O.R O. P : NON IMPLEMENTATION OF OROP UPGRADATION OF AGITATION LEHAR-TOOFAN -TSUNAMI

UNITED FRONT OF EX SERVICEMEN

                                                                                                Dated: 24 Jul 2015                                

 NON IMPLEMENTATION OF OROP

UPGRADATION OF AGITATION

LEHAR-TOOFAN -TSUNAMI

 

Dear Friends,

 

1. Today is the 40^th Day of the Relay Hunger Strike at Jantar Mantar New Delhi and at more than 50 locations in country. The Govt has not implemented One Rank One Pension (OROP).

 

2. As per the decision of United Front of ESM announced during the Press Conference held on 14^th July 2015, we have upgraded our Agitation with effect from mid night 23 Jul 2015.  The broad Aim of this Phase of the Agitation is to “Create Visibility” in all the Districts in the County. ESM, our members of the family and our supporters will be distinctly seen across the country protesting against the non-implantation of One Rank One Pension.  However, all our protests will be peaceful and within the authorized methods of protests in the Constitution.

 

3.      Some  of the actions and activities which will be carried out are as under :-

 

·   10 Km Kargil Vijay Diwas Marathon run from DSOI – India gate – Jantar Mantar.  Respects will be paid to the Martyrs at India Gate by laying wreath at Amar Jawan Jyoti.  Detailed instructions are being issued separately.

 

·  Shri Anna Hazare will motivate, encourage and showcase solidarity with the ESM on Relay Hunger Strike which would enter 42^nd Day at 10.30AM on 26 Jul 2015.  He will also address the Rally at Jantar Mantar.

 

·   Marathon and Rallies be carried out across the country on daily basis carrying black flags and play cards showing non-implementation of OROP.

 

·  Protest Leaflets will be distributed, billboards will be displayed across the country.

 

·         Social, print and electronic media will be fully activated by carrying out Blitz Krieg Campaigns against the non-implementation of OROP.

 

·  All Govt functions will continue to be boycotted by ESM and our members of the family.

 

 

·  In order to express anguish for non-fulfillment of assurance of implementation of OROP, an appeal has been made to all ESM, their member of the family and our supporters who are members of the BJP to withdraw their membership till implementation of OROP.  60 ESM from Uttrakhand have already sent their resignation of membership to BJP President Mr.Amit Shah.

 

·  ESM to write to the serving Chiefs to jointly and strongly ask the Govt to implement OROP immediately.  The letter will be repeated after five days.  In the event of no action by the serving Chiefs, ESM to appeal to them in the third letter that they consider resigning to accept their accountability and responsibility from the non-implementation of OROP.

 

·  All ESM, our family members and supporters to fly black flags on their houses on 6 feet high pole with OROP written on the flag.

 

·  ESM to ask MPs of their constituencies to raise questions in the Parliament for non-implementation of OROP and asking the Govt to implement it immediately.  In case an MP does not raise question, ESM to sit on dharana outside his house.

 

·  Veer Naaries of Jhajjar district have conveyed that they will be sending bangles to the PM. 

 

·  Some ESM are threatening to sit on Hunger Strike till death.  We are dissuading them not to do so.  However some of them have refused to pay heed to our requests.  They may sit on Hunger Strike till death any day.

 

·  To execute any other action/activity as decided by the UFESM from time to time.

 

·  ESM leaders at local level may modify or execute action/activities keeping in view the local situation.

 

·  The Relay hunger Strike will continue in addition to the above suggested action/activities.

 

4. It is heartening, encouraging and motivating that Officers in NDA/Regular/SS Course batches are visiting Jantar Mantar to showcase their solidarity to the Cause  of Injustice to the  Soldiers.  The highlight of these visits was that 1^st NDA Course officers in their eighties came and blessed the Relay Hunger Strike for the cause.

 

5. ESM, our family members and our supporters are requested to daily visit Jantar Mantar in large number to encourage and support the cause.

 

 

6. All ESM are requested to execute this phase of the Agitation in letter and spirit and create Visibility in the nook and corner of the country, turning the Lehar-Toofan Phase of the Agitation into Tsunami.

 

7. We  the ESM, our  members of the family and our supporters resolved to continue our struggle with greater  intensity till such time the Govt implements OROP as per  the  approved definition without any dilution.

 

8. Memorandum to the Hon’ble Prime Minister will be presented at         1 PM on 26 Jul 2015 by delegation of United Front  of Ex-servicemen.

