167 replies to this topic

[Spc4]

Is people not knowing or not caring about Japanese war crime something in the US only?  (please delete this if it's offensive...)

Americans generally don't know or care much. A survey found that a significant # of American adults can't get questions about the American Revolution or other important events.

American GI's were also subject to war crimes. During the Bataan Death March, Japanese would ride around in horses and lop off the heads of straggling prisoners. They made US soldiers bury their comrades alive. During the Nagano Olympics, there was a special on Louis Zamperini, who was a victim of all sorts of abuse and heard his buddies scream in mortal agony from germ experimentation.
However, the general public doesn't know or care much. Americans also seem to think of 60 years as a long time.

(During the tv special, they actually interviewed "The Bird" from the article. He claimed he was just being a good soldier.)

At the end of WWII, the Americans pardoned some war criminals and traded other favors to obtain germ warfare documenation recorded by the Japanese, including Unit 731. Japan's rapid postwar development was largely due to US aid as part of the containment strategy against the USSR.

[yehzhaofeng]

Believe me, a lot of Americans do not know the President in charge during WWI or what was the Emancipation Proclaimation, or even who Donald Rumsfield was.

[Kenneth]

hehe.
An Iraqi flatmate of mine was in Iraq during the first gulf war and was a very interesting guy to talk to about the world & arabs and Iraq etc. Highly educated, fluent and very moderate (and an aetheist) and nice guy.
He said his Aunty was in the US and she got asked by an American workmate 'Where do you come from' and she said 'Baghdad'. The American asked where that was and the Iraqi was amazed because that was where they were bombing nightly at that time (and all over the news, remember the AA fire and the stealth bombers?).
In general I have heard comments from various nationalities and they seem to not rate the AMerican comparitive awareness of the outside world very highly (right or wrong there is that feeling).
Maybe some people just dont watch the news if there is sport on TV.

I think however most people will at least know the Japanese had a very inhuman way of treating POW's, as non-human and that they were cruel in war.
I recall stories even as a kids about ripping out finger nails or rapid growing bamboo up through the bodies of people tied to the ground.
The Japanese were very close to invading NZ and even had occupation currency printed..and NZers are aware the Japanese coudl of come here and we would have to have 'gone bush' as they say, and go to the forest and abandon the townand cities.
There are a few tank traps and machine gun pill boxes and stuff around the coast even in my area..that were never used.
I think if they got here we would have been defeated easily and NZers dont seem to take in how well Japanese fought in much tougher jungle than ours....and how little we had to stop them.
One good thing the Americans done was turn the Japanese back just above Australia.
It is a shame we have to put up with all their lousy Dec 1941 war movies because of it though.
Its like 'wow, theres a war going on!, why didnt you tell us!'

[Alexander39]

Not here though.
In a textbook, you'll find like 3 paragraphs on the pacific war. Nothing about Japanese Atrocities. I at least thought we'd be able to research the Holocaust and nit 731 side by side. Guess not though.

Unit 731 and unit 100 is exhactly why many think that the Japanese got a more leninent treatment that would otherwise by the allies, they had a use for the information and research the unit had gatherd, and would do anything to keep it out of the hands of Stalin.

http://roswell.fortu.../37/unit731.htm

I will not go into to many details since they are grusome in the ekstreme, but the fact is that Japan at the end of the War, had the best developed biological warfare capacity in the world, and that knowledge was worth a lot for all sides, so the theory goes that in exchange for the information, the allies would go easy on the
Japanese after the war!
wether this true or not is up for conjekture, but it would explained a lot of the inconsistencies in the after war prosecution of japanese warcrimminals.

[caocao74]

The Japanese were cruel to other asian groups as well and you don't see those people still crying about the past.

But that's not really the point though is it?.

[kaixin]

Nanjing wasn't the only massacre, but it is the most famous one. From Harbin all the way down to Guangzhou, the Japanese had committed massacres. 30 million civilians died in the war. They certainly made the Nazis look like angels by comparison.

[yehzhaofeng]

Yes, I always thought the Southern provinces fared less, but my grandparents told me of several incidences, especially this one village next to hers in which a massacre took place over a Japanese death.

[Tsukiyono]

Well this is an old thread, but its a thread like this that brought me here.. per se.

Well i for one didnt hear about her death till a bit after it happened. I first caught wind of the book probably a week before it, and i ordered it soon afterwards as i was doing some research on a differnt project for a class of mine.

