“Yellow bastards”, that’s a full-mouthed statement for a first post!
The Emperor survived because of MacArthur and his understanding of the importance of preserving him because of his significance to the Japanese to allow a manageable Occupation, despite the fact that the Emperor was fully involved in Japan’s war of aggression and only decided to surrender when the survival of the Imperial line was threatened. Bruser is correct that the little bastard should have been tried and hung, as Hitler would have been if he’d been captured alive.
Many Japanese and their colonial Korean and Formosan soldiers behaved like primitive, brutal, murdering, sadistic, and cannibalistic beasts who gloried in bloodshed, torture, and murder just for the sake of it. Whether it is explained through some corrupted Bushido code or something else is immaterial to the inhumanity of their actions.
If it was done for their families and country, then neither their families nor country were worth the much more benevolent treatment they got under Mac and from the Allies generally.
There was no fighting or soldierly conduct involved in the endless massacres of civilians and prisoners of war, not to mention working them to death, carried out by Japanese soldiers in victory in 1941-42 and in occupation in later years and in retreat at the end of the war. Such as their depredations in Manila in 1941-42 when it had been declared an open city but was still attacked and in 1945 when they massacred thousands of Filipinos while retreating from the Americans.
Sandakan did not involve soldiers fighting for their families and country in 1945 when Japan knew it was beaten. There was nothing even remotely like it, or like many other Japanese outrages such as the massacres of Chinese after the Singapore surrender, by any Allied troops in the theatre. Six men surviving by escaping from the nearly 2,400 during the Sandakan outrage by Japan in the dying days of the war when it was trying to obliterate the living human evidence of its outrages was not soldiers fighting for their families and country, but just the actions of men whose contempt for human life renedered their own lives worthless, yet the Allies did not exterminate them out of hand in the same way as they might have in full justice.
At the time of the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, only six prisoners had survived the horrors of the Sandakan prisoner of war camp and the Sandakan Death Marches. They had escaped into the jungle either during the death marches or at Ranau. 2,390 prisoners from the Sandakan camp had been murdered by the Japanese in cold blood or by starvation, sickness, and overwork.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforAustralia/JapWarCrimes/TenWarCrimes/Sandakan_Death_March.html
I am well aware from wide reading, including the diaries of Japanese dead in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, that many Japanese soldiers were no different to their enemies in wishing to survive the war and return to their families, but the fact remains that Japanese soldiers were in many instances the willing instruments of an inhuman militarism and the national culture behind it which gloried in brutality and inhumanity, both towards its own soldiers and much more towards its enemies when they were defenceless.
If there is any crap to be cut, it should have been the crap the Japanese inflicted on the rest of the world 1941-45, or 1931-45 if you had the misfortune to be Chinese.
well said.
from other had - is there the collective guilt of nation?
Or is it just the crimes of separate peoples?
i don’t think that the Japane nation in general can be blamed ( as well as German one) in the EXCLUSIVE EVIL only becouse they’ve losed a total war with us.
As well as Chineses who genocided each other during their inner civil war that , accidentally, was happend at the same time ,hardly migh cry they are much better then japaneses.
This is Asia.
The citizens of a nation cannot be collectively guilty for the acts of the nation, but the citizens who supported those actions can be.
So that, for example, people who were enthusiastic Nazis in 1933 / 37 / 41 and who by 1945 when things weren’t going their way forgot they had ever been Nazis were, in my view, still liable to be brought to account after the war for the evil they supported.
And I really don’t care if, like Sergeant Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes, they knew nothing, because it was their job to know. Rather like Republicans in America whose votes supported the rendition program and other abuses of human rights in the current era.
Conversely, there were many Germans and many people in other Axis nations who either did not support or opposed the actions of their governments and who should not be held liable for those actions. Not that it mattered when the indiscriminate bombs were falling on Dresden or Tokyo, or afterwards when almost everyone claimed to be in the good camp. Mussolini’s body wasn’t hung for public condemnation in the twenties, for the simple reason that he had a lot of support then when he was on a roll. It’s only failed leaders and regimes that have no supporters after the event.
Please try to refrain from such epithets such as “little yellow bastards.”
The War is long over…
Just telling the truth YANK.I am now on a good well run british site,Goodbye.
New Zealand was bloody glad to be chockers with Yank soldiers in WWII (as indeed were many New Zealand women glad be chockers with Yanks in WWII), when American, Australian, and Dutch forces were about all that stood between Kiwiland and Japanese conquest of The Land of the Long White Cloud.
