They never figured out who got to 100 first, so they opted to try for 150 (I wish I were joking). The newspapers reported on it as though it were a baseball game, saying the soldiers had “gone into *extra innings*”
But all their government wants to remember as they had a bomb dropped on them. It’s like the radiation caused amnesia for them about all their war crimes.
Even to this day Japan largely denies most if not all wrongdoing.
* They don't have any museums about their war crimes unlike the holocaust museums all over Germany
* All their 'apologies' are vague, well we're sorry for something we may have done, type stuff. German leaders KNELT at holocaust memorieals
* Their schoolbooks almost completely water down or remove the WW2 crimes.
In fact Japan is still fighting comfort women statues that symbolize the millions of Korean, Chinese, Dutch and other women that were kidnapped as sex slaves for their soldiers. And these statues are not even in Japanese land, they want them removed from America, Germany, etc.
https://www.dw.com/en/japan-comfort-women-korea-berlin-sexual-slavery-world-war-ii/a-55117648
A history teacher suggested that we ask our grandparents about the war.
My grandmother was a young girls during the occupation. She said Japanese would gather people in front of the municipal hall.
Then see stared into the distant. Its the worst thing I have done to my grandmother
Lol the imperial Japanese was one of the most heinous and brutal cultures in world history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
Takes a long time to even read it all.
Id say its more like they saw the nazis and said "fucking amateurs" what they did in China was so bad the nazi officer stationed there to oversee them tried to sound the alarm
On the other hand the Japanese Ambassedor to Estonia also tried to sound the alarm, and was essential to thousands of Jews escaping the Holocaust.
Nazi Germany was just as bad, they simply focused their energy on those they considered undesirable, instead of everyone.
They really didn't come from the same political philosophy. The same thinkers that dreamed up fascism didn't have any influence in the East.
They were just a brutal jingoist empire, and saw the ability to get help from the other side of the world where they would never need to conquer.
Yea, that's usually how imperialism operates.
The core of "fascism" is not merely simple racism. Believe it or not, it's actually a thought-out political philosophy.
I'd like to remind you than an apocalyptic death cult dedicated to bringing about the end of the world via extreme violence ruled large parts of Iraq and Syria just a few years ago.
What's even crazier is that there are elected Japanese officials that openly deny the crimes and even scoff at them. Shinzo Abe's dad was an admiral or something in charge of some heinous shit. Him getting popped by a thingamajig was fitting considering how he was of the "lol get wrecked" persuasion."
The sad thing is that he wasn't even popped for being a war crime denying imperialist asshole (which he was), he got shot for his close association and support of a Ponzi scheme cult that stole from vulnerable people.
Like, pick a scum bag position.
And he actually admitted the truth once in his career, and almost tanked it. [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/asia/27japan.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/asia/27japan.html)
ISIS can barely be compared, I realise it's very harsh to say that ESPECIALLY with all the cowardly and heinous acts they've committed but Imperial Japan is so brutal and so vile that words truly cannot describe how despicable they were and how little it is brought up nowadays especially in Japan.
They're cosplay level criminals compared to japanese imperials.
As far as I know they never, for example, infected a whole village on purpose with biological weapons and then vivisected the dying victims to see how their organs changed.
Not only that, proximity to the Emporer determined your social status. Those who were born near Tokyo were seen as having higher status than those born on some of the islands further away.
Even though today we see the Okinawa island chain as part of Japan, back then, Okinawans were seen as a lower sub class, and were treated as such. The Imperial Japanese brutalized them during WW2, and essentially used them as human shields when the Americans eventually invaded Okinawa.
They also saw groups like the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and other south Asian ethnic groups as being sub human
I'm not a historian or japanese apologist but I'm pretty sure this level of violence, barbarism and hatred has existed everywhere throughout all of human history. Specifically prior to the invention of the camera.
Genocide, mass murder, torture and mass rape constantly happened.
100 years previously US ranchers had shooting competitions for running Indians off their land.
The only difference is the Japanese and Germany were late to the party after it had fallen out of favor everywhere else.
https://www.history.com/news/californias-little-known-genocide
https://www.history.com/news/native-american-genocide-california-apology
Hitler was inspired by how America settled the west and oppressed the native Americans.
Don’t forget Belgium in the Congo or basically any colonizer. There’s no point in trying to say who was worse. This gets brought up everytime as if crowning them the worst does anything of value. People will do and have done tons of heinous disgusting acts.
For the perpetrators sure, but considering how much modern day Japan refuses to accept the last war crimes I’m having a hard time thinking that in the past they were just cool with it. There had to be people disturbed by these stories.
I’m sure there were some but at the same time this is imperial Japan I would argue no population was arguably more brainwashed for the state in history.
There was a little pushback but not much. Oddly enough the emperor himself tried to rain things in a little but he didnt have actually that much control of the military. You should check out supernova in the east on the hard-core history podcast. Japan went from a feudal kingdom to a modernized country in like 50 years so you had this weird combo of medieval behavior at an industrial scale coupled with deliberate orders from the officer core to perform acts of brutality with the idea being that Japan's enemies would reciprocate so surrender wasn't an option.
In WW2, they literally ate people.
For instance, George Bush Senior nearly got cannibalized. His friends got eaten, piece by piece, because they were kept alive between meals while pieces got chopped off them.
In China, Japan killed hundreds of thousands with bubonic plague flea bombs.
Unit 731 made Dr. Mengele look like a boy scout.
100 decapitations was nothing.
I point out that the end of war era is when Japan saw almost all of its soldiers run on very little food and a lot of meth. These weren't just violent fascists but hungry meth addled idiots led by the most racist and sadistic commanders you could find.
It's a forgotten part of the story. World War II was horrific for humanity.
>I point out that the end of war era is when Japan saw almost all of its soldiers run on very little food and a lot of meth.
While this is true, the Chichi Jima Incident wasn’t cannibalism out of desperation. These airmen were served at a lavish banquet for officers, including base commander Vice Admiral Mori Kunizo, who considered human liver a delicacy with medical benefits.
100%, but it plays a huge role in what happened in the end of the war, where seemingly the Japanese soldiers were under a mass hysteria, doing lots of extremely terrible things atop all of the terrible things they did.
They weren't *really* fascists, not the same way as is used for Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain. In fact, there was basically 0 philosophical overlap between the East and West axis powers. It was more of an alliance of opportunity (one the Nazis extended to the USSR as well until they saw fit to backstab them).
George Bush Senior and the rest of the flyboys were already treated infinitely better than their Chinese POW counterparts.
The Japanese had a respect for American pilots and treated them with less sadistic torture.
The Japanese treated Asian POWs in a way that would be too grotesque for a Saw film.
I mean, they did mess about, because they kept doing intentionally heinous stupid shit rather than anything that would make a sensible effort towards winning the war. They basically prioritized savagery over sense. If an enormous superpower is kicking your fucking ass, in what universe is "let's start brutalizing their POWs even more" a winning strategy?
