Hi Carl, and all,
Well put and I know Gandhi would appreciate the nod.
Charlie.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: 24 June 2015 16:17
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Secret World War II Chemical Experiments Tested
Troops by Race
You're absolutely right, Charlie.
For years I struggled with whether the death sentence should continue,
or not. In more recent times I used the argument that our system is
so flawed that we should not use the death penalty because too many
innocent people were being murdered by the State. But the real truth
is that just so long as we continue using murder to settle a wrong, we
are teaching a lesson in violence to our young. Far too long we have
justified murder as a reasonable method of solving problems. Get rid
of the violent criminal via violence, get rid of the oppressive rulers
via violence, put an end to even peaceful protest via violence. It's
high time we turned our backs on Dirty Harry and shook hands with
Gandhi.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/24/15, Charles Crawford <CCrawford@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Miriam and all,
What frightens me is the ability of humanity to make up excuses that
are supposed to explain away why certain things had to happen. Think of
almost any horror and you will also think of what folks said in response to
it, so that they could somehow make sense of it.
Only until we reach the point where killing is absolutely prohibited
irrespective of the matters at hand, do we start to stand a chance of
getting where we need to be.
Charlie Crawford.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: 24 June 2015 15:31
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Secret World War II Chemical Experiments
Tested Troops by Race
Actually, I have read about other experiments on our servicemen and our
citizens that had to do with testing the effects of nuclear explosions on
people who lived relatively close to them. This one was more horrifying
because the government specifically put people of color in gas chambers.
Humankind has a very dark side. I'm reading a nonfiction book about the
Armenian genocide. I wonder why we never learned about it in school. There
were actually a lot of Americans involved in trying to help the Armenians.
Of course this had something to do with the fact that the Armenians were
Christians who were being annihilated by a Muslim country which was
fighting
on the side of Germany in World War 1. But Turkey killed more than a
million
people! And I'm reading an excellent novel called A God of Ruins. It
reminds
me that during World War 2, the allies were fire bombing German cities in
order to annihilate everything, including the homes of civilians. They
caused fire storms which made the streets so hot that the concrete boiled
and people were burned alive. I suppose that's what the burning of Dresden
was about. It's a very frightening thought. Just set up a particular
confluence of conditions and rage, greed, and aggression take over.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2015 1:57 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Secret World War II Chemical Experiments Tested
Troops by Race
Miriam and All,
This revelation came as a real sad shock for me. While I've gotten over
believing that WW II was a "Good War" in which are guys were kind and
gentle
with the enemies, to learn that our "Good Government"
experimented on our own troops, was a real wake up call. Have we ever been
that wonderful free land of which we sing? Remember the Syphilis "study"
using Negro American Servicemen? Of course we protected our little yellow
Japanese Citizens by stealing their land and shoving them into internment
camps(prisons). Did we ever wonder why we didn't set up camps for our
German Americans? Could it have been that they "looked like normal
Americans"? I mean, they looked White. Of course we'd already learned how
to treat our imported workers. We brought in cheap Chinese labor to build
our railroads...I said, "our", but that was tongue in cheek. Once we'd
finished with their services, we rewarded them in the most evil of ways.
If there is one common reoccurring thread here, it is that we have
mistreated all of the groups of persons of color who have come, or been
forced to come, to our shores. Well, that's not all of it, because there
were those persons of color who got in our way by being here first.
When will we be honest and face the fact that America has never been the
"City on the Hill" that we want to believe it to be.
When I was young, I had my share of chores around our house. I would rush
through them, often with a lick and a promise, not paying close attention.
Mother would come along behind me, checking my work. She would point to a
missed spot and say, "You can't clean it if you don't see it".
And that is exactly true of our efforts to clean up our nation. If we
can't
see our own dirt, how can we clean it up? How do we build a more Just
Society when we refuse to see our Dark Side?
One of my duties as assistant director for field services at the department
of services for the blind, in Washington, was overseeing case compliance.
We contracted with outside reviewers to do a thorough check of our work.
