Let’s not go overboard here… the textbooks on that site are much better than the conservative text I initially linked to, and from what I saw admit that their actions during the war were wrong, but they’re not perfect.
Are you saying that you believe the New History Textbook is represenative of textbooks as a whole?
Ya…maybe you are right. Like I said, I can’t download the text, so I can’t read it. I have heard that history books here gloss over the war, but since I’ve never actually read one, I won’t pass judgement either way on it. I was just happy to see that at least it was translated in three languages for everyone to see, and by doing so, I assumed that they must be aknowledging the facts, and owing up to to their atrocities, but maybe not???..ill try and download it from a different comp.
Well, after reviewing some of your other links, the answer is YES, I BELIEVE THE NEW HISTORY TEXTBOOK IS REPRESENTATIVE.
Here ya go - Osaka Soseki’s textbook entire coverage of the Rape of Nanking:
The army occupied the capital, Nanjing, in December and killed many of the city’s residents, including women and children (the Nanjing Incident).*
*The facts regarding the Nanjing Incident were not made public in Japan. It was not until after the war, at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, that the scale of the incident and the facts about the victims came to light. Although a number of investigations and studies have been carried out, the total number of victims has never been firmly established.
China Guy: the above is a lie of ommission. Some scale or facts could have been included such as “The scale ranges from 100,000 to 800,000 dead over a period of 4 months and thousands and up to 20,000 women raped.”
The other entries on China are equally suspect in their omission of key facts that are well documented.
No mention of comfort women either. Do I need to spell out what comfort women means?
If you have a copy of Genes, Peoples, and Languages check out page 89, Figure 3. That data shows genetic distances of 42 populations from around the world. The Mbuti are more closely related to these 3 groups than they are to the San (Bushmen):
Nilo-Saharan
Bantu
West African
There is quite a large genetic distance between the Mbuti and the San in this data (based on the analysis of 110 genes), which is from 1994. That’s almost 10 years before the cite you gave, so it might be older, less accurate data. I’m going to be very interested in looking into this more closely, as I’ve never seen anything before that linked those two populations as your cite does.
China guy,
I wonder if it is deliberate to not list all their atrocities in their history books, or more of the fact that its a middle school Japanese book(age appropriate?) or that Japan’s history is quite long, and they dont have time to concentrate on the details. I wonder if American history books list all the major atrocities (murders and rapes) committed to the Native Americans or the Slaves, or do they generalize , list specific events and then go on to say that they were brutalized, and leave it at that? Does the same happen in the Chinese history books about their violent history?
I am not defending the Japanese education, I just dont know enough about it. I wonder if there are sectional history courses in High School that would target and explain the 2nd world war in more detail. There are quite a few television programs here(Japan) that document the war in gory detail and dont glorify their actions in anyway. Ive seen this first hand.
I feel like the “age-appropriate material” argument is not such a great argument. I aknowledge that there is a difference in what is appropriate for different ages, but I think that the textbook authors could be more forthcoming and still age appropriate.
Another thing, many of the posts talk about anti-Japanese sentiment, but I’m not seeing a lot on current anti-Asian sentiment among some Japanese. I recently read an article in the New York Times about growing anti-Chinese and Anti-Korean feeling in Japan.
Here is a similar article from the International Herald Tribune. According to the article, one character is quoted as saying
I think it is a deliberate lie of omission. BTW, I just took the Rape of Nanking as one example. The textbook translations that I read are full of other examples. Thanks for the links though, now I understand why the Chinese government in principle is so viciferous on the issue.
Might be helpful for the Japanese school kids to learn about the Rape of Nanking so it can be judged against “we victims as the only country that has had a nuclear attack”
Then how would a Singaporean High School Student like me know about all those things too? Chineses being rounded up, the deplorable condition in the POW camps, the mass murderer of Chineses at Changi Beach - those were in a secondary school textbook for 13 and 14 years old.
I am not sure about the German textbooks, but from what I see, they indicate that they are fully responsible, and fully sorry, for the whole incident. I wonder if any Japanese officials will attend a memorial held in service for the victims of Nanking, like what the Germans did for the Holocaust victims?
I don’t think so.
Correction: Back when I was still a high school student, that is.
Extrakun,
I am really biting off more than I can chew now, but here we go.
Yes, the Japanese were brutal. And should they apologize? Well anyone that is alive today who brutally killed or ordered the killing of civilians should. Should the Japanese admit that what they did was wrong, and educate their people and not gloss over the facts of the second world war? Surely. And I think the continued pressure by the Chinese, Koreans etc will help to do so.
The Japanese were screwed up in their colonial interests in Asia. Were they any worse than American, British, Dutch, French or Portuguese? What made it worse? Their brutal torture and killing of the people they colonized? And this didn’t happen under other colonial administrations around the world, or even in the region? Is there a difference between 1 murdered civilian, 100 or 1,000. To the parent of the one it’s the same. Within world history, there have been massive amounts of death and destruction. Is it only because it is in recent memory that China/Korea etc are demanding retribution? How many atrocities have been committed in all colonial conquests?
Let me give you one example of the Americans in the Philippines:
(We are talking about the Americans, not the Japanese)
http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ailtexts/srr/index.html
excerpts from that:
The estimates of civilians killed in the Philippines range from 200,000 to a high of perhaps 600,000—no one really knows. This writer has seen pictures smuggled out by American soldiers of pits filled with the bodies of dozens of Filipinos. One soldier wrote of troops massacring an entire village of one thousand people after a villager had fired upon them.??The “water cure” was the approved torture of the day. With the mouth held open by a knife, a water hose was thrust down the victim’s throat. Whether he talked or not, most often death came later from the infection of the stomach lesions caused by the water pressure. “Civilize ’em with a Krag” [rifle] was the U.S.’s great battle cry of the era.