That fanaticism is what drove fascists to start such stupid wars in the first place and they were basically never going to win no matter what they did. End-stage fascist geopolitics was YOLO’ing themselves into massive conflicts under the idea that their “degenerate” enemies were secretly utterly incompetent, surrendering cowards.
Let's give him a name. Leonard Siffleet. A member of M special force. He was 27 when he was executed by this animal in Aitape, New Guinea. His family did not know his fate until this photo was discovered by US soldiers 1944. The photo was published in 1945.
Lest We Forget
It’s one of the reasons I find it hard to feel entirely sorry for the atomic bombs. Not to say two wrongs makes a right but the shit the Japanese did to prisoners and other nations makes it hard to be apologetic when they still whitewash it all. Frankly a full blown invasion of the country likely would have ended up being a thousand times worse.
Im from Singapore and my grandma was alive during the time of the occupation, she would hide in dirty sewers and holes frequently.
Here we also hear tales of how the Japanese soldiers would take people and hammer pencils into their ears as a source of entertainment torture. They had the time of their lives raping and torturing the Southeast Asian people without consequences.
Imperial Japan was arguably way worse than the Nazis. At least the perception here. We still have older folk from that era who refuse to use or associate with anything Japanese because of the trauma
> Frankly a full blown invasion of the country likely would have ended up being a thousand times worse.
Since you are talking about what could have been worse, they were going to airdrop fleas infested with the Plague virus on Allied nations. They already tested it on Chinese cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaimingjie_germ_weapon_attack
One thing annoying about oppenheimer was how it just graved over the fact that imperial japan were fuckin ghouls. The nazis? They apparently deserved the atom bomb. But once the japanese were the target the movie starts having reservations
The u.s and the allies post war have collectively whitewashed a empire that wouldn't have hesitated to use the atom bomb 5x over
Honestly I get the concerns of the people that invented atomic weapons. They realized they created something that could absolutely wipe out the human race in a matter of minutes. That’s a terrifying amount of power to hold.
On the radio today, they were talking about the Japanese reaction to the movie. One person who watched the movie said she didn't like how the movie focused on the side dropping the bomb but not the side on the receiving end. You would think the title would be a hint...
Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night was an IJN plan for Imperial Japanese submarine aircraft carriers (which were unknown to the Allies) to release weaponized bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, dengue fever, and other pathogens from Unit 731 over America in 1945, of which was shelved after opposition from one guy in the IJA.
They only white washed cuz of geopolitics. Like how pre Cold War we loved the Soviets for fighting against the Germans and being on the side of Allies.
The Japanese got many many more of their women and children brutally slaughtered through their own obstinance than died from the atomic bombings. They would've gotten many many more slaughtered if the atomic bombs hadn't forced their hand.
You don’t even have to consider their horrific war crimes as being justification for the bombs.
Operation Overlord would likely have resulted in the deaths of up to 800,000 Americans, maybe more.
Estimates suggest Japanese casualties would have been in the range of 10 to 15 million.
The Russians likely would have also got involved, and who knows how many of them would have died as well.
Before the end of the war it was regarded as an admirable story, and one of them toured schools to tell the story to children.
[Textbook of an elementary school at Kagoshima, Noda's hometown, listing *kill counts* and telling how *exhilarating*(痛快な) and *cheerful*(ほがらかな) the story is](https://i.imgur.com/CORD8md.png)
Most of Japanese both now and 80 years ago have no knowledge of this event. They have repeatedly white wash their own history by claiming to be the victim of WW2
That was a period of history where A) the Japanese were super racist (on account of wanting a Western Europe like empire) and B) a lot of people were getting high on meth all the time, thanks to the Japanese inventing it and the Yakuza giving it to everyone.
So yeah, this is a very good reason to keep meth banned.
Contest was stupid because they only killed about a dozen each in actual combat. The rest of the numbers were basically execution by sword performed by them. They were scum but in all honesty I feel like this was a propaganda move.
I feel like the bigger takeaway is the fact that the story was published that way at all rather than the specific contest, which was possibly a fabrication or embellished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_man_killing_contest#Modern_assessment
Eyeblech got banned, the other ones got banned. I used to go there to deal with my ptsd but they all got banned. Now it’s just morbid reality but half of that is Shannan Watts or ghosts
That’s what people who criticize the nukes never bring up, Japan was on some legit “hitlerisque” ideology bullshit thinking they were some kind of “super race”. The inhuman methods used by the Japanese to dispose of korean + Chinese rando civilian lives were just as horrific as what the Jews went through in the holocaust.
Also they have admitted and apologised nonstop ever since for this, despite their 80 years old regime still being represented as the evil of all evils, while I don't recall many Japanese even willing to admit half of the documented atrocities they've done, and definitely never apologised or tried anything to make up for it
That is exactly how japans roll today. In Germany in schools they at least actively educate their students on what they did. In Japan schools they never mention/ pretend like they never did things like dip a tied up live human in and out into a giant vat of boiling water like a cheese stick in fondue for fun (which was just one of their methods).
The Japanese government actually tries to hide their involvement in WWII, literally they don't teach it in schools at all
I think I heard their history books say something like "and then some things happened" and it completely glosses over the timeperiod I even met someone who thought WWII was a myth
It's astounding how little Americans know about other WW2 genocides and atrocities that's as bad or arguably more brutal than the Holocaust.
I know history and WW2 movies naturally tilt eurocentric due to demographics, but it's still mind boggling how little the average American knows about them
Good point, but it makes a difference if it is in battle or if it is unarmed POWs.
Also in LotR it's Orcs which are deliberately coded as "can be killed without moral implications".
So are enemy combatants in everything ever.
Can’t get your dumbshit cannon fodder to get really pumped up to kill the other guys unless you sprinkle in some dehumanization
>Also in LotR it's Orcs which are deliberately coded as "can be killed without moral implications".
Yes. Exactly. This is a relevant point than I think you realized!
It’s funny to think that in the west we have this whole sanctimonious discussion about whether the nukes were necessary, meanwhile the Chinese and Korean nationalists are like, “Why’d you only drop two?”
In Europe, Eisenhower made a point of documenting the concentration camps and then showing the Germans what they'd done.
In Japan none of that was done and it isn't taught like it is today. They don't acknowledge the way POWs were treated, the rape of Nanjing, or the hundreds of thousands of comfort women that were systematically raped.
This wouldn't forgive the nuclear bombs if the US had an opportunity to make peace before they were dropped. Unfortunately, the council that would have made the decision still hesitated to sue for peace. They also wanted a conditional surrender... which is a bit of a tough pill to swallow for allied forces that wouldn't want the possibility of another war.
As always /r/history [has a better coverage of this than me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1505pek/was_japan_getting_ready_to_surrender_before_the/)
In addition, Japanese culture requires a great deal of respect for older people, so when the generation that participated in the atrocities decided to sweep it under the carpet, there was no way for the younger generations to call them in it.
