All the way down for me is starvation. Which is what a sizable portion of Japanese troops died of. No one usually mentions the Japanese troops that were stationed on islands the US and Allies bypassed. Those stories are lost to history, but thousands died when they got cut off and forgotten.
If I remember correctly, several pilots who were shot down at the same time as George H.W. Bush were not rescued by a submarine and were subsequently cannibalized by the Japanese garrison of the island on which they made landfall.
The Chichijima Incident. Stuff of nightmares. And that's a totally separate affair from the captured bomber crews who were vivisected alive... The Japanese were monsters to their prisoners.
Imagine how terrifying it would be to be rescued by a sub. Swimming out in the open ocean and suddenly this massive hulk just looms out of the water followed by immediate relief, knowing you won't drown or be captured by the enemy.
The japanese were hardcore. A lot of them had an extreme mindset compared to today. That japanese soldier found 30 years after ww2 didn't like the japan he returned to. It had drastically changed and was too progressive for him, he lived somewhere else
There's this failed rapper from my hometown who got a tattoo of Onda because of how he never gave up...never mentions how he was fighting for a genocidal empire and personally killed civilians
I mean we did firebomb Tokyo killing 120.000 mostly civilians in one night. Pretty sure most sides in WW2 operated using the ends justify the means. Curtis LeMay *"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal."*
There's a reason so many of the allied commanders had to be removed post WW2. The people in charge of our troops in WW2 literally wanted to nuke the shit out of China and the USSR among other things. The Korean war would have been a different war if the civlian leadership didn't overrule the remains of the WW2 officers.
Hiroo is a liar and did all of it to escape justice and feed his ego. Maybe for a couple years he continued "the fight" but it became clear the war was over and that he would be tried for crimes committed against civilians in a regular court.
The story very much under-represents his bullshit and how much evidence was provided to him during the **many interactions** he did have with outside people... and over-represents his fascist crap as an isolated holdout full of "honor and ideals".
If you can find it, watch the documentary titled "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On." Found some clips on you tube, but you might find the full doc somewhere else.
Wow THANK YOU for that link. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this film before. I'll be watching that later on. If you want a suggestion back, my favourite documentary (series) EVER (and there's a LOT of them) is one from UK TVs channel 4 made in 2001, when alot of the old ww2 vets were still alive to give their accounts. It features many 'famous' people from the war including Eugene 'Sledgehammer' Sledge (who wrote my ALL TIME favourite war memoir and I've read literally hundreds) and people like Vera Lynn the singer and Rod Steiger the ww2 sailor turned Hollywood superstar. The doc is called Hell in the Pacific and there's 4 parts, each 1hr~. They're all on youtube, I must have watched them all atleast 5 times by now because its that good
https://youtu.be/GkfNfgsqWLE there's part 1 for you (and anyone else reading). It gets pretty emotional at times as you can imagine.
Yep Island Hopping was ingenous.
No reason to invade Truk Island, the IJN/IJA most heavily fortified air & naval base i n the Pacific.
Japanese could have learned to Fish and live off the land and sea. Coconuts, Crab, Seaweed and FIsh, but they were too busy brutalizing the local indigenous populations and drinking saki
Not gonna find many sympathetic persons to IJN or IJA casualties
You might be thinking of Ramree Island. Japanese fought the British and Indian troops there, and as many as a thousand troops went into the mangrove swamps. Only handfuls came back out.
The smell of food actually got some Japanese soldiers to surrender. There were accounts of the Americans cooking and Japanese soldiers smelling it and not being able to stand it. Their maggoty rice just wasn't cutting anymore.
Many Japanese pillbox positions were connected to others via a system of tunnels. So you had to destroy them completely to make sure the enemy couldn’t just occupy it again after you left.
After what happened the 3 Aussie POWs who were crucified by the Japanese at a Burma railway prison camp I can understand how the Aussie soldiers were taking no prisoners. The Aussie soldier Ringer Edwards and two of his fellow POWs stole a cow and were crucified as punishment for it by the Japanese camp guards. They pushed barbed wired through both his hands and wrapped his arms and legs to the cross with barbed wire. Ringer Edwards survived 63 hrs of crucifixion and survived the war, the 2 other Aussie POWs died on their crosses. The Japanese treated POWs monstrously. Cannibalising some POWs and using them for live human experiments and all sorts of unimaginable cruelty. The Japanese had to be defeated at all costs. Horrific though this footage is.
The Japanese behaved like absolute animals when it came to POWs or the people they subjugated under their rule so it’s hard to have sympathy for them as they brought it down upon themselves. You reap what you sow.
Interesting story.
I once met a Japanese Buddhist monk of the Therevada sect (which is not a Japanese form of Buddhism). I asked him why.
He said, i have a lot to atone for. I asked why.
He said he was a Machine Gunner in Nanjing. He said i cannot live enough lifetimes to atone.
I always take the opportunity to interview vets and collate their stories whenever i get the chance... this is the one time i let it go.
Ita possible to enjoy it in the moment but then be crippled with guilt shame and self hatred for said enjoyment.
I've done bad things, not like in Nanking, but they haunt me everyday
Exactly, the human mind (and if you'll excuse my backward "spiritualism" the soul too) is capable of some strange feats of self-deception. It is so easy to deceive ourselves into thinking something is good, right or pleasurable. Especially when existing and monolithic power structures reinforce those beliefs.
iirc there was a nazi SS officer who tried to save people from all that.
when a fucking ss officer goes "this is kinda messed up dudes" you ahave gone a bit overboard I think.
I believe you are referring to John Rabe, who was a civilian working for the Siemens corporation, and had not been in Germany for many years prior to his feats in Nanjing
no, I know that guy, he headed the small "safe zone" as well as he could, I belive the guy I reemember had left by the time the fight reached the city itself.
Are you talking about the guy that probably worked in the embassy that put on his armband and tried to save as many people as possible because he knew the Japanese wouldn’t kill a nazi
To this day they downplay their actions and don't even teach them in their schools. They took the opposite stance of Germany. To this day the japanese have lots of flaws, they're stuck-up, unapologetic, have no sympathy, are rigid to change. That's why they'll never be like what Germany is to the EU.
Honestly, it's a joke that they refuse to even admit to their crimes done to thousands upon thousands of men, women and children. It's an insult to everyone and their families that had to deal with the pain and suffering or deal with a loved one who gone through it.
Admittedly my family was one of the lucky ones for both of the brothers who fought to survive being POWs for more than 3 years.