 

9. Our fight is against the injustice and betrayal of faith and not against the Govt.  We appeal to our Hon’ble PM Shri Narendra Modi to honour his assurances given to the Defence Personnel and order immediate implementation of OROP as per the approved definition without any dilution whatsoever. 

 

 “JIS DESH KE SAINIK SARHKON PAR,

DESH KA DURBHAGYA HAI”

 

 

With Regards,         

Yours Sincerely,

 

Maj Gen Satbir Singh, SM (Retd)                                                                                      Advisor United Front of Ex Servicemen & Chairman  IESM                                                                                                                      Mobile: 9312404269, 0124-4110570  

 Email:satbirsm@gmail.com          

 

 

 

TURKEY : NATO : NATO To Meet At Turkey's Request

SOURCE:
 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2015/07/mil-150726-rferl01.htm?_m=3n%2e002a%2e1479%2eka0ao00b2h%2e1cw3

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/int/nato.htm

        NATO To Meet At Turkey's Request

 

In-Depth Coverage

 

July 26, 2015
by RFE/RL

NATO says it will hold emergency talks on July 28 to discuss Turkey's security operations against both Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish militants, as the country presses ahead with air strikes in neighboring Syria and Iraq.

The alliance said in a statement that Turkey had requested a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, which includes the ambassadors of all 28 NATO allies.

It said the consultations had been scheduled 'in view of the seriousness of the situation after the heinous terrorist attacks in recent days.'

'NATO allies follow developments very closely and stand in solidarity with Turkey,' it added.
Ankara invoked a clause from NATO's founding treaty that allows any member to request a meeting of all 28 NATO ambassadors 'whenever, in the opinion of any of them, their territorial integrity, political independence, or security is threatened.'

Turkey's state-run media reported late on July 26 that Turkish jets had taken off again to hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets across the border in northern Iraq.

There was no immediate confirmation of the report, which came hours after authorities said PKK militants detonated a car bomb near Diyarbakir, killing two soldiers and wounding four others.


The Turkish Army has been targeting IS locations in Syria for three days straight.

It has also pounded the positions of PKK militants in northern Iraq, themselves bitterly opposed to the jihadists, putting in jeopardy a truce that has largely held since 2013.


The strikes came in response to an IS suicide bombing near Turkey's border with Syria that left 32 people dead on July 20.

A Turkish soldier was killed on July 23 in a separate IS attack on Turkish forces.


Turkish security forces have rounded up at least 590 suspected members of IS, the PKK, and other militant groups across the country in recent days on the grounds that they pose a threat to the state.


The White House has staunchly backed the Turkish offensive.
On July 26, it praised Ankara for what it described as its 'increased focus and accelerated efforts' against IS.

The White House also said Turkey had the right to defend itself against attacks by Kurdish rebels, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group.

The U.S. military said the United States and its allies had carried out 20 air strikes against IS militants in Iraq on July 25, mostly near Ramadi.

The Combined Joint Task Force said it had also conducted 13 strikes in Syria.

NATO itself is not involved in operations against the IS group, although many of its members are.

As an alliance, however, NATO is committed to helping defend Turkey.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/nato-to-meet-turkey-request/27153573.html

Further Reading

NATO NATO - Defense Spending EAGLE GUARDIAN NATO Members NATO Army Groups NORTHAG Northern Army Group CENTAG Central Army Group Operations Resources North Atlantic Treaty Organization Membership Action Plan (MAP)

Keep the Russians out,
Keep the Americans in,
and
Keep the Germans down. 

 Lord Ismay, 1967
     

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

SHAPE	Supreme Headquarters Allied Power Europe
	Joint Force Command HQ Brunssum
	Joint Force Command HQ Naples
	Joint Headquarters Lisbon
ARRC	Allied Rapid Reaction Corps
	Spearhead Force
	Very High Readiness JTF
	NATO Response Force
	EUROCORPS
	Multinational Corps Northeast
	Rapid Deployable Italian Corps
	Rapid Deployable Turkish Corps
	Rapid Deployable German-Netherlands Corps
	Rapid Deployable Spanish Corps
	NATO Deployable Corps - Greece
RF(A)S	Reaction Forces (Air) Staff -
NAEWF	NATO Airborne Early Warning Force
	Immediate Reaction Forces (Maritime)
	ACE Mobile Force - AMF
STRIKFORNATO	Naval Striking and Support Forces
STANAVFORLANT	Standing Naval Force Atlantic
STANAVFORMED	Standing Naval Forces Mediterranean
STANAVFORCHAN	Standing Naval Forces Channel

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO; French: Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord ("OTAN"); also called the North Atlantic Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance, or the Western Alliance) is a military alliance, established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. In accordance with that Treaty, the fundamental role of NATO is to safeguard the freedom and security of its member countries by political and military means. NATO is playing an increasingly important role in crisis management and peacekeeping.


