I won't be super specific on locations for OPSEC, but I can describe some prominent war crimes that he participated in. Relative has severe PTSD and there is not a single day in his life where he didn't relive his crimes, and he has lived a long life indeed. He has been a burden to our family as he descended into a mess of a person with age. In a way, I'm glad he has lived long in relative peace. It is the best punishment for him, because he definitely feels guilt despite his old age and the long time since his actions.
Highlights:
He thought that I, a young child of age 7-14, was a good therapist for his trauma. I called him a monster multiple times and he seemed to be happy that I called him that. He wrote down some notes over the years and to be frank, I'd like to get them to the DPRK at some point for proof. He would regularly do these 'sessions' as he was driving me to school and I'd have to sit there during the fucking anthem, pledge, and 'brave' soldier worship while thinking of the latest revelations. I was disgusted the entire time. He encouraged me to think critically about the world, and was upset when I used this critical thought to be a communist. He never told any other relatives.
He was airforce and joined the war voluntarily.
Recalled the slaughter of potentially thousands of people in a firebombing he helped perpetrate as they jumped into the river. He later landed back on a carrier and saw the bodies up close, it was majority women and children. Many were around my age. I had a Korean girl in my class. As an innocent kid, I asked if he would kill her if given the chance and called him a disgusting murderer.
He had a 'comfort girlfriend' in Busan of Japanese descent. I did a DNA test somewhat recently and noticed a lot of Japanese names pop up. Yeah. I told him about that. He said he actually grew attached to her and wanted to marry her but decided to leave, mostly for racist reasons and self disgust. Left her with all of his military checks out of guilt, which was quite a lot of money for a Japanese person at the time.
As he was on a carrier, a DPRK one-man sub suicide bombed it and he almost drowned to death. He freaks out all the time in the bath tub and one time fell over and broke his leg in it.
He said he dropped all sorts of things on the DPRK that weren't bombs. He said he wasn't sure what it was. I suggested insects that carried plague after doing some research, and he said 'The load was so light and they usually just said it was leaflets. But you don't drop leaflets over a farm and near rivers.'
He helped bomb dams with the stated mission of destroying them to flood the countryside.
He mentioned that one time the carrier engaged likely Soviet civilian aircraft, destroying them. Despite his anti-communist views, his brainworms saw this as a huge, unforgivable crime because he was a young adult during WW2 and saw the Soviets as arms-length allies still. Very weird, was probably mostly angry because he saw them as white.
Still uses racist slang to refer to Asian people, and it has in fact gotten his ass beaten before, which he didn't fight back against. Which makes me assume that he did that on purpose out of guilt and wanted the shit kicked out of him.
He said he was tempted by suicide multiple times but couldn't bring himself to leave his American wife hanging. Now that she's dead, its all he talks about.
If you guys have any specific questions, feel free to ask.
maybe I am sympathetic to a fault, but it strikes me as like...kind of coldhearted to talk of discouraging someone's suicide purely for the utility their continued existence serves to propaganda.
A part of me can understand (although I doubt ever fully) the hatred for this man who left devastation in his wake.
How many lives did he destroy and now he has the gall to feel guilty about it!?
When he can just walk away back to the US while those people were left to pick up what was left of their lives and country!
but at the same time when I just hear about this broken shell of a human being the only emotion I can really muster is a deep and utter sadness.
I feel extremely conflicted emotions about him myself. The guy was genuinely helpful to me as a kid. When I told him he was a racist piece of shit, he listened and changed his words, like he genuinely cared what I said. He said some homophobic shit during one of our talks, I told him to stop, and he stopped. No questions asked, never did it again. I do genuinely feel that if he wasn't propagandized, felt like his country was 'right' and 'correct' after WW2 and its propaganda, if there was less systemic racism, he would have been a genuinely good guy.
But he wasn't, and turned out to be a monster. Its very disconcerting and horrifying to know this is how the world can work, especially learning that as a kid. But the only way to respond to this sort of thing is to side with the victims, of which he has many.
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Oh, I’m not saying like…people shouldn’t hear this or like he shouldn’t do more to make things right or come clean.
it just striked me as cold if your response to a broken person wanting to kill themselves is purely about benefit to some cause.