My
staff person in charge of doing case reviews was always trying to dismiss
or
even hide errors made by the VR staff. Every year I had to remind him that
the errors were how we learned to do a better job . "We don't learn to
improve ourselves by patting our backs over our good performances. We
study
our mistakes and short comings and figure out how to do them right."
By believing that we are the best and most wonderful nation since Adam and
Eve, we are doing nothing to correct our ugly side.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/23/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Did I just say that things are deteriorating? Well, this happenedWashington, D.C.
during our good ! war!
Miriam
Dickerson writes: "While the Pentagon admitted decades ago that it
used American troops as test subjects in experiments with mustard gas,
until now, officials have never spoken about the tests that grouped
subjects by race."
These historical photographs depict the forearms of human test
subjects after being exposed to nitrogen mustard and lewisite agents
in World War II experiments conducted at the Naval Research Laboratory in
(photo: Naval Research Laboratory)might affect Japanese troops.
Secret World War II Chemical Experiments Tested Troops by Race By
Caitlin Dickerson, NPR
23 June 15
As a young U.S. Army soldier during World War II, Rollins Edwards knew
better than to refuse an assignment.
When officers led him and a dozen others into a wooden gas chamber and
locked the door, he didn't complain. None of them did. Then, a mixture
of mustard gas and a similar agent called lewisite was piped inside.
"It felt like you were on fire," recalls Edwards, now 93 years old.
"Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And
then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and
let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape."
Edwards was one of 60,000 enlisted men enrolled in a once-secret
government program - formally declassified in 1993 - to test mustard
gas and other chemical agents on American troops. But there was a
specific reason he was
chosen: Edwards is African-American.
"They said we were being tested to see what effect these gases would
have on black skins," Edwards says.
An NPR investigation has found evidence that Edwards' experience was
not unique. While the Pentagon admitted decades ago that it used
American troops as test subjects in experiments with mustard gas,
until now, officials have never spoken about the tests that grouped
subjects by race.
For the first time, NPR tracked down some of the men used in the
race-based experiments. And it wasn't just African-Americans.
Japanese-Americans were used as test subjects, serving as proxies for
the enemy so scientists could explore how mustard gas and other chemicals
Puerto Rican soldiers were also singled out.War II.
White enlisted men were used as scientific control groups. Their
reactions were used to establish what was "normal," and then compared
to the minority troops.
All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in
secret and weren't recorded on the subjects' official military
records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They
received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they
were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable
discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive
adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn't
tell doctors what happened to them.
Army Col. Steve Warren, director of press operations at the Pentagon,
acknowledged NPR's findings and was quick to put distance between
today's military and the World War II experiments.
"The first thing to be very clear about is that the Department of
Defense does not conduct chemical weapons testing any longer," he
says. "And I think we have probably come as far as any institution in
America on race. ... So I think particularly for us in uniform, to
hear and see something like this, it's stark. It's even a little bit
jarring."
NPR shared the findings of this investigation with Rep. Barbara Lee,
D-Calif., a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who sits on a
House subcommittee for veterans affairs. She points to similarities
between these tests and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, where U.S.
government scientists withheld treatment from black sharecroppers in
Alabama to observe the disease's progression.
"I'm angry. I'm very sad," Lee says. "I guess I shouldn't be shocked
when you look at the syphilis studies and all the other very terrible
experiments that have taken place as it relates to African-Americans
and people of color. But I guess I'm still shocked that, here we go
again."
Lee says the U.S. government needs to recognize the men who were used
as test subjects while it can still reach some, who are now in their
80s and 90s.
"We owe them a huge debt, first of all. And I'm not sure how you repay
such a debt," she says.
Mustard gas damages DNA within seconds of making contact. It causes
painful skin blisters and burns, and it can lead to serious, and
sometimes life-threatening illnesses including leukemia, skin cancer,
emphysema and asthma.
In 1991, federal officials for the first time admitted that the
military conducted mustard gas experiments on enlisted men during World
According to declassified records and reports published soon after,agents."
three types of experiments were done: Patch tests, where liquid
mustard gas was applied directly onto test subjects' skin; field
tests, where subjects were exposed to gas outdoors in simulated combat
settings; and chamber tests, where men were locked inside gas chambers
while mustard gas was piped inside.
