General Hawley's speech

[Toimu]

USAF 4 Star Speaks Out

For those of you who don't know who General Hawley is, he is a newly-retired 4-star General who commanded the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command.

He recently delivered this speech, now that he's retired and no longer restricted to being politically correct, at the Air Force Association Annual
Meeting:

"Since the attack, I have seen, heard, and read thoughts of such incredible and surpassing stupidity that they must be addressed. You've heard them too.
Here they are:

1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything is relative."

Listen carefully: We're good, they're evil, nothing is relative. Say it with me now and free yourselves. You see, folks, saying "We're good" doesn't mean, "We're perfect." Okay? The only perfect being is the bearded guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The plain fact is that our country has, with all our mistakes and blunders, always been and always will be the greatest beacon of freedom, charity, opportunity, and affection in history. If you need proof, open all the borders on Earth and see what happens. In about half a day, the entire world would be a ghost town, and the United States would look like one giant line to see "The Producers.

2) "Violence only leads to more violence."

This one is so stupid you usually have to be the president of an Ivy League university to say it. Here's the truth, which you know in your heads and hearts already: Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more violence. Limp, panicky, half-measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully thought-through, professional, well-executed violence never leads to more violence because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead. That's right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not "nurtured back into the bosom of love." DEAD. D-E --Well, you get the idea.

3) "The CIA and the rest of our intelligence community has failed us."

For 25 years we have chained our spies like dogs to a stake in the ground, and now that the house has been robbed, we yell at them for not protecting us. Starting in the late seventies, under Carter appointee Stansfield Turner, the giant brains who get these giant ideas decided that the best way to gather international intelligence was to use spy satellites. "After all," they reasoned, "you can see a license plate from 200 miles away." This is very helpful if you've been attacked by a license plate. Unfortunately, we were attacked by humans. Finding humans is not possible with satellites.

You have to use other humans. When we bought all our satellites, we fired all our humans, and here's the really stupid part. It takes years, decades to infiltrate new humans into the worst places of the world. You can't just have a guy who looks like Gary Busey in a Spring Break'93 sweatshirt plop himself down in a coffee shop in Kabul and say "Hiya, boys. Gee, I sure would like to meet that bin Laden fella. "Well, you can, but all you'd be doing is giving the bad guys a story they'll be telling for years.

4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's why they're angry at us."

Uh-huh, and Jeffrey Dahmer's frozen head collection was just a desperate cry for help. The terrorists and their backers are richer than Elton John and, ironically, a good deal less annoying. The poor helpless people, you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered to stay in power. Mohammed Atta, one of the evil scumbags who steered those planes into the killing grounds (I'm sorry, one of the "alleged hijackers," according to CNN-they stopped using the word "terrorist," you know), is the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this, too. In the sixties and seventies, all the pinheads marching against the war were upper-middle-class college kids who grabbed any cause they could think of to get out of their final papers and spend more time drinking. At least, that was my excuse. It's the same today. Take the Anti-Global-Warming (or is it World Trade? Oh-who-knows-what-the-hell -they-want demonstrators) They all charged their black outfits and plane tickets on dad's credit card before driving to the airport in their SUV's.

5) "Any profiling is racial profiling."

Who's killing us here, the Norwegians? Just days after the attack, the New York Times had an article saying dozens of extended members of the gazillionaire bin Laden family living in America were afraid of reprisals and left in a huff, never to return to studying at Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm crushed. I think we're all crushed. Please come back. With a cherry on top? Why don't they just change their names, anyway? It's happened in the past. Think about it. How many Adolfs do you run into these days? Shortly after that, I remember watching TV with my jaw on the floor as a government official actually said, "That little old grandmother from Sioux City could be carrying something." Okay, how about this: No, she couldn't. It would never be the grandmother from Sioux City. Is it even possible? What are the odds? Winning a hundred Powerball lotteries in a row? A thousand? A million? And now a Secret Service guy has been tossed off a plane and we're all supposed to cry about it because he's an Arab? Didn't it have the tiniest bit to do with the fact that he filled out his forms incorrectly- - three times? And then left an Arab history book on his seat as he strolled off the plane? And came back? Armed? Let's please all stop singing "We Are the World" for a minute and think practically. I don't want to be sitting on the floor in the back of a plane four seconds away from hitting Mt. Rushmore and turn, grinning, to the guy next to me to say, "Well, at least we didn't offend them."