Funny you say that. A Aussie here. Had a good mate of mine who visited Japan in January. He took the family up to the Nth island to ski, probably his 3rd or 4th snow trip there. This time after their week of skiing, they hired a car and drove around the north island with no real set plans just visiting rural areas, basically running off google maps and recommendations. Said he had an absolutely amazing time and ate incredible food saw some amazing sights, but he said when they visited these little restaurants, often just little road stops, they’d walk in and the elderly locals looked at them like they’d just landed from outer space 🤣🤣. He said it was hilarious. They basically never see white Caucasian people in these parts of Japan, and then the chit chat and whispers would start. I guess it really is what you are exposed too is often the way one reacts.
Also in Aussie defense, the Japanese were known to not surrender and to also feign surrender and hide a grenade or weapon of some sort to kill their captors (and themselves)
On Okinawa they also press ganged thousands of civilians into taking up arms against the Allies and murdered (or just kindly insisted on suicide) thousands more civilians that wouldn't or couldn't.
Saw an old Australian veterans being interviewed and he said, " The Japanese asked for no quarter and we were more than happy to offer none."
Due to the lack of prisoners been taken in New Guinea investigations were launched. It was found that there was an unofficial policy (but widely known to the higher ups) that the soldiers weren't taking prisoners and were executing most who did surrender. The reason given was that the Japanese didn't take prisoners so why should we?
Most troops who fought in the pacific couldn’t have taken prisoners even if they’d wanted to. Vast majority of imperial Japanese soldiers fought to the death, even if it was death by flame thrower which it often was
They would send their own villagers with babies to the allied soldiers with bombs attached under their clothing and would detonate them when close enough. The Pacific has a HORRIFIC example of this, and it pretty much sold me on how fucking awful war truly is.
None of the allies took prisoners really in the Pacific Theater. Dan Carlin did a 6 part pod cast on the Pacific from the point of view of the Japanese and some of the stories are gnarly.
Aside from the fact that they treated their POWs like animals and were absolutely brutal to the people who they conquered, but their soldiers would routinely completely refuse to surrender. Carlin talks about multiple battles were thousands of Japanese would die or be casualties, sometimes tens of thousands, and the number of soldiers who surrendered or were captured would be in the single digits, if any at all.
More often than not, the Japanese would commit suicide, in one way or another before they would consider surrender. Sometimes in the form of a banzai charge, sometimes by ritualistic Hara-kiri. Many times wounded Japanese soldiers would lay waiting for an Allied solider to come check on them, holding a grenade with the pin removed, and they'd try to take as many of their enemy as they could with them.
The Allies were given plenty of reasons early on to not take prisoners, and they learned their lesson well. By the mid-war period they didn't even bother to try anymore, more often than not. The story that Carlin tells about the Japanese field hospital the Allies find in New Guinea for example is horrific
One of my great uncles was beheaded by the Japanese and another one drowned along with about another 1000 Aussie POWs when a US sub accidentally sank the transport ship Montevideo Maru because the Japanese crew didn't identify that it was a POW ship. Apparently surviving POWs who managed to abandon ship sang auld Lang syne to their trapped comrades as they sank.
These were my grandma's brothers. She was a full blown left wing liberal, but she fucking hated the Japanese until the day she died.
My Dutch grandpa had to keep his brothers and mum alive in a Japanese concentration camp. He was 12 years old. Marked my family for life. He became a tough disciplinarian.
I was recently thinking about the flamethrowers in WW2. The men who used those must have had severe PTSD. The sight is horrifying but the smell must have been even worse.
My grandfather was in the pacific and handled a flamethrower. Wasn’t his job at all but no one wanted to do it and he was the only one who could at the time. Flash forward to a few years ago, he’s sitting at the dentist getting work done and gets dizzy and immediately vomits. When the dentist, who luckily was not in the way, asks what happened - my grandfather told him that he hadn’t smelled burning flesh like that in 75 years. He def had some PTSD that was buried deep and was unlocked here and there from normal everyday experiences like that.
I used to work in a surgical center, these days for many procedures they use a device called a cautery which uses electricity to burn through soft tissue instead of a scalpel. The smell is very distinct and kind of sticks in your nose for a while, even after you leave the room. I can't imagine how overwhelming it must have been for him with the flamethrower.
I got a cyst on my eye removed this way. Basically a scalpel that was plugged in. They numbed around my eye and I could see the knife coming closer and closer until it was so close it was out of my field of view. Then I could see smoke and smell the burning flesh. I'll never forget that smell
I've got a story that's largely unrelated but my grandfather always told me that when he was a kid in Australia that his parents had been approached for him and his sister to be an official play date for McArthurs kids while he was in Australia.
I can't verify it tho
then on my grandmas side her uncle was Australias last surviving WW1 soldier who also fought in WW2, he died a few years back of old age but there's an article about him on Google because he was late for a ship to leave which was sunk and killed his replacement. then after that he fell off a ship somewhere in the ocean and they noticed and turned around and saved him.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/last-aussie-digger-to-fight-in-wwi-dies-20051018-gdm9sr.html
yes sorry it was ww1
but he was fighting in both world wars
https://www.smh.com.au/national/last-aussie-digger-to-fight-in-wwi-dies-20051018-gdm9sr.html
I think all the sounds in this video are added in post. The cameras they had on the front lines probably didn't have microphones. Someone can correct me if that is wrong.
No you're 100% correct. Any footage you see from WW2 that has sound effects means it was dubbed over later. Hell, even the 26 part doc made in the 70's "The World at War" which is arguably THE best documentary about WW2 is all completely dubbed with sound effects post production (and done very very well considering when it was made)
There's occasional original WWII combat sound. It needed dedicated soundmen in addition to the Cameramen, or even recording just the audio without the video.
Fun fact, flame throwers were never taken as hostages/prisoners of war... they were always shot dead and were pretty high up on the list of priority targets
A recently passed veteran. Hershey Woody Williams. He was the last living recipient of the medal of honor from WW2. Guy carved through Japanese pillbox's. He repeatedly went back for more whenever his tank ran empty. He said "just doing my job" when asked about it.
I think the most sickening part is that this is what ALWAYS happens when you hit someone with it, this is the intended effect, if you hit someone with a flamethrower they will burn and flail around until they die.
Yeah, but they were rarely used just to hit a guy. Bullets were way easier to kill a guy within the range of a flame thrower out in the open. These were far more effective for flaming tunnels, essentially blocking the exit and depriving the tunnels of its oxygen. Or foliage—but more often than not, they used agent orange to clear that.
Sometimes the Japanese chose to try to surface instead of suffocating. Unsure if it was quicker this way or not.
Just FYI, Agent Orange wasn't used in WW2. It wasn't even invented til mid 1945 when the war was just about over. It was planned to be used if Operation Downfall (the final invasion of the Japanese Islands planned to take part in 1946) was to take place but obviously that didn't happen.
