The Japanese can point to the fact that their combatants thought their actions were legal, moral and justified in the context of the circumstances and history leading up to the war, and that for better or worse, western notions regarding the appropriate treatment of POWs ,and conquered peoples were quite different from Japanese notions.
All these would be accurate statements of fact. Why should they feel contrite if they played by the rules they thought appropriate? I’m sure they are sorry they lost, and are probably regretful they initiated the actions that led to their defeat, but why should they be contrite if they feel they followed the situational ethics appropriate for their culture?
This is no longer the case. The museum now contains an overview of the war, the reasons for the American decision, and a military history of Hiroshima.
Here’s the OP in full. The “point” seems to center of the unwillingness of the Japanese to be properly contrite for what we deem to be immoral acts during wartime which is what the post you responded to addresses directly.
Slavery ended almost 150 years ago, so its not like your average (non-black) American feels a significant personal connection with it and incurs any kind of shame by admitting that it was wrong. It was also centered around a particular geographic area of the country, and ended in a way that makes it easy for all guilt for it to be shifted on to a particular group rather than the nation as a whole. The Japanese attempt (encouraged by the US government after the war) to place all blame on the militarist government rather than the average Japanese citizen is not, in my opinion, all that different.
Extremely. Except for a lunatic fringe, all Americans regard it as a great national shame. Notwithstanding that, we repeatedly teach it in our schools, and refer to it often in our popular culture (films, TV, etc). To this day, many white Americans advocate special treatment for black Americans, in part as atonement for slavery and its legacies.
AFAIK, there is no comparable sentiment in Japan, especially not towards the Asian peoples.
FWIW, in several converations with Japanese people, their explanation was that the WWII generation has not completely died off, and that after the last ones die off, they can be more honest. I don’t buy it, but they seemed sincere in saying it.
Well, Thomas Woods’s recent bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History asserts that there were no black slaves when America was founded. It vaguely mentions slavery later on, only to bash abolitionists for militantly starting aggression against innocent southerners. That may be only one book, but it was endorsed by the widely popular Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
We’d get more direct analagous examples from recent American history, however. Does the “average American” know that the CIA toppled democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, and replaced him with dictator Carlos Castillo Armaz, who subsequently murdered 200,000 people? Has the U.S. government ever apologized for this action? Or have we tried to pretend that it never happened? What about supporting Pinochet in Chile? Or the CIA-backed coup in Iran in the 50’s, and the subsequent brutality of the Shah?
I’m curious as to how accurate the comment is that the Japanese by and large ignore the unsavory parts of WWII history. It’s one thing not to dwell on it, but I think it is definitely something worthy of a few units of study in a history class.
As an American in High School I learned specifically about the Japanese Internment camps, slavery, the displacement of native americans, the trail of tears etc. And in regard to an earlier statement, in my AP History Class as a Junior we actually did learn extensively about our involvements in the Philippines and the unsavory aspects of that guerilla war.
Or for that matter our gifting of millions in munitions and aid to Josef Stalin, one of the greatest butchers of the 20th century?
I think most people are at least aware of the fact we helped the Soviets out during WWII. Just as, while most Americans are not familiar with specifics from the Cold War they do know that the CIA and America was involved in a lot of sponsorship of pro-capitalist governments in other countries and that those persons were often unsavory in nature. It can be argued that, just like our support of Josef Stalin, it was a strategic act, our goal was to prevent the spread of communism, not to grow a democracy in every nation.
Personally contrite? It was a national shame to be sure, but it’s enough generations back that beyond the sincere statement that “slavery was a very bad thing” I feel no personal responsibility for it at this point.
I do believe some of the problems seen in in black family structures can be traced back to the institutions of slavery, and the cascade of social dysfunction it caused that ripple through black families to this day, but do I feel *personally * contrite? No.
There are two big reasons why most japanese don’t know much about what went on in WWII:
in the final months of WWII, the japanese military destroyed most of their archives-literally tons of documents, photos, and films were incinderated. Also, the notorious prsion camps in Korea and manchuria were closed down and destroyed.
the japanese (until recently0 had simply NOTHING in their hsitory textbooks about WWII-nothing about the rape of Nanking, slavery in Korea, wholesale murder in China. That is why the Hiroshima memorial museum is a shock to most Americans-you get the impression that the city was attcked out of the blue.
Now, WWII is fast fading into history-within 20 years, just about everyone will be gone. the true test will be then-will anyone take the time to read the past?
If the USA is an example-forget it-most US highschool studenst haven’t got a clue about when WWII took place! :smack:
Well…many were prosecuted but some of the worst were not and had good lives post war.
By the way…Unit 731’s atrocities are enough to make you ill just reading about them. They made Josef Mengele seem tame in comparison. Then add in the Rape of Nanking, Comfort Women, Bataan Death March, appalling POW conditions (IIRC the death rate in POW camps in Japan were far, far past the rates anywhere else) and the Japanese as a society have something to answer for.
Rather appalling that our own government let them off the hook for some data.
Yes and the Chinese rejected it.
I do not think anyone is trying to blame individual Japanese for WWII war crimes (barring a few who might be still alive). But as a society the Japanese should own up to their part in the war. They seem to have the attitude that since they got nuked they were the oppressed ones. The Chinese certainly feel pretty strongly about this and have yet to feel it has been handled in an acceptable manner. So too it seems that for Japan to progress in the UN it needs to own up to its past deeds.
The Chinese have about 0% credibility on anything relating to accurate history, human rights, or anything of the sort. Do you know what THEIR textbooks say about WW2?
We can’t even really say it’s the government, but the Japanese education system. I thought their education after grammar school was mostly privatized, but I could be entirely wrong about that.
Be that as it may - and I should stress that I have never been to Japan, and my only knowledge of this comes from the Dave Barry book I mentioned (but I thought it was appropriate to the OP) - the tone of that Dave Barry article was that the memorial made it sound almost like a natural disaster, like these people died as the result of an accident of fate, rather than as an act of war that their government was very much responsible for.
On the flip side, I have visited the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor, and part of it is a film which very well describes the causes leading up to the war in the Pacific.
I’m glad to hear from cckerberos that the situation described by Barry has changed.
The Chinese government’s attitude towards the issue has as much to do with regional rivalries and domestic Chinese politics as it does with the actions of the Japanese. Yes, the Japanese have a ways left to go in owning up to the war (though they’ve made more progress than most posters in this thread have suggested), but frankly, the Japanese could bend over backwards making amends and I doubt that it would change little with regards to the Chinese.
I haven’t looked at actual numbers, but I would guess that the majority of Japanese in secondary school attend public schools.
The government holds its share of the blame with regards to textbooks, as all textbooks must be looked over and approved by the government before being used in a public school.