SO HERE'S what I resolve for the New Year: Never to forget our murdered brothers and sisters. Never to let the relativists and bleeding-heart liberals get away with their immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your daughter's political science professor says, we didn't start this. Have you seen that bumper sticker that says, "No More Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."

[Navaron]

"No More Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."


I'm making that bumpre sticker tonight. That was one of the best speeches I've heard in a while. Apparently, common sense is still around.

[OneManArmy]

damn.. I want that bumper sticker!!!!! do you have a link to where I can find this speach, not that I don't trust you but this is the internet and all. real sources are much appreciated.

[Denali]

"After all," they reasoned, "you can see a license plate from 200 miles away." This is very helpful if you've been attacked by a license plate.

[KoldFusion]

AMEN! Love that speech. Says everything I tried to say to the morons after 9-11 saying that we brought it on ourselves

[Sputty]

Even liberals with common sense(me) should be able to understand that and agree with it. I also hate those protesting idiots. Everything he said is right IMO

[Zatrais]

That guy rocks! Liked that speech

[SilentCacophony]

Well excuse my bleeding heart for you guys, but Pearl Harbour was a military base, was it not? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities filled with innocent people, were they not? People still suffer from the radiation effects, not to mention the memory, of these two strikes.

U.S. bombed one, and then just 2 days later, they bombed the other. Was this really necessary? They didn't even try to talk to the Japanese. All they had to say was "You see what we have, and if you don't surrender, you're getting another one." I don't know about you, but if I was the Japanese, I would have surrendered. Did the U.S. give them this chance? No, they just dropped the next one. The death toll for those 2 bombs WAY surpasses the death toll of the WTC.

Let me repeat. Pearl Harbour = military installation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki = INNOCENT lives.

[SilentCacophony]

Oh, and as for what that 4 star said about the people in charge of those countries hurting all those innocents, the U.S. put the Taliban in charge. The U.S. got Saddam in charge. The U.S. has put countless "terrorists" in charge of countries. Why are they suddenly going after Iraq and not Osama? Why aren't they going after Korea which poses a more dangerous threat? Bush either wants more oil, or has a vendetta because Saddam tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated, but that's just my 2 cents, and with these oil prices, I can't buy a tank of gas with that.

[Zatrais]

The japanese would never have surrendered, it was not in the mindset of their leaders. They lived by the code of honor, death before surrender, die for the divine emperor etc. Only reason they did surrender was because they witnessed the power of the american arsenal.

An invation of Japan would have ment the loss of more people combined than the 2 bombs... thousands more of american and japenese troopers would die. every city would be in ruin... civilians are always the biggest cassulaty in war.

no i'm not american incase you wondered.

[SilentCacophony]

Like you said, they DID surrender, The surrendered after they saw the might of the bomb. So was the second one really necessary?

Now what I don't understand is how people can praise the bomb being dropped on Japan, and then give Osama hell for what he did to the WTC.

Osama feels he and his people are at war with America. He doesn't have nukes at his disposal, or even any F-18's, tanks, etc. He's got guys riding camels, hiding in caves, and packing guns older than I am. In that case, Osama's attack was pure military genius. He hit the states, and he hit them hard. Who cares if they were innocent people in those towers? They were expendable, collateral damage, and citizens of the country he is at war with. If you think the bombs were right, then you have to agree that Osama was right. I personally don't think he was. Great strike from a military point of view, but wrong. Just like the U.S. nukes were wrong.

[Zatrais]

As for the taliban, the US supplied them whit the weapons they needed to get the russians out of afghanistan.. That was a good thing, pulling out and leaving afghanistan to itself was a mistake.

