[KS] "Petition; "Make U.S. high school curriculums more inclusive of Japanese War Crimes during WW II"

[Walraven, B.C.A.]

Agreeing with Kent that this whole discussion probably should not be conducted in this place, I feel bound to respond to the suggestion that the Japanese camps were more brutal than the German camps. The Japanese camps were in many ways horrible. My grandmother died there of starvation, for instance, and there was violence and misery in various forms, but they were not industrialized extermination camps like Auschwitz. Up to a point people could maintain some dignity and even do ordinary things.  To the three camps in which she stayed my mother lugged a 3 kilogram book about Rembrandt and  a 6-volume set of Les Miserables and she had paper to make drawings of her surroundings (one of which showed the book, which with wry humour she entitled "Les miserables").  To suggest that the German camps were less brutal amounts to Holocaust denial.

Boudewijn

From: Koreanstudies [mailto:koreanstudies-bounces at koreanstudies.com] On Behalf Of Henny Savenije
Sent: zaterdag 8 februari 2014 6:03
To: Korean Studies Discussion List
Subject: Re: [KS] "Petition; "Make U.S. high school curriculums more inclusive of Japanese War Crimes during WW II"

I know and have known many people who were in an Indonesian (Japanese) concentration camp, some family members, some friends, some who spent their youth there.

Each and every one of them told me that they hated the Koreans more than the Japanese, the Korean camp guards were more cruel than the Japanese. I knew one couple, he, Dutch spent the war in an Indonesian concentration camp, she, Jewish, spent the last part of the war in a German concentration camp. They both stated that the Japanese camps were more brutal.

At 02:34 PM 2/7/2014 Friday +0100, you wrote:


Dear Bill Streifer,

A woman who spent her childhood in an Indonesian concentration camp managed by Japanese told me that the workers of the camp (not the prisoners, in this case) were Koreans. The manager of the camp was Japanese.

As I learned at my Jewish Orthodox school in Gush Ezion, Israel, the Nazist treatment of Jews included complex relationship with the Jewish leadership. There was this famous case of one of Jewish ghettos in Europe, where the leader of Jewish community first supplied to Nazis goods made at the ghetto factory, then labor force, then a certain number of people, then children. The rest of the ghetto people included the leaders were killed by Nazist just a few weeks before liberation.

My specialization is 'technologies of self'. Technologies of self includes how to build a person, and how to break a person. Nazist, communist and similar regimes have a particular set of skills and techniques, that include moral/spiritual demoralization, humiliation and elimination. You can apply these techniques to a person, and also to a nation.
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Henny (Lee Hae Kang)
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http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr/indexk2.htm In Korean
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http://www.vos.henny-savenije.pe.kr<http://www.vos.henny-savenije.pe.kr/> Frits Vos Article about Witsen and Eibokken and his first Korean-Dutch dictionary
http://www.cartography.henny-savenije.pe.kr<http://www.cartography.henny-savenije.pe.kr/> (in English) Korea through Western Cartographic eyes
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http://www.oldKorea.henny-savenije.pe.kr<http://www.oldkorea.henny-savenije.pe.kr/> Old Korea in pictures
http://www.british.henny-savenije.pe.kr<http://www.british.henny-savenije.pe.kr/> A British encounter in Pusan (1797)
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