BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 10:07 AM

It was certainly understandable during the war years, Backwoodsman, but I find it very sad that people still feel they must keep that sort of hatred burning and alive for many years after a war has been won and is over. It disgusted me as a kid to see my own young generation being taught to hate the Germans and Japanese when most of us had never even met one, and I think it's shameful for any nation to continue its wartime hate propaganda after the war is over. It doesn't help anyone to do that, it just perpetuates something very negative that people should let go of and be done with. It's as if the war didn't teach the older people anything, but just deepened their need for further revenge on nations that were already utterly crushed.

It made me want to learn a lot more about the Germans and Japanese, because I suspected that they were just normal human beings like the rest of us, and I was right about that. They are. Normal human beings tend to do awful things during wars, because they're under incredible pressure from irresponsible leaders and commanders.

Terrible things always happen in war. Atrocities get committed by both sides, but you heard nothing about Allied war crimes in those days. Not a peep. They were still giving us North American kids the same crude, hysterical hate propaganda in the 50s and 60s as if they wanted to recruit us all to go out and kill yet more Germans and Japanese long after the war was already won! I see no point in that at all. It's stupid. It's vengeful. It's unnecessary. And it's arrogant in the extreme.

If I'd been forced to witness the dreadful wartime German and Japanese hate propaganda, I'd have despised it just the same. I despise all that kind of stuff, no matter who is spouting it at the time. People should have enough maturity to respect their enemies on the field of battle (even if they disagree with their political leaders) and recognize their common and shared humanity and respect the danger and horror the "enemy" soldier is facing, just like they are facing themselves..........but if they did have that kind of maturity, well, maybe our politicians couldn't get us to go off to war so easily, could they?

And that applies to the Germans and Japanese too. You need to trick a people into going to war. You trick them by making them hate and fear some other people. Most will fall for it...and then you have your war...and the arms manufacturers get very, very rich.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 10:11 AM

Not just in the USA, Bobert. Us Brits lost a lot of men and women fighting the Japanese in WW2, and my dad, normally a kind and generous guy, hated "Those slitty-eyed little yellow bastards" - understandable, given that family-members died in horrific circumstances at the hands of the Japanese.

However, times have changed, and attitudes change too. The generation who went through those times (both sides suffered, different ways maybe, but suffered just the same) are leaving the world. Today, we meet people of many races and nationalities in the modern world and the thing that strikes me often is that.........they're people, just like me.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 10:12 AM

Sorry, LH - posting at the same time as you. You are right in so many ways.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 10:21 AM

Yeah, B-woodsman, and the UK suffered the massive bombing campaigns by the Germans...

My uncle, who fought in the Pacific as a marine, was so riled up and filled with hatred of any Orientals after WW II to he re-upped for the Korean War and still hadn't had enough so he tried to re-up for Vietnam when he was pushing 50 years old???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 10:51 AM

Yep Bobert, it was something we didn't have to live through (at least, I didn't - born 1947), but I remember the aftermath, the deprivations, food rationing, the guys with dreadful injuries, guys who were shell-shocked and living in institutions, the bombed-out buildings (still around in the fifties).

And I heard the stories from the guys who fought and survived - ex-aircrew, sailors on the North-Atlantic convoys who'd spent time in the sea after being torpedoed by a sub, a relative who was a member of the Parachute Regiment, who was taken prisoner at Arnhem, my old boss who fought at Cassino and in the North-African desert campaign. And you know what, the amazing thing is that those stories always contained humour - when things were shit, they found a joke in there somehow. Amazing!

It was a harder time than we can imagine, but the world has to move on. It has, and it will continue to....hopefully.

All the best, and sorry for the thread drift. Reminiscing is a sign of age, they say.....!! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 10:56 AM

Interesting, b-woodsman... Same here... I got a box of letters that my uncle sent home from the Pacific and from reading them you'd think that it was one big joke... Of course, they weren't allowed to talk about anything related to the war in those letters but they are some funny stuff...

Nuthin' wrong with reminiscin' either... Think of it as mental calisthenics...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 10:58 AM

Thanks Bobert. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 11:03 AM

Holy crap, Bobert! That's a serious case of war addiction. ;-)

My Dad volunteered to fight the Germans in '42, and he was very intent on defeating them, because his own family had lost everything to the Nazis in 1938. He detested that regime and he wanted to see them brought down, so he enlisted in the British forces to do his bit.

What he found when he actually got there, though, was that war, as he put it, turned out to be the "biggest, stupidest waste of men and material I'd ever seen in my life". He still wanted to beat the Nazis, but he hated the war, and he swore that he would somehow survive it, get back to peacetime society, make something of himself, and NEVER serve in another war upon any excuse! He advised me never to enlist in any war, no matter what the government said.

This was after he'd seen a lot of good men and buddies die, killed a number of Germans in close combat, and saw a lot of other weary and heartsick German soldiers surrender with obvious relief in their eyes at the giddy thought that, by God, they were going to maybe survive this thing after all...all any of them wanted to do at that point was to go back home, be with their loved ones again, and be done forever with that war. It was just a giant tragedy for the ordinary people who were involved in it.

After the war he was good friends with a number of Germans, and they shared reminiscences about the war now and then, but mostly focused on the present.

I know for sure my Dad would not have felt as comradely toward the Japanese, and here's why. He didn't look at them the same way he'd have looked at another white man. In short, he was prejudiced against them because they were Asians, he didn't see them as equals, and I'm sure he'd have detested them if he'd fought against them.

I don't see it that way. I like the Asians just as much as I like anyone else. Things have changed a lot since the time when my Dad was growing up, and some things have changed for the better.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 11:24 AM

We had a POW camp in our town, which housed Italians and Germans at one time or another. They were sent out to work around the town, and one German POW was befriended by my mother's family. Not sure of the circumstances - the family were Salvationists, maybe they came into contact through that work. Whatever, for years after the war, after he was repatriated, he came over from Germany to visit and stay with my grandparents and their family, my uncles and aunts. A truly nice guy, us kids loved him.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 04:23 PM

Yeah, LH, my uncle was eat up with war... He was 17 in 1939 and tried unsuccessfully to join the German army because my grandmother wouldn't let him but when he turned 18 he marched right into the Marine recruiting office and signed up... He was twice wounded in the Pacific and again wounded in Korea but that didn't phase him... I think it was '65 when he went back to the Marines but by this time a life's worth of bad habits had caught up to him and the Marines turned him down this time...

Very entertaining individual, however...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 05:23 PM

So he could just as well have ended up on the other side, eh? Interesting. Some people take to military service and war like a duck to water, and they make very effective soldiers. Patton was like that, but he was a lot higher up the chain of command.