53percenter's Blog

The remains of 22 servicemen killed on a Japanese-controlled island during World War II returned home to U.S. soil on Thursday, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said.

“Today, we welcome home more than 20 American servicemen still unaccounted for from the battle of Tarawa during World War II,” said acting Secretary of Defense Richard V. Spencer in a statement acknowledging the repatriation on behalf of a grateful nation.

“We do not forget those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and it is our duty and obligation to return our missing home to their families and the nation. Thank you to everyone who took part in this repatriation.”

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency transferred the remains from Tarawa in 22 cases to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, though remains from additional servicemembers could possibly be commingled with them, Stars and Stripes reports.

According to the agency, the servicemen were killed during the Battle of Tarawa, which was part of the larger Operation GALVANIC that commenced Nov. 20, 1943, to capture Japanese-held territory within the Gilbert Islands.

During the operation, approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed and 2,000 more were wounded over several days of fighting that “virtually annihilated” the Japanese on the Pacific Ocean island, the State Department said.

Tarawa is now part of the nation of Kiribati and efforts to repatriate remains of U.S. servicemen from the island have been ongoing since 1946, the agency said.

In March, searchers with the nonprofit organization History Flight discovered a mass grave with remains believed to be from members of the 6th Marine Regiment. The transfer Thursday  represents a portion of remains found at that time, according to the Stars and Stripes report.

In this Nov. 1943 file photo, sprawled bodies are seen on the beach of Tarawa atoll testifying to the ferocity of the battle for this stretch of sand during the U.S. invasion of the Gilbert Islands. A nonprofit organization that searches for the remains of U.S. servicemen lost in past conflicts has found what officials believe are the graves of more than 30 Marines and sailors killed in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. (AP Photo, FILE)

History Flight has been searching for World War II remains in Tarawa since 2007. In 2015, the group uncovered the bodies of 35 U.S. troops, including Medal of Honor recipient 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., who died leading a doomed assault on a Japanese bunker.

Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war.  Currently there are 72,692 service members still unaccounted for from the conflict, of which approximately 30,000 are assessed as possibly-recoverable.

UPI contributed to this story

Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com

There exists in this country a cultivated mindset that conservatives are all things evil.  We have gradually devolved into fictional characters, invented by the left, and animated by whatever awful thoughts, beliefs, and imaginary actions the anti-American hate cult can conjure up, mostly on the basis that we still have faith, or love our country, or believe in true justice rather than socialist justice.

It’s been going on for a long time.  I was a Reagan supporter as a teenager and college student, so I’ve been hearing for almost my entire life what a rotten person I obviously am.  Of course, I am none of the things that are pinned on me, but it doesn’t matter.  I am who they say I am, and they believe it to their cores.

It is a fascinating process, watching yourself being defined by people who actively practice what they pretend to condemn.  The awful things that they project upon us don’t spring from our minds, but from theirs.  Those terrible thoughts and dark motives are bred in their own warped psyches. When they spring forth, we are assured that these are what drive others but not themselves. 

Their bigotry is limitless, their hatred palpable.  Their distrust and loathing is out of all proportion to anything they’ve actually ever seen.  We do live among them, of course.  We interact with them every day.  We remnants of America are polite, rational and logical.  Except when we upset the cult.  Then we become fictional creatures entirely.

Read almost any headline and you’ll see the methodology.  For instance, Trump’s comments “drip with racism,” or are xenophobic, or misogynistic, or offensive in millions of other imagined ways.  It isn’t what Trump actually says or does that matters, it is what he “means.”  Trump’s motives, and ours, are provided for us countless times each day by a cadre of unhinged, hyper-emotionalized mental patients.  What we want, what we think, what we mean, what we intend, are assigned to us by unwell people who hate us with their entire beings.  The left, the most intolerant and hate-filled movement any of us have ever seen in this country, has rewarded itself with the exclusive right to interpret our every word and thought, and somehow they always conclude the same thing.  We are evil, but they are not.

We could be accused of doing the same, except that we don’t have to.  The progressive loons that have risen to prominence in the Democrat party tell us clearly what they intend, and who they mean to attack if and when they are calamitously returned to positions of power.  They are expressly, gleefully coming for us, because of the hate that we don’t have, but which they say we do. 

Conservatives, as traditional Americans, are not prone to irrational, emotional tirades.  They’ve learned, even as the practice fades into memory among half the population, that a healthy society cannot exist without tolerance, forbearance and forgiveness, to a point.  The Bill of Rights has historically informed the extent of our forbearance.  But while we’ve allowed progressives and anarchists to indulge their psychoses, we may have been tolerant too long.

