Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:03 pm
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by bisley45</i>
<br />Pat- the pilots spotlighted in Bradley's "Flyboys" were held on Chichi Jima, which was a Japanese radio outpost. Captive pilots were forced into listening to US radio traffic and translating it, though one wonders how accurately the POWs did this, as the Japanese couldn't double-check their work.
The meat of the book lies in the poor treatment of the captured pilots by their captors, including summary executions and cannibalism. To balance that, Bradley details the US firebombing of Japanese cities, just to remind the reader that there was plenty of blame to go around.
By the by, one of Eastwood's earliest movie roles was in "The Lafayette Escadrille," which parallels the storyline of the movie "Flyboys."
Bisley 45
"Evidently, Mr. Ringo's an educated man. Now I really hate him."
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Sounds like an interesting book.
There's a lot of fertile ground, in the topic of comparative stuff, I suppose, in the bombing campaigns of World War Two. Having said that, it's often forgotten that the Japanese may have started the war off with barbarity early, and kept it up throughout. Japanese bombing raids in China predated what we generally regard as the commencement of World War Two, and were pretty promiscuous in their targeting of Chinese civilian populations. And Japanese army murder of Chinese civilians was systematic, and amounted to a right of passage in most, or perhaps all, Japanese army units stationed in China in the 30s and 40s. With that sort of background, it was inevitable that Japanese troops would act barbarically against any captives. That's formed the longlasting resentment against Japan in the Far East, given that, unlike the Germans, the Japanese have never confronted it.
Pat
<br />Pat- the pilots spotlighted in Bradley's "Flyboys" were held on Chichi Jima, which was a Japanese radio outpost. Captive pilots were forced into listening to US radio traffic and translating it, though one wonders how accurately the POWs did this, as the Japanese couldn't double-check their work.
The meat of the book lies in the poor treatment of the captured pilots by their captors, including summary executions and cannibalism. To balance that, Bradley details the US firebombing of Japanese cities, just to remind the reader that there was plenty of blame to go around.
By the by, one of Eastwood's earliest movie roles was in "The Lafayette Escadrille," which parallels the storyline of the movie "Flyboys."
Bisley 45
"Evidently, Mr. Ringo's an educated man. Now I really hate him."
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
Sounds like an interesting book.
There's a lot of fertile ground, in the topic of comparative stuff, I suppose, in the bombing campaigns of World War Two. Having said that, it's often forgotten that the Japanese may have started the war off with barbarity early, and kept it up throughout. Japanese bombing raids in China predated what we generally regard as the commencement of World War Two, and were pretty promiscuous in their targeting of Chinese civilian populations. And Japanese army murder of Chinese civilians was systematic, and amounted to a right of passage in most, or perhaps all, Japanese army units stationed in China in the 30s and 40s. With that sort of background, it was inevitable that Japanese troops would act barbarically against any captives. That's formed the longlasting resentment against Japan in the Far East, given that, unlike the Germans, the Japanese have never confronted it.
Pat