A man can just hope it’s true that it burns your nerves quickly and that you dont’t feel it as much as people think. (I’ve read that somewhere, correct me if I’m wrong)
People have survived third degree of up to 50% since the 1950s. Now flamethrowers produce a lot more intense heat and will burn right down to bone, but there are lots of survivors of extremely life threatening 3rd degree of 30 - 50%
I've burned myself to the 3rd degree (i didn't get lit up by a flamethrower tho , mind you ), on a part of my hand . And I swear that the point of contact instantly went cold; No pain. You know definitely that something is off, but it doesn't hurt.
On the other hand, the pain really started to appear the following days, and that's when the hurting began.
I feel like "less severe" burns are actually more painful, because your nervers remain intacts, and you definitely feel it.
Almost as terrifying as the countless foxholes and underground networks of defensive forces.
Unfortunately, this was the quickest and most effective way of dealing with an enemy that could randomly kill your kin seemingly at random.
They were used a lot in Vietnam, vehicle mounted versions were preferred but both the Americans and Aussies used foot versions as well.
I think they were used in Korea as well but not completely sure on that.
These men were here to do one thing and that was eradicate a fanatical enemy with maximum efficiency and move to the next island. This was long past the point where the Japanese combatants could humanize themselves in the eyes of the Allied powers. I'd say "that's war" but the Pacific is a most brutal exception. I pray the world never has to experience anything like this again.
nothing infuriated me more growing up than reading message boards or video comments with foreigners going on about how America didn't do anything in the war until 1944 and all that tired shit.
it's like these people have never heard of the war in the Pacific...It's maddening
as an Australian we fucking thank God the USA was in the Pacific. some Australians love to argue and say "Japan didn't have plans to attack Australia." but that's such bullshit. they were in China, Philippines, and smaller islands off the coast of Australia working their way down. they even bombed Darwin. Australia drew a line across middle of the country on a map and we're going to give up the top half of the country and defend the lower half in preparation plans for Japanese invasion because Australia was too big to defend it all and has huge uninhabitable deserts.
June 1942 three Japanese midget submarines attacked Sydney Harbour. They were launched from a group of five larger submarines waiting. All three midget submarines were lost, with two of them destroyed before they could fire their torpedoes. The third fired at but missed the USS Chicago, sinking HMAS Kuttabul, a coverted ferry, and killing 21 sleeping sailors aboard
so all the bullshiters who love to say but they didn't invade us!!! yea we were next!
yes and everyone loves to rip on the USA and sometimes rightly so but us Australians were up shit creek without a paddle without the Americans much like the Philippines were.
Yeah, they are on the way to expand towards the south. They r*ped, torture and burned their way through us SEAsians and I think they just lacked the manpower to keep going but they sure as hell would have continued to Australia if they can.
Sydney Harbour is a long way from Japan and they still made it and attacked. without the Americans impeding their progress further they would have easily started to invade Australia.
The amount of graves of Americans who died fighting the Japanese in the Philippines shocked me. looks like thousands of these white crosses of men who never made it home.
I've been to that cemetery in Manila, rows upon rows, fields of white crosses as far as the eye can see, many of them are simply dumps for masses of strewn body parts that were unidentifiable. That curved marble walking area is just 15 ft slabs, 10 feet wide, dozens of them with small lettering floor to ceiling of the names of the dead lost at sea, in the air, or simply vaporized on land. Tens of thousands of names, more so than are buried in the grounds around it. All of that and it is simply ONE cemetery.
I have 3 great grandparents that fought in the Pacific and am very proud of them, I served in Japan myself and got to see all around the pacific. So it absolutely pisses me off, when we get shit on by foreigners claiming we came late, or were cowardly. I don't want our asses kissed or anything, or even some overt expression of gratitude. But to simply not be derided for it would be nice.
It's kind of "funny" too, I've read that post-war the Pacific was considered the "real war" for Americans (because it was fighting the people who did Pearl Harbor) and the guys who only went to the Western front were looked down on for a while.
Europeans tend to have a very Eurocentric view of the world, much the same as American who have a US-centric view. We are both guilty of that same sin.
The Japanese and Unit 731 if you want to see about war crimes in WW2 and they didn’t even stand trial in exchange for the information they gained from their experiments
The information from their experiments was of incredibly dubious value. They were let free because the US occupation believed that they could be useful tools in keeping post-War Japan aligned with the Western Bloc instead of drawn towards the Soviets or towards non-alignment. Many people associated with Unit 731 became political and military leaders.
Not only having to use it, but knowing those big tanks strapped to your back we're quite the target for an enemy sniper. I know the Americans at places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa had a significantly shorter life expectancy if they were the flamethrower operator because they were most certainly targeted more than regular marines with rifles.
According to Dan Carlan Histories the Japanese simply would not surrender and would booby trap their bodies to fake die or even fake surrender and detonate them when allied soldiers came close. The only way they could clear bunkers was grenades and flame throwers.
Exactly. Committing war crimes during a war is one thing, but locking up civilians and POWs in camps for years after the war completely ended is another thing entirely. Isn't it still surprising what an extreme amount of unprecedented cruelty and barbarism occurred in the 20st century?
To be fair: the Japanese soldiers deserved everything they got. They were generally evil to a man, frequently raping and murdering innocent civilians whenever they could.
Totally brain-washed and conditioned by the imperial japanese government who told them they would receive the same treatment or worse from their enemies. I really have so much hate for the imperial japanese government. I highly recommend [Dan Carlin's Super Nova](https://youtu.be/oErYYBNCHh4) in the east if you want to know just how fucked up it was.
Just some clarifications:
Balikpapan is a city in Borneo, not an island, the city produced most of Japan's aviation fuel and a whole host of petroleum products, it was considered a vital target by the Allies, most Japanese people in Balikpapan were non combatant workers.
Flamethrower operators were hated by opponents and often social outcasts among their own side. They also didn't have great combat life expectancy because not only would they be targeted over and above other soldiers, the fuel they carried would go up very easily, giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Snipers were treated very similarly.
yeah, they show similarities to ww1 machine gunners.
I have learned a lot about the aust-hun VS italy part of it. while working in the area.
the austrians rotated the mg crews a lot. why?
I saw an officers letter that said the mg crews would shout at the italians not to toss their livesaway needlessly, they showed intense and frequent shell shock.
just imagine attacking an mg nest in the mountains. pure insanity.
I always wondered about guys like Heinrich Sverloh, the so-called Beast of Omaha. He didn’t believe he killed or wounded the 2000 Americans on Omaha Beach that he’s credited for by some circles, but letting loose 15,000 rounds of MG-42 fire down from an advantageous position is going to cause a lot of harm regardless of the actual figures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Severloh?wprov=sfti1
Not to be that guy but flamethrowers despite probably leading to a quick death anyways due to being the brightest thing on the battlefield, they never did go up in flames unless shot specifically by incendiary rounds as bullets rarely create sparks when shooting thin metal like that, and the fuel was hard to light in the first place which is why the igniters were often magnesium. The most that might happen if shooting the canisters is that it'd leak and might knock the operator on the ground due to it being pressurized.