Iraq is ruled by a president that has gassed his own citisens, he has the tongues ripped out of political oposers. Iraq is among the worst on amnesty internationals cruelty list. People also die every day in Iraq due to hunger, lack of medicines because of the sanctions and because Saddam uses money on the military and illegal projects. You mean that Saddam shouldn't be removed because some civilians will die? Or til a biological weapon is deployed by some mad terrorist in an urban area? Yes there is biological weapons there, Saddam can't even show the inspectors what he has told them he has so it can be destroyed.

As for N.Korea, the guy is lying... hes just a windbag trying to convince the world he can threathen it to do as he wants.

And Japan did not surrender after the first bomb, it took 2. I havn't praised bombing civilians (it was a horrible act), it was a military necisity to get a country that had invaded and controlled almost all of Oceania and was hellbent on more conquest to surrender and stop posing a threat to the countries around it.

You're drawing a parrallell between the actions of a group of people hellbent on the western worlds destruction, and the neccisity of destroying a zealous enemy that the free world was at war whit. Does that mean we should nuke bagdad? hell no, we know better the effects of the afthermath of nuklear weapons and there are other ways whit todays weapons.

Edit: All of Iraq is not the enemy, neither is all of the muslim world. However, all of Japan belived that the emperor was a living god and they would all go to their deaths for him. All of Japan was the enemy in WW2.

[Navaron]

Arrg,

We've had a ton of this "facts" lately from everything from the dixie flag to this A bomb business. If you're gonna make a point, use real facts.

1 "People still suffer from the radiation effects"

Not true.

2 "They didn't even try to talk to the Japanese. All they had to say was "You see what we have, and if you don't surrender, you're getting another one." I don't know about you, but if I was the Japanese, I would have surrendered. Did the U.S. give them this chance? No, they just dropped the next one."

You just proved you do not know history, or at least this aspect of history.

3 "the U.S. put the Taliban in charge"

Nope. We armed the Mujah Hadein. They we're freedom fighters, but still independent men, militia men if you will. The word Taliban came around in the last 10 years, and it just means student.

4 "Why aren't they going after Korea which poses a more dangerous threat?"

A) Korea does not present a larger threat. At the greatest length, out left coast is only partially available as a target. State funded terrorists, like the taliban, are a much more realistic threat.

B) The 3 largest armies over there Russia, China, and Japan have all promised pre emptive attacks.

5 "Bush either wants more oil"

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to drill in our back yard for it? Why didn't we take it the first time? Do you really think that it would fly if we took over the country and loaded up barges and just shipped all the oil back home for keeps?

6 "Like you said, they DID surrender, The surrendered after they saw the might of the bomb. So was the second one really necessary?"

Perhaps you aced "fuzzy history"?

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by SilentCacophony
Well excuse my bleeding heart for you guys, but Pearl Harbour was a military base, was it not? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities filled with innocent people, were they not? People still suffer from the radiation effects, not to mention the memory, of these two strikes.

U.S. bombed one, and then just 2 days later, they bombed the other. Was this really necessary? They didn't even try to talk to the Japanese. All they had to say was "You see what we have, and if you don't surrender, you're getting another one." I don't know about you, but if I was the Japanese, I would have surrendered. Did the U.S. give them this chance? No, they just dropped the next one. The death toll for those 2 bombs WAY surpasses the death toll of the WTC.

Let me repeat. Pearl Harbour = military installation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki = INNOCENT lives.

Every time I read one of your posts it reminds me of the old saying "It's better to be thought a fool then to open your mouth and prove it"

Maybe you'll stop to think who the 'Bad Guys' were in that war before you chastise the U.S. for saving the rest of the world for Japaneese brutality.

In an effort to help you understand this I present the following list of Japaneese Atrocities commited Durring WWII.