In particular, elements of the magnificent 1st Division, USMC, which fought in the crucial land battles on Guadalcanal to stem Japan’s eastern advance towards New Zealand were stationed in New Zealand before emabarking for Guadalcanal. And New Zealand was grateful to have them there at the time, and lucky that they helped defeat the Japanese on Guadalcanal.
As for the British, they did sweet FA in the defence of New Zealand while your soldiers fought long and hard in the Mediterranean for Britain and provided a lot of aircrew for Britain’s war in Europe. Meanwhile, America provided the bulk of the forces and fought most of the major actions that allowed New Zealand to survive the Japanese onslaught. I hope the British site you’re so happy on now is run better than the British managed the defence of Malaya and Burma, and New Zealand.
The whole of the world outside America recognises that some Yanks can be a right royal pain in the arse, particularly under their current administration, but those of us in countries like Australia, New Zealand, France and elsewhere who owe our freedom from Axis victory in WWII in part to America’s human sacrifices, industrial efforts, and spirit in WWII would be churlish to use YANK as an epithet on a WWII history site as you have done, at least without explaining it.
So, exactly what did America do that was wrong in saving New Zealand from Japanese invasion, apart from giving you the freedom to be hostile to Yanks instead of being a slave, or corpse, under Nippon?
P.S. For members outside the refined environs of Australia and New Zealand, “chockers”, or “choc a block” = full up.
Don’t let the door hit your arse’ on the way out!
Im Japanese, and I realy do not appreciate such racial remarks as “Yellow basytards”.
Thank you.
Maybe…However, it always amazes me when someone sings the song of “it was their job to know” or “they should be held accountable because they supported the regime”. There are many things that our own government does that we don’t know about and that is the way it has always been and always will be. If that is the case in a democracy, I can’t imagine how efficient hiding things must have been in a dictatorial government. When I was in Army Intelligence, there were a lot of things that we did in order to do our duty and nobody had a clue. I’m sure that the same is true today as well. The fact is that most people simply go about the mundane job of surviving day to day. We have jobs and families, and those things have priority. The average American doesn’t have a clue about many things and my guess is that there were plenty of Germans that didn’t have a clue either.
As to accountability, I doubt that people who voted for Bush and that were against the war in Iraq would consider themselves accountable for many things that have been done in Iraq and Guantanamo. They couldn’t have foreseen certain events back on that November day. While most Germans may have been excited about the prospect of a strong Germany, I doubt that the average German would have foreseen the grand scope of things and how far would it all go.
The concept of collective guilt, whether is of the entire nation or of those that originally may have supported the Nazis is a form of oppression…a way to keep them in line. Therefore, it is a concept that I reject wholeheartedly. To me, the real guilty ones are only the ones that gave the orders, the ones that executed them…not the average Joe who proudly hung a swastika flag from his window without direct knowledge of what was happening.
As for the Japanese, they surely committed enough atrocities, but certainly haven’t paid the same price as the Germans. Then again, the victims of the Japanese really don’t have much of a voice. My guess would be that, if there is anybody that wishes to have an apology from Japan, they will be waiting until hell freezes over.
the emperor was not for the war at all, he’s not to be blamed completely. he was pressured by his military leaders like Tojo.
Rather than matters kept secret by governments, I had in mind things which were known or which common sense says would have had to be known by the people concerned which they later claim, rather unconvincingly when called to moral or legal account, not to have known about.
A current example is the rendition program which I mentioned. Another is the Bush Administration’s re-writing of domestic and international law to permit torture. These are well publicised issues which seem to be supported by some people because, presumably, it suits their ‘the end justifies the means’ opinions and because, like the Nazis and Japanese in WWII, they regard the people subjected to that treatment as lesser human beings who do not deserve the same rights because they are seen as threats to the people engaging in the bad conduct. If bin Laden somehow managed to conquer America, he’d be struggling to find anyone who knew anything about such things, just as happened in Germany and Japan.
I’m not taking the position that civilians should be held accountable for things they didn’t and couldn’t have known about.
I agree.
But if they defend or support things such as Abu Ghraib, the rendition program, and torture after they became known, then I think they are, at the very least, morally accountable.
Probably.
After all, the Nazis never got more than about a third of the German vote. And their evil nature probably didn’t become apparent to most Germans until well after they gained power.
I view it as a form of justice, by bringing people to account for their actions.
I don’t think it’s that simple.
