THE LESSON OF RABAUL
Rabaul, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea. The Brits called him George, a Melanesian native of Rabaul born here in 1934. He was 8 years old when the Japanese invaded and seized this island from the Brits - who took it and all of German New Guinea after World War I.
George showed me where the Japanese kept the Australian and British prisoners they captured, all overgrown now. Hidden in the bush, he watched as they were hung or beheaded, and then... eaten. "The officers thought human liver was a delicacy," he said. "The soldiers would cut off pieces of thighs and arms to fry in strips."
I recount George's eyewitness not to guilt-monger, as I'm aware of how difficult it was for TTPers of Japanese ancestry to read The Lesson of Iwo Jima last week.
The evidence for Japanese cannibalism during WWII is extensive, along with numerous other hideous atrocities. Entire cultures and societies have the capacity to go criminally insane, as do individuals.
One of the most recurrent themes in history is barbaric savagery - from the constant blood feuds of primitive tribes to the Mongols of Genghiz Khan to the Reformation's Thirty Years War to Stalin's genocidal murder of millions of Ukrainians and Hitler's of Jews.
There is a famous scene in the movie classic The African Queen, when Bogart tells Hepburn such savagery is "natural" - and Hepburn responds that "Nature is what we were put here on earth to rise above."
Christianity offers a way to do this for individuals - but how can an entire culture, an entire people rise above their past?
