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The Japanese bombed Manila the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Through an authoritarian culture like the Nihonjins (Japanese), they were able to push up accountability to the highest rank , namely their emperor. This left the soldier on the battlefield to make his own decisions. Many of them were not good. As is the case in Manila where they literally raped the people there. The Japanese lost the war, lost face, but now they want don't want to be accountable. Their response is nothing, no reparations because that would cause them to lose face even more. That is not acceptable. Let them lose face, let them make reparations, let us bury the hatchet. Until then, we will not forget. Semper Fidelis.
From what I understand, in Japan, like Italy, but unlike Germany, only a token number of war criminals were tried and sentenced. The great majority never faced any prosecution and successfully went on to politics and business.
I am puzzled that some people have trivialized what happened in China. I am trying to understand why the free pass for Japan by the West and especially by those that today are the angriest critics of China.
If chopping off limbs of living human beings in an experiment or making sons rape their mothers is equal to the events at Abu Ghraib, then my sense of equality needs recalibration.
Only a token number of war criminals?
Most of the top leadership of Japan during that time (excluding the Royal Family) was executed for war crimes. There were several lesser trials that lead to many executions and prison terms. China held its own series of war crime trials and executed a further 149 Japanese who were involved in the mistreatment and murder of Chinese civilians and POWs and imprisoned several hundred more.
LIberals like Chegirl will never admit the Japanese slaughted millions, due to the fact that that would bring the "Only Whites can be evil" facade crasing down. Oh, and it would valiadate the US. We can't have that.
I'm convinced Chielgirl is actually Ann Coulter playing an Andy Kaufman-esque prank. She is trying to create the stereotypical "America Hatin' Liberal" to discredit American Liberalism.
Here is how the debate seems to go so far:
"The Japanese are known to have killed millions of Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Thai civilians. They killed about has many people as the Nazis and were actively more sadistic about it."
"America has committed genocide against the Native Americans, kept slavery, had segregation, invaded Mexico, had a war with Spain, and currently is in Iraq. America is far worse than Japan."
"No. Most Native Americans died from relatively common diseases originally brought by the Spanish, although plenty of Native Americans were killed, the massive drop in the population of Native Americans was the result of a mostly intentional spread of disease and not malice. Also, I think you are over-simplifying the wars with the Spain and Mexico. Japan almost certainly killed more civilians from 1937-1945 than America has in its entire (often bloody) history."
"Well, Japan only committed those crimes in 8 years and America has been doing it for the entire history of the US. The US wanted land and colonies so it took those from the Native Americans, Mexico, and Spain. Japan wanted land and colonies so it took it from China, Korea, and the Europeans and Americans. I see no difference."
All of it well established.
To deny the murderous savagery of the Fascist Japanese Militarist Government (allied with Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy and all the rest) is to deny reality.
LIberals like Chegirl will never admit the Japanese slaughted millions, due to the fact that that would bring the "Only Whites can be evil" facade crasing down. Oh, and it would valiadate the US. We can't have that.
What the heck are you talking about.
Please point me to where I said that, ever. Otherwise, keep your lying to yourself.
All countries commit war crimes.
We don't have to look past our own military to find them.
We need to clean up our own house before we throw stones at others.
If that's liberal, I'm proud to be one.
And Frank, try getting it right, no need to put words in my mouth, I can speak for myself.
What the heck are you talking about.
Please point me to where I said that, ever. Otherwise, keep your lying to yourself.
All countries commit war crimes.
We don't have to look past our own military to find them.
We need to clean up our own house before we throw stones at others.
If that's liberal, I'm proud to be one.
And Frank, try getting it right, no need to put words in my mouth, I can speak for myself.
A few things:
1) Not all countries have committed war crimes.
2) Not all war crimes are equal.
3) America did not commit the kinds of war crimes in neither scale nor brutality that the Japanese did.
4) Although there have been war crimes in Iraq, it should be noted that what Iraq has gone through in the past five years pales in comparison to what China and Korea went through.
5) Saying "We've done it too" is an ignorant statement. It implies that unless you are perfect--which no one is--you cannot ever criticize unacceptable behavior.
1) Name some countries that have not committed war crimes. Bhutan, perhaps.
2) Torture, as the US has also taken part of, is equal. Tell that to the people being tortured, and their families. You forgot our atrocities in Vietnam, Mai Lai, perhaps. How about napalming villages? How about bombing Cambodia and Lao?
3) It's a difference in scale, not in the effect it had on the people tortured, or their families.
4) I don't see a difference. As a pacifist, I believe that war crimes are all atrocious. Are you saying that our war crimes are ok because someone else performed worse war crimes?
5) No, saying that we've done it too is simply the truth. People who live in glass houses, etc.
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