Take a Korean conscripted into service by Japan. He’s from a colony which has been ruthlessly oppressed and exploited by Japan and at the bottom of a brutal system where he regularly gets knocked about physically by Japanese, who also regularly knock their own people about and most of whom have contempt for and power over Koreans. He’s put in charge of a work gang on the Burma railway and knows he’ll be knocked about if his gang doesn’t perform, so he knocks his gang about, both to make them perform and in transferring brutality down the line. He’s in a better position than a trusty in a Nazi concentration camp who ensures his own survival by doing what he has to do to survive, even if it means knocking other prisoners about and selecting them for punishment or death. But they’re both trying to survive in an awful system they were forced into.
Conversely, the average German Joe who proudly hangs out a Nazi flag does it as a completely voluntary action. And, by the time the war starts, he’d have to be blind, deaf and living in a hole in the ground since 1923 not to know what the Nazis stood for after, for example, Kristallnacht; the anti-Jewish citizenship and economic laws; rabid anti-Jewish propaganda. His post-war claims of “I knew nothing” at least have the support of Albert Speer claiming the same thing, despite being the overlord of, among other things, the Reich’s slave labour industry about which he later (when facing trial for his actions) claimed to know nothing. Claims which, unfortunately for poor old Albert who successfully presented himself to the world as “the good Nazi” in a magnificent piece of post-war personal propaganda, have been thoroughly disproved by documents recording various meetings he attended
Similarly, Japanese claims of ignorance are equally unconvincing. One has only to look at the rabid anti-Chinese propaganda leading up and during the invasion of China in the thirties and to events such as the huge publicity given to, and public interest in and support for, a competition by two Japanese officers in China to be the first to behead 100 Chinese. Yet there has been a whole post-war industry at government level in Japan devoted to denying any misconduct in China or elsewhere after the war began.
I think they do, such as the Korean comfort women who got US Congressional support.
The problem is that their voice is rarely heard at Japanese government levels.
Japan has ‘apologised’ formally a number of times, but the problem is that the ‘apologies’ were couched in language which to Western ears lacked a complete apology and were evasive, rather like Hirohito’s broadcast to the Japanese announcing the surrender because “the war, not necessarily having gone to Japan’s advantage” (or words close to that). The other problem is that whatever ‘apologies’ were offered, there was contrary activity going on in Japan such as its education system busily presenting a sanitised view of Japan’s war which undermined the sincerity of the ‘apology’. There is a good treatment of the apology issue here http://www.asiaquarterly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=115&Itemid=40
He may, on one view, have been reluctant to go to war but, once Japan had gone to war and was winning, he was very happy with it and heavily invovled in it. Then a few years later he realised when Japan was on the ropes, with the prospect of another American atom bomb landing a bit closer to his home as the Soviets rampaged across Manchuria and into the Kurile Islands, that losing the war threatened the survival of the Imperial line.
The view you present is the one put forward by those who wish to minimise his involvement in Japan’s actions.
However, if you go back to the primary historical documents, notably the records of Imperial Conference before and during the war, you will find that the Emperor was fully aware of the implications of the proposed actions and that he took a keen interest in considering aspects affecting the prospects of Japanese success in its war of aggression. On one view, he carefully positioned himself so that he was not responsible for anything, apart from the minor action of approving every major action at Imperial Conference. On another view, he was in it up to his ears. Either way, he definitely was not an opponent of Japan’s war from start to finish, but rather the opposite.
It was certainly the case that Hirohito was in the awkward position of being in many respects a revered figurehead rather than an imperial ruler with complete power, and that like some of his predecessors he was at remote risk of being deposed or killed by those under him if he frustrated their ambitions. But the fact remains that he chose to take an active role in the path to war and in prosecuting the war when he could equally well have survived by being the poor captive little puppet of the military which he has been presented as since the war by those committed to preserving the Imperial line, which after all was his dominant purpose in agreeing to others’ proposals for war and ultimately in him overriding some of his military people to surrender before the Imperial line was wiped out.
Here is a useful summary of some of the issues affecting his conduct. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=168161§ioncode=22
Nothing about WW2 was that simple or black and white. It is easy for us to look back and say that the average German knew what the Nazis stood for and should have known better. We’re looking at it with the eyes of two to three generations later. Krystallnacht was actually condemned by many Germans and there was somewhat of a backlash because of it. There is also a big difference between thinking that maybe Jews have something to do with the country’s problems and they should leave, and “let’s round them up and kill them all!” And, even if the average German would have known, what was he/she supposed to do about it? In this country, we’re free to ridicule and speak ill of our leaders and their decisions anytime that we want without fearing that we’re going to end up in some prison. That was not the case for the Germans. The Germans were in dire straits when Hitler came along. They believed his message of hope and many may have been racist, just as many are in America and many other countries. But, there is a line, as fine as it might be, between not liking a group of people and killing everyone that belongs to that group. I refuse to believe that every German that believed in Hitler’s promises had murderous intentions or was completely aware that murder was in the horizon. Blaming millions of people for the actions of a percentage is not only unfair, but it is the same mentality that has been used for genocide! Let’s just blame everybody and make them pay! I refuse to have that mentality and I will always speak up against it because when we spread that kind of thinking, we’re only a few steps away of being like the ones we condemn.