NANKING MASSACRE
(December 1937)

Known historically as the 'Rape of Nanking'. In 1937 (the real start of World War 11) the Chinese capital had a population of just over one million, including over 100,000 refugees. On December 13th. the city fell to the invading Japanese troops. For the next six weeks the soldiers indulged in an orgy of indiscriminate killing, rape and looting. They shot at everyone on sight, whether out on the streets or peeking out of windows. The streets were soon littered with corpses, on one street a survivor counted 500 bodies. Girls as young as twelve, and women of all ages were raped by gangs of 15 or 20 soldiers who roamed the town in search of women. Over a thousand men were rounded up and marched to the banks of the Yangtze river where they were machine-gunned to death. Thousands of captured Chinese soldiers were simililary murdered. In the following six weeks, the Nanking Red Cross units alone, buried around 43,000 bodies. About 20,000 women and girls had been raped, most were then murdered. Department stores, shops, churches and houses were set on fire while drunken soldiers indulged in wholesale looting and bayoneting of Chinese civilians for sport. It is estimated that around 200,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were killed in this, the most infamous atrocity committed by the Japanese army. In charge of the troops during this time was General Iwane Matsui. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, Matsui was found guilty of a war crime unrelated to Nanking and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1948. After the war, China tried about 800 persons for war crimes including those responsible for the Nanking and Shanghai massacres. The death penalty was given to 149 defendants.



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YELLOW RIVER FLOOD
( 1938 )

During the Sino-Japanese war, as Japanese forces moved west towards the railroad junction of Chengchow, there to meet up with other Japanese units advancing on Hankow, the Chinese Nationalists blew up the flood dykes of the Yellow River. The resulting flood inundated three provinces and forty-four counties. Between four and five thousand villages and eleven towns were flooded. A total of 3,911,354 people were displaced. Altogether 893,303 lives were lost through drowning. The Chinese Nationalists blamed this atrocity on the Japanese.



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HONG KONG ATROCITIES
( December 25, 1941 )

The lush island of Hong Kong, thirty-two square miles in area, was formally ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Around Christmas, 1941, the peace and tranquillity of this island paradise was shattered when the troops of General Tanaka defeated the gallant soldiers of Britain, Canada, and India, and detachments of various other nationalities. Intoxicated with the spirit of victory, the Japanese troops showed no mercy to their victims. At Eucliff, fifty-three prisoners were shot, bayoneted, some beheaded and their bodies rolled down the cliff. On Christmas morning, around 200 drunken Japanese approached St. Stephen's College, now a sanctuary for ninety-six wounded soldiers. Barring the front door was the head medic, Dr. George Black. 'You can't come in here' he called out, 'this is a hospital'. With deliberate aim, one of the soldiers raised his rifle and shot the doctor through the head. As the drunken mob surged into the hospital ward, the body of Dr Black was repeatedly bayoneted as he lay at the door. In the ward, a massacre of unprecedented ferocity took place. The Japanese ripped the bandages off the wounded patients and plunged their bayonets into the amputated arms and legs before finishing them off with a bullet. In half an hour fifty-six wounded soldiers had been massacred while the nursing staff looked on helplessly. The female nurses were then led away, to a fate one can only imagine. The patients and staff who had survived the slaughter were then forced to carry the bodies and bloodied mattresses to the grounds outside where a huge funeral pyre was prepared and lit from the college desks and cupboards which had been smashed up for firewood. A similar atrocity was enacted at the Jockey Club in Happy Valley and to a lesser extent at various locations throughout the colony. On this day, any misconceptions the world had that Japan was a civilized nation, disappeared into thin air.



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THE LAHA AIRFIELD EXECUTIONS
( February 9, 1943 )

Two graves, about five metres apart, were dug in a wooded area near the Laha airstrip on Ambon Island the defence of which had cost 309 Australian lives. The graves were circular in shape, six metres in diameter and three metres deep. Soon after 6pm, a group of Australian and Dutch prisoners of war, their arms tied securely behind them, were brought to the site. The first prisoner was made to kneel at the edge of the grave and the execution, by samurai beheading, was carried out by a Warrant Officer Kakutaro Sasaki. The next four beheadings were the privilege of eager crew-members of a Japanese mine-sweeper sunk a few days previously by an enemy mine in Ambon Bay. This could only be considered as an act of reprisal for the loss of their ship. As dusk descended, and the beheadings continued, battery torches were used to light up the back of the necks of each successive victim. The same macabre drama was being enacted at the other round grave where men of a Dutch mortar unit were being systematically decapitated. On this unforgettable evening, 55 Australian and 30 Dutch soldiers were murdered. Details of this atrocity came to light during the interrogation of civilian interpreter, Suburo Yoshizaki, who was attached to the Kure No.1 Special Navy Landing Party, at that time stationed on Ambon. A few days later, on February 24, in the same wooded area, another bizarre execution ceremony took place. Around the graves stood about 30 naval personnel who had volunteered for this grisly task, many of them carrying swords which they had borrowed. When some of the young prisoners were dragged to the edge of the grave, shouting desperately and begging for their lives, shouts of jubilation came from those marines witnessing the executions. In this mass murder, which ended at 1.30am the following morning, the headless bodies of 227 Allied prisoners filled the two large graves. Witness to this second massacre was Warrant Officer Keigo Kanamoto, Commanding Officer of the Kure No.1 Repair and Construction Unit.