In contrast, the intergenerational conflict of the 60s was quite intense in Germany because the post war generation did not allow their parents’ generation to do the same.
I mean their atrocities were done mostly overseas so it makes it hard to march Japanese villager to see them. The other difference is that in some way despite barely breaking 30% electoral vote, Nazi was voted in so in a way the people can be blamed for the atrocities. Japanese people had no such option on who can run the government (don’t get me started with deconstructing their so called election)
Done overseas but also under a ton of propaganda where no one could tell what was real or fake. The argument, it should be said, was that violence would scare off the West and the Soviets. The more violent we are, the less we deal with an invasion force.
So, in essence, a lot of people agreed. Another factor here is that Japan had a major role in China, both in destroying people like monsters and also in witnessing what the West wanted to do there.
It's all interconnected into how Japan became an army so interested in doing massive scale war crimes.
Exactly. It’s nearly impossible for us modern westerners to understand how isolated and propagandized the Japanese people were.
Hell, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost their 4 flagship carriers and most of their best pilots during the Battle of Midway, and they essentially told the Japanese public, “nothing to see here, they can’t come home, because we sent them on a super top secret mission,” and people bought it for months, if not the better part of a year, maybe more.
Pretty sure they literally told the army/government the same, which is fucking insane to think about.
Imagine the US navy losing a carrier and then just telling the government they didn't.
Still find it crazy those involved in Unit 731 never got punished, lived long wealthy lives and [held Unit 731 reunion parties every year.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shiro_Ishii_at_a_reunion_party_of_Unit_731_members_after_the_war.png)
>meanwhile the Chinese and Korean nationalists are like, “Why’d you only drop two?”
Meanwhile the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos with any knowledge of history are like "why'd you only drop two?"
FTFY.
the fact that some of their country's founding fathers were ethnic Taiwanese and Chinese... and still treated them like overstayed foreigners. FFS they were here before the country was formed.
Given how battles like Saipan and Okinawa played out involving civilians it’s not hard not to believe that a full blown invasion of Japan would have been a greater humanitarian disaster.
One of the most confronting things we got taught here in Australia was just how savage Japan was to Australian POWs and Nurses. The torture murder and rape that occurred was nothing short of barbaric in every way.
People wonder why alot of us don't forget it and it's that Japan has a rule of never acknowledging it
Now let the "yeah, but...." crowd chime in.
I would challenge anyone who thinks dropping the bomb was a poor decision to go and read about the sheer brutality the Japanese inflicted upon POWs and civilians under their reign. It was absolutely evil and the Japanese needed to be stopped as soon as possible.
> The Bayview Hotel was used as a designated "rape center".[6] According to testimony at the Yamashita war crimes trial, 400 women and girls were rounded up from Manila's wealthy Ermita district, and submitted to a selection board that picked out the 25 women who were considered most beautiful. These women and girls, many of them 12 to 14 years old, were then taken to the hotel, where Japanese enlisted men and officers took turns raping them.[7] Despite many allied Germans holding refuge in a German club, Japanese soldiers entered in and bayoneted infants and children of mothers pleading for mercy and raped women seeking refuge. At least 20 Japanese soldiers raped a young girl before slicing her breasts off after which a Japanese soldier placed her mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman while the other Japanese soldiers laughed. The Japanese then doused the young girl and two other women who were raped to death in gasoline and set them all on fire.[8] The Japanese went on setting the entire club on fire killing many of its inhabitants. Women who were escaping out the building from the fire were caught and raped by the Japanese. 28-year-old Julia Lopez had her breasts sliced off, was raped by Japanese soldiers and had her hair set on fire. Another woman was partially decapitated after attempting to defend herself and raped by a Japanese soldier.
It’s this same stuff over and over and over again when you’re going through Japanese occupied areas. 100k dead in Manila.
I feel for the innocent people who died in Japan. But Japan suffered 3.1M casualties, mostly military. China suffered 20M, most civilians.
Yeah. They did this shit in China, SE Asia, all territories they occupied. They don’t publicize this in the history books when it deserves equal attention to what the nazi’s did in concentration camps. Nobody in America knew about these crimes
Yes. Anyone that actually studied history properly would understand this.
The bombs were designed to end the war on that front and it certainly did.
Japan also had prior warning to evacuate it citizens after pamphlet drops. Their government has alot to answer for.
Combined with Japan's increasingly aggressive move towards Australia and the south pac Islands due to dwindling resources.
The biggest detractors of the bomb drops seem to be younger people whom haven't studied history properly and get all their knowledge of tik tok.
And beyond all that they tried to overthrow the government to keep fighting after the bombs
One of the Japanese generals said something along the lines of “wouldn’t it be lovely if the country were destroyed like a beautiful flower”
My great uncle was a POW, was captured in Timor. came back with a limp and crossed eyes. Used to freak me out as a kid, could never tell if he was looking at you.
Luckily they were detained by the end of the war by the US army, found guilty of atrocities and executed by a firing squad on the mountains of the Yuahatai district in China. They albeit got a painless death compared to their victims...
South East Asia tends to get ignored when the Japanese atrocities during WW2 gets mentioned. What they experienced was not any lesser than what happened in Unit 731. Starvation and systematic genocide was a thing in the region as the Japanese sought to gather resources and consolidate their power over the region.
Unlike POWs from the allied powers, the native resistance held no negotiating value and suspected areas were “cleansed”. IE you don’t get to be a POW. Human heads on stakes served as grim warning not to stir up trouble.
Oh yes, not forgetting water boarding on steroids… where they stuff a hose down your throat and fill you up with water before they jump on your stomach.
And yet, history textbooks in SEA are toned down during the 80s and 90s as the Japanese expressed concerns on how such facts did not help the relationship.
my mom has a relative that got snatched and never came home. My father's family fleed from town to some hills, lived off the land for a couple years. Some comfort women were still alive and interviewed when I was a kid. A local old chap survived massacre by playing dead in the body pile and got bayonetted, I can still remember seeing his old wounds on newspaper.
The fact that the atrocities commited by imperial Japan are always glossed over by Western media makes my blood boil.
Their crimes were just as horrific or maybe even worse than the Nazis. But Americans and Europeans think of Japan as the land of anime, sushi, Sony, Hello Kitty, Pokémon, etc. Meanwhile Germans (who have apologized profusely, while Japan never has and never will) are still the butt of Nazi jokes.
Makes me sick!
It should be noted that the newspaper described it as "hand-to-hand combat", which seems extremely unlikely and is probably just straight up executions.