Also:
Davis and Bass told him they had personally seen our soldiers bayoneting the wounded; and I reminded him that the cutting off of the ears of two American soldiers at Damariscotta had been merely retaliation for similar mutilations of dead Filipinos by the Americans.
And
It is an officer of historic name, then serving in the Philippines, whose wife, at his request, wrote to the Philadelphia Ledger a letter, which was published on November 11, 1901, and in which the writer said:
The present war is no bloodless, fake, opera bouffe engagement. Our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, and children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten up, an idea prevailing that the Filipino was little better than a dog, a noisome reptile in some instances, whose best disposition was the rubbish heap. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men “to make them talk,” have taken prisoners of people who had held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and, an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them up on a bridge, and shot them down one by one to drop into the water below and float down as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.
This took place over 100 years ago. No apology needed? No need to mention this in the American history books? Bush coming over for memorial services? Money paid to victims?
And what about the Tibet issue:
http://www.tibet.org/Why/occupation.html
China’s invasion by 35,000 troops in 1949 was an act of unprovoked aggression. There is no generally accepted legal basis for China’s claim of sovereignty.
Reprisals for the 1959 national uprising alone involved the elimination of 87,000 Tibetans by the Chinese count alone, according to a Radio Lhasa broadcast of 1 October 1960. Yet Tibetan exiles claim that 430,000 died during the Uprising and the subsequent 15 years of guerrilla warfare
No apology needed? No need to mention this in Chinese history books? Memorial services attended? Money paid to victims?
I do not support what the Japanese did. No way. And I thoroughly agree that they need to admit to their past. Why though, is so much emphasis being placed on this issue and not on other conflicts that have occurred in the region. Korea was invaded and occupied by other forces many times over their history, and most likely brutal killings occured during those as well. Why are they specifically going after the Japanese?
And when will enough be enough. How far do the Japanese have to go in order for the other Asian powers to finally say….”ok…we accept that you admit what you have done is wrong.” What do the Asian nations exactly want from Japan, and why only from Japan?
I hope you don’t take what I’ve been saying as combative. This board is about fighting ignorance, and hopefully I will learn something from you since you are from the region.
Respectfully yours,
SA
Japan could start by owning up to what they did during the “colonial period” and this includes school textbooks. Stop the whitewashing and lies of omission. It’s insulting. I expect Japanese today to have a basic understanding of what happened back then instead of blissful ignorance or deliberate obstinance. Here’s an example: Japanese Orgy in China on Anniversay of Japanese Invasian and the follow up trial reporting . Stuff like this does not do anything to make the Japanese appear to have taken responsibility for their role in WW2.
Do some websearches and actually read the cites you provided. Dig deeper into Aung Sang and why exactly he turned on his Japanese overlords. Search on “comfort women” “rape of nanking” “biological and chemical warfare experiments in Manchuria” “japanese colonization of Korea” “japanese atrocities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Burma”. Look up “International Military Tribunal for the Far East” or “Tokyo War Crimes”. After you get tired of the civilians, you could check out the “Bataan Death March” “Bridge over the River Kwai” “Changi Prison Camp” “empire of the sun” etc
Why only Japan? Well, Japan is the only country that brutally attempted to colonize Asia and resulted in a vry horrific number of civilian deaths as well as unleased a major war. [China’s had its moments but restricted to it’s extremely loosely defined historic borders. ]
Ya wanna open up other threads about atrocities commited by Americans or anyone else, please feel free. This one we’re discussing Japan.
Maybe this went unnoticed?
http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ailtexts/srr/index.html
There were other brutal colonizing attempts in Asia. And not only by the Japanese. Plenty.
So that’s ok? Would the Tibetens agree that what the Japanese did in China was worse than what China did to them?
China guy, I’m just trying to open your eyes. I know it’s all horrific. But we are fighting ignorance here. Play the devils advocate. Research in that direction, and you will see that there has been a lot of hell unleashed in this region, and not only by the Japanese. Yes, they were bastards (not a strong enough word) during their colonial times. Undisputed. Sevestopol originally asked a question, and the answer to that question goes much deeper than the events surrounding WW2.
puh-leese, how about staying on topic or opening other threads? Justifying or excusing what the Japanese did by colonization in Asia by the US, Germany, French, English, Dutch et al is not overly relevant or necessarily even comparable.
[If you want to know more about Tibet, I suggest Sir Charles Bell “History of Tibet”, “In Exile From the Land of the Snows” John Avadon, The Legal Status of Tibet" Dr. Michael van Walt van Praag and then start a seperate thread and we can discuss there.]
[QUOTE=sharkattack]
Extrakun,
The Japanese were screwed up in their colonial interests in Asia. Were they any worse than American, British, Dutch, French or Portuguese?
[/quote
Let talk about British in Souhteast-Asia, okay? AFAIK, they manage to keep economy going, things in relatively good order, with little unnecessary bloodshed and death. Things were thousands time were better before the Japanese comes over. After they came, people has to queue up for food rations and the economy pummets with those ridiclous “Banana Notes”.
Of course, things weren’t all rosy and fair, but the Chineses do not have to worry about “suddenly disappearing”, spies weren’t reporting everyone’s every moves, you can buy real stuff with money and people are not disappearing left and right.
Colonial Rule != Japanese Occupation
And just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean the Japanese doesn’t have to apologise or admit it. Even German owns up to what they have done. But not the Japanese.