By the late 1990s not all North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members participated in all aspects of the commonly funded budgets. Although all 16 members participate fully in the civil budget, Spain and France did not participate in all aspects of the military budget or the NATO Security Investment Program (NSIP). Further, the NATO Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) program, funded through the military budget but with its own negotiated cost shares, did not include France, Spain, and Iceland, and the United Kingdom only partially participates in it. Finally, although Iceland iscounted as a participant in the NSIP, its cost share is zero.


Since the end of the Cold War, the NATO alliance has been evolving to meet the new security needs of the 21stCentury. In this era, the threats to Europe and America originate primarily from outside Europe, particularly from the Greater Middle East. There was initially strong support among members for NATO's operations in Afghanistan.


In 1994 NATO launched the Partnership for Peace. This program, which initially included 27 non-NATO states, is open to all the countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union. In May 1997, President Clinton and the other NATO leaders signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act, reflecting the desire to build a new and constructive relationship with a democratic, peaceful Russia.


NATO has enlarged six times since its founding in 1949 - adding Greece and Turkey in 1952, Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982. As a member of NATO since 1982, Spain has been a valued ally and participant in international security activities. At the Madrid summit in July 1997, President Clinton and the other NATO leaders unanimously decided to invite Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to begin the process of joining NATO. The three new members, bringing total membership to 19 states, added approximately 200,000 troops to NATO's ranks in 1998. By early 2002 nine European countries had applied for NATO membership: Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. All were participating in the Membership Action Plan set up during the 1999 Washington Summit. At Prague, on November 21, 2002, the members' heads of state designated the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia, as prospective members, bringing total membership to 26 states. The applications of Albania and Macedonia were deferred. On April 4, 2009 NATO marked 60 years of operation by welcoming two new countries - Albania and Croatia - to the alliance during a ceremony in Strasbourg, France, bringing total membership to 28 states.


In 1949 France was a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a regional defense alliance led by the trans-Atlantic partners. France has relied on NATO ever since, while also insisting on a degree of independence in military affairs. In 1966 France, wanting sole control of its nuclear weapons, withdrew its forces from NATO's integrated military command structure, while remaining a member of NATO's political councils. NATO today is no longer the NATO of 1966, when President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from the Alliance's military command out of concerns over preserving the country's foreign policy independence.


In 1995 France rejoined the military structure and has since worked actively to adapt NATO - internally and externally - to the post-Cold War environment. By 2005 France was one of NATO's top military contributors. The French currently led NATO forces in Kosovo, are participating in NATO military operations in Afghanistan and have offered to train 1,500 Iraqi police outside of Iraq. The French military has been an active supporter of NATO's modernization and was a leading contributor to the NATO Response Force.


France is a longtime contributor to NATO missions from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo to Afghanistan. French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced plans in Paris on 11 March 2009 for France to fully rejoin NATO.In a March 11 speech at the École Militaire in Paris, Sarkozy announced his intention to end France's self-imposed exile from the alliance's leadership. Times have changed, he said, and as the alliance's fourth-largest contributor of funds and deployed troops, France can better protect its interests in the face of emerging security challenges by having a voice in strategic discussions at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. By fully rejoining the alliance, France's military will benefit from support with force modernization and greater interoperability with its NATO allies. Full membership may also open new opportunities for the French defense industry, say analysts, as well as build support for closer defense cooperation among European nations.


Moldovan Prime Minister Vladimir Filat said on 29 September 2009 that his country needed a transition period "to convince the people about the need of joining NATO, and to change the perception of NATO as a hostile bloc, which has been created under the influence of Russian media." Commenting on Filat's remarks, Sergei Nazaria, director of the Moldovan Center for Strategic Analysis, said that Moldova's accession to NATO "is unnecessary. ... From my perspective, we do not face any threats today and nobody is planning to attack us. In the present geopolitical situation, it makes sense to maintain Moldova's neutrality," he said. He said that if Moldova joined NATO in the foreseeable future, it could end up in confrontation with Russia. "The North Atlantic alliance is not quite a friendly organization for Russia. If we join NATO, we will be perceived as 'not very good people'... This will lead to a dramatic worsening of relations with Russia," he said.


