When it comes to the last few decades of people sticking it to Western Culture – less our flawed institutions than the underlying philosophies that have created our systems of government, law and order, science and technology, economies and our overall civil society – I’ve moved from raised eyebrows to irritation to annoyed dismissiveness of their bullshit:
NZ prefers to see itself “of the North” rather than of the South. You can make of that what you will but I see a hint of racism and cultural superiority in that attitude, and I do not think that I am alone in that belief given the actions of certain NZ elites towards matters “of the South” such as indigenous rights and representation.
Especially because the implication is always that Western culture is no better than other cultures, which is the whole underpinning claim of multiculturalism, and often because the critics live in the West and show no desire to move to the societies they extoll.
I thought of this as I read through a “Woman Of The Day” post from Ele’s HomePaddock blog about Australian Army nursing sister Betty Jeffrey and her imprisonment by the Japanese in WWII. You can read the whole story at the link but I wanted to focus on this part:
Conditions were appalling: bug-infested rice (one tablespoon of boiled rice each per day), rotten vegetables, plus a tiny pannikin of foetid water as the daily diet yet they were made to walk for hours to fetch clean water for the guards’ sweet potato crops.
Most of the nurses had only the clothes they stood up in. No shoes; they’d taken those off before diving off the Viner Brooke. For punishment, they were made to stand for long periods in the blistering sun. At great personal risk, Betty kept a secret diary and she recorded it all. She took her life in her hands – the Japanese confiscated and destroyed all records such as birth or marriage certificates, lists of names, anything written.
They even removed the hands from the women’s watches so they couldn’t tell the time. The only reliable indicator of time passing was the rigid, monotonous camp regime with its calls of Tenkō (転向, literally changing direction, meaning coerced ideological conversion), used as a roll call requiring the women to bow in obeisance to the Japanese emperor.
She nursed women as best she could with no resources – those Red Cross parcels containing food and medical supplies were withheld from the POWs – and dug their graves when they died. Eight of her nursing colleagues were among those who didn’t survive.
Bear in mind that one of the key rationales for the terrible treatment of Allied POW’s was that the Japanese had no regard for soldiers who surrendered; like the Japanese themselves they should have fought to the death. To be fair, they showed this was not a double standard as they did die for their Emperor in vast numbers, and as the Pacific War ground on, increasingly did so in useless, hopeless ways that changed the course of battles and the war not at all, and in some cases they didn’t surrender for years after the war was over.
But these were non-combatants, in many cases civilians, as had been the Chinese victims of the IJA in the infamous Rape of Nanking, and millions of other civilians across SouthEast Asia and the Pacific.
In other words the surrender claim was merely a rationale applied to combat when the truth lay deeper in Japanese culture and society. A truth that they regarded their culture and their race as so superior that they could just do whatever they wanted with a defeated enemy.
By contrast there’s this picture of an American soldier on the island of Okinawa feeding water to a terrified little Japanese kid who is shaking from fear, cold, and hunger.
That still is from the following video, which is teed up to run at 2:43, but just drag the tracker to zero if you want to see the whole thing showing what the US Marines and Army soldiers were dealing with on Okinawa in 1945.
Also this photo of two US Marines lying asleep in a foxhole protecting a little Japanese boy between them.
Anybody who has read anything about the Pacific War or seen films or the fantastic but brutal TV miniseries, The Pacific, will know that American Marines and Soldiers committed war crimes against Japanese soldiers and the Battle of Okinawa was one of the most terrible of the war.
Yet even after being exposed to that face-to-face brutality for months in horrific conditions, with all the fear and anger and hatred of fighting an enemy who did not abide by almost any laws of war and would not surrender, even unto death, there were American soldiers who afterwards acted towards Japanese civilians in the manner of the man in that photo.
That is Western Civilisation, Western society, in a nutshell, and yes I do think it was superior to Japanese society and remains superior to many others around the world to this day. And yes, I say that knowing that the Japanese were merely being rational in using their self-sacrifice, their own mass death and refusal to surrender on Okinawa to convince the Americans not to invade Japan.
They convinced them.
No Minister 
It’s notable how Western values are under attack from within. Those attackers always remind me of little kids simply having a tantrum. There’s no logic to their madness, it’s just about tearing down any traditional values so that they are left with nothing..
