Jonestown pt. 2 (belatedly)

Right back in this. Back to Jonestown, continuing where I left off lo those many weeks ago. Future updates shall not be so few-and-far-between. (Tail between legs and such.)

III. Jonestown, settled

--by 1973, things were becoming dicey for the People's Temple, so over the following three years Jones arranged for the purchase of 3800 acres of land in Guyana. Because Guyana itself was experiencing a period of shifting politics (leftwards), and because many Guyanese gov't officials were black (mirroring Jonestown's proposed populace), Jones felt this would be a sympathetic place to set up shop.
--unfortch for the People's Temple, the purchased land was not terribly fertile. As mentioned last time, agricultural failures would be a major blow to their efforts at self-sufficiency.
--the initiative was given the name "The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project."
--of course, even for a nation as economically insignificant as Guyana, this whole deal raised some eyebrows within the country, but Jones was able to convince officials that his were good people, and his implication that they'd be investing a significant amount of cash into Guyana greased the wheels. Guyanese officials were said to admire this attempt at creating a "socialist paradise," etc. Oddly, this endorsement was trumpeted by California Lt. Gov. Dymally, who in a letter to Guyana's Prime Minster referred to Jones as "one of the finest people." Um, yeah.
--Money talks. Eased customs restrictions allowed Jones to import all kinds crazy nonsense, including drugs n' guns. Additionally Jones was able to persuade the alteration of Guyanese emigration policy, making it more difficult for Jonestown residents to flee the country, mirroring the restrictive policies of other communist countries.
--1977 marked the first influx of people to Jonestown. Life was hard and seemingly militaristically regimented, with 11 hour workdays in the fields 6 days a week, with much non-work time devoted to viewing of propaganda films education on socialism, and Jones' own sermons on world events and his take on them.

IV. The Worm Begins to Turn
--over the next year-and-a-half, life at Jonestown became decidedly more unpleasant. Radio towers were installed with speakers blaring Jones' increasingly incoherent ramblings day and night; crop failures/miserable living conditions led to widespread sickness; punishment for insubordination became more brutal and bizarre.
--Additionally The People's Temple was embezzling the welfare monies/etc. of the colonists, raising suspicion with the US Social Security Administration. 75 Temple members were interviewed and each reaffirmed that they were there of their own volition.
--"White Nights"- Jones became preoccupied with the CIA's purported desire to squash Jonestown, and as such began conducting precursors to emergency evacuation procedures during which votes were taken regarding the Temple's course in the face of threat/invasion. On two occasions, the vote favored ritualistic mass suicide, and suicide drills were carried out. Yikes.
--A custody suit followed, in which a former Temple member was demanding the return of a child. Instability ensued, with Jones losing faith in Guyanese officials' pledges to not interfere in the goings on at Jonestown. Jones began inquiring as to a mass exodus to various Communist countries.
--The parents involved in the aforementioned custody suit formed a group, "Concerned Relatives," which began to shed light publicly on the wackiness that was going on at Jonestown, and began attacking the People's Temple by legal means. Nearly 100 US Congressmen contacted the Guyanese Prime Minister expressing their concern.
--Despite all this, Jones still had his supporters, notably Harvey Milk, Huey Newton, and many civil rights attorneys. Jones himself by this point was suffering from declining health and abusing drugs daily.
--Finally, CA Congressman Leo Ryan announced that he was going to visit Jonestown for a good ol' fashioned look see.
--Guess what happened next...........................
[to be continued and such]

Bataan Death March

So, I thought I would take a brief respite from the Balkans and move into another uplifting chapter in history...the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Southeast Asia! I was definitely familiar with the term 'Bataan Death March,' but only as a hyperbolic expression of something that was long, awful, and painful.

It is more. Here goes:
Bataan is a province in the Philippines and was a gasoline storage site for the US in the Pacific War with Japan during WWII; US forces were stationed there under General King.
Japanese forces invaded the Philippines in December of 1941. The American/Filipino troops retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, but were attacked by the Japanese in January 1942. King surrendered after months of siege in April; at the time of the surrender, King commanded 75,000 troops, consisting of 67,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans.

The March: Began on April 10, 1942, it was 61 miles (some sources say 70), from Mariveles (on the tip of Bataan) to San Fernando. If you tarried or fell behind, you were executed or left for dead. Prisoners were beaten, denied food and water and allowed little time for rest or sleep. One account has several prisoners who stopped to fill their canteens being shot immediately by their captors. For part of the march, the prisoners were crammed into boxcars and many suffocated, but the rest was on foot--and completed in a week. 54,000/75,000 troops made it to the destination.

The villain: Lt. General Masuhuro Homma. Basically, he decided that, because more men surrendered than he had anticipated, most of them would just have to walk. He was later tried, convicted and executed for his role in the March.

Aftermath: this is sweet/creepy--apparently groups ranging from the Boy Scouts to the National Guard arrange 'death marches', honoring those who survived/died at Bataan. It's like a Race to End MS, but, er, more macabre...

Sowing the Seeds of Ethnic Clashes: Hungarian Stormtroopers???