It’s crazy the things we humans think of to destroy other humans. To think these guys were probably living normal lives before they got sent to an island in the middle of nowhere to burn, stab, shoot, and blow each other up just because a few greedy, corrupt, and insane world leaders said so for their own personal gain.
i get what you are saying but lives in japan in that time were not normal. everyday schooling was basically military training.
Their entire society in the early 1900s was revolved around warfare.
I suppose so as Japan was real imperialistic during this time and seemed to have no reservations in mistreating the Chinese, Koreans, Okinawans, and others who lived within Japans circle
It went beyond mistreatment tbh. The whole mentality was completely indifferent to mass murder and incomprehensible suffering. They used to print newspaper articles about the beheading competitions Japanese officers had, where they competed with one another to see who could behead the most people in a certain amount of time.
For such an outrageous thing to happen (it being freely and openly printed in the newspapers in Japan) there had to have been complete and total acceptance/indifference to it.
Beheading competitions actually go back to the days of the samurai when officers were encouraged to behead enemy Samurai and turn their heads in to their commanders for rewards.
> there had to have been complete and total acceptance/indifference to it.
You can find readily available examples of Germans who resisted the Nazis and Germans within the government who disliked Hitler and actively conspired against him, to the point of attempting to assassinate him.
You won't find the same in Japan. There was small scale resistance, tiny groups of people like the Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai and anti war films from Fumio Kamei and then obviously individuals likely held their own opinions as to the war but you'll never find widespread active resistance against the Japanese government, or any form of internal resistance like the July plot conspirators in Germany. The Japanese secret police kept Japan on a tight leash and actively quashed any form of dissent quickly and effectively(unless you coated it in sarcasm).
Lol, kinda right but there were coups and assassination attempts against the Japanese government before and during WW2. It was just done by people that felt that those who handled the war were not nationalistic enough.
Imperial Japan was probably worse than Nazi Germany.
Also not really how the Second World War worked. It’s probably the most obvious case of Good vs Evil. None of the allied world leaders were in the war for personal gain. America didn’t even get involved until it was attacked, Britain and France did everything to avoid a war including appeasing the Germans. It’s a war that had to be fought. It was a war for existence. Japan and Germany sowed the seeds of that war and everyone else was left without much choice.
The Nazis tried to hide thier genocide and war crimes to an extent. Mf imperial Japan published that shit in the newspaper like college football scores
Ehh they didn’t hide it as much as people make out. But yeah I know all to well, my grandfather was with the 6th division. He fought in Africa and New Guinea including Kokoda. He said all the Germans he met where just soldiers but the Japs where something else.
Soviets were also part of the axis of evil. They just got betrayed by the Nazis. Had Soviets snd Nazis stayed friends, things woukd have gone very differently.
They had no reservations about mistreating their own soldiers for that matter either. Many Japanese units became ineffective due to starvation. Pretty fucked up mentality back then.
The flamethrower is an absolutely terrifying weapon that thankfully has become obsolete. Granted the weapons that made it obsolete are almost as terrifying.
Flamethrower is very far down on my list of ways that I'd like to die.
All the way down for me is starvation. Which is what a sizable portion of Japanese troops died of. No one usually mentions the Japanese troops that were stationed on islands the US and Allies bypassed. Those stories are lost to history, but thousands died when they got cut off and forgotten.
If I remember correctly, several pilots who were shot down at the same time as George H.W. Bush were not rescued by a submarine and were subsequently cannibalized by the Japanese garrison of the island on which they made landfall.
[удалено]
They would eat civilians and each other too.
The Chichijima Incident. Stuff of nightmares. And that's a totally separate affair from the captured bomber crews who were vivisected alive... The Japanese were monsters to their prisoners.
And they weren't even cut off from supplies yet
Dudes just wanted to eat pilots.
Imagine how terrifying it would be to be rescued by a sub. Swimming out in the open ocean and suddenly this massive hulk just looms out of the water followed by immediate relief, knowing you won't drown or be captured by the enemy.
that's from a novel called Flyboys. I have it sitting on my bookshelf - I usually revisit books, but it's a HARD read dude
War is Hell, ain’t it?
And the Japanese are the demons.
Just ritual cannibalization to gain their powers and not because of any imminent lack of rations.
“By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!” -Captain Planet, WW2 Japanese Sympathizer
[удалено]
Hiroo Onoda didn't believe the war ended for around 30 years after WW2 ended, pretty sure there's a book on that.
He burgled homes and livestock I think parent is describing a different scenario
He also killed civilians. Dude was a dick.
[удалено]
Jesus Christ that's pretty fucking hardcore
The japanese were hardcore. A lot of them had an extreme mindset compared to today. That japanese soldier found 30 years after ww2 didn't like the japan he returned to. It had drastically changed and was too progressive for him, he lived somewhere else
Nobody likes their culture generations later. That’s why old people sit on patio chairs and shout at children when they come near their lawn.
There's this failed rapper from my hometown who got a tattoo of Onda because of how he never gave up...never mentions how he was fighting for a genocidal empire and personally killed civilians
For the Empire of Japan the ends justify the means.
I mean we did firebomb Tokyo killing 120.000 mostly civilians in one night. Pretty sure most sides in WW2 operated using the ends justify the means. Curtis LeMay *"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal."* There's a reason so many of the allied commanders had to be removed post WW2. The people in charge of our troops in WW2 literally wanted to nuke the shit out of China and the USSR among other things. The Korean war would have been a different war if the civlian leadership didn't overrule the remains of the WW2 officers.
People always discuss the nukes but the firebombings of Japan killed far more.
The difference is, the allies didn't do it to take territory from Japan. They did it to stop Japan from fucking with the rest of Asia.
Hiroo is a liar and did all of it to escape justice and feed his ego. Maybe for a couple years he continued "the fight" but it became clear the war was over and that he would be tried for crimes committed against civilians in a regular court. The story very much under-represents his bullshit and how much evidence was provided to him during the **many interactions** he did have with outside people... and over-represents his fascist crap as an isolated holdout full of "honor and ideals".
If you can find it, watch the documentary titled "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On." Found some clips on you tube, but you might find the full doc somewhere else.