I read the book, and i will say it was one of the hardest things i had ever read. Since i first read it, i have been doing my own research on the events in the book. And many times i found it hard to keep reading, but i did.

Why? Cause i for one, up untill i read that book, had heard not one thing about it. Not one wisp about it at all. My history books had nothing in it at all back when i was in high school. And since in high school i didnt have access to the internet..(not because i am an older person, just cause my family didnt have mych money) and i couldnt make it to a library to read up on anything, i sadly remained unaware of all these events.

I am glad i do know now, i have a huge love of history, and even the bad parts of it, i feel obligated to know about. So my own personal reserch will continue, until i know as much as i can possibly get.

The book sparked an interest in me, unline any book i had ever read. Any chance i get i tell someone who will listen what i have found out, but with everything i learn, more questions arise.

If all you needed to do, was to spark the interest of one person, in this case she has done so. I think its sad how many people dont know about the incident, or how many dont care. I was surprised, i asked most of the people i know when i read this if they knew anything, none knew a thing, i asked my old history teacher about it, he didnt reply to me.

But in short, this should be something that is more taught in school, people should know about this. There is countless stuff in school about the holocaust, but this there is nothing but the occasion mentione of it in one paragraph maybe.

Or that is at least in central missouri here where i am, but there isnt at least where i went to school at a large asian group here.

[bhchao]

Even the Nazis in Nanjing at the time were horrified by the methods the Japanese used to massacre Chinese civilians.

[Tsukiyono]

I'm sure the Japanese civilians were horrified to. The imperial army were quite simply, brainwashed. Unfortunately we are seeing many ultra-right historical circles denying this atrocity. Or even worse, portraying the monsters who performed this as great men. Luckily, this is not an opinion shared by the Japanese people who I know. Who feel very sorry about what their ancestors did to so many innocent people.

Sadly, I was never taught anything of the Japanese atrocities in Asia. I had to find out about them myself. Granted, i'm still a teenager. And may have learnt about it later

.

Well at least the japanese of that specific time frame did know, as long as they read the paper or anything. For instance, on the road to nanking (and possibly during the whole incident).. from what i have read, there was a killing contest between two japanese soldiers to see who could reach 100 decaptions first (sorry if i am mistaken a bit, i dont have my resources in front of me). And this was reported of japanese news media. And if i recall, there was betting of a sorts going on and so forth.

Now im sure there were those that were horrified and so on. I dont doubt that some were, but it seems that alot of the people seemed to watch it all as a sporting event.

Now from what i know, this whole incident is either being downplayed, or just skipped over in the japanese history books. Which just recently..(2001?) there was an issue about a history book being releaeed for public viewing before there was a decide on weather or not the schools there would use it, and there was protest in china, korea and several other nations about it all. As the book stated little if anything about it.

Its nice to know that the ones you do know are saddedened by this event.

I honestly doubt you will read anything about it in your own classes though.

[Sephodwyrm]

Well, if any of you is taking High School of University courses on WW2 histories you might want to start a research project about Japanese atrocities in Asia.

Remember the biggest objective of 731. A lot of people seemed to have forgotten about it. The Japanese were utilizing 731 to come up with a WMD capable of defeating the US. Peasants (Chinese and Korean), POWs were used in the research to come up with a sufficiently weaponized and controllable virus or bacteria and utilize this against the US.

As for the death of Iris Chang, the news sank after 5 days.
And Shiyuan Diantailang is still at large. (Ultra right wing Japanese, I don't even bother to learn his Japanese name. Shiyuan is synonymous to modern facism and Neo Nazis).

As for Japanese civilians being horrified, I personally know very little about this. There are bodies of pro-peace activists and the Red Brigade that is extremely pro-China (compared to the right wings at least). There were also reported incidents of defecting Japanese that served the PLA instead, reasons provided were that they:
1. didn't want to serve a monster
2. they hate the emperor
3. they identify with socialism

In any case, these cases are very isolated. If the Japanese civilians have been horrified, they probably would stage an anti-war and anti-atrocitiy protest and not flying Japanese flags and partying when Nanjing was taken and people slaughtered.

[adoo]

...Thats another problem, all the crimes in China and Korea are not publicized and known like the Holocaust.  They were both horrible acts. but the Crimes in Asia are never known to many people.

Due, in large part, to Japan's effective public relations / lobbying campaigns, portraying itself as the victim of the A-Bomb---the consequence of a war that it had started.

The victimization spin over-shadows Japan's war crimes in China and Korea