Sir Paul

[Highlander]

One of my earliest memories is of a blackbird singing...

[OldManC]

Ah, the twists and turns of a normal thread at The Last Bass Outpost! 

[Highlander]

 

[uwe]

Peter Frampton has a new album out and that is called "Thank you Mr Churchill" and shows a Spitfire. That kind of rounds this thread up until there are the usual other preferred subjects we might want to probe deeper into.

[dadagoboi]

Ah, I'm too late to the party as usual.  Re Macca, not interested and wish he would go away.  But on what seems to me the other racial issue that has been raised:

Atrocities aside (Dresden, Hiroshima anyone?), dig deeper and you will find how Japan in 1848 was forced to open its society by Admiral Dewey and aspire to be "Western" (and forced to cede an island called Iwo Jima).  The Japanese realized to be western meant to subjugate and COLONIZE, so they did.  Because they were not a white race, we condemned their expansion while encouraging our Euro brethren to 'civilize' the yellow and black men by taking their homelands.

Was the 'pacification' of the Philippines after the Spanish American War any less brutal than the Rape of Nanjing?

As they say, history is written by the victors.

[Pilgrim]

History has always - and I suspect always will be - written by the victors.  I suspect that's verging on what some might call "natural law".

[OldManC]

dig deeper and you will find how Japan in 1848 was forced to open its society by Admiral Dewey and aspire to be "Western" (and forced to cede an island called Iwo Jima). 

I didn't know this. I'll have to dig deeper into history and learn about it.

[Highlander]

Check out the Ienaga book I referenced elsewhere...

[dadagoboi]

I didn't know this. I'll have to dig deeper into history and learn about it.

It was 1853, not '48.  Here's the official Navy history:

http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/teach/ends/opening.htm

The book I recommend is:

http://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Story-Courage-James-Bradley/dp/0316105848

Flyboys , A Story of Courage.  Written by the guy who wrote Flags of Our Fathers.  Most of it is about 9 downed fliers who were fished out the waters around Iwo and brutally killed by their Japanese captors.  Here's part of a review:

...More problematic is that Bradley tries to encompass not only the whole history of the Pacific War, but the whole history of the cultures of the two opposing countries that led to the racial attitudes which both sides brought to the war. Those attitudes, Bradley argues, played a large role in the brutal training of the Japanese army, which led to atrocities that in turn sharpened already keen American hostility. Some readers' hackles will rise at the discussion of the guilt of both sides, but, despite some missteps, Bradley attempts to strike an informed balance with the perspective of more than half a century...