I’m in Kanchanaburi in western Thailand on what used to be the Death Railway…a Japanese railway built in WWII by 60,000 slave POW laborers and 200,000 kidnapped Asians. The final death toll was 120,000 people due to horrible conditions and torture. The Japanese INTENTIONALLY created the conditions leading to this disgusting tragedy. I walked on the Bridge on the River Kwai today and passed a Japanese memorial commemorating THEIR sacrifice! THEIR SACRIFICE!! Was the commanders saki too warm?!! Did the guards break their bamboo canes while beating POWs to death?!?!! Some Japanese did die from the diseases that were decimating their captives, but who the fuck allowed this insult HERE! It’s like walking through Auschwitz and passing a Nazi memorial. I can’t wait for nightfall so I can piss on it. For all your atrocity denial and current revisionist history, FUCK YOU JAPAN! APPARENTLY TWO WASN’T ENOUGH!
Piss on it in broad daylight like a real man.
Oh, by the way, if it’s the Japanese War Memorial described here, you might want to reconsider pissing on it at all. That memorial was put up in 1944 by the Japanese in honor of the sacrifices of the *Allied *dead.
I think you might be right. The scenario described in the OP is so shockingly disgusting as to be questionable. I’ve never heard of this before, and if it was as the OP describes, one would think it would be commonly reported in the many news stories I’ve read about the issues Japan is still dealing with about WWII-- ie, Comfort Women, the way the war is handled in Japanese text books, or the lack of apology.
At that place and that time, that strikes me as an extraordinary gesture by the Japanese.
I was in Kanchanaburi a good few years ago. I was quite shocked at how some of the Japanese tourists acted.
There was a museum beside the bridge which included life size recreations of Japanese soldiers with guns standing over emaciated rag wearing allied soldiers working on the bridge. The Japanese tourists were posing beside the soldiers giving thumbs up signs, smiling and laughing and even hugging the guards.
All the people I was with just looked on in shock. We had just come from the recreation of the camps and one of the many graveyards of the allied dead.
I can only attribute it to the lack of education the Japanese get on the war. I was very glad there was no returning POW or thier family present as I’m sure it could have got nasty.
“Honor” is a relative term.
"there is another memorial. It stands about 50 yards from the bridge, almost hidden by jungle foliage. It is a Japanese memorial, built by the captors in 1944, when the war tide had turned and the world was noting how these people handled their prisoners.
The Japanese memorial is a 20 foot high concrete pillar in a concrete plaza. The plaza is encircled by barbed wire, a tribute to either the exquisite sense of irony or incredible insensitivity of some unknown official. It bears a plaque with the following inscription: -
“In order to console the deceased who had been labored along the Thailand-Burma railway during world war two this memorial was built by the Japanese army in 1944”
Must have been a great “consolation” to the 116,000 dead.
I’m not a veteran of said war, but I would have lamped them. It’s a disgusting culture.
Dude, come on. Many aspects of Japanese policy during WWII were deplorable, and I find both the propoganda and nationalistic fervor of the period to have been as disturbing as I usually do. But I honestly believe that compassion and forgiveness are the best reaction; racism and anger just beget more of the crap which started that mess.
The photograph of the monument I linked to was taken in 2005 and doesn’t show any barbed wire. The link also includes a photo of the plaque, with an inscription in Thai, Japanese, and English. The photo shows the following inscription:
“This monument was erected by the then Japanese Army in February 1944, during World War II in memory of the personnel of the Allied Forces together with other people, who died during the construction of the Thailand-Burma Railway. Once a year in March, voluntary members of the Japanese community in Thailand assemble here to hold a memorial ceremony for those who died.”
I agree that racism and anger will not help things. However, when you still have a country that cannot appreciate that what they did was wrong… it’s not really possible to trust them.
It’s basically an asian thing, linked in with losing face, I think.
Asian people of any nationality do not generally enjoy being lumped together in that way. I understand what you’re trying to say, just throwing out a helpful reminder that you’re being offensive to some.
When I come back from work I’ll be able to post more on the whole post-WWII-Japan dealy.
Please do.
Quite a disgusting remark you made there, friend.
BTW: While stationed in Japan from 1990 to 1996, I worked with many Japanese. A lot of them were even in the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. They were honorable and professional people and I had no problem in calling those I knew well my friends.
Do you mean to say that Japanese culture is disgusting?
Agreed. That was out of line.
I dunno, page 230 in The Rough Guide to Thailand says, “nearby [the bridge], a memorial stone commemorates the Japanese soldiers who died while overseeing the construction work.”
And I wouldn’t have used it if it wasn’t appropriate.
How exactly does your personal life relate to a government unrepentant of horrible injustices?
I’ve seen at least one documentary on the building of the RR. Most of the documentary concerned the difficulty encountered in locating the original sites, IIRC. I do recall references to the extreme brutality inflicted on the laborers and to the diseases that decimated them. Also, and again IIRC, it seems there wasn’t really much purpose to building the RR nor did it get a lot, if any, use: I may be completely wrong in this recollection. Other than that one documentary, I don’t remember ever hearing anything else about the subject.
Newsflash - it wasn’t appropriate. We get that you were pissed, but suggesting that they should be nuked for a third time is not cool.
Without trying to offer support for the Japanese military’s policies towards the various populations that they subjugated, nor their treatment of POWs, what the fuck makes you think that nuking more cities in Japan would have made the changes that you want to see in the Japanese government?
I’m digusted with your comment for a number of reasons.
First and foremost I’m sick of the meme that most Westerners have that a nuke is somehow inherently worse than any other possible means of waging war. The Tokyo firebombing raid, I believe shows just how horrid, “convential” munitions can get. It’s a fucking weapon, and it’s not inherently worse than any other munition. Get a bloody clue.
Secondly, Japanese society was riven down to bedrock by August 1945. People were starving in job lots while the military was propagandizing to prepare the population to fight to the last man a la Saipan. Even after hostilities ceased there were still huge problems getting food to people throughout the islands. To believe that, in those circumstances, more cities being bombed into craters would have appreciably changed the current Japanese government is engaging in wishful thinking on the order of holding a banana in one’s ear to keep the elephants away.
Third, if you really want to put blame for Post-War Japanese government and society where it belongs, don’t forget that the US, and MacArthur especially, acquiesced to a white-wash job allowing Hirohito and many other civilian leaders to remain in power, in a successful effort to allow Japan to be rebuilt as a industrial nation without allowing the Reds entry into the situation.
I’m not saying that they were wrong in that decision - I don’t know. It is a triumph of expediency, but there are times I suspect that expediency is more moral than taking a pointless moral stand that leads to greater chaos down the road. But it is vitally important to remember that much of the architecture of the current Japanese government (Not society, just the forms of the government, rather than the people in it.) comes directly from MacArthur.
Finally, there’s something fucking beautiful about someone who’s so outraged by racist intolerance that he’s willing to advocate nuking job lots of an ethnic group to learn them.