Referring to his order to kill hundreds of japs who were abandoning their sinking ship. That's a war crime but nothing was done to him, though he was killed in a battle later. The series should have followed up on that incident.
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Reckless drivers are a bigger threat to you than all other criminals put together.
W&R was not a documentary or social exploratory. It was a novel (fictional account) of the lives of a very small number of people out of a potential cast of millions. It was also not a war story per se but rather a story of how ordinary people coped with the effects of war and displacement.
It is therefore not required or necessary for the author to cover the entire account of the war in the Pacific or every occurrence thereof.
The Japanese would have done exactly the same if the positions had been reversed. Aster made the right call.
The players of The Game are the scum of the earth
The script should have had Aster pointedly asking Byron if he'd have had no qualms if it had been German sailors gunned down. This is one of the chief weaknesses of Winds and War IMO, in that it keeps the Japanese and their brutality totally at arms length from the viewer in contrast to showing us every facet of Nazi brutality (and let's not even get started on the whitewash job regarding Soviet conduct in the war in events like Katyn Forest). Having experienced both miniseries recently (Winds I had not seen since its 1986 ABC rebroadcast, War I had never seen the entirety of), I was struck by how big as the storyline was, the view of WW2 in this saga was maddeningly incomplete with too much dramatic exposition sacrificed for the sake of too much spectacle in spots (and belaboring obvious points IMO).
shareI have now just gotten to the scene in Part XI where Byron confesses "killing Japanese leaves me cold" because "the war is won." Honestly, Byron's hypocrisy on this point gets even more infuriating to me because again, I don't believe for one minute he would be this moody and introspective if it were Germans he were killing. And given what still lay ahead with Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the idea that what remained in the Pacific was a cakewalk is even more absurd.
Maybe War and Remembrance instead of killing Warren Henry at Midway, should have had him become a victim of a Japanese POW camp to show us how the brutality and atrocities of the war were not limited to one of the Axis powers. Or maybe Warren's story could have been a fictionalized account of what happened to two American pilots shot down at Midway who were murdered by the Japanese after being picked up by Japanese destroyers and subjected to harsh interrogations.
For those who have not read the book--Lady Aster is based upon a real Sub guy and what happened in the movie did happen---but the guy was never brought up on charges--we need to look at it through the eyes of a 1941 to 45 America and not the 2015 era of things.
Aster's death is based upon the death of Howard W Gilmore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_W._Gilmore
In the book, the lead-up to Aster's shooting of the Japanese soldiers in the water -which, in the book, takes place in April of 1943- is prefaced by a description of the problems SubPac was facing then. It had two nagging problems: dud torpedoes (the unreliable Mark XIV) and dud captains. The dud captains either had to be beached for overcaution, or fell apart during attacks. (The way Branch Hobart did on the first patrol aboard the Devilfish.) The aces of SubPac were the captains who had the rare combination of skill, cold courage and good luck. They were the ones whose boats racked up the sinkings and who earned colourful nicknames (such as "Lady" Aster). It's described that, within broad limits, they could get away with murder.
After the incident, it's described that Aster's killing of Japanese troops was (which he apparently fully reported) kept as a "family secret" among the crews of SubPac. Immediately after, Byron hears talk around the base amongst other officers from other boats and their feelings on the matter. The vote goes against Aster, but not by much. It's also described that it's kept hushed until after the war when patrol reports are declassified. A staff officer on SubPac writes a critical report of the incident. Admiral Lockwood, who was ComSubPac, crossed out the criticism and wrote that if had ten more aggressive captains like Carter Aster, he could end the war a year sooner and he's recommending Aster for his second Navy Cross.
The incident is very similar to one that happened on the third war patrol of USS Wahoo. The skipper, CDR Dudley (Mush) Morton fired on boats of a sunken transport. His exec, LCDR Richard O'Kane (who would later win them Medal of Honor when commanding USS Tang) stated that Morton only ordered the destruction of the life boats, and the casualty figures seem to support that, as they were quite low.
WWII in the Pacific was truly a different kind of war. For one thing, the Japanese did not sign the so-called Geneva Conventions, and did not abide by them. They routinely shot at pilots in parachutes, executed prisoners of war out of hand and repeatedly committed atrocities against civilians. And, yes, some of our personnel responded in kind. They even used Allied Prisoners of War and Chinese civilians for chemical and biological warfare experiments of a ghastly nature. That was the nature of that war.
Both sides committed atrocities during the Pacific war.
One true event the Midway episode (and the book) did not cover was that the Japanese fished out downed American pilots whom, after interrogation, they beheaded or drowned.
On the other hand, some Japanese generals were unjustly executed following the verdicts of MacArthur's war crimes trials. Gen. Homma was found guilty and executed, even though it was his subordinates like the fanatical Col. Tsuji who actually committed, in defiance of Homma's orders, the atrocities Homma was accused of.
Why is it a war crime? The Japs were enemy combatants. The Japs did not sail from Tokyo on a pleasure cruise. They were part of a naval force intending to destroy U.S.ships and sailors. The japs started thre war. The U.S. could have used a lot more sub commanderslike Aster.
For someone like yourself who wants to hang drunk drivers, I can't understand why you would want to let those Japs go free. We should have burned em.
Japanese didn't surrender. They wanted to willingly die for their emperor...
The Nips bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack while their Ambassador was proclaiming to hunt for a peace between the two countries. Not many Americans felt an iota of sympathy for them.
There was this little thing called the Bataan Death March...
No one cared to offer any quarter. They plunged the US into a war that claimed hundreds of thousands of US lives. Think anyone cared if the Japanese lived or died?
..Joe