Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[Story]

Redaction of a miscreant's petty larceny.

SALT LAKE CITY — A man made a long-awaited apology to a Salt Lake City business over something he did more than 70 years ago.

It all started when a woman came into the Lamb’s Grill on Main Street sometime between breakfast and lunch on April 1.

“This woman walks in the front door, and she looks like she’s on a mission,” said server Jasmine Back.

Back approached the woman, who then explained that her father had committed a crime there.

"She starts in and says, 'My father ... ' so my mind wanders and I think, 'What's going to happen next?' Next, she says, '(He) dined and dashed here in 1941," Back said.

The man was 10 years old at the time. Allegedly, he and his friend ate there and ran away when they realized they couldn’t pay the bill.

“It was a dollar,” Back said.

Read more at http://www.ksl.com/?nid=960&sid=29338786#u2Lslkjay3jPLi06.99

 

[GHT]

Never forget.

Never forget what? that men had to wear knickers?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was talking about the unfortunate modern habit of forgetting or downplaying Japanese war atrocities, which were as genocidal as those of the Nazis, but get a fraction of the press. Never forget.

Knickers, I don't mind. I wish baseball players still wore them.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Knickers, I don't mind. I wish baseball players still wore them.

Some do, and I like the look too. I wish they'd wear stirrups more often.

 

[Fading Fast]

I was talking about the unfortunate modern habit of forgetting or downplaying Japanese war atrocities, which were as genocidal as those of the Nazis, but get a fraction of the press. Never forget.

Knickers, I don't mind. I wish baseball players still wore them.

Lizzie, I agree that the Japanese WWII atrocities have not come to "define" evil the way the German ones have - do you have any thoughts on why?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lizzie, I agree that the Japanese WWII atrocities have not come to "define" evil the way the German ones have - do you have any thoughts on why?

Whether thru historical ignorance (in the case of Westerners) or thru perverse nationalism (certain factions in Japan) many people prefer to think of Japan as a victim of World War II, not one of the chief victimizers. Plus, the Nazis make better villians from a popular-culture perspective. Internet discussions never devolve into people calling each other "Tojo."

 

[Fading Fast]

That makes sense. I've often thought (to your first point) that since Germany was a product of Western Civilization - and a fully developed version in the pre-Hitler 20s / early 30s - whereas, Japan had it own unique and (to your point) for many years unstudied-in-the-West culture (and looked down upon at the time), it was more shocking to the West (US, UK, other allies) that German was capable of such atrocities.

 

[sheeplady]

I think part of it is because so many of the survivors and relatives of the Holocaust came to live in many Western countries. I've known two Holocaust survivors myself (both I knew when I was a child and have since passed) but have never met a survivor of Nanking. There's substantial evidence that you come to sympathize with the people you know. Many temples are active in historical events, memorials, and education surrounding Shoah.

I think there is also something to the popular historical view of the calculated cruelty of the Holocaust that resonates with people in a more deeply disturbing way than the way Nanking (and other Japanese acts) is presented. The Nazi's didn't simply just execute, rape, and murder people in the Holocaust. They developed calculated plans to round up, murder, and torture people- their own people (Germans)- and became "experts in efficiency" at it. I think it is easier for us to "understand" quick, forced, brutalrity because we think "oh, that's war like." But there is something with the coldness of the Holocaust- the calculated nature of it- that disturbs us. I think we're more likely to overlook harsh, sudden, and intense violent behavior like Nanking because it seems "war-like" but less likely to be able to overlook harsh, calculated, and drawn out violent behavior like the Holocaust. In addition, part of what seems so disturbing about the Holocaust is that so many knew about it but did nothing and watched their neighbors get killed. (I understand that Nanking didn't just "happen" but there was not a large infrastructure of violence created that took years to build in the Holocaust, but our education system doesn't emphasize the fact that Nanking was in a series of genocidal events.)

I don't want to sound apologetic for anything that happened nor am I giving excuses as to why we have a selective memory. I think there are other factors at play here too, including racial ones, the bias in history education in many countries, etc.

There was also 6 million Jews killed, including a million children, so I am not making light of the number difference between Nanking and the Holocaust either. In the end, it is unfair to compare them just because they are acts of genocide. They are both important to remember.

