While is is true the Germans were scraping the bottom of the barrel in recruiting efforts it is simply false to claim most of the armed services at the end of the war was comprised of boys or old men.
All your claims are based on one book, “Other Losses” by James Bacque, a book which is unsupported by any other historian, serious academic research, or even a cursory analysis of the facts. Virtually every claim it makes has been torn apart by professional historians.
:smack:
No.
Then explain their cruelty to other Asian cultures.
Your ‘argument’ (ick) fails out of the gate.
What is depicted in this picture has been done in many other conflicts. It’s not specific to Japanese army during WWII.
I still say that the fact that so many soldiers were high on amphetamine, then considered a harmless pick-me-up, certainly didn’t help.
This strikes me as little more than engaging in weird speculation in support of various personal fantasies.
The link you provided is not credible. While I am sure that individual incidents of similar behavior have occurred, the notion that it routinely happened on a large scale is absurd. If such a phenomenon was prevalent, it would be more widely known and would most likely have been the subject of a war crimes trial.
As such, (particularly as it is not a well-known incident or phenomenon), it is really not pertinent to the discussion in this thread.
[ /Moderating ]
Zombie penises. I thought I’d make it through my time at the SDMB without ever having to type those two words together.
Against my better judgment I did click the link and scanned the blog article. The first thing that struck me is that in the picture provided captioned “Castrated marine with his genitals stuffed in his mouth” the subject 1) does not look like he is dead and 2) seems to have two penises in his mouth. The article doesn’t add to the credibility of the thesis, for example there is this statement:
Total US deaths in Vietnam, both combat and non-combat total only 58,209, so making a conservative estimate that 100,000 American soldiers were castrated is rather indicative of the sanity of the thesis.
Mutilation of the enemy dead is sadly not that uncommon. It having some sexual component isn’t unheard of, E. B. Sledge relates an incident in With the Old Breed where he and a fellow Marine came upon a corpse of another Marine which the Japanese had mutilated by chopping his hands and feet off and cutting his genitals off and stuffing them in his mouth. He also relates another incident where his Lieutenant shot the penis off of a long dead Japanese soldier in the distance and yet another where he watch in disgust as another American urinated in the mouth of a dead Japanese soldier. Trying to make the tremendous leap from this to Japanese cruelty in WWII was caused by penis envy, or as you so eloquently worded it “Orientals’ fixation on western cock”, is trying to jump the Grand Canyon.
That was the theory on South Park, I believe.
But just because they are cruel to other cultures does not necessarily rebutts my speculation/argument. They may be as cruel if not more so to other cultures, but how are they cruel to the other cultures? How did they mistreat them? Did the acts involve castration and/or did the acts reflect a clear disdain at/fascination of the American GI’s penis (like “I hate that thing/but damn that is huge! If I can’t have one as big as that, then neither can this GI!”)
After poring over numerous first-hand accounts of Japanese cruelty in the Philippines where I’m from, there were no accounts involving the castration of the penis nor was there accounts and recorded media depicting the Japanese soldiers’ conspicuous target/disdain that is inherent in the accounts involving Caucasian POW’s. In fact, what was rather strange was even accounts from my mother who was born in 1943 about the Japanese soldier’s penchant for throwing them bags of candy as she and other kids played inconspicuously under the house/porch. Accounts of torture that were prevalently mentioned include fingernails, crucifixion, dragging around, whippings, and rape in which the victims were sodomized ( by contrast there were no accounts of sodomy involving American GI’s or oral force).
So yes equivalent cruelty or even greater cruelty to other cultures does not necessarily negate the fact that when it came to their Western enemies, they reserved a deeper and more personal grudge/fury-inciting frustration over their discovery of American endowments.
Why is the site above not a credible one? If you looked through the posts/accounts, not all of them contained the absurd mutilations but more generic (see Pete Peterson’s account in Vietnam ( I know not Japanese)).