From the last two posts on the Balkans, you can see that the region is terrifically diverse, both ethnically and religiously. Now that the ethnic and religious divides have been loosely spelled out, the next step is to try and highlight some of the specific historical events that sowed the seeds of division and all-out rancor.
WWII
In the early part of WWII, the Balkans were relatively unaffected, and, until 1941, the only violence the region experienced was a war fought along the Greek/Italy border. However, before Hitler dispatched his troops on their grand, ill-fated march up to Russia, he ordered the securing of the Balkans. This was not a tall order, given the decentralized nature of the region and its corresponding lack of military might; the campaign ended around the same time it started, with a few more feathers in the now-overcrowded Nazi cap.

This left the Balkan states with essentially one of three fates:
(1) Get directly in bed with Germany/Sell soul, etc.
(2) Squirm, but ultimately surrender, as the puppetmaster pulls the strings on your sham gov't
(3) Run for the hills and serve out ineffectual existence in exile
(a): spearhead guerrilla insurrection all but destined for immediate and total suppression by Nazis

Bowing to the Nazis
Bad options all, but the more, shall we say, pragmatic favored the short-term bliss of surrendering to their Nazi bride...and lived to regret it. This group included Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.
Perks: regaining lands lost in Treaty of Versailles through partitioning of Czechoslovakia (Hungary); strength of Nazi state at your back (all)
Downsides: being forced to dispatch troops for German-led campaigns in the horrific wars on the Eastern front with the creatively brutal and macabre Russian troops (Hungary); losing lands/being used as a pawn between Russia and Germany (Romania); lasting stigma/fallout of alliance with Nazis (all)

Yugoslavia
Initially, Yugoslavia's leader signed an alliance deal with the Nazis, but was overthrown by lusty freedom-fighting Serbs. However, the Germans did not countenance this for long: Yugoslavia was soon invaded and partitioned. Croatia, including Bosnia, was placed under puppet rule; Serbia was under German military rule; Macedonia was given to Bulgaria.
Germany's policies were specifically aimed at denigrating Serbs and, when there were rumblings of armed insurgency, the Germans suppressed them swiftly and brutally.

Life in Exile...
Greece: Greek Royals fled to Egypt, and the remaining Greeks were all across the board in terms of allegiances and alliances. Some communist guerrillas engaged in armed resistance; others were actively involved with British Commandos. There were also some factions who did not recognize the Royal gov't anyway.

Nazi Puppet Strings
Croatia: the Germans set up a government ruled by the Utashe based on anti-Serb/anti-Orthodox sentiments. The Utashe went into Serb villages and forced residents to convert to Catholicism and many enemies of the puppet state were sent to death camps. The Bosnian Muslims were left alone, inexplicably. This is where we start to see the fires stoked even more. Like colonial regimes in Rwanda and Indonesia , ethnic and cultural distinctions were exploited for the overlords' gain (between Hutus and Tutsis and Chinese and Indonesian, respectively), aggravating fault lines that would later be prodded by poorly drawn boundaries or the mere side-by-side existence of these ethnic enemies.

Muslims and Jews Used to Get Along? Do Tell...

Religious/Ethnic Breakdown in the Balkans

Jews
• Sephardic Jews (AKA ‘Spanish-speaking’ Jews)
o these were some of the first Jews who ended up in the Balkans after being driven out of Spain when Isabelle/Ferdinand defeated and expelled the Moors
o They actually emigrated from Spain to the Ottoman Empire because of the relatively high degree of religious freedom enjoyed by its inhabitants, as well as the fact that the ruling Muslims respected the Jewish immigrants' monotheism and piety—the Jews were even granted a degree of independence in the form of self-government
• Ashkenazi Jews:
o This sect came to the region after being expelled from various parts of Western Europe
o Some of the Ashkenazi settled in areas known today as Lithuania and Poland (and were later persecuted by the Russians); others moved into Austria-Hungary
o Enlightenment ideals and toleration decrees under the Hapsburg Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries ensured that the Balkans remained a generally peaceful place for Jews

BREAKDOWN BY BALKAN
• Yugoslav: very small Jewish population
• Greece: large Sephardic population
• Bulgaria: small Jewish population that enjoyed measure of autonomy

• Lasting Impressions:
o Balkan Jews had hand in creating the Israeli state in 1948
o The Balkan Jews were generally thought to be anti-secular and somewhat in opposition to more progressive Jews from Western Europe

Muslims
• The root of Islam in the Balkans is from the long reign of the Ottoman Empire
• Bosnia:
o became a part of the Ottoman Empire in 1463
o When Bosnia was handed back over to the Austral-Hungarian Empire in 1878, they were no longer under Muslim rule and so started the persecution
o Until WWII, when Bosnia became a part of the Kingdom of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia and, later, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia—eventually Yugoslavia came under control of Orthodox Christian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims were subject to harassment and arbitrary persecution
o During WWII, the region was occupied by Germans, but it was the ultra-nationalist Serbs (who spearheaded a strong insurgency against the Nazis and eventually established communist rule) who oversaw to it that 100,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed during that time
o Many of the Bosnians persecuted during WWII ended up migrating to Turkey
o After the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (basically the Communist answer to NATO), Bosnia declared its independence, but the Serbs remained in power and oversaw the slaughter of over 200,000 Muslims
TO BE CONTINUED....