# PM of Japan is a war-crime denier **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 2, 2007, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342 "2007-03-02T19:47:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2007, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/21 "2007-03-03T09:38:38Z")
[QUOTE=crowmanyclouds] Yes, how many of them remember the Sand Creek massacre or the Moro Crater massacre [/QUOTE] Well, we don’t deny them. Note Wiki has a nice entry on both. But no one is alive today that perpetrated those atrocities. And, I doubt if any victims still live, either. However there are plenty of both from the Japanese atrocities. So, there is no one to say “we’re sorry and here’s some reparations” to for the earlier ones, but the Japanese government can still at least try to make things right for many people. Denying the atrocities is spitting in the face of the _living_ victims. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2007, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/22 "2007-03-03T11:02:00Z")
[QUOTE=Zoe] Don’t paint the Japanese people with a broad brush anymore than you would Americans. Do you think that all Americans support the Bush Administration’s policies in Guantanamo and the formerly “secret prisons” where Geneva Conventions were set aside? Do you think that all Americans support the idea of sending prisoners to countries that are known to torture? Why has a European country charged Rumsfeld with war crimes? Are all Americans in denial too? [/QUOTE] I **do** blame the majority of Americans, because they re-elected Bush. By doing so, they _did_ show support for the secret prisons, and the torture, and the rapes, and the corruption, and all the other evils America has commited in Iraq and elsewhere. I consider them worse than the people who support the Japanese PM, because the Iraq war is happening _right now_, not decades ago. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2007, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/23 "2007-03-03T11:36:26Z")
You can hardly compare the US’s future treatment of the Bush administration with the Japanese traetment of their behaviour in WWII. Come back in 50 years time and tell me if school textbooks uniformly fail to mention any of GWB’s failings and pretend that he didn’t invade anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/24 "2007-03-04T05:37:18Z")
Japan has from time to time apologized for all of their war crimes. The problem is that noone believes them because they continue to treat their war criminals like war heroes and deny war crimes on a somewhat regular basis. ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/25 "2007-03-04T13:40:36Z")
[QUOTE=Struan] And yet your current President was elected twice! [/QUOTE] I didn’t vote for him, fuckhead. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/26 "2007-03-04T14:15:07Z")
[QUOTE=sturmhauke] I didn’t vote for him, fuckhead. [/QUOTE] Sure, but how much of the country can say that? Over 99% of voters in Japan can say they didn’t vote for Abe. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/27 "2007-03-04T15:11:47Z")
[QUOTE=Monty] The Emperor is Emperor in name only. He has no power and is not permitted to be involved in the political machinery running the country. The Emperor cannot rebuke the PM. [/QUOTE] I am not familiar with the political system of Japan, but what’s stopping the Emperor from letting it be known he personally is against the PM’s views? ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/28 "2007-03-04T15:57:46Z")
Slight aside here, but I have read several articles in the past few weeks about Japanese war crimes, and though on a smaller scale, some of the medical experimentation seems more horrendous that what was done in the German Nazi camps. Here’s a [Daily Mail article](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=439776&in_page_id=1770) from 2 March 2007, listing such fun pastimes as dissection of live prisoners without anesthaetic, testing of biological warfare and chemical weapons on live prisoners, amputating limbs and reattaching them to the “wrong” side of the body, etc. This portion of the article was very disheartening to read: > [@](#): > > Why, then, after the war, were nearly all the scientists at Unit 731 freed? Why did Dr Josef Mengele, the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ at Auschwitz, have to flee to South America and spend the rest of his life in hiding, while Dr Shiro Ishii died at home of throat cancer aged 67 after a prosperous and untroubled life? > > The answer is that the Japanese were allowed to erase Unit 731 from the archives by the American government, which wanted Ishii’s biological warfare findings for itself. > > In the autumn of 1945, General MacArthur granted immunity to members of the Unit in exchange for research data on biological warfare. ---
**Author:** ![blinkingblinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/29 "2007-03-04T18:18:10Z")
[QUOTE=Arnold Winkelried] Slight aside here, but I have read several articles in the past few weeks about Japanese war crimes, and though on a smaller scale, some of the medical experimentation seems more horrendous that what was done in the German Nazi camps. Here’s a [Daily Mail article](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=439776&in_page_id=1770) from 2 March 2007, listing such fun pastimes as dissection of live prisoners without anesthaetic, testing of biological warfare and chemical weapons on live prisoners, amputating limbs and reattaching them to the “wrong” side of the body, etc. This portion of the article was very disheartening to read: [/QUOTE] Shouldn’t the USA government apologize for letting the heads of UNIT 731 go free ? ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/30 "2007-03-04T18:22:02Z")