 

[LizzieMaine]

]
There was also 6 million Jews killed, including a million children, so I am not making light of the number difference between Nanking and the Holocaust either. In the end, it is unfair to compare them just because they are acts of genocide. They are both important to remember.

I'm not just talking about Nanking. While an exact figure will never be known, it's estimated that around 6 million Chinese, Indonesian, and Korean civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese, starved to death, or subjected to various twisted forms of medical experimentation. But you never seem to hear about that anymore -- and, make no mistake, it was intended as an act of racial genocide.

Read the figures here.

 

[sheeplady]

I'm not just talking about Nanking. While an exact figure will never be known, it's estimated that around 6 million Chinese, Indonesian, and Korean civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese, starved to death, or subjected to various twisted forms of medical experimentation. But you never seem to hear about that anymore -- and, make no mistake, it was intended as an act of racial genocide.

Read the figures here.

And I think society's non-acceptance or non-willingness to see that as genocide is also due to racial perspectives and how society sees and constructs "white" people (and what society consider s"white" to be) and what society consider s"the other." We could get into a whole discussion on this point (but I am not sure if anyone would want to engage in it) but I think it is hard to comprehend a mass of "othered" people (who are distinct cultures) as hating each other, purely because society sees them as one group- the "other."

In the end the numbers don't matter really- genocide is genocide is genocide. But the fact that I can easily call up the number of victims of the Holocaust but can only call up precise numbers on Nanking (and not the larger genocidal movement) speaks exactly to the problem you are addressing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In the end the numbers don't matter really- genocide is genocide is genocide. But the fact that I can easily call up the number of victims of the Holocaust but can only call up precise numbers on Nanking (and not the larger genocidal movement) speaks exactly to the problem you are addressing.

It goes all the way back to the end of the war, too. There was a deliberate effort made to soft-pedal Japanese atrocities on the part of the United States almost immediately following V-J Day, to douse any demands that Hirohito be hung as a war criminal. This was done purely for geopolitical reasons, not for moral ones. The blood of those dead Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, and others, dripped from "The Son Of Heaven's" hands, and if there had been any honest justice in the world, his life should have ended at the end of a rope. Allowing him to remain on the throne was akin to allowing Doenitz to rule a rump Nazi state in postwar Germany "for the sake of stability."

 

[Edward]

It goes all the way back to the end of the war, too. There was a deliberate effort made to soft-pedal Japanese atrocities on the part of the United States almost immediately following V-J Day, to douse any demands that Hirohito be hung as a war criminal. This was done purely for geopolitical reasons, not for moral ones. The blood of those dead Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, and others, dripped from "The Son Of Heaven's" hands, and if there had been any honest justice in the world, his life should have ended at the end of a rope. Allowing him to remain on the throne was akin to allowing Doenitz to rule a rump Nazi state in postwar Germany "for the sake of stability."

I t was cetainly an interesting volte face; my understanding was that a pre- Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japanese offer of surrender was refused by the US on the basis that the offer was conditional upon keeping the Emperor. Plenty of room for specualtion as to the for whsy of the change, but clearly it was politically motivated rather than a moral issue if that change did happen.

That makes sense. I've often thought (to your first point) that since Germany was a product of Western Civilization - and a fully developed version in the pre-Hitler 20s / early 30s - whereas, Japan had it own unique and (to your point) for many years unstudied-in-the-West culture (and looked down upon at the time), it was more shocking to the West (US, UK, other allies) that German was capable of such atrocities.

I do genuinely believe there's a lot to that. If someone cannot so easily be dismissed as "other", if they look like us, live like us, eat similar food and have similar family lives.... it's harder to galvanise troops and the home front against this enemy during a war effort, and afterwards also much harder to accept such acts we discover they did (or, of course, nowadays that were done to them by "our side") simpyl because it's that much harder to dehumanise them.

Whether thru historical ignorance (in the case of Westerners) or thru perverse nationalism (certain factions in Japan) many people prefer to think of Japan as a victim of World War II, not one of the chief victimizers. Plus, the Nazis make better villians from a popular-culture perspective. Internet discussions never devolve into people calling each other "Tojo."

