Man is a war-like being. War has been a constant in human history. I was born during World War II. My father was in a war, and I was in a war (Vietnam 1968-69). Since WW II, we’ve had the Korean War, 1950-53; the French Indochina War ending in 1954 with their defeat at Dien Bien Phu; the American Vietnam war of 1959 to 1975; the Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain in 1981, Grenada, Somalia, the Gulf War of 1991, The Ukraine war of today, and on and on. Now we have a new war between Israel and the Palestinians. What other war have I missed? War makes men like animals, with no moral compass in some cases. Most, if not all wars, have atrocities. We had them in WW II and we had them in Vietnam., e.g. the My Lai massacre. The Russians were, probably, the most prolific at atrocities. They would execute their own soldiers if, for instance, they were captured and escaped. Upon their return they were executed. Russian soldiers in some cases were ordered to charge an enemy position in the open field; a sure death sentence. If they refused they were killed by their commanders. Most German prisoners did not survive to return home. A German commission found that over three million German soldiers were taken prisoner in Russia; over one million died in captivity through 1950.
I’ve just finished a book on the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943; “Sicily “43, the First Assault on Fortress Europe,” by James Holland. I was born there in November of the same year. Atrocities were committed there by the US. The book lists at least two cases where American soldiers killed surrendered Italian soldiers. In one of those two cases, an American soldier, takes it upon himself to execute multiple surrendered Italian soldiers just because he was mad at the loss of fellow soldiers. Many small towns were levelled by Allied troops, killing innocent civilians. Hundreds of tons of bombs were dropped by allied troops. In the town of Gangi, one town next to my home town, in today’s local web site called “Madonie Press,” the town commemorates eight innocent civilians who were killed as allied troops swept by the town. This is a beautiful small agricultural hill town of less than eight thousand people.
One thing that made an impression on me when I arrived in Vietnam in May of 1968 as a US Army soldier, was how soldiers went about their business as if their moral compass was absent. The sad fact is that, in most cases, soldiers who commit war crimes do not get punished. The American soldier mentioned earlier in Sicily faced no punishment. During the Japanese American concentration camps (I know, I know, people refer to them as “relocation camps”). They were concentration camps. US soldiers shot dead Japanese Americans at the Manzanar camp, of whom they feared were trying to escape the camp, or who had just gone mad from the harsh conditions. I visited Manzanar, which is in the harsh California desert a few years ago in July. The wind was so strong that I could not stay outside of my car. The nearest town was about 100 miles away. No one ever paid a price for such actions, as far as I know. In one case, the murdered Japanese American’s family was charged for the cost of the bullet that killed him. These stories are chronicled in the fine book called “Infamy: The shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II; by Richard Reeves (2015). Another fine book on this subject is called “The Eagles of Heart Mountain” by Bradford Pearson. Heart Mountain was another concentration camp in Wyoming for Japanese Americans. For a fine documentary on Heart Mountain see this ABC TV Los Angeles documentary by David Ono. Click here to view it.