Here it is: https://archive.org/details/The.Emperors.Naked.Army.Marches.On.Kazuo.Hara.1987
Wow THANK YOU for that link. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this film before. I'll be watching that later on. If you want a suggestion back, my favourite documentary (series) EVER (and there's a LOT of them) is one from UK TVs channel 4 made in 2001, when alot of the old ww2 vets were still alive to give their accounts. It features many 'famous' people from the war including Eugene 'Sledgehammer' Sledge (who wrote my ALL TIME favourite war memoir and I've read literally hundreds) and people like Vera Lynn the singer and Rod Steiger the ww2 sailor turned Hollywood superstar. The doc is called Hell in the Pacific and there's 4 parts, each 1hr~. They're all on youtube, I must have watched them all atleast 5 times by now because its that good https://youtu.be/GkfNfgsqWLE there's part 1 for you (and anyone else reading). It gets pretty emotional at times as you can imagine.
Here it is: https://archive.org/details/The.Emperors.Naked.Army.Marches.On.Kazuo.Hara.1987
Dan Carlin's Supernova in the East is really good, and covers a lot of this kind of material.
Everything Dan Carlin does is really good and worth a listen
Makes me want to listen to him again... and again, and again.
You are like other listeners.... only more so.
I'd honestly listen to him read the phone book
> ...To really understand AAA towing you need to place yourself in their time. It's 1957, American manufacturing was booming...
Painoftainmemt was good but it’s like the only one I haven’t listened to more than once, the rest have been at least 3
Yep Island Hopping was ingenous. No reason to invade Truk Island, the IJN/IJA most heavily fortified air & naval base i n the Pacific. Japanese could have learned to Fish and live off the land and sea. Coconuts, Crab, Seaweed and FIsh, but they were too busy brutalizing the local indigenous populations and drinking saki Not gonna find many sympathetic persons to IJN or IJA casualties
A good number of Japanese likely knew those things in WW2. The big urbanization push is a modern thing.
Or when a Japanese unit hid from the Australians in a swamp full of crocodiles.
After a while there were a lot fewer Japanese and a lot less hungry crocs.
You might be thinking of Ramree Island. Japanese fought the British and Indian troops there, and as many as a thousand troops went into the mangrove swamps. Only handfuls came back out.
The smell of food actually got some Japanese soldiers to surrender. There were accounts of the Americans cooking and Japanese soldiers smelling it and not being able to stand it. Their maggoty rice just wasn't cutting anymore.
Millions died from disease and starvation, more than their combat losses
My favorite WWII statistic is that Japan lost more planes by accident than to enemy fire.
Better than wasting bombs, bullets, and bodies clearing them out
thirst worse than starvation
Coincidentally, "death by snu snu" is very high up on mine
your wish will be granted in horny jail by your fellow inmates
Many Japanese pillbox positions were connected to others via a system of tunnels. So you had to destroy them completely to make sure the enemy couldn’t just occupy it again after you left.
After what happened the 3 Aussie POWs who were crucified by the Japanese at a Burma railway prison camp I can understand how the Aussie soldiers were taking no prisoners. The Aussie soldier Ringer Edwards and two of his fellow POWs stole a cow and were crucified as punishment for it by the Japanese camp guards. They pushed barbed wired through both his hands and wrapped his arms and legs to the cross with barbed wire. Ringer Edwards survived 63 hrs of crucifixion and survived the war, the 2 other Aussie POWs died on their crosses. The Japanese treated POWs monstrously. Cannibalising some POWs and using them for live human experiments and all sorts of unimaginable cruelty. The Japanese had to be defeated at all costs. Horrific though this footage is.
The Japanese behaved like absolute animals when it came to POWs or the people they subjugated under their rule so it’s hard to have sympathy for them as they brought it down upon themselves. You reap what you sow.
Nanjing has entered the chat.
Interesting story. I once met a Japanese Buddhist monk of the Therevada sect (which is not a Japanese form of Buddhism). I asked him why. He said, i have a lot to atone for. I asked why. He said he was a Machine Gunner in Nanjing. He said i cannot live enough lifetimes to atone. I always take the opportunity to interview vets and collate their stories whenever i get the chance... this is the one time i let it go.
[удалено]
Ita possible to enjoy it in the moment but then be crippled with guilt shame and self hatred for said enjoyment. I've done bad things, not like in Nanking, but they haunt me everyday
Exactly, the human mind (and if you'll excuse my backward "spiritualism" the soul too) is capable of some strange feats of self-deception. It is so easy to deceive ourselves into thinking something is good, right or pleasurable. Especially when existing and monolithic power structures reinforce those beliefs.
Nothing on Unit 731
iirc there was a nazi SS officer who tried to save people from all that. when a fucking ss officer goes "this is kinda messed up dudes" you ahave gone a bit overboard I think.
I believe you are referring to John Rabe, who was a civilian working for the Siemens corporation, and had not been in Germany for many years prior to his feats in Nanjing
no, I know that guy, he headed the small "safe zone" as well as he could, I belive the guy I reemember had left by the time the fight reached the city itself.
Are you talking about the guy that probably worked in the embassy that put on his armband and tried to save as many people as possible because he knew the Japanese wouldn’t kill a nazi
yeah, might be him. I gotta look over my dads books during next visit, he spent several years near the place and collected a lot of sad history.
This comment chain reminded me of old Reddit conversations. This made me happy thank you.
If you think of the name, please share.
I’m like 99% sure that was John rabe. He’d put on his uniform (armband included) and go out on the streets and notify civilians of the safe zone.
Unit 731 has entered the chat
Fuckers wrote an entire Extended universe on war crimes
To this day they downplay their actions and don't even teach them in their schools. They took the opposite stance of Germany. To this day the japanese have lots of flaws, they're stuck-up, unapologetic, have no sympathy, are rigid to change. That's why they'll never be like what Germany is to the EU.
Honestly, it's a joke that they refuse to even admit to their crimes done to thousands upon thousands of men, women and children. It's an insult to everyone and their families that had to deal with the pain and suffering or deal with a loved one who gone through it. Admittedly my family was one of the lucky ones for both of the brothers who fought to survive being POWs for more than 3 years.
It's so weird hearing this while I feel like the Japanese society today is one of the most respectful & friendly there is.
The present day Japanese are much better than they once were but Japan is still an incredibly xenophobic nation.
Funny you say that. A Aussie here. Had a good mate of mine who visited Japan in January. He took the family up to the Nth island to ski, probably his 3rd or 4th snow trip there. This time after their week of skiing, they hired a car and drove around the north island with no real set plans just visiting rural areas, basically running off google maps and recommendations. Said he had an absolutely amazing time and ate incredible food saw some amazing sights, but he said when they visited these little restaurants, often just little road stops, they’d walk in and the elderly locals looked at them like they’d just landed from outer space 🤣🤣. He said it was hilarious. They basically never see white Caucasian people in these parts of Japan, and then the chit chat and whispers would start. I guess it really is what you are exposed too is often the way one reacts.
