Opinion

When good men go to war

By Douglas Lummis

In his best-selling comic book "On War (Sensoron)," Yoshinori Kobayashi complains that criticisms of what the Japanese military did in World War II are cruel and unfair to his grandfather. The old man, Kobayashi says, was a soldier in that war, but was a good man, kind to his grandson.

I understand this complaint. Sometimes criticisms of the Japanese military give the impression that the crimes and horrors it committed are unique to Japan, and that the militaries of other countries respect the laws of war, and hardly ever commit war crimes.

This is not true. Let me remind readers of a well-known example.

On the morning of March 16, 1968, a unit of 105 American soldiers entered the village of My Lai in South Vietnam, and by noon they had killed about 500 people, all unarmed civilians. They raped the women and/or stuck knives in their vaginas. They scalped dead people, and/or carved the name of their unit — "C Company" — on their bodies. They also burned down houses.

The only time the commander of this unit, Lieutenant William L. Calley, restrained anyone was when he found one of his men forcing a woman to give him oral sex, and said, "Get on your goddamn pants." The reason he gave was that a G.I. with his pants off is not doing his job. Calley then shot the woman and her child.

As it happened, somebody blew the whistle, and the army was forced to investigate. Twenty-five soldiers were indicted, but the charges were dropped for all except Calley.

When the news came out that Calley was going to trial, many people — soldiers, veterans and civilians — came to his support. Civilians who had never been to war went into denial, saying, "American boys would never do such a thing."

Veterans took a different line, saying, "This kind of thing happens in every war. Why should they pick on Calley?" Veterans of World War II and the Korean War protested by turning themselves in to the police, saying, "If this man is guilty, he is guilty for the same things we did. We shot up villages and killed civilians too."

Calley was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, but two days later then-President Richard Nixon reduced the sentence to house arrest. The U.S. House of Representatives, hearing of Nixon's pardon, applauded. In less than three years, he was released on parole.

I suppose Calley and his troops, like Kobayashi's grandfather, were good men — or anyway, as good as one can reasonably expect. The military does not consciously recruit sadists, psychopaths and serial killers. The problem is different: how does the military recruit ordinary, good-hearted folks and train them to behave like sadists, psychopaths and serial killers?

So the matter is more serious than Kobayashi thinks. It is not just a question of our gentle grandfathers. If the remilitarization policies that Kobayashi himself supports are carried out, we will see our gentle children and grandchildren put in the same situation.

Shukan ST: Aug. 24, 2001

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