It’s the attack on the values and Western philosophies that concern me. The West has always had a history, even a pride, in self-criticism.
But it was always about our institutions and our civil society being better, living up to those long-espoused values. And I think that was true in much of our own times, with regard to economics, business, war, civil rights and so forth.
But what I increasingly see and hear is an outright trashing of those values, of everything about us, about the West, of which we have been so long a part. Post-modernism is one deep-seated driver of all this, with its denial of the possibility of objective truth.
But I wouldn’t ignore the Marxism either, even as the USSR and other lie on ash heaps. It’s as if there’s a Year Zero mentality out there in the West that just wants to burn it all down in the vague hope that something different and better will arise and they’ll use any weapon to hand: Global Warming, Immigration (both legal and illegal). Anything.
Tom,
I am quick to share my opinion when it differs from yours.
But I really should applaud you for your prodigious output, which in large I agree with or empathise with.
It sounds like in some way we are on the same journey in life. Seekers of truth and relevance.
However, while I spend many hours everyday reading widely, I would fail miserably to meet your writing/journalism/presentation abilities.
Well done.
Thanks Roy.
And shhhhh, otherwise you might get invited to join as a contributor, since I’m only capable of doing this right now as I’m in the slack period of the year.
Haha, you would have to have a skilled editor to unscramble my ramblings.
Fortunately I am at the slack part of my life. 🙂
Enjoying life before the grim reaper terminates the fun, hopefully before I do a Joe Biden(Lose my marbles)
have a listen to Victor Davis Hanson being interviewed by Peter Robinson
civilisations destroy rhemselves
https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/uncommon-knowledge/id1378389941?i=1000655687815
Fortunately Western Civilisation only needs one Steve Jobs or Elon Musk per generation to kickstart a surge in prosperity.
Others have discovered that there is money to be made in civil unrest so they stir this up with their “oppressed vs. privileged oppressor” narratives via the compliant media and “higher learning” institutions to encourage the over-educated and under-socialised youths to engage in pointless activist protests and sit-ins.
As the US election approaches, there will be a need to concoct a slain oppressed martyr to provide a justification for rioting in Democrat controlled cities as a “get out the vote” tactic for the minority community Democrat support base.
Western Civilisation has always existed alongside a backdrop of civil unrest and cities have always been cesspools of depravity and yet somehow it continues to survive and prosper.
Read the Trilogy on the Pacific War by Ian W Toll.
Approx 1800 pages. Excellent series.
Will bookmark that although I have so much to read already.
Would suggest the single volume Nemesis by Max Hastings and of course the two autobiographies upon which most of The Pacific series was based: Helmet For My Pillow and With The Old Breed.
The old TV doco, The World At War still stands up pretty well on the Pacific episodes as well.
And although it’s not specifically about the subject, I strongly recommend Richard Rhodes The Making Of The Atomic Bomb because it really sets the scene in looking at the horrors of the Pacific battles, the fire-bombing of Japan and the psychology that grew in the USA with regard to the war.
Interesting thoughts.
I wonder how much it really was Japanese culture? Or was it a culture imposed by the elites from above. The Samauri classes that had taken over the military, and therefore the political system.
Their troops were treated little better than allied prisoners. They were beaten , starved, executed in numbers and if wounded in China executed on the field of battle. Why, because the Japanese had no way of dealing with the large casualties in China, and because they didnt want the homeland to be flooded with a veritable army of wounded.
As one field marshal of the Japanese army disclaimed they are penny soldiers as that was the reckoned cost of recruitment and training.
Was it German culture to execute vaste numbers of Poles, Russians, Jews, and who knows what on the Eastern Front.?
Was it German culture to breed fanatical SS Divisions, divisions who often fought to the last man ?
One man wrote a book in a prison cell, and in remarkably short time it became German culture
Is it Russian culture not to revolt against their officers or lay down their arms in Ukraine? I’m sure its not , but like the Japanese soldier they have no choice.
Whether the cost to invade Japan would have been as high as claimed who knows.
But faulty American intelligence or willful neglect over looked the one source of electrical energy in Japan that would have shortened the war considerably if it had been knocked out.
Of course there was also the alternative to starve them out, a well tested strategy down through the millennia.