Unbroken--Laura Hlllenbrand's biography about US Olympian Louis Zamperini-- describes the horrendously violent torture and misery WW II POW Japanese Camp commander Mutsuhiro Watanabe (The Bird) inflicted upon Louis and other camp inmates, often beating them until they passed out and subjecting them to starvation, extreme cold and enslavement.
After the war Mutsuhiro escaped capture and most likely a death sentence by hiding in a small Japanese farming community. When the US commuted and dropped all pending war crime sentences and indictments, Mutsuhiro became a very wealthy and successful business man. In several interviews, with varying degrees of contrition that never quite took responsibility for his crimes, he indicated that it was the war that pushed him over the edge. He asserted that had there been no war, he would have gone through life, by all appearances, a normal caring and empathetic human being.
He was probably right. If it had been otherwise, his behavior would have possibly started before the war and most likely continued after the war.
When civil society brakes down, when those in authority are allowed to act in secrecy or with impunity, and when we send soldiers into the chaos of war, there are always those among us who devolve into ugly beasts and who succumb to their most base instincts.
Remember that before being completely unforgiving of those we have sent into war and against those who have been our enemies. Remember that before we casually decide to commit our young men into foreign conflicts. These wars do not just create casualties of the physical body but of the mind and spirit. Not that there should be no accountability for such behavior but that the pressures and absurdities of war should be taken into consideration.
Remember that also when we think that laws governing and restricting those in power and authority over us are deemed as obsolete or unnecessary--including laws governing voting rights, discrimination, wages, privacy rights, civil rights, etc. We will always need the strictures of civil society to rein in the excesses of those who find the seductive influence of power too overwhelming to resist and give in to bullying their fellow men for either their own sadistic pleasure, for their enrichment or under the delusion that they are morally superior and those they inflict harm upon deserve it.
Loren M. Lambert © July 24, 2014
After the war Mutsuhiro escaped capture and most likely a death sentence by hiding in a small Japanese farming community. When the US commuted and dropped all pending war crime sentences and indictments, Mutsuhiro became a very wealthy and successful business man. In several interviews, with varying degrees of contrition that never quite took responsibility for his crimes, he indicated that it was the war that pushed him over the edge. He asserted that had there been no war, he would have gone through life, by all appearances, a normal caring and empathetic human being.
He was probably right. If it had been otherwise, his behavior would have possibly started before the war and most likely continued after the war.
When civil society brakes down, when those in authority are allowed to act in secrecy or with impunity, and when we send soldiers into the chaos of war, there are always those among us who devolve into ugly beasts and who succumb to their most base instincts.
Remember that before being completely unforgiving of those we have sent into war and against those who have been our enemies. Remember that before we casually decide to commit our young men into foreign conflicts. These wars do not just create casualties of the physical body but of the mind and spirit. Not that there should be no accountability for such behavior but that the pressures and absurdities of war should be taken into consideration.
Remember that also when we think that laws governing and restricting those in power and authority over us are deemed as obsolete or unnecessary--including laws governing voting rights, discrimination, wages, privacy rights, civil rights, etc. We will always need the strictures of civil society to rein in the excesses of those who find the seductive influence of power too overwhelming to resist and give in to bullying their fellow men for either their own sadistic pleasure, for their enrichment or under the delusion that they are morally superior and those they inflict harm upon deserve it.
Loren M. Lambert © July 24, 2014