The left’s tactic of defining its enemies seems to have succeeded so well that it can’t be corrected by mere conversation and evidence.  When every word we speak is instantly rejected on the basis of imaginary biases and prejudices we don’t have, but which are imposed upon us by those who hold them, the ability to converse is permanently smothered.  It has taken generations to fracture the country, but the left’s adherents are now almost unreachable. The country consists now of those who hate virulently, and those who are accused of doing so but don’t.  Perhaps that is changing, but not in a positive way.  That is, rational, decent Americans are getting truly sick and tired of the asylum’s tactics, and are trying to figure out their options in the shrinking vestiges of traditional America.

Realizing our situation is not yet exactly synonymous, some of us find ourselves thinking about what the Jews may have thought as they saw Germany rot from within, changing from a modern civilization in which they were free and equal to a barbaric hate cult driven by lies and disinformation about them.  They must have wondered where they could go, and when they should go there, to beat the coming tsunami of evil that was intended to crush them.  They saw and heard about the squads of radicals, agents of the party in power, attacking Jews in the street, driven by lies and human evil unchecked, with the assailants knowing they would face no punishment for doing the work of the Party.  They heard their government smear them, defame them and condemn them, and then their fellow citizens, all on the basis of lies propagated by those who sought totalitarian control and domination.  They were told what rights would be taken from them, and the dwindling opportunities they would have to exist in their own country.  When the disinformation campaign was complete, though they had done nothing wrong, they became the internal enemy.  They became the personification of all that the Party said was wrong with the country, and as such, they became less than human. They became targets.

As we see now, their motives were pinned on them, like Stars of David.  Their evil was invented and forced upon them, and their voices were not allowed to be heard in their own defense.  They became sub-humans whom the cult declared deserved whatever was done to them for their undeniable, but non-existent, evil.  These peaceful people, the innocent and law abiding, had been singled out for elimination because they gave the Party a pretense for overthrow and authoritarianism.  They became the scapegoats and victims of the evil that animates the subjugation of the many by a demonic few, whether it be socialism, communism or naziism.

We are not there yet, but the fact is, we can see it from here, can’t we?  The stage of words is gradually being succeeded by the stage of isolated acts of sanctioned violence by the Party’s enforcers, whether in the form of elected officials encouraging aggression and physical violence, roving mobs wearing hoods and masks, or the media. 

The work of isolating the targets continues in earnest.  Whites, Christians, Jews, males, law enforcement, the military, capitalists, conservatives and patriots, all have been assigned their hatred and evil by the mind-readers of the left.  We have been declared the problem, so our suppression is not only the solution, but is “social” justice. 

In this way, it becomes easier to rationalize that we will be preyed upon by those who know their party will excuse their filthy service to the seizure of our country and the power that comes from controlling it.  When Trump goes, unless he is succeeded by an American, so does the last barrier to total anarchy.  They’re telling us what they’re going to do.  Your only choice is to stand up for the country you want, rather than to live in the country they intend.  With illegals voting as planned, we really could be only an election away.  In the words of Sgt. Plumley, prepare to defend yourselves.

Photo credit: Kevin Jenco

There exists in this country a cultivated mindset that conservatives are all things evil.  We have gradually devolved into fictional characters, invented by the left, and animated by whatever awful thoughts, beliefs, and imaginary actions the anti-American hate cult can conjure up, mostly on the basis that we still have faith, or love our country, or believe in true justice rather than socialist justice.

It’s been going on for a long time.  I was a Reagan supporter as a teenager and college student, so I’ve been hearing for almost my entire life what a rotten person I obviously am.  Of course, I am none of the things that are pinned on me, but it doesn’t matter.  I am who they say I am, and they believe it to their cores.

It is a fascinating process, watching yourself being defined by people who actively practice what they pretend to condemn.  The awful things that they project upon us don’t spring from our minds, but from theirs.  Those terrible thoughts and dark motives are bred in their own warped psyches. When they spring forth, we are assured that these are what drive others but not themselves. 

Their bigotry is limitless, their hatred palpable.  Their distrust and loathing is out of all proportion to anything they’ve actually ever seen.  We do live among them, of course.  We interact with them every day.  We remnants of America are polite, rational and logical.  Except when we upset the cult.  Then we become fictional creatures entirely.