On 02 October 2009 a delegation from Bosnia-Herzegovina handed in an official application for a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). MAP is designed to assist aspiring partner countries meet NATO standards and prepare for possible future membership. Aspiring nations must first participate in MAP before they join the alliance. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed Bosnia's move, and said he was expecting the country's leadership to conduct further democratic reforms. After joining NATO's Partnership for Peace program in 2006, Bosnia and Herzegovina signed an agreement on security cooperation in March 2007. The Balkans nation began further cooperation with NATO within the Individual Partnership Action Plan in January 2008. Bosnia then started the process of Intensified Dialogue at the 2008 Bucharest summit and expects to join NATO between 2012 and 2015. Bosnia and Herzegovina gained its independence during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.


As of late-2009, pending membes include Macedonia, Georgia and Ukraine. By the end of 2012, Ukraine was no longer interested in NATO membership, while the list of countries seeking membership had grown to include Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Georgia. Greece continued to block Macedonia's entry into the alliance because of the dispute over Macedonia's name.


The Membership Action Plan (MAP) is a NATO program of advice, assistance and practical support tailored to the individual needs of countries wishing to join the Alliance. Participation in the MAP does not prejudge any decision by the Alliance on future membership. Current participants in the MAP are the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia1, which has been participating in the MAP since 1999, and Montenegro, which was invited to join in December 2009.

RUSSIAN NAVY : Russia Discloses Number of Warships It Has Throughout the World's Oceans

SOURCE:
 http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/russia/2015/russia-150726-sputnik02.htm?_m=3n%2e002a%2e1479%2eka0ao00b2h%2e1cwx

 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mf.htm

Russia Discloses Number of Warships It Has Throughout the World's Oceans

Sputnik News

In-Depth Coverage

 

11:58 26.07.2015


More than eighty Russian Navy ships of various classes currently remain on duty at sea, according to the country's Defense Ministry.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that more than 80 naval ships of various classes are currently on mission in different areas of the World Ocean, including the Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

 The 'World Ocean' is the interconnected system of Earth's oceanic waters, comprising all of the oceans and seas of the world.

The information was disclosed in a Defense Ministry press service message dedicated to Russia's Navy Day.

'Right now, the scheduled tasks in different areas of the World Ocean are being implemented by more than eighty warships and support vessels of various classes. Intense preparations are underway in the run-up to the research vessel Admiral Vladimir's unprecedented voyage to Antarctica, due to begin between November and December 2015. The goal is to deal with the oceanographic and hydrographic research of water and the coastal areas of Antarctica,' the press service said.

In particular, more than ten warships and supply vessels are now on duty in the Mediterranean as part of Russia's permanent naval task force in this area, according to the Defense Ministry.
The press service also said that the group of warships led by the guards missile cruiser Moskva of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is currently carrying out a number of tasks in the South Atlantic.

Also on duty are Russian naval ships in the Gulf of Aden and near the Horn of Africa, where they are tasked with ensuring civilian navigation security.

In addition, the press service said that the two diesel-electric submarines of Project 636, the Novorossiysk and the Rostov-on-Don, will enter service when they join the Russian Black Sea Fleet later this year.

'The headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet's submarine squadron has been established in the city of Novorossiysk; the crews were trained earlier at a Russian naval center,' the press service said.

Meanwhile, a new generation of ships is reportedly being built for the Black Sea Fleet; they will include six patrol ship class units capable of escorting ships, containing sea pirates and maintaining stationing site safety.

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry pledged to respond in kind to the modernization of US warships, and equipped them with missile defense systems.

The ministry said that Moscow will take appropriate technical retaliatory measures, adding that since the beginning of 2010, the Pentagon has purchased 200 interceptor missiles, and will buy 50 more before the end of this year.