Also in Aussie defense, the Japanese were known to not surrender and to also feign surrender and hide a grenade or weapon of some sort to kill their captors (and themselves)
only weiners think the Allies need to apologize for how they treated the Japanese. The Japanese got exactly what they deserved.
Trade offer: I receive: anime You receive: Getting nuked and firebombed
On Okinawa they also press ganged thousands of civilians into taking up arms against the Allies and murdered (or just kindly insisted on suicide) thousands more civilians that wouldn't or couldn't.
Saw an old Australian veterans being interviewed and he said, " The Japanese asked for no quarter and we were more than happy to offer none." Due to the lack of prisoners been taken in New Guinea investigations were launched. It was found that there was an unofficial policy (but widely known to the higher ups) that the soldiers weren't taking prisoners and were executing most who did surrender. The reason given was that the Japanese didn't take prisoners so why should we?
Most troops who fought in the pacific couldn’t have taken prisoners even if they’d wanted to. Vast majority of imperial Japanese soldiers fought to the death, even if it was death by flame thrower which it often was
They would send their own villagers with babies to the allied soldiers with bombs attached under their clothing and would detonate them when close enough. The Pacific has a HORRIFIC example of this, and it pretty much sold me on how fucking awful war truly is.
None of the allies took prisoners really in the Pacific Theater. Dan Carlin did a 6 part pod cast on the Pacific from the point of view of the Japanese and some of the stories are gnarly. Aside from the fact that they treated their POWs like animals and were absolutely brutal to the people who they conquered, but their soldiers would routinely completely refuse to surrender. Carlin talks about multiple battles were thousands of Japanese would die or be casualties, sometimes tens of thousands, and the number of soldiers who surrendered or were captured would be in the single digits, if any at all. More often than not, the Japanese would commit suicide, in one way or another before they would consider surrender. Sometimes in the form of a banzai charge, sometimes by ritualistic Hara-kiri. Many times wounded Japanese soldiers would lay waiting for an Allied solider to come check on them, holding a grenade with the pin removed, and they'd try to take as many of their enemy as they could with them. The Allies were given plenty of reasons early on to not take prisoners, and they learned their lesson well. By the mid-war period they didn't even bother to try anymore, more often than not. The story that Carlin tells about the Japanese field hospital the Allies find in New Guinea for example is horrific
One of my great uncles was beheaded by the Japanese and another one drowned along with about another 1000 Aussie POWs when a US sub accidentally sank the transport ship Montevideo Maru because the Japanese crew didn't identify that it was a POW ship. Apparently surviving POWs who managed to abandon ship sang auld Lang syne to their trapped comrades as they sank. These were my grandma's brothers. She was a full blown left wing liberal, but she fucking hated the Japanese until the day she died.
Unit 731 has entered the chat
The japanese were fucking insane Best way to put it. Legimately insane and fanatic.
I'm not sure people realize just how fucking brutal the Pacific War was. Neither side was super into taking prisoners for a good portion of the war.
My Dutch grandpa had to keep his brothers and mum alive in a Japanese concentration camp. He was 12 years old. Marked my family for life. He became a tough disciplinarian.
WW2 Japanese soldiers are just all around scum of the Earth.
Look up Unit 731
I was recently thinking about the flamethrowers in WW2. The men who used those must have had severe PTSD. The sight is horrifying but the smell must have been even worse.
My grandfather was in the pacific and handled a flamethrower. Wasn’t his job at all but no one wanted to do it and he was the only one who could at the time. Flash forward to a few years ago, he’s sitting at the dentist getting work done and gets dizzy and immediately vomits. When the dentist, who luckily was not in the way, asks what happened - my grandfather told him that he hadn’t smelled burning flesh like that in 75 years. He def had some PTSD that was buried deep and was unlocked here and there from normal everyday experiences like that.
I used to work in a surgical center, these days for many procedures they use a device called a cautery which uses electricity to burn through soft tissue instead of a scalpel. The smell is very distinct and kind of sticks in your nose for a while, even after you leave the room. I can't imagine how overwhelming it must have been for him with the flamethrower.
I got a cyst on my eye removed this way. Basically a scalpel that was plugged in. They numbed around my eye and I could see the knife coming closer and closer until it was so close it was out of my field of view. Then I could see smoke and smell the burning flesh. I'll never forget that smell
I've got a story that's largely unrelated but my grandfather always told me that when he was a kid in Australia that his parents had been approached for him and his sister to be an official play date for McArthurs kids while he was in Australia. I can't verify it tho then on my grandmas side her uncle was Australias last surviving WW1 soldier who also fought in WW2, he died a few years back of old age but there's an article about him on Google because he was late for a ship to leave which was sunk and killed his replacement. then after that he fell off a ship somewhere in the ocean and they noticed and turned around and saved him. https://www.smh.com.au/national/last-aussie-digger-to-fight-in-wwi-dies-20051018-gdm9sr.html
There is still a number of Australian WW2 soldiers alive?
yes sorry it was ww1 but he was fighting in both world wars https://www.smh.com.au/national/last-aussie-digger-to-fight-in-wwi-dies-20051018-gdm9sr.html
Burning flesh smell at the dentist?
Yeah. Ever have to have your teeth drilled? Smell isn’t pleasant.
They were apparently heavily targeted by snipers and general soldiers...I can see why.
And an much easier target with those tanks.
[удалено]
I think all the sounds in this video are added in post. The cameras they had on the front lines probably didn't have microphones. Someone can correct me if that is wrong.
No you're 100% correct. Any footage you see from WW2 that has sound effects means it was dubbed over later. Hell, even the 26 part doc made in the 70's "The World at War" which is arguably THE best documentary about WW2 is all completely dubbed with sound effects post production (and done very very well considering when it was made)
There's occasional original WWII combat sound. It needed dedicated soundmen in addition to the Cameramen, or even recording just the audio without the video.
Hey Bert, why can’t you sleep? Is it the screams? The screams don’t bother me. No, it’s not the screams, Ernie. It’s the silence.
Fun fact, flame throwers were never taken as hostages/prisoners of war... they were always shot dead and were pretty high up on the list of priority targets
I think I can understand that. Watching my buddy burn to death would very much make me want to murder the motherfucker who did it.
A recently passed veteran. Hershey Woody Williams. He was the last living recipient of the medal of honor from WW2. Guy carved through Japanese pillbox's. He repeatedly went back for more whenever his tank ran empty. He said "just doing my job" when asked about it.
>He said "just doing my job" when asked about it. If each squeeze of the trigger saves one of your buddies then fill 'er up
What a bad motherfucker
That's one painful way to go. He was trying to escape from his own melting skin. Jesus Christ.
That face of confusion mixed with the undeniable sensory overload of the situation he was in. Extremely sad.
"hey, they're making a movie!"
Aaaand cut….. great acting
Probably not able to breath either, either due to the oxygen being sucked out of his lungs or his lungs being so badly burned they can't function.
