoon.
But, of course, stranger things have been known to happen.
My current quesiton is, given that the Japanese never overran the position, how did the Japanese soldier that wrote the note know there was only one defender?
At least 600 rounds and that is a pretty heavy load. I am looking for a cite but IIRC a typical infantryman only carried about 120 rounds on his person. I know from personal experience that carrying 90 rounds of in 9mm mags in belt pouches gets annoying. 600 rounds of typical 30 cal rifle ammo probably weighs at least 40 pounds, not something you want to have on your back trying to fight 600 enemy alone.
This of course assumes he hit with every round he fired.
Hmm, well this story certainly has my bullshit detector going off.
So 600 Japanese troops just line up, and ignoring all tactical options available to them, just allow themselves to be gunned down by a solitary infantryman? And this same man in a second battle further wipes out another 200 Japanese and seven machine guns? Oh please!
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