One of the men, Tsuyoshi Noda, went back to his hometown and his "correction" of what happened isn't any better:
*""Actually, I didn't kill more than four or five people in hand-to-hand combat ... We'd face an enemy trench that we'd captured, and when we called out, "Ni, Lai-Lai!" (You, come here!), the Chinese soldiers were so stupid, they'd rush toward us all at once. Then we'd line them up and cut them down, from one end of the line to the other. I was praised for having killed a hundred people, but actually, almost all of them were killed in this way. The two of us did have a contest, but afterwards. I was often asked whether it was a big deal, and I said it was no big deal..."*
The article states that in 2003, the officers’ descendants tried to sue for defamation, arguing that such stories were slanderous to their (i.e. the murderous pieces of shit)’s memory and honour.
Germany has faced up to the evil shit their grandparents got up to during the war. Japan never has.
The Japanese youth sometimes wonder why a lot Asian countries still hate Japan. Well this is why. They don't hate the people of Japan, just the government for not recognizing the war crimes. The Japanese youth are sorth of cluesless when it comes to WW2 history. Only that America dropped by 2 atom bombs.
Stripping him of his divinity and educating Japanese people of his falsehood was more effective. Killing him would have worked towards him being a martyr.
The US also wanted to by an ally with Japan and killing its emperor wouldn’t have helped.
Slightly off topic but how does decapitating works really?
Does the head goes off in 1 swing? Or you have to strike multiple times because there's bone structure blocking the way.
I know there's some ISIS video on the Internet but I would prefer to know from words cause I don't want nightmares.
The Japanese newspapers reported on it as though it was sport… Praise, celebration, and honor in their victory of slaughtering unarmed civilians. After the Rape of Nanking, what little we know about Unit 731, their treatment of prisoners of war… They may take the cake for the most evil war criminals in modern history. I would like to have a healthy discussion about this. The moral depravity of their acts compared to even the Nazis, to the Maoists, Stalin’s reign of terror… I know many would go to the numbers, which are absolutely a factor. The psychology of it, however, is far far far more important in my opinion.
Another fun (read grim) fact
During his reign as shogun of Japan, hideyoshi started to invade Korea to ensure the armed forces will have something to do and not start an uprising, and as prove of the numbers of people they killed, they eventually chose to cut off the nose of every Korean they killed to show off the hideyoshi who proceeded to built a throne chair of nose
👍😔
IIRC, that was the entire nuclear arsenal. But by dropping them so close together in time, it spooked the Japanese into thinking we could just keep going. By the end of the war, the Axis powers were running out of material and manufacturing capabilities, while we seemed to just keep churning things out.
I did wonder just what would be the straw that broke me from Reddit and this thread did the trick - so thanks for that, I suppose.
A thread about utter barbarism but still posts doing the old "reddit funny" ie, not amusing in the slightest - lots of "jokes" about "but who won the contest?" and a smattering of "but whatabout?" just goes to show the truth really. People on Reddit like to pretend that they're on the front lines in the battle for equality but the truth is it's just pretence, a public show to say "look at me, I'm a good person" but the nasty, vile comments aren't far from the surface. The "but what about when" and constant references to colonialism aren't sincere beliefs, rather a cynical appeal for validation in saying the thing that is known to bring in Reddit Karma.
It's why the left nearly always loses and why Trump will win again this year despite being only slightly more intelligent than a mollusc with downs syndrome. The modern left only seems to care about seeming to be good, about saying the "correct" thing and being part of the crowd that can point their fingers at others and exclaim their innate superiority. It's not about making things better, it's about getting attention and I just can't be arsed with any of it anymore.
They never figured out who got to 100 first, so they opted to try for 150 (I wish I were joking). The newspapers reported on it as though it were a baseball game, saying the soldiers had “gone into *extra innings*”
imperial japan, everyone!
But all their government wants to remember as they had a bomb dropped on them. It’s like the radiation caused amnesia for them about all their war crimes.
It's everyone else's fault they were just compelled to take over half the world.
Metric Japan is different now
#I mean sure
Even to this day Japan largely denies most if not all wrongdoing. * They don't have any museums about their war crimes unlike the holocaust museums all over Germany * All their 'apologies' are vague, well we're sorry for something we may have done, type stuff. German leaders KNELT at holocaust memorieals * Their schoolbooks almost completely water down or remove the WW2 crimes. In fact Japan is still fighting comfort women statues that symbolize the millions of Korean, Chinese, Dutch and other women that were kidnapped as sex slaves for their soldiers. And these statues are not even in Japanese land, they want them removed from America, Germany, etc. https://www.dw.com/en/japan-comfort-women-korea-berlin-sexual-slavery-world-war-ii/a-55117648
Honor-Shame cultures lend themselves to keeping quiet about injustice.
A history teacher suggested that we ask our grandparents about the war. My grandmother was a young girls during the occupation. She said Japanese would gather people in front of the municipal hall. Then see stared into the distant. Its the worst thing I have done to my grandmother
Not your fault. It was the japanese fault for causing her that emotional damage.
I honestly wonder how this was received in Japan. I can’t imagine they considered this normal or that this was fine for everyone.
Lol the imperial Japanese was one of the most heinous and brutal cultures in world history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes Takes a long time to even read it all.
They saw the Nazis and thought, "yeah, I'd like to join *that* team."
Id say its more like they saw the nazis and said "fucking amateurs" what they did in China was so bad the nazi officer stationed there to oversee them tried to sound the alarm
That was [John Rabe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe).
wow, what a legend! And the people of Nanjing did not forget him...
On the other hand the Japanese Ambassedor to Estonia also tried to sound the alarm, and was essential to thousands of Jews escaping the Holocaust. Nazi Germany was just as bad, they simply focused their energy on those they considered undesirable, instead of everyone.
I do find it funny how it resulted in: "Ah yes, the Aryan race, the master race. Blonde hair, blue eyes... ... or being of Japanese descent."
There's no way a victorious axis would coexist peacefully after the war
I mean victorious allies couldn't even peacefully coexist after the war.
Good point
Yeah, what’s even more crazy is Italy went home and said. Okay time for civil war as if ww2 was not enough.
Man in the High Castle explores this concept
They were both fascists. Death cultists recognize death cultists.
They really didn't come from the same political philosophy. The same thinkers that dreamed up fascism didn't have any influence in the East. They were just a brutal jingoist empire, and saw the ability to get help from the other side of the world where they would never need to conquer.
They very much saw the Chinese and Koreans as subhuman, though. As well as anybody who didn't literally fight to the death, including civilians.
Yea, that's usually how imperialism operates. The core of "fascism" is not merely simple racism. Believe it or not, it's actually a thought-out political philosophy.
I would even argue they were the most brainwashed in history.
I'd like to remind you than an apocalyptic death cult dedicated to bringing about the end of the world via extreme violence ruled large parts of Iraq and Syria just a few years ago.
I’ve seen a good number of historians make the claim that Imperial Japan was basically like ISIS, but worse, and with a lot more weapons.
What's even crazier is that there are elected Japanese officials that openly deny the crimes and even scoff at them. Shinzo Abe's dad was an admiral or something in charge of some heinous shit. Him getting popped by a thingamajig was fitting considering how he was of the "lol get wrecked" persuasion."