Oh I just quoted that statement from the site, but nevertheless, doesnt it strike you funny that while there were accounts of random, off the cuff shooting of dead penises in the distance, you never heard accounts that were as ceremonious and as obviously directed to a specific body part. I mean have you heard of an American soldier holding an erect Japanese penis while his comrades looked on and hold it while on his knees, before cutting it enjoyably ? And at the same time documenting the entire act in photographs? I mean it would be unheard of. It wouldn’t make sense.
There are many comments on here about certain Japanese culture’s sick and twisted , could part of it be this fixation but people both western and non western first hand observers are simply afraid to verbalize?
I think that just because these are not as widely covered or become subjects of war trials doesnt mean they didn’t happen. Just like college rape or rape in the military, it is understandable that such taboo’ed offenses or acts that are not easily graspable to Westerners are swept under the rug. I mean could you imagine how Walter Cronkite would sound like if he recited/ reported the detailed slicing of a blonde All American soldier on ABC World News tonite ? America and its conservative puritanical roots would not appreciate that type of coverage. So i don’t think the lack of coverage, discussion/dialogue, and publication of these acts have any bearing on whether these are simply figments of the imagination. Right ? Am I just making too many assumptions here?
Oh come on, some Japanese soldiers were over five feet tall!
Larger than a small child, maybe.
But also what I find hard to grasp is how the Japanese culture have apparently had an endemic superiority complex/xenophobia, feeling of we are better than thou. I mean I don’t deny its existence but what I don’t understand is that as smart and intelligent as the Japanese were/are , didn’t anyone of their early literati/circle of philosophers who originated their superior complex point out a flaw in their logic ? Of their thinking that they are the alpha of the human species, how could they possibly consider themselves as such upon the discovery of the Western penis. Ok i have heard of the school of thought “big dicks are for dumb species who don’t know where to insert to procreate’” but I don’t buy it. As intelligent and observant of they are of life , weren’t they just trying to convince/fooling themselves on this philosophy? I mean even to geeks and nerds, the thought should be “wow the bigger my dick, the more fun to be had, the happier my woman/women are and the more of them want to have my babies: more babies of me, the longer my lineage goes through history.” And to this day, is such a superior mentality still endemic when they can’t possibly be oblivious to the fact that even their female counterparts harbor a general preference for Western guys (hm not sure if there’s one sizable reason or a handful). I mean how could they possibly still hold that xenophobia/complex? Sex / procreation/sexual expression to fellow being is just one aspect of life but a rather important and possibly all-consuming one if not attended to appropriately. I think we all know what happens when one is sexually suppressed/frustrated.
So your statement that it is not a pertinent discussion to this thread is what honestly have an issue with. I mean how could you simply dismiss it as non pertinent just because it is not as well known incident. This is not a reason to dismiss it as baseless:
Your discussion is not pertinent because your claim of penis envy has no supporting documentation and your linked article is bulllshit–apppearing to have been written by someone who fantasized about such actions and then made up stories to depict their odd fantasies.
If you wanted to support your hypothesis, you should have provided a citation to a competent series of psychological studies presenting evidence that there actually is such penis envy.
The thread asks the question “Why were the Japanese so cruel?” Your answer is that (at least sometime) they were displaying penis envy. Regardless of the horror fantasies of your linked essay, (in other words, even if it actually happened more than a few times or if was perpetrated by Japanese more often than by Americans–a point you have also failed to establish), you ave done nothing to provide any evidence to support your claim of WHY it occurred.
That blog isn’t written by Jack Dean Tyler, is it?
And of what national origin is the name “Eisenhower,” do you think?
Isn’t there some kind of adage that states as an online discussion of WWII atrocities grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Japanese vs. Caucasian penis sizes approaches one?
This is the first one I’ve encountered which does and frankly I think the posts say vastly amount Quiddy than about the Japanese in WWII.
I’m also confused as to what the Vietnamese of the 1960s had to do with the Japanese in WWII.