The Expanded Self: Society as Self 291“9x6” b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanitythe Japanese invaded the Philippines at the end of 1941, the outnum-
bered American and Filipino forces retreated into the mountainous
jungles of Bataan, where they surrendered four months later following
intense fighting. With little food or water and stricken with sickness, the
emaciated soldiers were forced to trudge under the torrid topical sun to
a prisoner-of-war camp sixty miles away. In the eye-witnessed account
of Brown, those who could not continue the walk were killed on the
spot. Japanese soldiers fractured their skulls with rifle butts and cut off
their heads. Prisoners who tried to help fallen comrades were stabbed or
bludgeoned. In the P.O.W. camp, survivors were listed in groups of ten.
If one escaped out of the ten, they eliminated the rest of them. “So at
night,” said Brown, “just before roll call, you tried to find out if your ten
were still there.”^52 The Bataan incident occurred during the beginning
of World War II in the Pacific, when Japan embarked on an all-out con-
quering of Southeast Asia, in an attempt to dominate the region.
Many Westerners find it particularly hard to reconcile the wartime
cruelty of the Japanese military with the exquisite manners and polite-
ness of peacetime Japanese people. Those who have had the experience
of living in Japan post World War II were greatly impressed by their
civility and social order.^53 It is puzzling that the same people who com-
mitted the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March also exhibited
the kind of altruism and empathy during the post-tsunami nuclear acci-
dent. The answer, in a nutshell, is group selection, in which intra-group
compassion and inter-group brutality may show up as two sides of one
coin. These diametrically disparate behaviors are intricately entwined.
Diehard patriotism or war crime could just be a matter of viewpoint —
from within or outside a group. A culture that overstresses internal unity
may predispose itself to outward hostility and animosity.
12.13.6 Other war atrocities and coalitionary killings
The list goes on and on without end. Even the most glaring ones
could fill up many more pages of this book. I shall only mention a