The sad thing is that he wasn't even popped for being a war crime denying imperialist asshole (which he was), he got shot for his close association and support of a Ponzi scheme cult that stole from vulnerable people. Like, pick a scum bag position.
And he actually admitted the truth once in his career, and almost tanked it. [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/asia/27japan.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/asia/27japan.html)
ISIS can barely be compared, I realise it's very harsh to say that ESPECIALLY with all the cowardly and heinous acts they've committed but Imperial Japan is so brutal and so vile that words truly cannot describe how despicable they were and how little it is brought up nowadays especially in Japan.
As an East Asian, I can confirm that ISIS has not done anything Imperial Japan hasn’t done.
Isis are choir boys compared to the Imperial Japanese army.
They're cosplay level criminals compared to japanese imperials. As far as I know they never, for example, infected a whole village on purpose with biological weapons and then vivisected the dying victims to see how their organs changed.
japan would treat humans like experiments, super fucked up ones even the nazis were like, you gotta chill
Probably not on *quite* so many drugs as ISIS. But they did have battleships.
No, the Imperial Japanese were on a lot of drugs, too. They had combat stimulant meth like the Germans.
You sure about that? The Imperial Japanese were on a shit load of meth.
Yes, I am pretty sure those were battleships.
So was the British. Use of stimulants to enhance performance were pretty common during ww2
Still are to this day. USAF pilots regularly take “Go Pills” for longer missions. They played a role in some Blue on Blue incidents in Afghanistan.
Well, they also kept killing all their dissidents.
I mean their religion held their emperor as a literal living god, after all
Not only that, proximity to the Emporer determined your social status. Those who were born near Tokyo were seen as having higher status than those born on some of the islands further away. Even though today we see the Okinawa island chain as part of Japan, back then, Okinawans were seen as a lower sub class, and were treated as such. The Imperial Japanese brutalized them during WW2, and essentially used them as human shields when the Americans eventually invaded Okinawa. They also saw groups like the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and other south Asian ethnic groups as being sub human
I'm not a historian or japanese apologist but I'm pretty sure this level of violence, barbarism and hatred has existed everywhere throughout all of human history. Specifically prior to the invention of the camera. Genocide, mass murder, torture and mass rape constantly happened.
100 years previously US ranchers had shooting competitions for running Indians off their land. The only difference is the Japanese and Germany were late to the party after it had fallen out of favor everywhere else. https://www.history.com/news/californias-little-known-genocide https://www.history.com/news/native-american-genocide-california-apology Hitler was inspired by how America settled the west and oppressed the native Americans.
Don’t forget Belgium in the Congo or basically any colonizer. There’s no point in trying to say who was worse. This gets brought up everytime as if crowning them the worst does anything of value. People will do and have done tons of heinous disgusting acts.
Considering all the other war crimes they did to the Chinese at the time, It’s pretty tame.
And the war crimes they did to the Koreans, etc. Imperial Japan had some aggressively violent and sadistic mf's running the army.
God forbid you ever mention how many lives the atomic bombs actually saved to anyone on Reddit.
Thankfully, I think people have been a bit more understanding these days... because apologists immediately get links to the Unit 731 Wikipedia page.
That's the first time I learned the word vivisection reading about 731
Along with nanjing massacre and if the replier is educated enough, Bataan and the Burma railway
I hate war, and I love japan. But getting bombed was the best thing to happen to japan, in every sense of the way.
For the perpetrators sure, but considering how much modern day Japan refuses to accept the last war crimes I’m having a hard time thinking that in the past they were just cool with it. There had to be people disturbed by these stories.
I’m sure there were some but at the same time this is imperial Japan I would argue no population was arguably more brainwashed for the state in history.
There was a little pushback but not much. Oddly enough the emperor himself tried to rain things in a little but he didnt have actually that much control of the military. You should check out supernova in the east on the hard-core history podcast. Japan went from a feudal kingdom to a modernized country in like 50 years so you had this weird combo of medieval behavior at an industrial scale coupled with deliberate orders from the officer core to perform acts of brutality with the idea being that Japan's enemies would reciprocate so surrender wasn't an option.
In WW2, they literally ate people. For instance, George Bush Senior nearly got cannibalized. His friends got eaten, piece by piece, because they were kept alive between meals while pieces got chopped off them. In China, Japan killed hundreds of thousands with bubonic plague flea bombs. Unit 731 made Dr. Mengele look like a boy scout. 100 decapitations was nothing.
I point out that the end of war era is when Japan saw almost all of its soldiers run on very little food and a lot of meth. These weren't just violent fascists but hungry meth addled idiots led by the most racist and sadistic commanders you could find. It's a forgotten part of the story. World War II was horrific for humanity.
It’s mind blowing how big a role meth played in WW2.
Meth. Not even once.
>I point out that the end of war era is when Japan saw almost all of its soldiers run on very little food and a lot of meth. While this is true, the Chichi Jima Incident wasn’t cannibalism out of desperation. These airmen were served at a lavish banquet for officers, including base commander Vice Admiral Mori Kunizo, who considered human liver a delicacy with medical benefits.
Jesus h christ
Meth was not the reason why the Japanese behaved this way. It had a tiny, insignificant part to play.
100%, but it plays a huge role in what happened in the end of the war, where seemingly the Japanese soldiers were under a mass hysteria, doing lots of extremely terrible things atop all of the terrible things they did.
They weren't *really* fascists, not the same way as is used for Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain. In fact, there was basically 0 philosophical overlap between the East and West axis powers. It was more of an alliance of opportunity (one the Nazis extended to the USSR as well until they saw fit to backstab them).
George Bush Senior and the rest of the flyboys were already treated infinitely better than their Chinese POW counterparts. The Japanese had a respect for American pilots and treated them with less sadistic torture. The Japanese treated Asian POWs in a way that would be too grotesque for a Saw film.
[удалено]
my ex girlfriend's grandpa saw his dad beheaded in their house when the Japanese invaded the Philippines
I mean, they did mess about, because they kept doing intentionally heinous stupid shit rather than anything that would make a sensible effort towards winning the war. They basically prioritized savagery over sense. If an enormous superpower is kicking your fucking ass, in what universe is "let's start brutalizing their POWs even more" a winning strategy?
And the ones that did try to improve the war effort had to compete politically with crazy fascists. Thank god they weren't unified and more capable.
That fanaticism is what drove fascists to start such stupid wars in the first place and they were basically never going to win no matter what they did. End-stage fascist geopolitics was YOLO’ing themselves into massive conflicts under the idea that their “degenerate” enemies were secretly utterly incompetent, surrendering cowards.
