Will,

Look in Hoyt’s JAPAN AT WAR and/or Craig’s THE FALL OF JAPAN. There
may also be something in the new Okinawa books, OPERATION ICEBERG and
TENNOZAN(sp?).

I’ve also read an account of Okinawa by a local Marine veteran. He
too pitied the Okinawans … describing how young girls were found dead
and/or raped by the Japanese and/or suicide victims … since they had
been whipped up with “GI rapist” propaganda.

However, he also describes a “human bullet”/bomb woman … Okinawan
or Japanese … walking out to … and killing along with herself …
some of his buddies. This was happening often enough that Hoyt (or
Craig) describes how many GIs had stopped taking *civilian* prisoners
… too.

It is a jarring book … and that is no pun on jarheads. He is
still unrepentently and blatantly racist in his pathological hatred
of the Japanese. It looks like the thing that really pushed him over
the brink is when they found 3 of his buddies … Marine Scouts …
dead, decapitated, and sexually mutilated … their testicles and
scrota stuffed into their mouths (… like the scene in “Ulzana’s
Raid,” the movie about hunting/fighting renegade Apaches in the
American Southwest) … possibly while they were still alive.

Of course, such atrocities/terrorism were commonplace on the Asian
mainland, but for young Americans it was devastating. (Jonathan Shay
has written about war wounding the human spirit. It depends on the
nature of the war … if it’s something other than a European excursion
in “sport” … I suppose … but this vet’s mind is on his side of the
issue.)

Our vet also wrote about his (enraged-out-of-control) unit soon
thereafter coming upon a Japanese field hospital and massacring anyone
they found.

The book is a profound shock, but now I better understand what
Okinawa was really like, Will … and what an invasion of Japan would
have been like. Stalingrad would (have) look(ed) like child’s play,
by comparison.

Lou Coatney, mslrc@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu

On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Louis Gorenfeld wrote:
> Time out Lou!!!
> Active Okinawan citizens–not so fast. Yes, there may have been some
> incidents, but you will find that Okinawan civilians were caught in the
> cross-fire. Simply stated, they did not wish for a major campaign to occur
> on their island and tried to stay out of the way.