Any WWII buffs?
The Japanese soldiers have slowed began to tell their tales about these inhumane acts but their government wants to censored it for some reasons. The Japanese government must fear repercussions towards them or something about its past to the public. I know because there was a film done Nanjing by the Japanese who interviewed the actually soldiers who were there and the government looked down on the film.
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"You are the stars and the world is watching you. By your presence you send a message to every village, every city, every nation. A message of hope. A message of victory."- Eunice Kennedy Shriver
All six powers committed war crimes. Some were more spectacular than others, but we're better off admitting that everyone had their fingers in the pie.
Japan was responsible for the horrific Rape of Nanking, where thousands of Chinese civilian women were dragged out into a town square and simply raped. The Japanese also performed ghastly medical experiments on American POWs, most of them involving deliberate infection with diseases like yellow fever and plague (WWII really was the "Lead Age" of medical ethics). There was also the whole Bataan Death March thing. Yeah, war is hell.
I think Americans avoid talking about Japanese war atrocities because we feel bad about going overboard with our frankly racist demonization of all things Japanese during the war. It's kind of like how the German government always tries to be extra sweet to Jews these days. It's the joy of guilt!
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Powered by quotes since 7/25/10
Just bringing up the rapes of thousands of women in Nanjing is one of the many atrocities committed there. I have also read of them spraying crowds with gasoline and lighting them on fire, and marching thousands of young boys and men to the outskirts to be shot. I also have a book with photos and Japanese news paper clippings- a few charming examples of Japanese soldiers brutality include-
Photos: (I should add that all are either gruesome enough or obscene enough that I think posting them here would violate the ToS)
Burying hundreds of people alive
Mutilating womens bodies in countless obscene ways
Using civilians for bayonet and target practice
Mass be headings and display of the heads
Among others...
However those here that have argued about how implicit the Japanese might have been should be interested to know that much of these was in fact reported back in Japan. I have a photo of a newspaper talking about two Japanese officers who engaged in a be heading spree to see who could kill one hundred men first, though their tallies as reported were 105 and 106.
Additionally to that, as many as 25,000,000 Chinese disappeared from certain regions of China. And don't get me started on what they did to Korean women...
All told, most realistic estimates of the Nanjing massacre, or Rape of Nanjing, are of at least 400,000, and at most 1,000,000. All done in about two months time. So who is worse, really, the Germans, who's population was kept in the dark, or the Japanese in WW2?
In fact, various western powers *including* Nazi Germany's diplomats in Nanjing set up an International Safety Zone- check out the story of John Rabe, the hero of Nanjing, who also happened to be a member of the German Nazi party. Irony, at its best, no?
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Ceterum autem censeo, Carthaginem esse delendam
The following statement is True, the preceding statement was False.
I'm A PINEY from my head down to my HINEY.
I didn't. I was just making a point about WWII-related guilt and how there's more than enough to go around.
Anyhoo, that's why Americans are soft on Japanese war crimes. Guilt.
Never said anything was directly comparable to anything else except in guilt-creating capacity.
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Powered by quotes since 7/25/10
Anyhoo, that's why Americans are soft on Japanese war crimes. Guilt.
Never said anything was directly comparable to anything else except in guilt-creating capacity.
Ahhh, That clarifies it.
As for the guilt; I don't think enough people even know about the internment camps for there to be some sort of national complex about it. In the end I think it really just comes down to PR - these folks didn't have any. The POWs who survived didn't want to talk about it, China was busy falling apart, and the western powers were all getting googly-eyed about the Com-block, so it all just got swept into the backroom of history and ignored.
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Ceterum autem censeo, Carthaginem esse delendam
The following statement is True, the preceding statement was False.
I'm A PINEY from my head down to my HINEY.
Most people in those countries want to move away from what their grandparents' generation did.
And I respect that.
I hate the "slavery" aspect of being a southerner.
But no ugly past should be entirely ignored.
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^That is actually true about the War between the States in the South point of view when the North forgets about it. Though I don't know if I had family in the war but in respect both sides were bad to one other noted in POWs camps.
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"You are the stars and the world is watching you. By your presence you send a message to every village, every city, every nation. A message of hope. A message of victory."- Eunice Kennedy Shriver
I hate the "slavery" aspect of being a southerner.
But no ugly past should be entirely ignored.
True, the past should never be forgotton - but, neither should it be remembered as anything but history.
When people try and form more personal, emotional connections with wars and conflicts of ages ago... well, then you get the middle-east, eastern-europe, etc.
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Oh, well, fancy that! Isn't that neat, eh?
I hate the "slavery" aspect of being a southerner.
But no ugly past should be entirely ignored.
True, the past should never be forgotton - but, neither should it be remembered as anything but history.
When people try and form more personal, emotional connections with wars and conflicts of ages ago... well, then you get the middle-east, eastern-europe, etc.
You're right.
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Prof_Pretorius
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The Middle-East really has a lock on never forgetting. The fuss lately that was made over the word "crusade" is a good example.
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I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. ~Theodore Roethke