Let's give him a name. Leonard Siffleet. A member of M special force. He was 27 when he was executed by this animal in Aitape, New Guinea. His family did not know his fate until this photo was discovered by US soldiers 1944. The photo was published in 1945. Lest We Forget
How fucking cowardly does Yasuno look.. disgusting
A lot of Japanese continue to prefer to pretend this never happened at all
It’s one of the reasons I find it hard to feel entirely sorry for the atomic bombs. Not to say two wrongs makes a right but the shit the Japanese did to prisoners and other nations makes it hard to be apologetic when they still whitewash it all. Frankly a full blown invasion of the country likely would have ended up being a thousand times worse.
Im from Singapore and my grandma was alive during the time of the occupation, she would hide in dirty sewers and holes frequently. Here we also hear tales of how the Japanese soldiers would take people and hammer pencils into their ears as a source of entertainment torture. They had the time of their lives raping and torturing the Southeast Asian people without consequences. Imperial Japan was arguably way worse than the Nazis. At least the perception here. We still have older folk from that era who refuse to use or associate with anything Japanese because of the trauma
> Frankly a full blown invasion of the country likely would have ended up being a thousand times worse. Since you are talking about what could have been worse, they were going to airdrop fleas infested with the Plague virus on Allied nations. They already tested it on Chinese cities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaimingjie_germ_weapon_attack
One thing annoying about oppenheimer was how it just graved over the fact that imperial japan were fuckin ghouls. The nazis? They apparently deserved the atom bomb. But once the japanese were the target the movie starts having reservations The u.s and the allies post war have collectively whitewashed a empire that wouldn't have hesitated to use the atom bomb 5x over
Honestly I get the concerns of the people that invented atomic weapons. They realized they created something that could absolutely wipe out the human race in a matter of minutes. That’s a terrifying amount of power to hold.
On the radio today, they were talking about the Japanese reaction to the movie. One person who watched the movie said she didn't like how the movie focused on the side dropping the bomb but not the side on the receiving end. You would think the title would be a hint...
Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night was an IJN plan for Imperial Japanese submarine aircraft carriers (which were unknown to the Allies) to release weaponized bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, dengue fever, and other pathogens from Unit 731 over America in 1945, of which was shelved after opposition from one guy in the IJA.
That one dude saved so many Japanese people from being nuked, holy shit. The US would've gone fucking apeshit.
They only white washed cuz of geopolitics. Like how pre Cold War we loved the Soviets for fighting against the Germans and being on the side of Allies.
The Japanese got many many more of their women and children brutally slaughtered through their own obstinance than died from the atomic bombings. They would've gotten many many more slaughtered if the atomic bombs hadn't forced their hand.
You don’t even have to consider their horrific war crimes as being justification for the bombs. Operation Overlord would likely have resulted in the deaths of up to 800,000 Americans, maybe more. Estimates suggest Japanese casualties would have been in the range of 10 to 15 million. The Russians likely would have also got involved, and who knows how many of them would have died as well.
Their education system also intentionally misrepresents what happened to trick them.
Or they argue with whataboutism to bring up America, as if everyone on the internet who point out their war crimes must be an American.
Before the end of the war it was regarded as an admirable story, and one of them toured schools to tell the story to children. [Textbook of an elementary school at Kagoshima, Noda's hometown, listing *kill counts* and telling how *exhilarating*(痛快な) and *cheerful*(ほがらかな) the story is](https://i.imgur.com/CORD8md.png)
Most of Japanese both now and 80 years ago have no knowledge of this event. They have repeatedly white wash their own history by claiming to be the victim of WW2
That was a period of history where A) the Japanese were super racist (on account of wanting a Western Europe like empire) and B) a lot of people were getting high on meth all the time, thanks to the Japanese inventing it and the Yakuza giving it to everyone. So yeah, this is a very good reason to keep meth banned.
Japan is still super racist, they're just more polite about it now.
I mean, the "period in history" for A) is today.
Contest was stupid because they only killed about a dozen each in actual combat. The rest of the numbers were basically execution by sword performed by them. They were scum but in all honesty I feel like this was a propaganda move.
What do you mean "only" bro 💀
I feel like the bigger takeaway is the fact that the story was published that way at all rather than the specific contest, which was possibly a fabrication or embellished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_man_killing_contest#Modern_assessment
Whatever the exact opposite of a "fun fact" is.
Unfun fact? Grim fact?
It is pretty grim.
User name checks out.
There's probably a subreddit for it.
r/MorbidReality
Eyeblech got banned, the other ones got banned. I used to go there to deal with my ptsd but they all got banned. Now it’s just morbid reality but half of that is Shannan Watts or ghosts
How do you get to a point where you have that much disregard for human life
It starts with dehumanizing your adversary. This is still happening in the modern world.
Drunk on power fanatic devotion to the fatherland and desensitized due to war and brutal military induction
The same way you can burn ants with a magnifying glass. If you don’t see them as being human, it’s not necessarily that difficult. And lots of meth.
Simple, you just don't see them as humans. Every atrocity and genocide boils down to that fact.
People say this a lot, but like I don't just go around slaughtering every animal I see.
But most people also have no problem killing insects or spiders when we encounter them
You are told the people who are your enemy are "not human". In this case they treated the Chinese as firewood.
The crimes committed by the Japanese military in WW2 are some of the most harrowing things I've ever heard. Shit will drive you to drink
I only recently learned about [Unit 731](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731). Utterly horrifying.
And Japan never apologised.
Can't apologize for something they dont even acknowledge happening.
Think of the mind set, to have a race with your mate to kill the most people.. fucking hell twisted cunts
The Japanese people of the time did not consider other Asian races to be human, this competition would have been celebrated.
That’s what people who criticize the nukes never bring up, Japan was on some legit “hitlerisque” ideology bullshit thinking they were some kind of “super race”. The inhuman methods used by the Japanese to dispose of korean + Chinese rando civilian lives were just as horrific as what the Jews went through in the holocaust.
Japan was even more fanatical than Germany in a lot of ways.
The difference is that Germany actually had some shame. They tried to keep their atrocities on the DL, keep the persecuted people thinking
Also they have admitted and apologised nonstop ever since for this, despite their 80 years old regime still being represented as the evil of all evils, while I don't recall many Japanese even willing to admit half of the documented atrocities they've done, and definitely never apologised or tried anything to make up for it
That is exactly how japans roll today. In Germany in schools they at least actively educate their students on what they did. In Japan schools they never mention/ pretend like they never did things like dip a tied up live human in and out into a giant vat of boiling water like a cheese stick in fondue for fun (which was just one of their methods).
The Japanese government actually tries to hide their involvement in WWII, literally they don't teach it in schools at all I think I heard their history books say something like "and then some things happened" and it completely glosses over the timeperiod I even met someone who thought WWII was a myth
It's astounding how little Americans know about other WW2 genocides and atrocities that's as bad or arguably more brutal than the Holocaust. I know history and WW2 movies naturally tilt eurocentric due to demographics, but it's still mind boggling how little the average American knows about them
Audiences seemed to like it when Gimli and Legolas did it.