© Sputnik







 

Naval Force
Morskoyo Flota

Ships Naval History Imperial Russian Navy Overview - Soviet Era Overview - Russian Era Naval Reform Under Putin Fleet Order of Battle Northern Fleet Baltic Fleet Black Sea Fleet Pacific Fleet Caspian Flotilla Mediterranean Eskadra Forward Deployments

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          The Russian Navy has historically been a submarine Navy. There was a period in the 1970s and 1980's where Gorshov attempted to build a Blue Water Surface and Naval Air Capability. But it has returned to their roots - with front line nuclear submarines their essential Naval Force.   The primary missions of the naval forces are to provide strategic nuclear deterrence from the nuclear submarine fleet and to defend the sea-lanes approaching the Russian coast.  In the post-Cold War era the Russian Navy is no longer interested in limiting American naval power in areas that do not affect Russian interests. The Russian Navy would be hard pressed to challenge Western command of the seas, and with the death of communist ideology and collapse of its overseas influence, there would appear little reason for attempting such a challenge.          The Navy Day holiday on 26 July 1992 was the occasion for most warships of the ex-Soviet Navy to haul down the hammer-and-sickle naval ensign and replace it with the flag of St. Andrews, traditionally flown on Russian warships since 1699. At that time, Admiral Vladimir Chernavin, commander in chief of Russian naval forces, said that the Russian navy would be smaller than the Soviet navy, with old vessels to be retired and manpower reductions totaling 100,000 men to be effected by 1995. Between 1990 and 1995 Naval Forces personnel was cut by 50 percent (fleet aviation personnel by 60 percent).    The year 1996 marked the tercentennial of the Russian Navy. It was celebrated on 28 July 1996 in a show of the main naval parade of the Russian fleet. In addition to Russian ships representing all four fleets and the North-West Border Guard District, vessels from ten foreign states participated in the naval parade.   As of 1996 the naval forces included about 200,000 sailors and marines, about 20 percent of whom were conscripts, and 500,000 reserves. There was no tradition of enlisted members staying in the Navy after their initial tour is over. Of the active-duty personnel, about 30,000 were in naval aviation and 24,000 in coastal defense forces.   According to the resolutions of the Security Council meeting of 11 August 2000, the major reform measures of the general purpose forces was to be accomplished by 2006. By that time these forces were to have over 800,000 servicemen, for a total reduction of 400,000 troops [possibly as soon as 2003]. The navy was to be reduced by more than 50,000.    




































The naval forces include shore-based troops, naval aviation units, four fleets, and one flotilla. The shore-based forces and naval aviation forces are operationally subordinate to the fleets. The Northern Fleet is headquartered at Severomorsk, at the top of the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk, with additional home ports at Kola, Motovskiy, Gremikha, and Ura Guba. The Baltic Fleet is headquartered in Kaliningrad, where it controls naval bases at Kronshtadt and Baltiysk. Headquartered at Sevastopol', the Black Sea Fleet has an additional home port in Odessa. Pacific Fleet headquarters is in Vladivostok, with additional home ports in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Magadan, and Sovetskaya Gavan'. Each of the Fleets is in turn organized into a variety of subsidiary units.






In the middle of December 2008 the final decision about the General Staff of the Russian Navy was made and its relocation to St. Petersburg has started. This MD structure will be deployed in the Admiralty building, which was vacated by the Staff of Leningrad Navy base (it moved to Kronstadt). Relocation of GS of Russian Navy to St. Petersburg was completed in the second quarter of 2009.


In the mid-1990s, Russia's naval aviation force was almost entirely shore based, after having achieved substantial sea-based strike capability in the Soviet era. In 1996 only the steam-powered aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, assigned to the Northern Fleet, conducted active flight operations at sea. Two new nuclear-powered carriers were scrapped before completion, indicating abandonment of that program, and older aircraft-carrying cruisers were sold to the Republic of Korea (South Korea) for scrap.   Each of Russia's four fleets has a subordinate, land-based naval air force. The Caspian Flotilla has no naval air arm. The naval shore-based troops consist of naval infantry and coastal defense forces. The naval infantry forces include one infantry division subordinate to the Pacific Fleet and four naval infantry brigades--one in the Baltic Fleet, one in the Black Sea Fleet, and two in the Northern Fleet. The coastal defense forces are a combination of infantry regiments, brigades, and divisions with air defense missile regiments. Amphibious landings are a low priority; according to intelligence estimates, only 2,500 marines and 100 tanks could be put ashore by Russia's thirteen amphibious ships.   The Soviet Navy lost at least five submarines during the Cold War, with another being scuttled at sea following a reactor accident. Since the end of the Cold War, the Russian Navy has lost one submarine.  

• K-129, a Golf-I class ballistic missile submarine, sank in March or April of 1968 in the northern Pacific Ocean (1390 kms northwest of Oahu harbor). The collapse of the hull was detected by the American SOSUS acoustic system, and in July 1974 parts of the submarine were recovered by US intelligence. 

