THE NOT-SO-FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST
Friday, January 2nd, 2009 From
>X-Authentication-Warning: ecom7.ecn.bgu.edu: mslrc owned process doing -bs
>Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 19:55:34 -0600 (CST)
>From: “Louis R. Coatney”
>X-Sender: mslrc@ecom7.ecn.bgu.edu
>To: consim-l@net.uni-c.dk, Mahan@microwrks.com,
> “William D. Anderson”
> “Louis R. Coatney”
>Subject: Re: THE NOT-SO-FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
> > Jonathan Gingerich wrote:
> > >
>Which is *exactly* what Jonathan Spence is doing, Jonathan.
>
> > but those numbers seem way off. Jonathan
> > Spence in his history of China says 20,000 rape victims many murdered,
> > 30,000 executed soldiers, 12,000 murdered civilians. Notably absent
> > was any comparison to CCP killings… >>
>
>The American intellectual/academic Left … in its ongoing attack on
> America’s (use of the) nuclear weapon/deterrent and military
> establishment, generally … has not only attacked the justification
> for the atom bombings … minimizing what the human holocaust of
> a U.N. assault on the home islands would be, for example … but in
> a few cases has even attempted to question and/or de-emphasize the
> bestial — un-negotiable, you see — fanaticism of the World War II
> Japanese fascists. It thus joins the Japanese Right’s attempt to
> minimize holocausts of which Nanking is only the most famous. (I
> sense that Japanese Left intellectuals are more hesitant to join
> their Right on this tack … or on anything, knowing how easily
> it(s evil) can resurrect … although there is that one leftist …
> from Nagasaki? … who made the news. (Does anyone have his name?)
>
>But both the Japanese Right and Left are dedicated against Japan’s
> ongoing struggle to be democratic — not that we aren’t losing
> the struggle for democracy, ourselves, these days — and are eager
> to attack America’s credibility as a democratic symbol and ally
> in any way possible.
>
>There have been academic/intellectual “missions” — intellectual
> diplomats, you see — by American Hiroshima revisionist
> historians which have supported … instigated? … Japanese
> historians’ call on American historians to “reassess” the atom
> bombings … i.e., blame Americans for the nuclear holocausts,
> rather than the Japanese fanatics whose refusal to surrender
> necessitated them … shifting the weight of war-guilt off of the
> lid on the A-bomb-sealed tomb of Imperial Japanese militarism.
>
>A year ago, I got kicked off H-Diplo basically because I protested
> the censorship of my mention of this “historical appeasement”
> (… and of my point that the Hiroshima revisionists’ methods and
> fallacies are similar in principle to those of Holocaust revisionists)
> … by America’s pre-eminent diplomatic historian, John Lewis Gaddis
> — now the *chair* of the history department of (where else?) YALE —
> from my summation post on Hiroshima and Nagasaki … which was
> well-received by some of my fellow H-Japan and H-War members
> when it *was* posted there.
>
>[ Nonetheless, the moderators of those lists — Pat Goodwin of UCLA(?)
> and Mark Parillo of KSU — went along with my H-Net-wide purge …
> like good academic careerists. I still haven’t seen/heard any
> announcement of who the new Smithsonian military historian is to
> be, but this fall Kansas State listed an open military historian
> position. Mark has written a good book on America’s submarine war
> in the Pacific, and I’m sure his credentials look impeccable …
> to the unaware … but if *he*’s the new SI military historian,
> there will be another snake loose in the Smithsonian henhouse
> … and I have another reason for this opinion, as well. See my
> written “Enola Gay” testimony in U.S. Senate Hearing 104-40. ]
>
>We are now seeing members of the historical academic Left trying to
> equate us atom bombing the Japanese with Nazis Holocaust exterminations.
> (See one of the articles in the Spring 1995 issue of DIPLOMATIC HISTORY,
> edited at the time (I believe) by Melvyn Leffler … a member of the
> H-Diplo Advisory Board which approved Gaddis’s censorship, incidentally.
> It’s all very inter-connected/”networked,” you see. I should write
> this up. Can anyone suggest where it could get published?) And,
> naturally, analogizing the atom bombings to the *Nazi Holocaust* has
> a powerful emotionalizing/enrighteousing effect on people.