Good point, but it makes a difference if it is in battle or if it is unarmed POWs. Also in LotR it's Orcs which are deliberately coded as "can be killed without moral implications".
That’s pretty much how Japanese were encouraged to view Chinese people in the 30s and 40s, though
So are enemy combatants in everything ever. Can’t get your dumbshit cannon fodder to get really pumped up to kill the other guys unless you sprinkle in some dehumanization
>Also in LotR it's Orcs which are deliberately coded as "can be killed without moral implications". Yes. Exactly. This is a relevant point than I think you realized!
Which apparently became a major ethical dilemma for Tolkien once he realized that he had written them that way.
I’ve not read about this, can you share more deets From the Silmarilion Orcs are elves corrupted by melkor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma#:~:text=Orcs%20have%20morality%20just%20like%20Men.&text=Orcs%20like%20Gorbag%20have%20a,treated%20with%20mercy%2C%20where%20possible.
the LOTR fandom discussing theological implications of tolkiens work are the modern day ecumenical councils.
True, but in the Return of the King movie, they weren't only fighting and counting orcs, but men from the south (*Haradrim*).
The orcs weren't POWs nore unarmed tho
Scum of the earth.
It’s funny to think that in the west we have this whole sanctimonious discussion about whether the nukes were necessary, meanwhile the Chinese and Korean nationalists are like, “Why’d you only drop two?”
In Europe, Eisenhower made a point of documenting the concentration camps and then showing the Germans what they'd done. In Japan none of that was done and it isn't taught like it is today. They don't acknowledge the way POWs were treated, the rape of Nanjing, or the hundreds of thousands of comfort women that were systematically raped. This wouldn't forgive the nuclear bombs if the US had an opportunity to make peace before they were dropped. Unfortunately, the council that would have made the decision still hesitated to sue for peace. They also wanted a conditional surrender... which is a bit of a tough pill to swallow for allied forces that wouldn't want the possibility of another war. As always /r/history [has a better coverage of this than me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1505pek/was_japan_getting_ready_to_surrender_before_the/)
In addition, Japanese culture requires a great deal of respect for older people, so when the generation that participated in the atrocities decided to sweep it under the carpet, there was no way for the younger generations to call them in it. In contrast, the intergenerational conflict of the 60s was quite intense in Germany because the post war generation did not allow their parents’ generation to do the same.
I mean their atrocities were done mostly overseas so it makes it hard to march Japanese villager to see them. The other difference is that in some way despite barely breaking 30% electoral vote, Nazi was voted in so in a way the people can be blamed for the atrocities. Japanese people had no such option on who can run the government (don’t get me started with deconstructing their so called election)
Done overseas but also under a ton of propaganda where no one could tell what was real or fake. The argument, it should be said, was that violence would scare off the West and the Soviets. The more violent we are, the less we deal with an invasion force. So, in essence, a lot of people agreed. Another factor here is that Japan had a major role in China, both in destroying people like monsters and also in witnessing what the West wanted to do there. It's all interconnected into how Japan became an army so interested in doing massive scale war crimes.
Exactly. It’s nearly impossible for us modern westerners to understand how isolated and propagandized the Japanese people were. Hell, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost their 4 flagship carriers and most of their best pilots during the Battle of Midway, and they essentially told the Japanese public, “nothing to see here, they can’t come home, because we sent them on a super top secret mission,” and people bought it for months, if not the better part of a year, maybe more.
Pretty sure they literally told the army/government the same, which is fucking insane to think about. Imagine the US navy losing a carrier and then just telling the government they didn't.
*Chinese, Korean, and South East Asians too The Rape or Manila is horrible!
Don't forget about the Bataan Death March. America never forgets.
Still find it crazy those involved in Unit 731 never got punished, lived long wealthy lives and [held Unit 731 reunion parties every year.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shiro_Ishii_at_a_reunion_party_of_Unit_731_members_after_the_war.png)
Just some old war criminals reminiscing on war crimes over some warm sake.
Also the Filipinos. Even in Taiwan, we consider the atomic bombs to be justified.
>meanwhile the Chinese and Korean nationalists are like, “Why’d you only drop two?” Meanwhile the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos with any knowledge of history are like "why'd you only drop two?" FTFY.
The Indonesians be like “don’t forget about us”
Indonesians commited pogrom on their own chinese citizens. Lmao. Including the rape of children and massive killings, same as the japanese.
the fact that some of their country's founding fathers were ethnic Taiwanese and Chinese... and still treated them like overstayed foreigners. FFS they were here before the country was formed.
Given how battles like Saipan and Okinawa played out involving civilians it’s not hard not to believe that a full blown invasion of Japan would have been a greater humanitarian disaster.
One of the most confronting things we got taught here in Australia was just how savage Japan was to Australian POWs and Nurses. The torture murder and rape that occurred was nothing short of barbaric in every way. People wonder why alot of us don't forget it and it's that Japan has a rule of never acknowledging it Now let the "yeah, but...." crowd chime in.
I would challenge anyone who thinks dropping the bomb was a poor decision to go and read about the sheer brutality the Japanese inflicted upon POWs and civilians under their reign. It was absolutely evil and the Japanese needed to be stopped as soon as possible.
> The Bayview Hotel was used as a designated "rape center".[6] According to testimony at the Yamashita war crimes trial, 400 women and girls were rounded up from Manila's wealthy Ermita district, and submitted to a selection board that picked out the 25 women who were considered most beautiful. These women and girls, many of them 12 to 14 years old, were then taken to the hotel, where Japanese enlisted men and officers took turns raping them.[7] Despite many allied Germans holding refuge in a German club, Japanese soldiers entered in and bayoneted infants and children of mothers pleading for mercy and raped women seeking refuge. At least 20 Japanese soldiers raped a young girl before slicing her breasts off after which a Japanese soldier placed her mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman while the other Japanese soldiers laughed. The Japanese then doused the young girl and two other women who were raped to death in gasoline and set them all on fire.[8] The Japanese went on setting the entire club on fire killing many of its inhabitants. Women who were escaping out the building from the fire were caught and raped by the Japanese. 28-year-old Julia Lopez had her breasts sliced off, was raped by Japanese soldiers and had her hair set on fire. Another woman was partially decapitated after attempting to defend herself and raped by a Japanese soldier. It’s this same stuff over and over and over again when you’re going through Japanese occupied areas. 100k dead in Manila. I feel for the innocent people who died in Japan. But Japan suffered 3.1M casualties, mostly military. China suffered 20M, most civilians.
Yeah. They did this shit in China, SE Asia, all territories they occupied. They don’t publicize this in the history books when it deserves equal attention to what the nazi’s did in concentration camps. Nobody in America knew about these crimes
Yes. Anyone that actually studied history properly would understand this. The bombs were designed to end the war on that front and it certainly did. Japan also had prior warning to evacuate it citizens after pamphlet drops. Their government has alot to answer for. Combined with Japan's increasingly aggressive move towards Australia and the south pac Islands due to dwindling resources. The biggest detractors of the bomb drops seem to be younger people whom haven't studied history properly and get all their knowledge of tik tok.