 

• K-27, a November class nuclear submarine, experienced a reactor problem which released radiation contaminating the entire submarine on 24 May 1968. It was finally scuttled (deliberately sunk) in the Kara Sea in 1981. 

 

• K-8, a November class nuclear submarine, sank on 08 April 1970 in the Bay of Biscay and 52 people perished [the accident was kept secret till 1991]. 

 

• K-219, a Yankee class strategic nuclear submarine, sank off Bermuda with 16 ballistic missiles on board on 06 October 1986. Four crewmen were killed. It is rumoured that the fire on the submarine broke out due to collision with a US submarine. 

 

• K-429, a Charlie I class submarine, sank on 23 June 1983 in the Savannaya Bay in the Bering Sea. The boat was raised and returned to service. Unluckily, she sank again alongside the jetty on 13 September 1985. The incident led to the loss 16 lives and the imprisonment of the submarine commander. 

 

• K-278 (Komsomolets), a Mike class nuclear submarine with a titanium hull, sank on 07 April 1989 south of the Bear island in the Norwegian Sea. A total of 41 crewmen, including the commander, were killed.

• K-141 (Kursk), an Oscar II type 949 SSGN) commissioned in 1995, sank on 12 August 2000 in the Barents Sea, presumably due to two explosions in the torpedo tubes.

The Admiralty Building is one of the favorite tourist sites in St. Petersburg. The cornerstone of this conspicuous landmark near the confluence of the Neva River and Baltic Sea was laid by Peter the Great in 1704, and served to illustrate Russia’s maritime ambitions. After the Revolution and WW I, the Russian Naval Headquarters was transferred to Moscow, but St. Petersburg has always retained a strong naval tradition. It has long been home to Russia’s finest naval academies, research institutes, and ship construction facilities. In 2007 discussions began and a tentative decision was made to again move Russia’s Naval Headquarters back to St. Petersburg. However, prickly domestic politics and an even larger military reform complicated matters.                    

WW - II INDO PACIFIC : Remembering Nagasaki: The Man Who Walked Through Hell (TRUE STORY )

SOURCE:





                  Remembering Nagasaki
       : The Man Who Walked Through Hell



Jan Bras does not like to hurt any living thing. If he spots a fly crawling across a table he will cup it carefully in his hand and release it out of the window. “I very quickly feel sorry for people or creatures,” he says, sitting on a beige sofa in the drawing room of the central London flat he shares with his wife of more than 57 years. “That’s one of my things.”


At 92 he thinks this surfeit of empathy comes from having witnessed appalling violence as a young man. From the formative ages of 18 to 21, Jan Bras was a Japanese prisoner of war. When the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies during the second world war, he was transported by “hell ship” and cattle wagon to work on the construction of the Burma railway. Later, he was interned in a camp and sent to work in the perilous coal mines at Fukuoka. After liberation in 1945, he was one of the first to walk through a decimated Nagasaki after the detonation of the atomic bomb. He witnessed unimaginable terror, brutality and death. Throughout it all, Jan Bras survived.

Hell Ships naar Flores en de Molukken  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Ht3nh-3CI

Hell Ships Naar Birma, Hell Trains Naar Thailand  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE9juMkvrcA

In many ways, his is the story of the second world war in the Pacific – a conflict overshadowed by memorialisation of events in Europe. With the 70th anniversary of Victory in Japan Day on 15 August, stories like his are becoming rarer. Bras is one of only a handful of survivors.


For years Bras did not talk about what had happened to him and this is the first time he has ever shared it publicly. Like many survivors, he found it impossible to convey his experiences to others after the war. The words did not exist.


“He never really talked to us, to my mother or me, maybe until the last 10 years or so,” says his daughter, Gina Jennings. “I think they [the survivors] do feel that nobody understands, so they don’t bother to talk.”


But then, about 10 years ago, the memories started floating to the surface like driftwood. Scraps at first, then entire stories: the occasion he watched his best friend die; the day his older brother was threatened with execution in the camp, the time he and his fellow prisoners were forced to dig their own graves in the days leading up to liberation because their Japanese captors planned to kill them all before the allies came


New Documentaries 2015 - Mach Stem:The Nagasaki Bombing Intensified (Full Documentary

© REX Features The mushroom cloud: a dense column of smoke rises more than 60,000ft into the air over Nagasaki.


