Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I had a grade school friend whose dad served in the Pacific during WW11...he always liked to show off the Japanese sword & gold tooth that he brought back with him. The tooth creeped me out, but in retrospect..he also brought back malaria & left a leg behind...
Because I saw that scene in the HBO mini-series 'The Pacific'.
Yes it was recently. Those guys went through hell and looked like they had been hell afterwards. This was during right after and mopping up. i watched it at home and i didn't have any cable etc.
Not necessarily taken off dead soldiers but picked up, found or traded with fellow soldiers. I grew up in the 50's and just about everyone back then had a Dad who was a WW2 vet. They had all kinds of souvenirs that got passed down to their kids.
We all had German and Japanese stuff. Medals, belt buckles, daggers, helmets and other things. Also back then there were a lot of Army surplus stores with American military items. Web belts, cartridge belts, first aid kits, gas masks etc.
Over the years these items were given away or lost. Probably a lot of it is currently popular with collectors and would command serious prices.
If you think that there is anything wrong with taking from the corpses of the enemy dead, then you know very little about war. In reality, most souvenirs were taken from homes or from the abandoned gear on battlefields.
On the grand list of things that are done that aren't good, this is about 347,239 on the list. Also, the Japanese, Russians and Germans were far, far, far worse than us. You should watch a documentary on the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese or read about what the Russians did to the Germans...then come back with some perspective.
My Polish buddies mom and her brothers survived WW2 up until Xmas Day when the retreating Germans shot her grandfather and uncles on the eastern front, and the advancing Russians stole/raped ever women they could find in the village New Years day, hot on the trail. And we think we come through trauma.
My uncle Ken was with Montgomery in the Italian advance, in infantry. I'm sure that in that pile of medals some are undoubtedly his own, but there sure are a lot of duplicates!! I never asked.
Not necessarily taken off dead soldiers but picked up, found or traded with fellow soldiers. I grew up in the 50's and just about everyone back then had a Dad who was a WW2 vet. They had all kinds of souvenirs that got passed down to their kids.
We all had German and Japanese stuff. Medals, belt buckles, daggers, helmets and other things. Also back then there were a lot of Army surplus stores with American military items. Web belts, cartridge belts, first aid kits, gas masks etc.
Over the years these items were given away or lost. Probably a lot of it is currently popular with collectors and would command serious prices.
Almost weekly we see on the news about grd kids cleaning out after gramps passes and find a grenade or two.
Taking something off of a dead soldier is not a big deal. Until very, very recently, it was generally accepted practice that looting and rape were legitimate spoils of war.
Plundering and rape were important ways to motivate the rank and file soldier,
and the plunder supplemented their measly income as well as time spent away from however they made a living at home.
Why not just accept that it is wrong? Why is there a bizarre form of conservative led political correctness when it comes to soldiers in the US?
How is it wrong? Should weapons be left laying there for an enemy soldier to later pick up and use? Or worse, for some kids playing to discover and hurt themselves?
What some fail to grasp in this conversation is the incongruity of trying to applying polite/civilian morality to the actions of men in combat. Right? Wrong? When you're carrying a loaded weapon and several pounds of deadly ordnance in an environment where an enemy may take your life at any moment? Get real, people.
The irony of training young men to be cold-blooded killers and then judging them from the safety and comfort of our ridiculously luxurious civilian lives is ignorant at best, and hypocritical by definition...
My father was an aircraft mechanic during WWII and never bothered with souvenirs. His one "souvenir" is a stainless steel spoon with the eagle and swastika stamped on the back of the handle.
He found it lying on the ground when he was working at the North Severn Naval Station in the mid-1950's.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Exactly; my Polish buddies mom and her bros.
