Myths of the Golden Era -- Exploded!

[LizzieMaine]

There are also plenty of Americans who deny the reality of the brutality of Japanese militarism. One myth that's current among the hand-wringing set is that the United States *provoked* Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor by imposing an oil embargo -- and that after diplomatic efforts to remove that embargo failed, an attack was the only recourse left. This may rank as the most ridiculous myth of World War II -- when you consider that although the embargo was imposed in 1941 as a result of the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, it was first proposed in the fall of 1937 as a direct reaction to the Rape of Nanking. Japanese brutality directly led to that embargo, as well as all of the other consequences that would follow. The militarists sowed the wind -- and reaped the whirlwind.

[Treetopflyer]

If anyone wants to know about the brutality of Japanese militarism, just ask someone that was a Prisoner of War under the Japanese. I read a book a few months ago titled “Unbroken”, which deals directly with the treatment of POWs by the Japanese. An extraordinary book by the way, I highly recommend it.

[Shangas]

My uncle (now in his seventies) lived through the Japanese invasion of British Malaya and the Fall of Singapore in 1942. He was under no illusions regarding the brutality of the Japanese. He used to tell me, he would cycle to school (he was seven when the Japanese invaded) and pass the local police-station, where the Japanese used to put decapitated heads on spikes and stick them in the ground to act as a warning. He told me about the chronic food-shortages, water shortages, medicine shortages, breakdowns in communications, and all the other horrible things that happened to the civilian populations when the Japanese came to town. There was so little food, they never knew where their next meal would come from, what it was, or how much of it they'd have, or if they'd get any food the next day.

Singapore was bombed so heavily during the invasion that damn near all the civilian infrastructure was obliterated. All the electrical power failed, and my uncle said they had to light the family home with oil-lamps after sundown, because electrical lighting was so unreliable as to be completely useless.

[Bluebird Marsha]

If you liked "Unbroken", you might also like "No Ordinary Joes". I've got a couple of other POW memoirs, but they're mostly out of print. "From POW to Blue Angel: the story of Commander Dusty Rhodes" is another one I can recommend if you can find a copy of it.

I have a theory about the kind of people that think that our oil-embargo was what started the war with Japan. If it was our mistake that started the whole nightmare, then actions on our part could have stopped it. That somehow, some way, we are always capable of controlling a situation. If we have control, then we can avert nightmares. That doesn't justify such willful ignorance of atrocities that I've seen (blessedly few), but it's almost touchingly naive. Believing that horror can always be averted by well-intentioned people. It doesn't work when dealing with monsters.

Kind of like the people that think Roosevelt let the Japanese destroy much of the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, just to get us into the war. Nope, those near-sighted, rice eating, paper airplane flying foreigners couldn't just waltz in and blow our unprepared butts out of the water. It had to be an inside job. It couldn't have anything to do with us screwing up.

[rjb1]

Here's a new take (at least to me) on the Shanghai "abandoned baby" photo. I have seen that photo a hundred times and did not really question it's authenticity. However, I just bought a book with a photo of the same baby with his father (so says the caption) crouching a foot or so behind the baby. An older boy (6-8 years old) is standing right next to the "father".
Whether it really is his father and older brother can't be told, but no doubt it is an adult Chinese male and a boy about 6-8 years old right next to the baby in question. He may or may not be abandoned after all. My theory/speculation is that the cameraman may have waved the man and older boy away from the scene to get a more dramatic image (and it worked).

As was said, that photo in its original form was significant in stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment in he 1930's. I wonder if it would have been as powerful if the father and brother had been included in the published image. (bad vs. worse)

Joel

[LizzieMaine]

That second photo was published in the same issue of Life which showed the original photo, so it's never been "secret." The Japanese Government claimed that it was evidence the photo was posed, but the photographer went to his grave insisting the photo with the father was taken *after* the original, and the Metrotone News film footage bears that out. The father had rushed to the scene looking for his wife and baby after the bombing.