“It’s quite grim actually,” Gina says. Growing up, she recalls her father’s absolute refusal to accept authority. She finds it difficult, still, to come to terms with what he went through. “He thinks I’m not interested, but it’s just that I can’t take it. I can’t bear what happened to them all. The random violence … It is a constant horror in the background. You live this so-called normal life, but these real atrocities happened to people you know and love.”


It was Gina who got in touch with me through a mutual friend. She was worried that her father’s recollections would be lost when he died and that the war in the Pacific and East Asia, once immortalised in films such as The Bridge on the River Kwai, was now in danger of being forgotten amid all the commemorations centred on VE Day in May.


This, then, is the story of one man’s war. But it also stands for those many others left untold.


Jan Bras’s father was a Dutch planter living and working in the colonies. Bras was born in Indonesia, the youngest child of eight, two of whom died in childhood. One of his earliest memories is of accompanying his father on a work trip into the jungle and coming face to face with a tiger. He wasn’t scared, he recalls, because tigers “had no bad instinct at all. We were frightened of bears because they climbed up trees and we were frightened they would fall on us”.

Bras and his older brother joined the Dutch army three months before war broke out. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan was able to pursue its military objectives against the allies, including the conquest of the Dutch East Indies.


By early 1942, the entire Bras family had been taken prisoner. Bras and his older brother Gerrit were among thousands transported to Thailand on the notorious hell ships. Their ship was subjected to heavy bombardment and Bras remembers hearing the sound of the bombs dropping in the ocean around them as they made the perilous crossing.


“Yes, we were scared,” he says now. “We thought we would drown like rats. We were deep in the hold, covered from the top by a sheet. Two people suffocated. It was a terrible situation.”


From Thailand they were taken by cattle wagon to the site of the Burma railway. There, the two brothers joined forced labourers digging 5m trenches and setting down sleepers in desperate conditions. Construction of the 415km railway cost the lives of around 13,000 PoWs and 100,000 native labourers. One man died for every sleeper laid.


Bras says the danger came not from the beatings the Japanese guards meted out at random intervals (“They passed,” he says phlegmatically, “and they didn’t want to kill us because they needed us to work”), but from the threat of cholera and malnutrition. He recalls being “always hungry”, but thinks he survived because, unlike some of his British counterparts, he was acclimatised to the tropics.
His brother, who was a trainee pathologist, knew it was imperative to boil water before drinking it. Those who didn’t “died like flies”.


There was a seasonal elevation of the Kwai owing to high rainfall. Once, after the waters receded, Bras remembers seeing the corpses of people who had died from cholera littering the branches of the trees bordering the river.

We would be lined up and we had to punch each other and if we didn’t do it hard enough, the guards would beat us

Bras spent two years on the railway. He and his brother would supplement their meagre daily rice rations with strips of young bamboo and the odd squirrel thrown in for protein.
Has he seen the film The Bridge on the River Kwai?


“Yes!” he says, his voice whooping with laughter. “I think it’s a very beautiful film, but completely beyond the truth.”


They did not spend their time singing and dancing and putting on shows, he says. “It [the film] was so ridiculous for a person who experienced the reality. It… it was a joke.”


Extraordinary as it may seem, Bras regards his time on the railway as comparatively tolerable considering what came next. He was taken to Japan, where he was interned in a prisoner of war camp in Fukuoka, on the southern island of Kyushu, and forced to work in the nearby coal mines. It was “very dangerous” work, conducted underground amid the dark and soot, with the constant threat of death. Bras missed being able to see the sky. At night, he was plagued by fleas and could barely sleep. One in three prisoners died in the mines. Bras’s best friend was one; he was made to drill down below a section of lake and was killed when the roof collapsed on top of him.

“I had to wash his clothes,” Bras says. “I found brain tissue on them.”


He looks at me levelly, weariness twitching at the corners of his mouth. He lapses into silence. It is a painful wordlessness, one which suggests all the things he chooses not to say. The way he coped was “by trying to do as little as possible. We were out there to sabotage the place… You try to forget a lot. It was so terrible in the mines. It was hard work, and the Japanese always had a stick to beat you with.”
After a while Bras became so ill with jaundice he was transferred to the camp sick bay, where his brother was working. He became a medical orderly as a means of escaping the mines. But camp life was relentlessly harsh and unforgiving. “If the Japanese were annoyed for some reason or other, we would be lined up one in front of the other and we had to punch each other and if we didn’t do it hard enough, the guards would beat us up with a stick and tell us to beat each other harder.” His eyes become veiled and tired. “You were beaten by your own kind.”