I should think a lot of it, as applies to the West, is cultural ignorance (in the least value judgement-laden use of the term). Ultimately, we remember and pass down what our own experience was for the most part. The Brits, for example, mythologise and fetishise the Battle of Britain; for some in the US, it's the D-Day fantasy of the US riding in like the cavalry and saving us all (whether or not John Bon Jovi stole the enigma machine) - to this day I still encounter online a US-specific version of Godwin - "You'd have been speaking German if it wasn't for us" which is all too 'for real' and not intended in the least as hyperbole. Jinkies, look even at the way we all put dates on the war... for the Brits, it started in 1939, and ran until 45 - most marking the 'end' of the war as the point at which Nazi Germany fell, not VJ day. In the US, many folks regard the war as having started in 42 and ended in 45, on VJ day. The Czechs and some Austrians (the Austrian popular attitude to the war is absolutely fascinating) would say it started in '38, perhaps.... the Chinese 37. We're all, as Johnson would have had it "a parcel of [our] own [cultural] experience." I'd say the reason more folks here in the West aren't so aware of what passed between China and Japan over the years was simply down to the fact that people tend to concentrate more on what happens closer to home. It's the same out there too, of course. I've seen a Chinese kid wearing an SS eagle tshirt on campus. Didn't seem any malice to it - it was just an interesting, Western and 'cool' t-shirt. Kid simply, in all probability, wasn't aware of what went down with the Nazis. Every year I teach European Data Protection Law out there, which of course was in large part a response to state abuse of census data by the Nazi government, an abuse which facilitated the identification of Jews, among other things, for ghettoisation and later sending to the death camps. When I explain this, a lot of the kids - early twenties undergraduates - seem simply to not have known this before. And really.... why would we expect them to know about European events when the average person among us in the West knows little of Chinese history? I've even seen middle class women in Larne, Northern Ireland, waving the Confederate Battle Flag around with their line-dancing class, knowing nothing whatever of its symbolism beyond "it's a sort of cowboy flag". Just the way people are, I suppose. Of course it could all have been very different if Hollywood had seen it as being as appealing a setting for war movies as the European theatre (I highly doubt it was any supposed-PC sensibility about fears of perceived racism, given that most of the classics were made back in the Sixties). Mind you, given the appalling liberties the film industry has taken with the reality of the war over the years, possibly not!

(I still love Escape to Victory, though. Gloriously silly.)

 

[GHT]

I was talking about the unfortunate modern habit of forgetting or downplaying Japanese war atrocities, which were as genocidal as those of the Nazis, but get a fraction of the press. Never forget.

Apologies Lizzie for my frippery, I should have read back further into this thread.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I was talking about the unfortunate modern habit of forgetting or downplaying Japanese war atrocities, which were as genocidal as those of the Nazis, but get a fraction of the press. Never forget.

I suppose the downplaying of Japanese war atrocities (except those committed against American, British and Australian POWs) also reflects a Eurocentric viewpoint in the West which views it as part of a distant "Asian" history. Because on the same token many Asians seem to regard Hitler, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust as part of a distant (to them) "European" history as evidenced by the popularity of Nazi imagery in their pop culture that would be unthinkable in America and Europe.

 

[Smithy]

Lizzie, I agree that the Japanese WWII atrocities have not come to "define" evil the way the German ones have - do you have any thoughts on why?

Whilst there's an emphasis on German atrocities, down this way in Australia and NZ, the awareness of Japanese war crimes and some of its least savoury actions during the war are very, very well-known. Indeed it's often said down in these parts that the Japanese were crueller than the Germans - and that does hold a strong basis in truth with how Aussie and Kiwi POWs were treated by their respective captors. The Australian experience of the war definitely has a strong emphasis on the war with Japan for obvious reasons.

Two of my great-uncles had the unfortunate pleasure of being guests of the emperor. One of them was so severely treated that although liberated died from poor health and complications shortly after the war.

 

[Talbot]

Sandakan.....

 

[Fading Fast]

I thought about where to post this, but think it belongs here. Yesterday, I saw the movie "Storm Center" which is a very anti-McCarthy movie where Betty Davis plays a librarian defending the principal of keeping a pro-communist book in the town's library not because she believes its philosophy (she makes a point that she does not) but because Americans are not afraid of ideas and that we don't censure things like communist counties do. This is a heavy handed movie in which the bad guys are those who want to ban the book and fire Betty Davis for her stance and the good guys are Betty and those who support her.

