If Germany had never apologized for the holocaust, would we just say “well it happened over 60 years ago” There are still living victims of Japanese atrocities that have been waiting for an apology for the last 60 years and they want the apologies from the still living perpetrators.
I wasn’t under the impression that there has been an endless stream of apologies coming from the Japanese government for tricking, coercing and even kidnapping girls to serve as forced prostitutes in their military brothels. The impression that I get is that any apologies given have been given very grudgingly and only in the face of overwhelming evidence.
I don’t think its a matter of cultural differences. During the Rape of Nanking there are accounts of two lieutenants who had a contest to see who could spear the most infants with their bayonets; there are stories of Buddhist priests being forced to rape the equivalent of Buddhist nuns; sons being forced to have sex with mothers and sisters; fathers forced to have sex with daughters; the list goes on. I don’t think incestuous rape is a Japanese thing; I don’t think infanticide is a Japanese thing; it seems to me it is an atrocity, you can’t just say “well they see things differently in that part of the world”
Crazy Guy writes a book for other Crazies. Can you please Cite the endorsements, I strongly dislike the pundits you mentioned, but neither seem ignorant enough to endorse the book you described.
The Guatemala & Chile example are sad but excellent reminders of our own checkered past, especially in South & Central America.
Question however, was the Shah actually worse than either what came before or after him?
Despite his human rights abuse, the country was a progressive non-religious state under his long reign. He seemed far less horrible than most of his counter-parts in the region and the country was a better place to live, with less human rights abuses than the current Theocracy.
Jim
If you want to make the argument that the Japanese haven’t done enough to make up for their atrocities in any real way. But there have been numerous official apologies for the atrocities, including ones specifically addressing the comfort women issue. So stop repeating the “they haven’t even apologized” meme. It hasn’t been true for decades.
That first sentence was supposed to be “If you want to make the argument that the Japanese haven’t done enough to make up for their atrocities in any real way, fine.”
I didn’t say we should be so dismissive. I’m asking if there are still known war criminals out there that weren’t brought to justice, the way there were in Germany?
My point deals with teaching history. From my 10th grade American history course, I don’t remember any of those topics being mentioned even once. The textbook gave perhaps half a page to mentioning Truman’s policy of engaging communism worldwide, but didn’t even list the specific cases of American intervention in other countries. Now one can argue that those interventions were justified–in some cases I’d agree. But students studying history should learn where and when the U. S. was actually involved, not just blanket statements that we did some things to fight Nazis and communists.
(Also Cathy Young mentions Hannity’s endorsements of the Woods book. I can’t find a cite for Limbaugh endorsing it, so I may have been wrong about that. Of course we don’t know whether Hannity actually agreed with the book, or even read it. Most likely he saw the words “politcally incorrect” on the cover and instantaneously decided that it needed a plug. Let’s hope no one alerts him to The Politcally Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. And doubtlessly The Politically Incorrect Guide to Math and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Chemistry will be on shelves shortly.
Because if the 20th Century proves anything, it’s that demanding unreasonable contrition will prevent future excesses on the part of the losing aggressor.
No doubt true. Shame that the Chinese use this as a leverage point in current politics when it should be a matter apart but hardly surprising I guess.
That said, and admittedly anecdotal, I have a Chinese roommate who has very strong opinions on Japan’s seeming lack of remorse over what occurred in WWII. My roommate is a US citizen (has been his whole life) so he is not a product of Chinese propaganda and he is well educated on the subject yet he retains a surprising passion regarding this. He generally is not overtly political so I found his depth of emotion on this somewhat surprising (or perhaps unexpected is a better word). I can only imagine there are other Chinese who likely feel as or more strongly.
Likely for some Japan could never do enough to apologize but Japan could do more. They should take a page from German official shame over WWII to see how it is done well. Maybe not even take it that far but a good model for this.
Well…I think one can argue that official sanctions to punish Germany after WWI were a direct cause of allowing Hitler to gain power and thus start WWII. The allies knew better the second time around and did not beat up Germany post war but helped rebuild them. German contrition over it all was largely of their own doing. I would think that even today Germans would be hard pressed into military adventurism. I doubt the populace would be easily sold on such a course due to that contrition they still hold from WWII.
I have a few theories and observations responding to the OP, based only on my own experience of Japanese people and the current state of Japanese culture. In no particular order:
Japanese people today, especially those not alive at the time, believe that the Japanese government (at the time a dictatorial oligarchy) was responsible for prosecuting the war and for at least the larger-scale atrocities. They believe that a large portion, even a majority, of the population was opposed to the war but was powerless to make any effective difference.
There is a tradition in Japanese culture, especially among men, that allows them to mis-behave when away from home and it “doesn’t count”. I don’t know where this comes from, but I guess if your neighbors and family don’t see your bad behavior then it doesn’t really matter. This, along with the normal stresses or war, accounts for the many otherwise-normal soldiers who did despicable things in foreign lands.
There is a potentially racist reason why Japanese atrocities against Chinese and other Asians would not rise to the level of outrage accorded Nazi crimes - because the victims weren’t white. Go back and read popular American literature of the 20’s and 30’s, and you will find that one of the most common stereotypes about Asians was that “they don’t regard human life the same way we do”. No cite for this at hand, I suppose I could dig some up if necessary. But I recall hearing things like that even as late as the Vietnam war.
I think it’s likely that many Japanese, if they think about it, do regard Japan as in some sense a victim of WWII, because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It may be due to the difference in perceived scope of the reprisal vs. what they know about Japan’s role in the war. So I am glad to hear that the Hiroshima memorial has a more even-handed narrative now; I didn’t notice that it was that way when I saw it in 1988.
Roddy
One thing I’ve read is that military atrocities were not universal throughout the Japanese army. While many officers (perhaps even a majority) condoned and encouraged their troops to terrorize people in occupied territories, other officers expected their troops to act like civilized professionals and they did so. Assuming this is accurate, it would indicate that the decisions about whether or not to commit war crimes were disorganized and being made at a low level.
Indeed, in retrospect this is one of the biggest arguments that A-bombing Japan was overall a bad idea - it gave them a reason to adopt victimhood and help them avoid facing the fact that the Pacific war was entirely of their nation’s making. So it contributed to the ability to rationalise their state of denial to this day. Note I am NOT saying this was knowable by the Allies at the time.
“What happens on cruise stays on cruise.” Ever hear that one?
The existence of Comfort Women and Unit 731 certainly indicate that a good deal of the atrocities were condoned all the way up the chain.
Unit 731, certainly, but the use of comfort women was decentralized and its nature differed greatly from place to place, making generalizations difficult (a fact exploited by Japanese conservatives when denying the issue.)
You seemed to be excusing the lack of contrition (present day and historical) on the fact that its been so long that most of the bad guys are dead or really really old, I was just pointng out that it was a bullshit argument.
I previously posted: "
After a bit of research its not as bad as I thought (there was some form of apology for all of these incidents although they always seemed to have little caveats attached like" we are sorry that it happened but such things happen in a war") but why the dichotomy between the treatment of the war crimes in Europe versus the war crimes in Asia?"
So I recognize that there have been things that you might point to and call an apology. Can you cite to a relatively unqualified apology for comfort women?
Would we let Germany get away with these attitutes?
I don’t think there were a bunch of Japanese war criminals that fled to Brazil if that’s what you mean (emperor Hirohito and other members of the royal family were not tried). I am not sure how that absolves them of apologizing for some of that stuff.
My high school history class basically seemed to presume that history ended with WWII, we didn’t cover the Korean or the Vietnam Wars, we did cover reconstruction of Europe and we covered Martin Luther King Jr. seperately around MLK day.