> (Isn’t it interesting that *this* Holocaust analogy is OK, though.)
>
>ABC had 2 programs on the atom bombings in 1995. The first one was
> OK, but the second one (also) dealing with the “Enola Gay” exhibit at
> the Smithsonian was researched by No. 1. Hiroshima revisionist Gar
> Alperovitz and mouth-pieced by Peter Jennings himself, who ended
> it by claiming that it was *U.S. veterans* who were trying to keep
> the truth about what happened from the American people!
>
>The *truth* is that the veterans were protesting the Smithsonian’s
> portrayal of the Japanese fascists as just (innocently?) trying to
> defend their “unique culture” [!!] and of the Americans/Allies/U.N.
> as waging only a war of vengeance. There was only brief/incidental
> mention of the Imperial Japanese fascist *policies* of atrocities.
> The real reason *Smithsonian* cancelled the exhibit, of course, was
> that under pressure from U.S. historical (and academic, generally)
> establishment, it had reneged on its promise to our veterans that it
> would display more realistic death toll figures for the possible
> invasion of Japan.
>
>[ Indeed, we’re lucky we still have a few veterans left to serve as a
> “reality check” to our errant intellectuals. (On WWII-L — before I
> got kicked off … AGAIN … 🙂 … for daring to disagree with a
> pro-IRA diatribe by a favored member of that list … and for joining
> in discussion of non-military topics — I saw the discussion of Yuki
> Tanaka’s claim that U.S.invasion/occupation forces had committed mass
> rape in Japan in 1945-46. This has yet to be picked up on by our Left,
> but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. Fortunately, a senior member
> of the Occupation MPs is still living to refute this falsehood (like
> General Sweeney has refuted the Hiroshima revisionists). (Mr. Tanaka
> seems to be quoting contemporary charges by Imperial propaganda/
> resistance officials who were yet to be disbanded.) However, our
> “ground truth” veterans are fast dying off.) … ]
>
>That evening (on “Night Line”) however, Ted Koppel presented a more
> balanced treatment of the atom bombings and Smithsonian controversy.
> I think Koppel — who recently did a remarkable job moderating a C-Span
> panel discussion by former national security advisors — may be one
> of the few TV journalists who is genuinely fair … no matter how
> liberal(-minded) he may be. Thus, I am not at all surprised to see
> him making sure that the truth of the Nanking holocaust is known.
> His “Get it right!” [Frank Reynolds/ABC] integrity does honor to his
> profession, and if he were running for President, he’d have *my* vote
> without question. Seriously. As to Jennings, I’ve never watched …
> trusted … his “ABC News” since … wondering who/what is running him.
>
>[I’ll never forget seeing Koppel interviewing a Grenada operation
> battalion commander. The guy was … understandably, considering
> the era … adamantly distrustful and unforthcoming. Ted was treating
> him respectfully — even sympathetically — and you could see how the
> guy’s incorrigible hostility/alienation(/hatred?) was getting to him …
> anguishing him.]
>
>However, Koppel is the remote, uncommon exception among Vietnam generation
> intellectuals/journalists, and our history is being re-written and
> distorted for ideological/political purposes, everywhere. And, it is
> only going to get infinitely … and terminally … worse.
>
>Lou Coatney, mslrc@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
>
>On Sat, 13 Dec 1997, David Bolt wrote:
> > Johnathan Spence’s figures are way too low. I spent several weeks > in Taiwan,
> > HK and mainland China researching this holocaust in 1994: interviewing
> > survivors, poring over archives and the like.The death toll at Nanjing
> > undoubtedly runs into six figures, based on records assembled > after the war,
> > including Imperial Japanese Army histories.
> >
> > “Notably absent was any comparison to CCP killings” — this is the standard
> > line from right-wing apologists for Imperial Japan. Does the mass murder of
> > one group of people diminish in importance because someone else came along
> > later and murdered more? The apologists for Imperial Japan in WWII,
> > particularly in the Japanese nationalist political organizations, have been
> > touting this angle since 1949.