Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by RockyMcNuts 3647 days ago
What's your source for the 'myth' of the Bataan Death March? Even the Japanese have apologized for it....and for other extreme militarist stuff. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39145098/ns/world_news-asiapacific...

There are people who say the German concentration camps were 'myths' too. There are memes that propagate because they serve someone's agenda... maybe the same applies to the narrative that the "allied soldiers [i.e. Americans] in the pacific were from some of the most savage and racist societies on earth."

Fortunately, there are professional historians that try to sort through this stuff.

1 comments

> What's your source for the 'myth' of the Bataan Death March?

"100–650 American prisoners of war died on the march before they reached their destination."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March

I'm not saying the march didn't happen. I'm just saying that the propaganda surrounding the bataan "death" march is a myth. Growing up, you'd think it was worst thing in the world. But then you learn that hardly any americans died and that those americans who died were invaders/colonizers of the philiphines themselves and just as evil as the japanese invaders. That's what I'm getting at.

> There are people who say the German concentration camps were 'myths' too.

Okay? What does that have to do with what is being discussed?

Okay, 'myth' = 'only 10% of the people died.'

Revisionism FTW.

Yes. Myth is a few people dying. Hell more americans are killed on a slow weekend in chicago than in bataan "death" march.