As for the Japanese, their “apologies” have been empty. In spite of the actions of certain groups to bring attention to the victims of the Japanese, the fact is that if you ask the average American about the Holocaust, everyone knows about it. If you speak about Japanese crimes, most of them will look at you with a blank stare. That isn’t a coincidence. In my line of work, I encounter many, many Japanese people. For the most part, they’re very nice people, some of whom I have in high regard. But, they won’t speak of the war much and they certainly do not acknowledge the crimes perpetrated by the Japanese during the war. As a matter of fact, there seems to be more of a regret that they lost the war than anything else. And I agree that the Emperor was just as guilty. Unlike the average German, he was in a position to stand for something. Instead, he took an active role.
the japanese sliced pows head of with katanas they were evil
While a form of ‘evil’ was institutionalised in Japanese military training and conduct, and in those parts of Japanese society which cheered the militarists on, the Japanese didn’t have a monopoly on ‘evil’ conduct in WWII.
Among the many recorded instances of ‘evil’ Allied conduct towards Japanese are instances of Australians bayoneting Japanese POWs to death (can’t recall sources); Americans prising gold out of the teeth of dead and even just wounded but conscious Japanese (probably in William Manchester, Goodbye Darkness and or Sledge, following); Americans driving jeeps with Japanese skulls wired over the headlights (Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed), as well as the routine execution of wounded Japanese on the battlefield, albeit to minimise the risk of suicidal attacks and detonations.
Rather than categorising the Japanese as evil, and by implication categorising the Allies as good, a biblical observation might be more accurate by ascribing responsibility to those who do evil things rather than to a whole racial or national group.
21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. Mark 7:21
VEry reasonable post IMO.
As for Japane denial position - but do we condemn our own relation and crimes to them.
Hardly.
I think there are a sort of double-standards.We’ve wrote a tonns of papers about their cruel treating of pows, inhuman medical experiments and ets, but how about own nuclear experiment over their population in 1945?Is it a crime?
Of course no , we will say, we “saved a millions” of their lives, bombing them to hell and making them to surrender.
And if somebody argue, we get the poin- the japans themself have killed a millions of Chineses, so is it so bad to kill couple of handreds of thousands of them additionally?
But if to get their point - was the mass murdering of civils in Tokio and Hiroshima so necessary for our victory?
if i was a Japan i would never agree with it.And elementary japane national proud wouldn’t let me to admit such anti-japane morale that probably had an rasist-based origin.
I think that Japans feel themself as a victims, ( not a victims of Commintern:)) but a victims of our dual Victory-morale.
Thanks, Chevan! Since you bring up the bombings over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I must clarify my position on those. I know that there is another thread about this, so I won’t go deep into it except to reply to your post.
The argument of whether it is okay for us to kill a couple of hundred thousand of them since they also killed so many doesn’t “fly” with me. It has always been my position that, if the Allies uphold such a self-righteous position of “we’re fighting evil”, then we should hold ourselves to higher values. In my view, some of the things that were done to the German people after their surrender were war crimes. Also, in my view, the bombings over Germany in late 1944 and in 1945, and the atomic bombings over Japan are war crimes. I know that my position is not very popular around here. However, the argument that we saved so many by dropping the atomic bombs has never seemed very credible to me. Not only did we kill so many right away, but the suffering that we caused and the decades of additional effects due to those blasts are so great!!! How many actual military personnel did we kill? The great majority were civilians. People argue that those cities were major industrial centers and that there was a lot there that the enemy could use against the Allies. It is kind of hard to tell since everything was destroyed and little “evidence” was left. None of it can really be proved, except for what the propaganda tells us.
So, I agree with you in that we usually don’t condemn our own crimes. On the contrary, we tend to always justify them and hold our enemies to a different measuring standard as we hold ouselves!
Krad42
Well , yes, although your position is uncommon around here, i think you are very honest.
That make me feel a personal respect to you.
Actualy we tend to justify our own deeds in war, especialy it might be so proper applied to Eastern front.
What distinguishes them from other similar events that weren’t war crimes?
For example, what makes bombing German cities in late 1944 - 45 war crimes if the previous bombings weren’t?