From: Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: 50 YEARS (and a month) AGO: murder of American POW's
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Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 09:31:31 GMT

I missed the anniversary of the Japanese murder of American POWs in
October 1942.  So here it is, a month late:

Eight of the participants of Doolittle's raid on To^kyo^ in April 1942
had been captured by the Japanese.  Against all civilized standards
and in total contempt for international law, To^jo^'s evil government
passed an ex post facto ``law'' that retroactively made it a capital
crime to bomb the Japanese homeland

The eight captured American fliers were placed on trial in a kangaroo
court, convicted, and sentenced to death under this ``law''.

In October 1942 Dean E. Hallmark, William G. Farrow, and Harold A.
Spatz were murdered in cold blood by a Japanese firing squad.  Such
was ``the rule of law'' in Dai-Nippon Teikoku.

This atrocity taught America the nature of the enemy they were
fighting; a ruthless and utterly evil clique of military gangsters
which would stop at nothing.  Even the Nazis obeyed the forms of
international law on the proper treatment of prisoners of war.

The death sentences for the remaining five were commuted by the
Japanese court to life imprisonment.  This was not mercy; it was a
cynical attempt to use them as a possible future bargaining chip.
They were kept hidden away in prison in China so they could ultimately
be similarly murdered no matter which side won the war.  They had been
tortured, starved, beaten, and kept in solitary confinenent.  Only the
suddenness of Japan's capitulation in 1945 prevented their murders.

In December 1943, Robert J. Medler died of beriberi and malnutrition
in prison.

Chase J. Nielsen, Robert L. Hite, George Barr, and Jacob DeShazer
survived to see the end of the war, and eventually came home,
emaciated and numbed.  Barr was so weak that he had to be kept in 
China after his liberation until he recovered enough to travel.

To^jo^'s thirst for blood wasn't satisfied with just this war crime;
To quote Chiang Kai-Shek's cable to Washington at what the To^kyo^
raid provoked:
	``After they had been caught unawares by the falling of
	American bombs on To^kyo^, Japanese troops attacked the
	coastal areas of China where many of the American flyers
	had landed.  These Japanese troops slaughtered every man,
	woman, and child in these areas -- let me repeat -- these
	Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman and child in
	these areas, reproducing on a wholesale scale the horrors
	which the world had seen at Lidice, but about which the
	people have been uninformed in these instances.''
Chiang was not exaggerating.  Hundreds of thousands of innocent
Chinese civilians were butchered by the Japanese Army in three months
after Doolittle's raid as revenge.

As Japan began to lose the war 50 years ago, there were to be more
frequent instances of savagry.  Some of these will be detailed in
future installments.

Postscript:

To^jo^ was hanged by the victorious Allies for his innumerable crimes.
That, unfortunately, was not the end.  Modern Japan honors To^jo^ at
Yasukuni Jinja in downtown To^kyo^; he is enshrined there as a ``kami
war dead'' who protects Japan.  I personally feel that ``a vampire who
ensures that the rest of the world can never trust Japan'' is more
accurate.

LDP officials continue to visit Yasukuni in open defiance of the
feelings of other nations and of the many Japanese who are equally
appalled.  The flimsy excuse offered by the Japanese government is
that Yasukuni is a ``private religious facility'' dedicated to
honoring Japan's war dead and that the government had no say in
To^jo^'s enshrinement.

Those of you who claim that Japan has freedom of speech might want to
consider what would happen to anyone, particularly a foreigner, who
pickets Yasukuni...