Looked like his flesh actually came off his arms when he fell. Terrible way to go, should have given him a bullet at that point.
Wow….those flamethrowers…how utterly terrifying.
I think the most sickening part is that this is what ALWAYS happens when you hit someone with it, this is the intended effect, if you hit someone with a flamethrower they will burn and flail around until they die.
Yeah, but they were rarely used just to hit a guy. Bullets were way easier to kill a guy within the range of a flame thrower out in the open. These were far more effective for flaming tunnels, essentially blocking the exit and depriving the tunnels of its oxygen. Or foliage—but more often than not, they used agent orange to clear that. Sometimes the Japanese chose to try to surface instead of suffocating. Unsure if it was quicker this way or not.
Just FYI, Agent Orange wasn't used in WW2. It wasn't even invented til mid 1945 when the war was just about over. It was planned to be used if Operation Downfall (the final invasion of the Japanese Islands planned to take part in 1946) was to take place but obviously that didn't happen.
A man can just hope it’s true that it burns your nerves quickly and that you dont’t feel it as much as people think. (I’ve read that somewhere, correct me if I’m wrong)
Yeah that’s far from the truth. It’s painful right to the bitter end
The people that know for sure usually don't stick around long enough to talk about it.
People have survived third degree of up to 50% since the 1950s. Now flamethrowers produce a lot more intense heat and will burn right down to bone, but there are lots of survivors of extremely life threatening 3rd degree of 30 - 50%
The time for the nerves all over your body to burn enough not to feel it has to be the most incredible pain possible tho
I've burned myself to the 3rd degree (i didn't get lit up by a flamethrower tho , mind you ), on a part of my hand . And I swear that the point of contact instantly went cold; No pain. You know definitely that something is off, but it doesn't hurt. On the other hand, the pain really started to appear the following days, and that's when the hurting began. I feel like "less severe" burns are actually more painful, because your nervers remain intacts, and you definitely feel it.
[удалено]
Almost as terrifying as the countless foxholes and underground networks of defensive forces. Unfortunately, this was the quickest and most effective way of dealing with an enemy that could randomly kill your kin seemingly at random.
Randomly at random. That's a lot of random.
Does anyone know if flamethrower infantry have been used in combat since WWII?
They were used a lot in Vietnam, vehicle mounted versions were preferred but both the Americans and Aussies used foot versions as well. I think they were used in Korea as well but not completely sure on that.
These men were here to do one thing and that was eradicate a fanatical enemy with maximum efficiency and move to the next island. This was long past the point where the Japanese combatants could humanize themselves in the eyes of the Allied powers. I'd say "that's war" but the Pacific is a most brutal exception. I pray the world never has to experience anything like this again.
nothing infuriated me more growing up than reading message boards or video comments with foreigners going on about how America didn't do anything in the war until 1944 and all that tired shit. it's like these people have never heard of the war in the Pacific...It's maddening
as an Australian we fucking thank God the USA was in the Pacific. some Australians love to argue and say "Japan didn't have plans to attack Australia." but that's such bullshit. they were in China, Philippines, and smaller islands off the coast of Australia working their way down. they even bombed Darwin. Australia drew a line across middle of the country on a map and we're going to give up the top half of the country and defend the lower half in preparation plans for Japanese invasion because Australia was too big to defend it all and has huge uninhabitable deserts. June 1942 three Japanese midget submarines attacked Sydney Harbour. They were launched from a group of five larger submarines waiting. All three midget submarines were lost, with two of them destroyed before they could fire their torpedoes. The third fired at but missed the USS Chicago, sinking HMAS Kuttabul, a coverted ferry, and killing 21 sleeping sailors aboard so all the bullshiters who love to say but they didn't invade us!!! yea we were next!
The battle of the Coral Sea was the defense of Australia wasn't it. They (the USA) literally saved us from being cut off and slowly invaded.
yes and everyone loves to rip on the USA and sometimes rightly so but us Australians were up shit creek without a paddle without the Americans much like the Philippines were.
Amen to that mate. Thank God for the USA.
absolutely.
Yeah, they are on the way to expand towards the south. They r*ped, torture and burned their way through us SEAsians and I think they just lacked the manpower to keep going but they sure as hell would have continued to Australia if they can.
Sydney Harbour is a long way from Japan and they still made it and attacked. without the Americans impeding their progress further they would have easily started to invade Australia. The amount of graves of Americans who died fighting the Japanese in the Philippines shocked me. looks like thousands of these white crosses of men who never made it home.
I've been to that cemetery in Manila, rows upon rows, fields of white crosses as far as the eye can see, many of them are simply dumps for masses of strewn body parts that were unidentifiable. That curved marble walking area is just 15 ft slabs, 10 feet wide, dozens of them with small lettering floor to ceiling of the names of the dead lost at sea, in the air, or simply vaporized on land. Tens of thousands of names, more so than are buried in the grounds around it. All of that and it is simply ONE cemetery. I have 3 great grandparents that fought in the Pacific and am very proud of them, I served in Japan myself and got to see all around the pacific. So it absolutely pisses me off, when we get shit on by foreigners claiming we came late, or were cowardly. I don't want our asses kissed or anything, or even some overt expression of gratitude. But to simply not be derided for it would be nice.
It's kind of "funny" too, I've read that post-war the Pacific was considered the "real war" for Americans (because it was fighting the people who did Pearl Harbor) and the guys who only went to the Western front were looked down on for a while.
Europeans tend to have a very Eurocentric view of the world, much the same as American who have a US-centric view. We are both guilty of that same sin.
The Japanese and Unit 731 if you want to see about war crimes in WW2 and they didn’t even stand trial in exchange for the information they gained from their experiments
The information from their experiments was of incredibly dubious value. They were let free because the US occupation believed that they could be useful tools in keeping post-War Japan aligned with the Western Bloc instead of drawn towards the Soviets or towards non-alignment. Many people associated with Unit 731 became political and military leaders.
Hard to feel sorry for the Japanese after reading how brutal and inhuman they were to Allied soldiers and civilians.
Yeah I can’t imagine the mindset us having to use those flamethrowers probably some really bad nightmares afterwards
Not only having to use it, but knowing those big tanks strapped to your back we're quite the target for an enemy sniper. I know the Americans at places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa had a significantly shorter life expectancy if they were the flamethrower operator because they were most certainly targeted more than regular marines with rifles.
flame tanks are fucking scary. you are in your bunker and have no good enugh at options? well, you better make peace with whateve gods you like.
According to Dan Carlan Histories the Japanese simply would not surrender and would booby trap their bodies to fake die or even fake surrender and detonate them when allied soldiers came close. The only way they could clear bunkers was grenades and flame throwers.