I was surprised it was made in 1956 because I thought the country was still blacklisting people throughout the 1950s and the general culture was still scared of being seen as on the side of communists or against those fighting communists. This movie all but says McCarthy was wrong, the people who supported him were wrong and those who fought against him were right. It even discusses how just because someone was once a member of a communist front organization, it doesn't mean they are communists or trying to over throw the country.

All of this is great to see (even in a two-dimensional way - this is one where the ideas are right, the delivery is too obvious), but I was surprised that it was made in 1956. I am acknowledging only a surface knowledge of the period's politics - and I know some on this board have a deep knowledge - so I am asking if anyone else is surprised this was made in 1956?

 

[LizzieMaine]

McCarthy himself was discredited and censured by the Senate in 1954, but the blacklisting was still going on in some sectors until the early and mid sixties. But the thing to remember is that blacklisting, officially and as such, didn't exist if you talked to people at the networks and the studios. It was all sub-rosa, it was something done "off the record," and thus you can't really say it began and ended at a certain specific point.

But even at the height of the blacklisting period there were people who spoke out against it and fought it. The New York local of AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, was nearly destroyed by battles between pro-blacklist and anti-blacklist factions during the early fifties, and that didn't really settle down until the sixties. Some people who had been ardent blacklisters -- Bud Collyer comes to mind -- later expressed regret for their actions and tried to make amends by helping people who had been victims of the blacklisting. By 1956 this sort of ambivalence was very much in evidence in the industry.

 

[Fading Fast]

McCarthy himself was discredited and censured by the Senate in 1954, but the blacklisting was still going on in some sectors until the early and mid sixties. But the thing to remember is that blacklisting, officially and as such, didn't exist if you talked to people at the networks and the studios. It was all sub-rosa, it was something done "off the record," and thus you can't really say it began and ended at a certain specific point.

But even at the height of the blacklisting period there were people who spoke out against it and fought it. The New York local of AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, was nearly destroyed by battles between pro-blacklist and anti-blacklist factions during the early fifties, and that didn't really settle down until the sixties. Some people who had been ardent blacklisters -- Bud Collyer comes to mind -- later expressed regret for their actions and tried to make amends by helping people who had been victims of the blacklisting. By 1956 this sort of ambivalence was very much in evidence in the industry.

Thank you for the additional information and context especially about the inside baseball at the studios. What really, and I mean really, surprised me was that a main-stream movie in 1956 was so clearly against McCarthyism. In some way, this seems to bring into question the stereotypical view of the fifties as main-stream America quietly accepting the Red Scare tactics and "conforming" to the prevailing view. Clearly this is consistent with your point about there being people speaking out against it, but I am surprised that there was enough confidence at the studio that main-stream America would accept this movie that it was even made.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The important thing to remember is that Joe and Sally Dinnerpail didn't really know much of anything about blacklisting while it was going on -- about the only public manifestations of it that was obvious to the public were things like the American Legion protesting Chaplin's "Limelight" in 1953, a protest which had as much to do with Chaplin's alleged sexual improprieties as it did to do with his politics. Ordinary people knew about McCarthy and his allegations about doings in the State Department, and read J. Edgar Hoover's "Masters of Deceit" and generally believed that something needed to be done to keep Those Commies at bay, but they had no knowledge or awareness of what was actually going on inside the entertainment industry. No overt public announcements to the effect of "Philip Loeb is a Communist so we can't have him playing Jake Goldberg anymore" were published. Instead they'd say only say things like so-and-so has left such-and-such a program for "marketing reasons" or something like that. You might be able to pick up on what was really going on by reading between the lines in the trade press, but the average American didn't read show-business publications. The closest they'd come would be picking up references in Walter Winchell's column and drawing conclusions from those.

But again, most people, most ordinary working-class Americans, had no interest in the inside dope of show business. They went to the movies twice a week, listened to the radio, maybe watched television if they lived in a TV city, and didn't really pay much attention to anything beyond that.

At the peak of his influence, McCarthy's public approval rating was 50 percent. That's hardly a groundswell of public support for Red-baiting, no matter how you slice it.