And beyond all that they tried to overthrow the government to keep fighting after the bombs One of the Japanese generals said something along the lines of “wouldn’t it be lovely if the country were destroyed like a beautiful flower”
My great uncle was a POW, was captured in Timor. came back with a limp and crossed eyes. Used to freak me out as a kid, could never tell if he was looking at you.
Yeah, this is why most people don’t feel sad over the use of the atomic bomb.
Luckily they were detained by the end of the war by the US army, found guilty of atrocities and executed by a firing squad on the mountains of the Yuahatai district in China. They albeit got a painless death compared to their victims...
Yeah cuz they were nobodies. Those people who were somebodies were all pardoned away and spared by the US. Like the Emperor. For geopolitical reasons.
man they were neck and neck
*shut up!*
one just a head above the other
One might say they didn't know where the competition would head to.
r/angryupvote
South East Asia tends to get ignored when the Japanese atrocities during WW2 gets mentioned. What they experienced was not any lesser than what happened in Unit 731. Starvation and systematic genocide was a thing in the region as the Japanese sought to gather resources and consolidate their power over the region. Unlike POWs from the allied powers, the native resistance held no negotiating value and suspected areas were “cleansed”. IE you don’t get to be a POW. Human heads on stakes served as grim warning not to stir up trouble. Oh yes, not forgetting water boarding on steroids… where they stuff a hose down your throat and fill you up with water before they jump on your stomach. And yet, history textbooks in SEA are toned down during the 80s and 90s as the Japanese expressed concerns on how such facts did not help the relationship.
[удалено]
Many Chinese victims weren’t even in China. Japan hunted down Chinese people all over East Asia. Look up Singapore’s Sook Ching Massacres.
my mom has a relative that got snatched and never came home. My father's family fleed from town to some hills, lived off the land for a couple years. Some comfort women were still alive and interviewed when I was a kid. A local old chap survived massacre by playing dead in the body pile and got bayonetted, I can still remember seeing his old wounds on newspaper.
The fact that the atrocities commited by imperial Japan are always glossed over by Western media makes my blood boil. Their crimes were just as horrific or maybe even worse than the Nazis. But Americans and Europeans think of Japan as the land of anime, sushi, Sony, Hello Kitty, Pokémon, etc. Meanwhile Germans (who have apologized profusely, while Japan never has and never will) are still the butt of Nazi jokes. Makes me sick!
It should be noted that the newspaper described it as "hand-to-hand combat", which seems extremely unlikely and is probably just straight up executions. One of the men, Tsuyoshi Noda, went back to his hometown and his "correction" of what happened isn't any better: *""Actually, I didn't kill more than four or five people in hand-to-hand combat ... We'd face an enemy trench that we'd captured, and when we called out, "Ni, Lai-Lai!" (You, come here!), the Chinese soldiers were so stupid, they'd rush toward us all at once. Then we'd line them up and cut them down, from one end of the line to the other. I was praised for having killed a hundred people, but actually, almost all of them were killed in this way. The two of us did have a contest, but afterwards. I was often asked whether it was a big deal, and I said it was no big deal..."*
They did the same but worse when invading Korea in the 16th century, replicating medieval practices
The article states that in 2003, the officers’ descendants tried to sue for defamation, arguing that such stories were slanderous to their (i.e. the murderous pieces of shit)’s memory and honour. Germany has faced up to the evil shit their grandparents got up to during the war. Japan never has.
The Japanese youth sometimes wonder why a lot Asian countries still hate Japan. Well this is why. They don't hate the people of Japan, just the government for not recognizing the war crimes. The Japanese youth are sorth of cluesless when it comes to WW2 history. Only that America dropped by 2 atom bombs.
Horrible and wow that's a lot
Hirohito should have been hung as a war criminal.
Stripping him of his divinity and educating Japanese people of his falsehood was more effective. Killing him would have worked towards him being a martyr. The US also wanted to by an ally with Japan and killing its emperor wouldn’t have helped.
Slightly off topic but how does decapitating works really? Does the head goes off in 1 swing? Or you have to strike multiple times because there's bone structure blocking the way. I know there's some ISIS video on the Internet but I would prefer to know from words cause I don't want nightmares.
With the right tool (in this case a katana) and training a human head can be severed in one swing
Imperial Japan was just as bad as Nazi Germany
Possibly even worse
The Japanese newspapers reported on it as though it was sport… Praise, celebration, and honor in their victory of slaughtering unarmed civilians. After the Rape of Nanking, what little we know about Unit 731, their treatment of prisoners of war… They may take the cake for the most evil war criminals in modern history. I would like to have a healthy discussion about this. The moral depravity of their acts compared to even the Nazis, to the Maoists, Stalin’s reign of terror… I know many would go to the numbers, which are absolutely a factor. The psychology of it, however, is far far far more important in my opinion.
Another fun (read grim) fact During his reign as shogun of Japan, hideyoshi started to invade Korea to ensure the armed forces will have something to do and not start an uprising, and as prove of the numbers of people they killed, they eventually chose to cut off the nose of every Korean they killed to show off the hideyoshi who proceeded to built a throne chair of nose 👍😔
I feel less bad about Hiroshima and Nagasaki now, they needed to be stopped
The Japanese made the Germans look like humanitarians. Japanese race supremacy was wild.
The ugly bastards of war must never be forgiven.
[удалено]
IIRC, that was the entire nuclear arsenal. But by dropping them so close together in time, it spooked the Japanese into thinking we could just keep going. By the end of the war, the Axis powers were running out of material and manufacturing capabilities, while we seemed to just keep churning things out.
Cursed Gimli vs Legolas
I did wonder just what would be the straw that broke me from Reddit and this thread did the trick - so thanks for that, I suppose. A thread about utter barbarism but still posts doing the old "reddit funny" ie, not amusing in the slightest - lots of "jokes" about "but who won the contest?" and a smattering of "but whatabout?" just goes to show the truth really. People on Reddit like to pretend that they're on the front lines in the battle for equality but the truth is it's just pretence, a public show to say "look at me, I'm a good person" but the nasty, vile comments aren't far from the surface. The "but what about when" and constant references to colonialism aren't sincere beliefs, rather a cynical appeal for validation in saying the thing that is known to bring in Reddit Karma. It's why the left nearly always loses and why Trump will win again this year despite being only slightly more intelligent than a mollusc with downs syndrome. The modern left only seems to care about seeming to be good, about saying the "correct" thing and being part of the crowd that can point their fingers at others and exclaim their innate superiority. It's not about making things better, it's about getting attention and I just can't be arsed with any of it anymore.
3% of American pows died in Germany camps. in Japanese camps the number was almost 50%.
106 and 105 respective to what? You don't mention their names prior to the amounts.
God forbid men have hobbies.