The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> Written by an AssyrianPATRIOTISM, SACRIFICE, HONOR AND MY UNCLE FRANK

Written by an AssyrianPATRIOTISM, SACRIFICE, HONOR AND MY UNCLE FRANK
Posted by Jeff (Guest) jeff@attoz.com - Wednesday, June 23 2004, 8:41:06 (CEST)
from Commercial - Windows XP - Netscape
Website:
Website title:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: PATRIOTISM, SACRIFICE, HONOR AND MY UNCLE FRANK
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 07:08:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: James Yonan <jbyonan@yahoo.com>
To: Jeff Atto <Jeff@attoz.com>

My Uncle, Frank Yonan, was a true red-blooded, patriotic American.
In the days preceding World War II he began proudly serving in the U.S
Armed Forces. He fought bravely against Japanese Soldiers in real
battles on the islands of the Philippines. He fought in defense of the
United States of America and in defense of democratic values and
principles for which She stands. These principles and values are
enshrined in the United States’ sacred Constitution and Bill of Rights.
They are principles of justice, mercy, and civility, enabling rights and
protections that his parents and my grandparents were seeking when they
fled to the U. S. A. to escape the persecution they received in the
Middle East as a religious ethnic minority.

My Uncle Frank fought some of the first battles in the so called
‘Pacific Theatre’ and in the process, my Uncle Frank along with hundreds
of other young patriotic U.S. soldiers got caught behind enemy lines and
were captured by the Japanese Imperial Army. Thus my Uncle Frank, along
with hundreds of other U.S. soldiers, were enemy combatants against the
Japanese Imperial Army and were taken prisoner.

They were then led on a march, but not any march, they were led on
the little publicized but infamous Bataan DEATH march. My Uncle and his
U.S. comrades were made to march under tortuous circumstances. Most of
those who could not make it, or strayed in any way, were summarily and
cold bloodedly murdered on the spot by their Imperial Japanese captors.

My Uncle Frank related to me how they were then packed like so many
human sardines into stifling, literally suffocating, hot freight train
box-cars and shipped to the nearest sea port. My Uncle happened to be
one of the ‘fortunate’ ones as he was plastered against an area of the
box-car wall where there was a small hole. He related to me how, during
the nightmare train ride, he avoided suffocation by breathing the air
that came in from that small hole. Many of his fellow U.S. soldier
‘enemy combatants’ were not so lucky. This became evident when, as my
Uncle related to me, their suffocated dead bodies collapsed to the
ground when the doors of the box car were opened.

Horrifyingly for my brave Uncle, this was just the beginning of a
long living nightmare of torture and torment at the hands of his
captors. Japan was not a signatory of the Geneva Conventions and so my
Uncle was shipped to a Concentration Camp on the islands of Japan where
he languished for a grueling 3 and ˝ long years. He was subjected to all
manner of psychological and physical torture that left him permanently
physically scarred. He saw many of his comrades murdered or die of the
torture and psychological abuse inflicted on them. This was torture and
abuse, I might add, they received as enemy combatants against the
Japanese Empire.

From that point on my Uncle was forever denied of living a ‘normal’
life. After he escaped from the Concentration Camp he weighed only 90
emaciated pounds and required intensive diet therapy to restore his
normal weight. My Uncle Frank made noble sacrifices and suffered
criminal abuses of torture in the defense of the United States of
America, its Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and the principles of
freedom and justice for which they stand.

Therefore, the fact that any branch of the U.S. Government, may
have officially or otherwise, sanctioned or participated in torture of
any kind, would dishonor and be a violation of the patriotic service and
sacrifices made by my Uncle Frank, (and all the others who served with
him). These are sacrifices my Uncle Frank made in good faith for ALL
U.S. citizens in defense, then and now, of the democratic values and
principles of freedom and justice enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and
Bill of Rights, principles for which the United States of America
ostensibly stands.



---------------------


The full topic:



Content-length: 4878
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,video/x-mng,image/png,image/jpeg,image/g...
Accept-charset: ISO-8859-1, utf-8;q=0.66, *;q=0.66
Accept-encoding: gzip, deflate, compress;q=0.9
Accept-language: en-us, en;q=0.50
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Keep-alive: 300
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf2/rkvsf_core.php?.17Ol.
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9