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PHILIPPINES MASSACRE

A full account of all massacres of Filipinos by Japanese troops would fill several books. In Manila, 800 men women and children were machine-gunned in the grounds of St.Paul's College. In the town of Calamba, 2,500 were shot or bayoneted. Around 100 were bayoneted and shot inside a church at Ponson and 169 villagers of Matina Pangi were rounded up and shot in cold blood. At the War Crimes Trial in Tokyo, document No 2726 consisted of 14,618 pages of sworn affidavits, each describing separate atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops. The Tribunal listed 72 large scale massacres and 131,028 murders as a bare minimum.

[Unregistered]

Since I can only put 10,000 charecters per post it wall take a few more to cover how horrible the japaneese were to the world.

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THE PARIT SULONG MASSACRE

In January, 1942, a company of Australian and Indian soldiers were captured by the Japanese and interned in a large wooden building at Parit Sulong in Malayasia. Late in the afternoon of January 22, 1942, they were ordered to assemble at the rear of a row of damaged shops nearby. The wounded were carried by those able to walk, the pretext being the promise of medical treatment and food. While waiting at the assembly point, either sitting or lying prone, three machine guns, concealed in the back rooms of the wrecked shops, started their deadly chatter, their concentrated fire chopping flesh and limbs to pieces. A number of prisoners whose bodies showed signs of life, had to be bayoneted. In order to dispose of the bodies, which totalled 161, the row of shops was blown up and the debris bulldozed into a heap on top of which the corpses were placed. Sixty gallons of gasoline was splashed on the bodies and then a flaming torch was thrown on the pile. Just before midnight, the debris of the nine shops had burned into a pile of grey ash two feet high, the 161 bodies totally incinerated. The perpetrator of this foul crime was Lt-Gen.Takuma Nishimura, 62, who later faced trial before an Australian Military Court. Nishimura was previously convicted of massacres in Singapore and sentenced to life imprisonment by a British Military Tribunal on April 2, 1947. After serving four years of his sentence, he was being transferred to Tokyo to serve out the rest of his sentence and while the ship stopped temporarily at Hong Kong he was seized by the Australian military police and taken to Manus Island where his second trial was held. He was found guilty and hanged on June 11, 1951.



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TOL PLANTATION ATROCITY
( Feb. 4, 1942 )

On the morning of 22/23 of January, 1942, Japanese forces, estimated at between seventeen and twenty thousand, landed at Rabaul on the island of New Britain. Defended by 1,396 men of the Australian 2/22 Battalion of the 8th Division, AIF, (Lark Force ) The New Guinea Volunteer Rifles and men of the 2/10 Field Ambulance Unit, they were soon forced to retreat in the hope of escaping via Wide Bay about 90 kilometres south of Rabaul. On the 3rd of February, 1942, Japanese troops landed from five barges on the shore of Henry Reid Bay, an indent on Wide Bay and near the Tol and Waitavalo plantations. They immediately set out to round up all Australian soldiers hiding out in the surrounding jungle. The first ten taken prisoner were immediately bayoneted to death. The others, worn out and hungry by their trek from Rabaul, simply surrendered. Their hands were bound together, their identity discs and other personal items taken off them and then marched into the bush on the Tol Plantation in groups of ten or twelve and there shot or bayoneted in a most cruel fashion. At the nearby plantation at Waitavalo thirty-five prisoners were shot from behind by rifle and machine guns. The Japanese didn't have the decency to bury these men, only to throw a few palm fronds over the bodies. Miraculously, six men survived these killings. When the Australian 2/14th Battalion recaptured the area in April, 1945, they discovered a number of areas littered with the bleached bones of 157 Australian soldiers who had escaped from Rabaul. The Japanese unit responsible for the murders was the 3rd Battalion of the 144th Infantry Regiment commanded by Colonel Masao Kusunose who was tracked down on 17 December, 1946. It was discovered that he had committed suicide by starving himself to death during a nine day fast. In Australia, the official Government report on the massacre was not released until 47 years later, in 1988. (Of the 1,396 men of Lark Force, only about 400 returned home)