And yet, he says, the unexpected conflagrations of violence from their Japanese captors were much worse. At least, with an organised beating, you knew “it would end… The unknown things were more frightening.”

The prisoners were expected to bow to the ground and say “Good day” in Japanese every time they passed a guard. On one occasion, when Bras forgot to do so in his haste to carry two buckets of water to the sanatorium, he was savagely beaten.


“This guard beat me up until I was really black and blue,” Bras says. He is matter-of-fact when he talks about this, and refuses to dwell on either the pain or the injustice. Almost immediately, he manages to seize on the slenderest filament of a positive: “One of the good things he did was that he never kicked my testicles, which he could easily have done. It sounds silly to you, but I could see there was some sort of honour in him. He beat me up terribly, but he didn’t kick my testicles or my stomach.”


I tell him many people would be astonished that, even in the most hopeless situation, he could still find it within him to seek out the good in the man beating him up.

“In those days I believed in God. I was really very religious and I think it might have helped me.”
But did he never think to question why, as a young man, he found himself in this nightmare? Why it was him and not someone else?

“It never occurred to me to question God at that time,” he replies. “Since then I have completely changed my mind.”

These days Bras considers himself an atheist. But perhaps in the midst of such cruelty, clinging blindly on to his faith was the only way to keep going. He says that, unlike many of his fellow prisoners, he never wanted to die.

The camp was liberate in September 1945. Bras vividly recollects the American planes flying overhead, dropping shoes, biscuits and cheese on to the ground below. Later, the Allied troops transported them to Nagasaki where, a few weeks earlier, one of two atomic bombs had been dropped (the other having obliterated Hiroshima), effectively ending the war. Waiting in a truck by the train station, Bras remembers a Japanese camp guard meeting his eye. This particular guard had never beaten him and had always been polite. The guard saluted Bras. Bras looked away, refusing to return the salute.

“Until now, I regret it,” Bras says. “I often think of it.”

‘I don’t forgive what the Japanese did’: Jan Bras Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer
In Nagasaki the scene was one of utter devastation, stretching 3km in every direction.

“All you could see were black hills; it was completely black. Here and there was a chimney. All the houses were just stones and rubble, and here and there was a Japanese who tried to get some food from the Americans, but the Americans did not want to share their food.

“I remember this fellow, a father who had just bought a bicycle for his son’s birthday, and all that was found was the bicycle, nothing of the son, just the charred remnants of the bicycle. It was just twisted metal... you could not tell what was human and what was not. The whole thing was black, one lot of black rubble.”


Despite the carnage, Bras admits he felt “no pity. I thought: ‘Good for the Americans.’ Some [former prisoners of war] went back after the war to the same area to show they felt sorry [for the Japanese], but I didn’t feel sorry. I never felt sorry. I feel sorry for the boy [with the bicycle], because the boy was dead, scorched. I feel sorry for that particular case, but I don’t forgive what the Japanese did. They were bastards.”

All that was found were the charred remnants of the boy’s bicycle, just twisted metal, nothing of the son

 
Of the many acts Bras is unable to forgive, the death of his father is the most painful. His father was tortured by Japanese guards: they fed a tube into his mouth and poured water through it until his stomach burst and he died of his injuries. Remarkably, the rest of the family – Bras’s four sisters and his brother – all survived the war. After it ended, Bras and his mother emigrated to Amsterdam, where he pursued medical studies. For a while he and his brother worked in Kingston, Jamaica, where Bras later met his wife, a Scottish doctor. In 1958 they settled in Wrexham in Wales, where Bras worked as a GP for nearly 30 years.


Is he angry, I ask, when he looks back at those lost years. He shakes his head. Why not?
“Well, chance is a funny thing,” he says. “Why should I be angry about the bad things that occur and still accept the good things? I really do not understand life. I do not know what it’s all about.”
He gazes at me, with the same impish smile on his face. There is a pencil drawing of him done by a fellow prisoner in September 1945 looking handsome, with hope still in his eyes in spite of almost three years in captivity.


Today you can see the bones of that young face pressing through his wrinkled skin, and it’s sort of miraculous, really, how strong he is, how unbowed, how his capacity to see the good in people remains.

Of course there is also damage profoundly felt, deeply hidden, and his way of coping lies partly in his iron refusal to bend. He will not forgive. He will not salute. He will not fall, even when the blows come down. And here he is: Jan Bras, 92, walking without a stick and eating biscuits, winning his own war every single day.