# History's forgotten atrocities? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 26, 2005, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764 "2005-08-26T18:01:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/41 "2005-08-29T22:52:25Z")
While hardly forgotten, the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo stand out as exemplars of deliberate nominally strategic (actually political) decisions to massacre civilian populations and destroy housing, food and medicine distribution services, and otherwise bring the war to noncombatants as a way of destroying national morale. The destruction of Tokyo was so complete that when discussion of where to drop atomic weapons came up, Tokyo was dismissed as not having enough remaining construction and infrastructure to make a clear example of the effectiveness of the weapon. General Curtis LeMay openly acknowledged that, had the Allies lost the war, he and his planning staff (which included future Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara) would have been executed for war crimes. Our national culpability for these events is invaribly downplayed, both by our own history texts and that of the defeated enemies who quickly became close Allies. The carpetbombing of Vietnam and the rampant use of defoliants in that conflict don’t speak too highly of our inate aversion to atrocity, either. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/42 "2005-08-29T22:55:13Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > While hardly forgotten, the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo stand out as exemplars of deliberate nominally strategic (actually political) decisions to massacre civilian populations and destroy housing, food and medicine distribution services, and otherwise bring the war to noncombatants as a way of destroying national morale. The destruction of Tokyo was so complete that when discussion of where to drop atomic weapons came up, Tokyo was dismissed as not having enough remaining construction and infrastructure to make a clear example of the effectiveness of the weapon. General Curtis LeMay openly acknowledged that, had the Allies lost the war, he and his planning staff (which included future Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara) would have been executed for war crimes. Our national culpability for these events is invaribly downplayed, both by our own history texts and that of the defeated enemies who quickly became close Allies. The carpetbombing of Vietnam and the rampant use of defoliants in that conflict don’t speak too highly of our inate aversion to atrocity, either. > > Stranger Indeed. I learned more about the firebombings of Japan from watching **The Fog of War** than from history classes or texts, at least in my recollection. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/43 "2005-08-29T22:56:44Z")
One genocide that is generally forgotten was that of the Moriori. They were a Polynesian people who lived on the Chatham Islands, near New Zealand. They were also strict pacifists. (The legend is that they had fought terrible tribal wars, until a chief of one of the tribes convinced them to renounce violence and unite as one people). In 1835, the Maori invaded the island. They killed and ate most of the Moriori (who wouldn’t fight back), and enslaved the rest. A few managed to escape, but the Moriori were destroyed as a people, and the last full blooded Moriori died in 1933. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/44 "2005-08-29T23:11:19Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > The Rape of Nanking in hardly forgotten, in fact, very few of those mentioned here are. Tell that to Japan. To this day the Japanese refuse to own up to it, Japanese textbooks do not mention it, and many people deny it ever happened. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/45 "2005-08-30T00:24:12Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Japanese textbooks do not mention it This is not true. All mainstream textbooks include it. ---
**Author:** ![Xploder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/a183cd/32.png) [@Xploder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xploder)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/46 "2005-08-30T10:40:10Z")
Also add the Katyn Forest Massacre in Poland perpetrated by the Soviets and exposed by the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/47 "2005-08-30T11:12:45Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > Good point. IIRC, the Old Testament has passages where the Hebrews, presumably acting under God’s command, attacked other tribes and killed all the men and enslaved the women. It was apparently commonplace enough to go in the Holy Book as Business as Usual for God’s chillun at the time. Oh yes, and not just in Mosaic times. **SmackFu** mentioned the Albigensian Crusades in France, that wiped out the Cathars. I say _all_ the Christian Crusades were atrocities. Nothing but [Christian Jihad type-terrorism](http://hnn.us/articles/1178.html), practiced by armies, instead of individuals, and drawn out for centuries, which may make it the longest drawn-out atrocity mentioned in this thread. _We_ see them as our knights in shining armour, travelling to distant lands to liberate the Holy City that is being occupied and defiled by heathen hordes. The viewpoint of the heathen hordes, however, is somewhat different. Our holy city also happens to be theirs; the city has changed rulers many, many times and is, at the time, under Islamic rule. The civilized Muslims are willing to share the city and open it to pelgrims from all religions. The heathen Christians refuse to share. Instead, every few years, a new enthusiastic army, uncivilised but heavily, if crudely, armed, comes from the Christian lands on a kill/crush/destroy mission. They are ill-equipped to rule the city themselves, but don’t trust anyone else to do it. And everytime the city has licked its wounds, has somewhat healed itself, and tries to build a life again, the Christian hordes come back again, eyes shining with religious fervour and a licence to kill any man. woman or child that commits the crime of being muslim an a Muslim country. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/48 "2005-08-30T16:04:03Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Tell that to Japan. To this day the Japanese refuse to own up to it, Japanese textbooks do not mention it, and many people deny it ever happened. This is patently false. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/49 "2005-08-30T16:15:56Z")
I’m going by Chang. It seems the Japanese did try to cover it up, and still are reluctant to talk about it. Unless things have changed since the book came out…oh, 1997 it says. ---
**Author:** ![raz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@raz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raz)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/50 "2005-08-30T17:47:26Z")
Ever heard of the [Tasmanian Aborigines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Aborigines)? Probably not, because they were all wiped out. What about the [Aboriginal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aborigine) people from mainland Australia? They were hunted, treated like animals and sold into slavery. There was even a point in history where the government _took their children away_ because it was believed that aboriginal people were unfit to be parents. Everyone’s heard of the nuclear testing on [Bikini Atoll.](http://www.bikiniatoll.com/) Did you know that people lived there, and had to be forcefully removed from their island home, just so the government could blow it up and contaminate it? Did you know they relocated them to an uninhabited island that was 1/6 the size of their home, without enough food and fresh drinking water, and basically let them starve? ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/51 "2005-08-30T18:33:22Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > I’m going by Chang. It seems the Japanese did try to cover it up, and still are reluctant to talk about it. Unless things have changed since the book came out…oh, 1997 it says. You have to take what Chang says with a grain of salt. She did a great service by writing a book that popularized knowledge of the massacre, but she was a journalist, not a historian, did not speak Japanese, and her book was riddled with errors and pop psychology (this is especially unfortunate as it made it easier for Japanese revisionists to dismiss the book as a whole by concentrating on the errors). Quoting from the only academic review of the book that I was able to easily find: > [@Joshua Fogel - Journal of Asian Studies](#): > > Because of the persistent efforts of historians to face up to the revisionists, though, Japanese textbooks are now much more accurate than in the past and probably more accurate than anywhere else in East Asia… Readers of Chang’s book - she claims that the Japanese have “systematically purged references to the Nanking massacre from their textbooks” (pp. 12-13) - will have a completely erroneus view of the present state of consciousness about the war in Japan. ---
**Author:** ![Ring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Ring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ring)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/52 "2005-08-30T21:59:17Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > We all learn about the Holocaust, about Nagasaki and Hiroshima, about slavery and the Civil War. But how many of us have ever heard of Nanking? Or the Armenian genocide? Or the Ustase in Yugoslavia? King Leopold II of Belgium’s atrocities in the Congo? - Nagasaki and Hiroshima \*? Pardon me, but I didn’t think it was accepted fact that dropping the bomb on these cities was considered an atrocity. I wonder if the sailors in Pearl Harbor, and the thousands of servicemen who would have died in the invasion of Japan, would have thought it was an atrocity? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/53 "2005-08-30T22:22:09Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Tell that to Japan. To this day the Japanese refuse to own up to it, Japanese textbooks do not mention it, and many people deny it ever happened. The first I ever heard of the Rape of Nanking was when I came across an article in an online, English-language Japanese news site. It was a rebuttal, written by a Japanese man, of some of Iris Chang’s claims. Chang claimed that the whole thing is being covered up and denied in Japan; the author of the article said otherwise. He said it was included in school textbooks (as **cckerberos** mentioned), and he also cited an incident in which a local government official had recently (this was a few years ago) been shamed into resigning his position after he publicly claimed that the Rape of Nanking never happened. I would offer a cite but, like I said, this was a few years ago and I can’t even remember the name of the Web site. (I wish I could find it again - I read a very enjoyable essay written by Emperor Akihito himself on that site.) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/54 "2005-08-30T22:36:44Z")
> [@Ring](#): > > - Nagasaki and Hiroshima \*? > > Pardon me, but I didn’t think it was accepted fact that dropping the bomb on these cities was considered an atrocity. I wonder if the sailors in Pearl Harbor, and the thousands of servicemen who would have died in the invasion of Japan, would have thought it was an atrocity? Now see, this is EXACTLY why I put it in GD. No, it wasn’t an “atrocity” as the Holocaust was, but it was a horror of war, and a lot of innocent people suffered. I’m not saying that dropping the bomb wasn’t the right decision at the time. If you want to start a debate about that, take it somewhere else. **Phase42** , if someone would point me to a source that contradicts Chang, I would appreciate it. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m merely speaking from my sources. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/55 "2005-08-30T22:37:25Z")
> [@Phase42](#): > > I would offer a cite but, like I said, this was a few years ago and I can’t even remember the name of the Web site. (I wish I could find it again - I read a very enjoyable essay written by Emperor Akihito himself on that site.) That would almost certainly be from [Japan Echo Vol. 27 No. 1](http://www.japanecho.co.jp/sum/2000/b2701.html). Unfortunately, they only have abstracts available for the articles you mentioned. Looks like the article you’re thinking of was actually written by the same guy I quoted from the Journal of Asian Studies. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/56 "2005-08-30T23:33:18Z")
Yes, that’s the one, **cckerberos**. Thanks. I originally viewed that site on my old computer, and my bookmarks didn’t make it onto my new computer. I retract my statement that the referenced article was written by a Japanese man. It appears my memory was faulty. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/57 "2005-08-30T23:38:58Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > **Phase42** , if someone would point me to a source that contradicts Chang, I would appreciate it. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m merely speaking from my sources. I’ve found a copy of the Fogel article that **Phase42** referred to [here](http://history.ucsc.edu/history196y/fogelreviewofirischang.htm). [Here](http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/Nanjing/nanjing2.html) is an article (mentioned in the Fogel article above) that lists specific factual charges against Chang. [This page](http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/Nanjing/nanjing3.html) lists excerpts from Japanese textbooks (though since the source is 8 years old the textbooks have likely been revised multiple times since) [Here](http://japanfocus.org/article.asp?id=109) is an interesting article dealing with the general state of historiography on the Rape of Nanking (and Chang’s place in it). ---
**Author:** ![Netbrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71e660/32.png) [@Netbrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Netbrian)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2005, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/58 "2005-08-31T00:40:31Z")
Actually, most mainstram Japanese textbooks include it, although to a certain extent it has been sterilized. I actually got the impression that this sort of revisionism had been getting worse in very recent years, as a new nationalist movement has come forth. The education movement does seem to try to pretty the incident up to a certain extent (and has been reccomending textbooks “fix” certain facts, and approving rather nationalist texts), but most people don’t seem to deny it happened per se. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2005, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/59 "2005-08-31T03:08:07Z")
> [@Netbrian](#): > > The education movement does seem to try to pretty the incident up to a certain extent (and has been reccomending textbooks “fix” certain facts, and approving rather nationalist texts), but most people don’t seem to deny it happened per se. Do you mean the education ministry? ---
**Author:** ![Lynwood\_Slim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Lynwood\_Slim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynwood_Slim)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2005, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764/60 "2005-08-31T06:37:46Z")
Max Hastings, in his book Armageddon, describes the last year of WWII in Europe. He details the Soviet invasion of eastern Germany, where an estimated one million civilians were killed. I think, in general, when we are discussing murder on a horrific scale, the fact that so many incidents happened in WWII can obfuscate the issue. For example, after the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in March 42, the Japanese killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese in looking for the pilots. Looking at the Russian deaths during the siege of Leningrad, or the mass murder that continously occurred throughout Poland and Ukraine, we see that the memory of one incident over another shows something about how we study history (e.g., the focus on anomolies, the uses of history by the victim groups, etc.). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historys-forgotten-atrocities/318764.md?page=4)