Even once the program was declassified, however, the race-based
experiments remained largely a secret until a researcher in Canada
disclosed some of the details in 2008. Susan Smith, a medical
historian at the University of Alberta in Canada, published an article
in The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
In it, she suggested that black and Puerto Rican troops were tested in
search of an "ideal chemical soldier." If they were more resistant,
they could be used on the front lines while white soldiers stayed
back, protected from the gas.
The article received little media attention at the time, and the
Department of Defense didn't respond.
Despite months of federal records requests, NPR still hasn't been
given access to hundreds of pages of documents related to the
experiments, which could provide confirmation of the motivations
behind them. Much of what we know about the experiments has been
provided by the remaining living test subjects.
Juan Lopez Negron, who's Puerto Rican, says he was involved in
experiments known as the San Jose Project.
Military documents show more than 100 experiments took place on the
Panamanian island, chosen for its climate, which is similar to islands
in the Pacific. Its main function, according to military documents
obtained by NPR, was to gather data on "the behavior of lethal chemical
Lopez Negron, now 95 years old, says he and other test subjects weresays.
sent out to the jungle and bombarded with mustard gas sprayed from
U.S. military planes flying overhead.
"We had uniforms on to protect ourselves, but the animals didn't," he
"There were rabbits. They all died."occurring.
Lopez Negron says he and the other soldiers were burned and felt sick
almost immediately.
"I spent three weeks in the hospital with a bad fever. Almost all of
us got sick," he says.
Edwards says that crawling through fields saturated with mustard gas
day after day as a young soldier took a toll on his body.
"It took all the skin off your hands. Your hands just rotted," he
says. He never refused or questioned the experiments as they were
Defianceour armed forces."
was unthinkable, he says, especially for black soldiers.
"You do what they tell you to do and you ask no questions," he says.
Edwards constantly scratches at the skin on his arms and legs, which
still break out in rashes in the places he was burned by chemical
weapons more than 70 years ago.
During outbreaks, his skin falls off in flakes that pile up on the floor.
For years, he carried around a jar full of the flakes to try to
convince people of what he went through.
But while Edwards wanted people to know what happened to him, others -
like Louis Bessho - didn't like to talk about it.
His son, David Bessho, first learned about his father's participation
as a teenager. One evening, sitting in the living room, David Bessho
asked his dad about an Army commendation hanging on the wall. David
Bessho, who's now retired from the Army, says the award stood out from
several others displayed beside it.
"Generally, they're just kind of generic about doing a good job," he
says.
"But this one was a bit unusual."
The commendation, presented by the Office of the Army's Chief of the
Chemical Warfare Service, says: "These men participated beyond the
call of duty by subjecting themselves to pain, discomfort, and
possible permanent injury for the advancement of research in protection
of
Attached was a long list of names. Where Louis Bessho's name appearsWashington, D.C.
on Page 10, the list begins to take on a curious similarity. Names
like Tanamachi, Kawasaki, Higashi, Sasaki. More than three dozen
Japanese-American names in a row.
"They were interested in seeing if chemical weapons would have the
same effect on Japanese as they did on white people," Bessho says his
father told him that evening. "I guess they were contemplating having
to use them on the Japanese."
Documents that were released by the Department of Defense in the 1990s
show the military developed at least one secret plan to use mustard
gas offensively against the Japanese. The plan, which was approved by
the Army's highest chemical warfare officer, could have "easily
kill[ed] 5 million people."
Japanese-American, African-American and Puerto Rican troops were
confined to segregated units during World War II. They were considered
less capable than their white counterparts, and most were assigned
jobs accordingly, such as cooking and driving dump trucks.
Susan Matsumoto says her husband, Tom, who died in 2004 of pneumonia,
told his wife that he was OK with the testing because he felt it would
help "prove he was a good United States citizen."
Matsumoto remembers FBI agents coming to her family's home during the
war, forcing them to burn their Japanese books and music to prove
their loyalty to the U.S. Later, they were sent to live at an
internment camp in Arkansas.