Read almost any headline and you’ll see the methodology.  For instance, Trump’s comments “drip with racism,” or are xenophobic, or misogynistic, or offensive in millions of other imagined ways.  It isn’t what Trump actually says or does that matters, it is what he “means.”  Trump’s motives, and ours, are provided for us countless times each day by a cadre of unhinged, hyper-emotionalized mental patients.  What we want, what we think, what we mean, what we intend, are assigned to us by unwell people who hate us with their entire beings.  The left, the most intolerant and hate-filled movement any of us have ever seen in this country, has rewarded itself with the exclusive right to interpret our every word and thought, and somehow they always conclude the same thing.  We are evil, but they are not.

We could be accused of doing the same, except that we don’t have to.  The progressive loons that have risen to prominence in the Democrat party tell us clearly what they intend, and who they mean to attack if and when they are calamitously returned to positions of power.  They are expressly, gleefully coming for us, because of the hate that we don’t have, but which they say we do. 

Conservatives, as traditional Americans, are not prone to irrational, emotional tirades.  They’ve learned, even as the practice fades into memory among half the population, that a healthy society cannot exist without tolerance, forbearance and forgiveness, to a point.  The Bill of Rights has historically informed the extent of our forbearance.  But while we’ve allowed progressives and anarchists to indulge their psychoses, we may have been tolerant too long.

The left’s tactic of defining its enemies seems to have succeeded so well that it can’t be corrected by mere conversation and evidence.  When every word we speak is instantly rejected on the basis of imaginary biases and prejudices we don’t have, but which are imposed upon us by those who hold them, the ability to converse is permanently smothered.  It has taken generations to fracture the country, but the left’s adherents are now almost unreachable. The country consists now of those who hate virulently, and those who are accused of doing so but don’t.  Perhaps that is changing, but not in a positive way.  That is, rational, decent Americans are getting truly sick and tired of the asylum’s tactics, and are trying to figure out their options in the shrinking vestiges of traditional America.

Realizing our situation is not yet exactly synonymous, some of us find ourselves thinking about what the Jews may have thought as they saw Germany rot from within, changing from a modern civilization in which they were free and equal to a barbaric hate cult driven by lies and disinformation about them.  They must have wondered where they could go, and when they should go there, to beat the coming tsunami of evil that was intended to crush them.  They saw and heard about the squads of radicals, agents of the party in power, attacking Jews in the street, driven by lies and human evil unchecked, with the assailants knowing they would face no punishment for doing the work of the Party.  They heard their government smear them, defame them and condemn them, and then their fellow citizens, all on the basis of lies propagated by those who sought totalitarian control and domination.  They were told what rights would be taken from them, and the dwindling opportunities they would have to exist in their own country.  When the disinformation campaign was complete, though they had done nothing wrong, they became the internal enemy.  They became the personification of all that the Party said was wrong with the country, and as such, they became less than human. They became targets.

As we see now, their motives were pinned on them, like Stars of David.  Their evil was invented and forced upon them, and their voices were not allowed to be heard in their own defense.  They became sub-humans whom the cult declared deserved whatever was done to them for their undeniable, but non-existent, evil.  These peaceful people, the innocent and law abiding, had been singled out for elimination because they gave the Party a pretense for overthrow and authoritarianism.  They became the scapegoats and victims of the evil that animates the subjugation of the many by a demonic few, whether it be socialism, communism or naziism.

We are not there yet, but the fact is, we can see it from here, can’t we?  The stage of words is gradually being succeeded by the stage of isolated acts of sanctioned violence by the Party’s enforcers, whether in the form of elected officials encouraging aggression and physical violence, roving mobs wearing hoods and masks, or the media. 

The work of isolating the targets continues in earnest.  Whites, Christians, Jews, males, law enforcement, the military, capitalists, conservatives and patriots, all have been assigned their hatred and evil by the mind-readers of the left.  We have been declared the problem, so our suppression is not only the solution, but is “social” justice. 

In this way, it becomes easier to rationalize that we will be preyed upon by those who know their party will excuse their filthy service to the seizure of our country and the power that comes from controlling it.  When Trump goes, unless he is succeeded by an American, so does the last barrier to total anarchy.  They’re telling us what they’re going to do.  Your only choice is to stand up for the country you want, rather than to live in the country they intend.  With illegals voting as planned, we really could be only an election away.  In the words of Sgt. Plumley, prepare to defend yourselves.

Photo credit: Kevin Jenco