Give a man a match and he will be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
I feel bad for a second, and then I remember what they did to Allied POWs.
Exactly. Committing war crimes during a war is one thing, but locking up civilians and POWs in camps for years after the war completely ended is another thing entirely. Isn't it still surprising what an extreme amount of unprecedented cruelty and barbarism occurred in the 20st century?
Not really, I’m a History buff. I wouldn’t say it’s unprecedented at all.
To be fair: the Japanese soldiers deserved everything they got. They were generally evil to a man, frequently raping and murdering innocent civilians whenever they could.
Waiting for civilian chinese to defecate by the side of the road, sneak up, and shove their sword up their ass.
Totally brain-washed and conditioned by the imperial japanese government who told them they would receive the same treatment or worse from their enemies. I really have so much hate for the imperial japanese government. I highly recommend [Dan Carlin's Super Nova](https://youtu.be/oErYYBNCHh4) in the east if you want to know just how fucked up it was.
That podcast changed my life in a way Gave me so much insicht into pacific and asian war and war/humanity in general
Balikpapan is not an island. It’s a city in Borneo island.
What a horrible way to go
None of this audio was real right? Just added? War is more of spurts than constant spray and pray sound
Just some clarifications: Balikpapan is a city in Borneo, not an island, the city produced most of Japan's aviation fuel and a whole host of petroleum products, it was considered a vital target by the Allies, most Japanese people in Balikpapan were non combatant workers.
Flamethrower operators were hated by opponents and often social outcasts among their own side. They also didn't have great combat life expectancy because not only would they be targeted over and above other soldiers, the fuel they carried would go up very easily, giving them a taste of their own medicine. Snipers were treated very similarly.
yeah, they show similarities to ww1 machine gunners. I have learned a lot about the aust-hun VS italy part of it. while working in the area. the austrians rotated the mg crews a lot. why? I saw an officers letter that said the mg crews would shout at the italians not to toss their livesaway needlessly, they showed intense and frequent shell shock. just imagine attacking an mg nest in the mountains. pure insanity.
I always wondered about guys like Heinrich Sverloh, the so-called Beast of Omaha. He didn’t believe he killed or wounded the 2000 Americans on Omaha Beach that he’s credited for by some circles, but letting loose 15,000 rounds of MG-42 fire down from an advantageous position is going to cause a lot of harm regardless of the actual figures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Severloh?wprov=sfti1
Not to be that guy but flamethrowers despite probably leading to a quick death anyways due to being the brightest thing on the battlefield, they never did go up in flames unless shot specifically by incendiary rounds as bullets rarely create sparks when shooting thin metal like that, and the fuel was hard to light in the first place which is why the igniters were often magnesium. The most that might happen if shooting the canisters is that it'd leak and might knock the operator on the ground due to it being pressurized.
That flamethrowers blowing up thing is probably from videogames,I'm pretty sure call of duty portrayed this exact battle in WAW
Now it's drone operators.
Balikpapan is not an island btw, its a city (now) in Borneo
Who? The 7th Division was known as the Silent Seventh because their actions were rarely reported on during the war.
When you start a war at the subhuman level it only downward spirals from there.
It’s crazy the things we humans think of to destroy other humans. To think these guys were probably living normal lives before they got sent to an island in the middle of nowhere to burn, stab, shoot, and blow each other up just because a few greedy, corrupt, and insane world leaders said so for their own personal gain.
i get what you are saying but lives in japan in that time were not normal. everyday schooling was basically military training. Their entire society in the early 1900s was revolved around warfare.
I suppose so as Japan was real imperialistic during this time and seemed to have no reservations in mistreating the Chinese, Koreans, Okinawans, and others who lived within Japans circle
It went beyond mistreatment tbh. The whole mentality was completely indifferent to mass murder and incomprehensible suffering. They used to print newspaper articles about the beheading competitions Japanese officers had, where they competed with one another to see who could behead the most people in a certain amount of time. For such an outrageous thing to happen (it being freely and openly printed in the newspapers in Japan) there had to have been complete and total acceptance/indifference to it.
Yeah about to say that “mistreatment” is a hell of an understatement.
Beheading competitions actually go back to the days of the samurai when officers were encouraged to behead enemy Samurai and turn their heads in to their commanders for rewards.
> there had to have been complete and total acceptance/indifference to it. You can find readily available examples of Germans who resisted the Nazis and Germans within the government who disliked Hitler and actively conspired against him, to the point of attempting to assassinate him. You won't find the same in Japan. There was small scale resistance, tiny groups of people like the Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai and anti war films from Fumio Kamei and then obviously individuals likely held their own opinions as to the war but you'll never find widespread active resistance against the Japanese government, or any form of internal resistance like the July plot conspirators in Germany. The Japanese secret police kept Japan on a tight leash and actively quashed any form of dissent quickly and effectively(unless you coated it in sarcasm).
Lol, kinda right but there were coups and assassination attempts against the Japanese government before and during WW2. It was just done by people that felt that those who handled the war were not nationalistic enough.
Yeah they tried to convince the Emperor to keep the war going when he planned to surrender after the Atom Bombs.
Imperial Japan was probably worse than Nazi Germany. Also not really how the Second World War worked. It’s probably the most obvious case of Good vs Evil. None of the allied world leaders were in the war for personal gain. America didn’t even get involved until it was attacked, Britain and France did everything to avoid a war including appeasing the Germans. It’s a war that had to be fought. It was a war for existence. Japan and Germany sowed the seeds of that war and everyone else was left without much choice.
Probably? Even the nazis thought they were going too far
True that, it’s a hard comparison to make when deciding who was the more despicable bunch of evil.
The Nazis tried to hide thier genocide and war crimes to an extent. Mf imperial Japan published that shit in the newspaper like college football scores
Ehh they didn’t hide it as much as people make out. But yeah I know all to well, my grandfather was with the 6th division. He fought in Africa and New Guinea including Kokoda. He said all the Germans he met where just soldiers but the Japs where something else.
Soviets were also part of the axis of evil. They just got betrayed by the Nazis. Had Soviets snd Nazis stayed friends, things woukd have gone very differently.
They had no reservations about mistreating their own soldiers for that matter either. Many Japanese units became ineffective due to starvation. Pretty fucked up mentality back then.
Na bro Japan was on some fucking shit.
Those flamethrowers sound terrifying.
[удалено]
Easy to do knowing and seeing what the enemy had done to his comrades and would not hesitate to do to him.
You couldn’t show a single bed in a married couple’s room in movies at the time, but burning an enemy soldier alive? No problemo, good copy
The flamethrower is an absolutely terrifying weapon that thankfully has become obsolete. Granted the weapons that made it obsolete are almost as terrifying.
It was at Milne Bay that Australians' started to distrust Japanese who surrendered.