Matsumoto says her husband faced similar scrutiny in the military, but
despite that, he was a proud American.
"He always loved his country," Matsumoto says. "He said, 'Where else
can you find this kind of place where you have all this freedom?' "
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
These historical photographs depict the forearms of human test
subjects after being exposed to nitrogen mustard and lewisite agents
in World War II experiments conducted at the Naval Research Laboratory in
(photo: Naval Research Laboratory)might affect Japanese troops.
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/22/415194765/u-s-troops-tested-by-race-in-s
ecret-
world-war-ii-chemical-experimentshttp://www.npr.org/2015/06/22/4151947
65/u-s
-troops-tested-by-race-in-secret-world-war-ii-chemical-experiments
Secret World War II Chemical Experiments Tested Troops by Race By
Caitlin Dickerson, NPR
23 June 15
s a young U.S. Army soldier during World War II, Rollins Edwards knew
better than to refuse an assignment.
When officers led him and a dozen others into a wooden gas chamber and
locked the door, he didn't complain. None of them did. Then, a mixture
of mustard gas and a similar agent called lewisite was piped inside.
"It felt like you were on fire," recalls Edwards, now 93 years old.
"Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And
then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and
let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape."
Edwards was one of 60,000 enlisted men enrolled in a once-secret
government program - formally declassified in 1993 - to test mustard
gas and other chemical agents on American troops. But there was a
specific reason he was
chosen: Edwards is African-American.
"They said we were being tested to see what effect these gases would
have on black skins," Edwards says.
An NPR investigation has found evidence that Edwards' experience was
not unique. While the Pentagon admitted decades ago that it used
American troops as test subjects in experiments with mustard gas,
until now, officials have never spoken about the tests that grouped
subjects by race.
For the first time, NPR tracked down some of the men used in the
race-based experiments. And it wasn't just African-Americans.
Japanese-Americans were used as test subjects, serving as proxies for
the enemy so scientists could explore how mustard gas and other chemicals
Puerto Rican soldiers were also singled out.War II.
White enlisted men were used as scientific control groups. Their
reactions were used to establish what was "normal," and then compared
to the minority troops.
All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in
secret and weren't recorded on the subjects' official military
records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They
received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they
were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable
discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive
adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn't
tell doctors what happened to them.
Army Col. Steve Warren, director of press operations at the Pentagon,
acknowledged NPR's findings and was quick to put distance between
today's military and the World War II experiments.
"The first thing to be very clear about is that the Department of
Defense does not conduct chemical weapons testing any longer," he
says. "And I think we have probably come as far as any institution in
America on race. ... So I think particularly for us in uniform, to
hear and see something like this, it's stark. It's even a little bit
jarring."
NPR shared the findings of this investigation with Rep. Barbara Lee,
D-Calif., a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who sits on a
House subcommittee for veterans affairs. She points to similarities
between these tests and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, where U.S.
government scientists withheld treatment from black sharecroppers in
Alabama to observe the disease's progression.
"I'm angry. I'm very sad," Lee says. "I guess I shouldn't be shocked
when you look at the syphilis studies and all the other very terrible
experiments that have taken place as it relates to African-Americans
and people of color. But I guess I'm still shocked that, here we go
again."
Lee says the U.S. government needs to recognize the men who were used
as test subjects while it can still reach some, who are now in their
80s and 90s.
"We owe them a huge debt, first of all. And I'm not sure how you repay
such a debt," she says.
Mustard gas damages DNA within seconds of making contact. It causes
painful skin blisters and burns, and it can lead to serious, and
sometimes life-threatening illnesses including leukemia, skin cancer,
emphysema and asthma.
In 1991, federal officials for the first time admitted that the
military conducted mustard gas experiments on enlisted men during World
According to declassified records and reports published soon after,agents."
three types of experiments were done: Patch tests, where liquid
mustard gas was applied directly onto test subjects' skin; field
tests, where subjects were exposed to gas outdoors in simulated combat
settings; and chamber tests, where men were locked inside gas chambers
while mustard gas was piped inside.