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THE CHEKIANG MASSACRES

The Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo brought a retalliation against the Chinese people that staggers the imagination. On April 18th. 1942, sixteen twin-engined Mitchell B-25 bombers, each carrying one ton of bombs, and led by Lt.Col. Jimmy Doolittle, were launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. Their mission was to bomb the Japanese capital, Tokyo, and then, unable to land back on their carrier, proceed to friendly airfields in China, 1,200 miles across the East China Sea. Some of the planes reached their destination safely but the others ran out of fuel and crashed after their crews had baled out. Sixty four airmen parachuted into the area around Chekiang. Most were given shelter by the Chinese civilians but eight of the Americans were picked up by Japanese patrols and three were shot after a mock trial for 'crimes against humanity'. The Japanese army then conducted a massive search for the others and in the process whole towns and villages that were suspected of harbouring the Americans, were burned to the ground and every man, woman and child brutality murdered. When the Japanese troops moved out of the Chekiang and Kiangsu areas in mid-August, they left behind a scene of devastation and death that is beyond comprehension. Chinese estimates put the death toll at a staggering 250,000. Lt. Col. James Doolittle was later awarded the US Medal Of Honor. (The Chinese Dept. of Defense claims that 1,319,659 Chinese soldiers were killed between 1937 and 1945. It estimates the number of Chinese civilians killed during this period at 35,000,000).



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ATROCITY ON LUZON

While many atrocities were committed on Luzon, this one stands out for its sheer bloody mindedness. Fourteen Filipino resistance fighters surrendered to the Nippon savages after their ammunition was expended. Tied together neck to neck and with hands tied behind their backs, they were marched three miles to their place of execution. Ordered to sit down, another group of prisoners were brought in and forced to dig fourteen holes two feet wide and four and a half feet deep. When the digging finished the fourteen Filipinos, with their neck ropes removed, were forced to jump into the holes while the other group shoveled the earth back into the hole and stamped it down hard until only the head and neck of the victims were visible above ground. Their repugnant duty finished, the grave diggers were then lined up and shot in cold blood. The attention of the Japanese was now focused on the fourteen heads awaiting decapitation. A few soldiers had gone behind some bushes to defecate and after scraping together their excreta on to banana leaves they returned to the buried victims and kneeling down offered each head a last meal. Unable to move, the helpless men could only shake their head from side to side whereupon the Japanese soldiers stuffed the revolting faeces into their mouths amidst peals of laughter from their comrades. After they had their fun, the serious business of execution commenced as an officer drew his sword and with deft strokes separated the fourteen heads from the bodies. No one was ever punished for this foul deed.



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THE TRUK MASSACRE
( February.1944 )

During the American attack on the island of Truk in the Carolines, around 100 women, (most of them 'Comfort Women', those girls forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army) took shelter in a dugout behind the Naval base where they worked. With defeat staring them in the face, the Japanese, fearing that the 'comfort women' would be an encumbrance and an embarrassment, should they fall into American hands, decided to dispose of them. During a lull between arias, three ensigns were sent to the dugout. Armed with machine guns, they approached to find a few women emerging from the pitch-dark interior. They were immediately shot on the spot. Entering the dugout with guns blazing, they fired randomly in the darkness. When the screams of the women had died down and only the moans of the wounded could be heard, the ensigns flicked on their torches to find around seventy bodies, drenched in blood, lying on the floor.