I think the important question to ask is whose interests, in 1937, would be served by "proving" the photo to be staged. Who had reason to want that belief spread?

[1961MJS]

...I have a theory about the kind of people that think that our oil-embargo was what started the war with Japan. If it was our mistake that started the whole nightmare, then actions on our part could have stopped it. That somehow, some way, we are always capable of controlling a situation. If we have control, then we can avert nightmares. That doesn't justify such willful ignorance of atrocities that I've seen (blessedly few), but it's almost touchingly naive. Believing that horror can always be averted by well-intentioned people. It doesn't work when dealing with monsters. ...

WOW Marsha, that's an interesting take on the "reasoning:" behind their "reasoning" or possibly "lack of reasoning". I would have been in the "Why should we sell them steel to shoot at the Chinese?" group personally.

I've been seeing that picture for YEARS and I never thought of the baby as abandoned, just recently bombed, tired, and scared out of it's wits. The kid looks about 1 year old, like it knows Mom and Dad are alive or dead, jut knows they're not HERE. It NEVER occurred to me that it would be "better" w.r.t. the news, if the kid was abandoned. Guess that's why I didn't go into Journalism.

Great insight

[V.C. Brunswick]

Kind of like the people that think Roosevelt let the Japanese destroy much of the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, just to get us into the war. Nope, those near-sighted, rice eating, paper airplane flying foreigners couldn't just waltz in and blow our unprepared butts out of the water. It had to be an inside job. It couldn't have anything to do with us screwing up.

Either that or it was the Germans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI

Though on a serious note there were quite a few who actually believed that the Japanese were totally incapable of pulling off such a surprise attack on their own that they had to have put their German allies up to it.

[rjb1]

I didn't mean to imply that the newer (to me) version I saw was "secret". I have just never seen the "more complete" version with the father and brother in it before. If the photo taken with the father and brother was taken *after* the "by himself" photo of the baby, it says to me that the baby was not really abandoned to the extent that the more famous version that was taken and printed implies. "The father had rushed to the scene looking for his wife and baby after the bombing.

I have no intention in justifying Japanese actions at that time. I am only curious about the photographic or cinematographic sequence of events that led to the final product.
As far as "faking" goes, there is the outright faking of a photo by retouching of negatives, etc. and the more subtle "faking" ("staging") by telling people to move around in and out of the frame or physically adding or subtracting elements in the image. The first was technically impossible to do at that time without detection. The latter was possible and was done on a regular basis. This led to the controversy concerning Joe Rosenthal's famous Iwo Jima flag-raising photo. His first photo (the famous one) wasn't staged, but the second one, where he told all the Marines to gather under the flag, was staged.
There was a mixup (and controversy) in describing those two photos that lasted decades.

Back to the issue at hand, based on what has been said, was there a still photographer standing right next to the movie cameraman taking images at the same time? I had always assumed that the still images were printed from individual frames of a movie. If not, then I have learned even more about this photo.

[LizzieMaine]

All the footage, and photos, were shot by Hai-Sheng Wong, the Shanghai representative for Hearst Metrotone News. He used two cameras simultaneously -- a spring-motor powered 35mm Eymo portable newsreel camera on a tripod for the moving images, and a 35mm Leica for the stills.



Because of the different cameras there exist slightly different angles for the same scenes, a fact which has led to further speculation of fakery by those who don't understand how they were shot.

Wong himself never implied the baby was "abandoned," although "Abandoned Shanghai Baby" has become a default description of the picture. He assumed that the female corpse just out of camera range was the baby's mother, and that she had been hit by debris and dropped the baby where he was found. He was, by his own account, approaching the child to help it when the father appeared on the scene to rescue the baby.

Wong was put on a death list by the Japanese Government for his role in capturing the reality of the Shanghai bombing, and was forced to flee to Hong Kong, which became his base of operations for the rest of the war. He died in 1981.