Even once the program was declassified, however, the race-based
experiments remained largely a secret until a researcher in Canada
disclosed some of the details in 2008. Susan Smith, a medical
historian at the University of Alberta in Canada, published an article
in The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
In it, she suggested that black and Puerto Rican troops were tested in
search of an "ideal chemical soldier." If they were more resistant,
they could be used on the front lines while white soldiers stayed
back, protected from the gas.
The article received little media attention at the time, and the
Department of Defense didn't respond.
Despite months of federal records requests, NPR still hasn't been
given access to hundreds of pages of documents related to the
experiments, which could provide confirmation of the motivations
behind them. Much of what we know about the experiments has been
provided by the remaining living test subjects.
Juan Lopez Negron, who's Puerto Rican, says he was involved in
experiments known as the San Jose Project.
Military documents show more than 100 experiments took place on the
Panamanian island, chosen for its climate, which is similar to islands
in the Pacific. Its main function, according to military documents
obtained by NPR, was to gather data on "the behavior of lethal chemical
Lopez Negron, now 95 years old, says he and other test subjects weresays.
sent out to the jungle and bombarded with mustard gas sprayed from
U.S. military planes flying overhead.
"We had uniforms on to protect ourselves, but the animals didn't," he
"There were rabbits. They all died."occurring.
Lopez Negron says he and the other soldiers were burned and felt sick
almost immediately.
"I spent three weeks in the hospital with a bad fever. Almost all of
us got sick," he says.
Edwards says that crawling through fields saturated with mustard gas
day after day as a young soldier took a toll on his body.
"It took all the skin off your hands. Your hands just rotted," he
says. He never refused or questioned the experiments as they were
Defianceour armed forces."
was unthinkable, he says, especially for black soldiers.
"You do what they tell you to do and you ask no questions," he says.
Edwards constantly scratches at the skin on his arms and legs, which
still break out in rashes in the places he was burned by chemical
weapons more than 70 years ago.
During outbreaks, his skin falls off in flakes that pile up on the floor.
For years, he carried around a jar full of the flakes to try to
convince people of what he went through.
But while Edwards wanted people to know what happened to him, others -
like Louis Bessho - didn't like to talk about it.
His son, David Bessho, first learned about his father's participation
as a teenager. One evening, sitting in the living room, David Bessho
asked his dad about an Army commendation hanging on the wall. David
Bessho, who's now retired from the Army, says the award stood out from
several others displayed beside it.
"Generally, they're just kind of generic about doing a good job," he
says.
"But this one was a bit unusual."
The commendation, presented by the Office of the Army's Chief of the
Chemical Warfare Service, says: "These men participated beyond the
call of duty by subjecting themselves to pain, discomfort, and
possible permanent injury for the advancement of research in protection
of
Attached was a long list of names. Where Louis Bessho's name appears
on Page 10, the list begins to take on a curious similarity. Names
like Tanamachi, Kawasaki, Higashi, Sasaki. More than three dozen
Japanese-American names in a row.
"They were interested in seeing if chemical weapons would have the
same effect on Japanese as they did on white people," Bessho says his
father told him that evening. "I guess they were contemplating having
to use them on the Japanese."
Documents that were released by the Department of Defense in the 1990s
show the military developed at least one secret plan to use mustard
gas offensively against the Japanese. The plan, which was approved by
the Army's highest chemical warfare officer, could have "easily
kill[ed] 5 million people."
Japanese-American, African-American and Puerto Rican troops were
confined to segregated units during World War II. They were considered
less capable than their white counterparts, and most were assigned
jobs accordingly, such as cooking and driving dump trucks.
Susan Matsumoto says her husband, Tom, who died in 2004 of pneumonia,
told his wife that he was OK with the testing because he felt it would
help "prove he was a good United States citizen."
Matsumoto remembers FBI agents coming to her family's home during the
war, forcing them to burn their Japanese books and music to prove
their loyalty to the U.S. Later, they were sent to live at an
internment camp in Arkansas.
Matsumoto says her husband faced similar scrutiny in the military, but
despite that, he was a proud American.
"He always loved his country," Matsumoto says. "He said, 'Where else
can you find this kind of place where you have all this freedom?' "
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