Editorial: Jap atrocities
Nothing that has happened in this war has so shocked the American people as the Army and Navy report on Jap atrocities. The eyewitness story of the starving, the torture, the deliberate murder of more than 5,000 American and Filipino soldiers captured on Bataan and Corregidor seems too terrible for belief. But it is true. Three American officers, after a year’s imprisonment, escaped to tell the awful truth.
In this country there is a mighty surge of indignation. Our sympathy goes out to all the families of the victims, who fought and suffered and died for us. We are choked by wrath against the bestial criminals.
But our anger will not help the dead, will not hurt the guilty Japs. Emotion is not enough. We must do something about it, more than swear or weep.
Here at home, we may feel there is nothing much we can do. But there is. Nothing very dramatic, and nothing heroic certainly. But we can help win the war. The fighting front does depend on the home front. And we are the home front – all of us little people, doing little jobs, which add up to such a vastly important total.
We make the home morale, which sustains or undermines the spirit of our fighting men at sea and in the skies and in the foxholes and in the prison camps. We can strengthen that morale. We can be ashamed to think, much less speak, of our own petty inconveniences and minor sacrifices compared with the real sacrifices. We can refrain from the partisan bickering that wears away national unity.
We can put an end to strikes and slowdowns that hold back production. We can stop the profiteering and selfish maneuvering for business advantage. We can speed up the flow of planes and munitions and ships, without which our Army and Navy cannot avenge the victims of prison camps in the Philippines.
And we can be on guard against the insidious whispers and the vile propaganda of a few politicians and newspapers, which play upon our hatred of the Jap criminals to divide us from our European allies.
When you are told that our government is fighting for British and Russian interests in Europe and sacrificing American interests in the Pacific, don’t believe it. That is not true.
When you are told that administration politics determines military strategy in the Southwest Pacific to the detriment of Gen. MacArthur, don’t believe it. That is not true.
When you are told that the best way to lick the Japs is to forget about Hitler, don’t believe it. That is not true. This is a global war and we must win a global victory with our allies – or lose the war and lose the peace.
What a blessed relief it would be if we could turn on those Jap fiends, who have starved and tortured and murdered our men in the prison camps, and wipe them out tomorrow, or next week, or next month! But swinging blind won’t help. It will only delay the knockout. There is no quick way, no easy way. The steady way is the sure way.