[QUOTE=blinkingblinking] Shouldn’t the USA government apologize for letting the heads of UNIT 731 go free ? [/QUOTE] Shouldn’t assisting persons guilty of war crimes escape justice be a war crime? CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![blinkingblinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/31 "2007-03-04T18:48:30Z")
[QUOTE=blinkingblinking] Shouldn’t the USA government apologize for letting the heads of UNIT 731 go free ? [/QUOTE] Sorry about the ‘hijack’. This should be in a separate thread. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/32 "2007-03-04T19:50:48Z")
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold] I am not familiar with the political system of Japan, but what’s stopping the Emperor from letting it be known he personally is against the PM’s views? [/QUOTE] I don’t think there is a “monarch” in the world as powerless as the post-war Japanese Emperor. If I understand correctly, any expressions of the Emperor and his family, that are to go out to the public, are tightly regulated and vetted by the Imperial Household Agency; public “personal” expressions are not part of the job, except for the most innocuous sort. He would almost have to wait to be in the middle of reading a speech for some ceremony where independent media were running the cameras and recorders, to go off his notes and say that. And that could cause quite some froofraw… why, it would mean the Emperor himself is exemplifying defiance of “the way things are done”, and we can’t have that, can we :dubious: ? And meanwhile, some of the major supporters of giving the Emperor back some smidgen of authority ARE the right-wing nationalist wacks so he’d end up ticking off all sides. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/33 "2007-03-05T00:38:36Z")
Its not just the Prime Minister, I think about a quarter of their congress have signed onto this position. ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/34 "2007-03-05T01:20:30Z")
[QUOTE=sturmhauke] I didn’t vote for him, fuckhead. [/QUOTE] What I’m getting at here is this: “the majority” is not necessarily “damn near everybody.” Here in the US, the number of people who voted for Bush is very slightly more than the number who voted for someone else (mostly Kerry in '04 and Gore in '00). I don’t know how many people in Japan agree with Abe, but I bet it’s not damn near everybody there, either. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/35 "2007-03-05T10:31:37Z")
[QUOTE=col\_10022] Its not just the Prime Minister, I think about a quarter of their congress have signed onto this position. [/QUOTE] Diet or Parliament. Actually it’s “National Assembly” literally but for some reason the translation is almost always done as “Diet or Parliament.” ---
**Author:** ![calm\_kiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/36 "2007-03-05T11:10:00Z")
Sixty years ago Japan and Germany turned the world into hell. Germany admits this now, Japan struggles with the thought. How will America deal with THEIR truth sixty years from now? Will they still be saying they liberated Iraq? Or will they realise they made hell worse for everyone? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/37 "2007-03-05T19:55:34Z")
Oh puleeeesee dudes. Let us not conflate GWB’s steps over the line into warcrimes on the level of Tojo and Hitler. That’s just plain ridiclous. Besides it’s a hijack. If you want to postulate possible warcrimes for GWB, start another thread. Like there aren’t already a zillion of them. ---
**Author:** ![MelCthefirst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eada6e/32.png) [@MelCthefirst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MelCthefirst)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/38 "2007-03-05T20:01:23Z")
In my experience from living in Japan, for those who are old enough to remember, many are deeply ashamed about what happened in the war. When I talked with older people about why younger Japanese aren’t taught what happened, they indicated that they don’t want to expose their young to those things they are most ashamed about. For those from non-face saving cultures, this kind of ‘don’t talk about it’ mentality is hard to understand. There are ofcourse others who don’t believe it happened but they are products of their own culture’s propaganda - as we all are, whether you like to acknowledge it or not. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2007, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/39 "2007-03-05T20:46:04Z")
[QUOTE=Pleonast] Women and girls were systematically and repetitively raped by Japanese soldiers. [/QUOTE] I agree with you sentiments, but I thought I should nitpick and say that you meant “repeatedly.” “Repetitively” just seems really inappropriate. ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2007, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342/40 "2007-03-06T02:46:53Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] I **do** blame the majority of Americans, because they re-elected Bush. By doing so, they _did_ show support for the secret prisons, and the torture, and the rapes, and the corruption, and all the other evils America has commited in Iraq and elsewhere. I consider them worse than the people who support the Japanese PM, because the Iraq war is happening _right now_, not decades ago. [/QUOTE] You yourself, of course, are exempted from that blame, I am sure. * * * It’s an ugly spectre, that’s for sure, but there’s not much that can be done about it. The Japanese live in a culture that is alien to much of the Western way of thought. To attempt to push it into the same sorts of actions we would expect is like trying to put a round peg is a square hold… with a hammer. It can be done, but it’s not easy, and the results aren’t always what you would want. Pushing them on this (or any issue, really) will only give those that would brush away this piece of their history more strength. Note: I believe they were in the wrong, and their government knows they were in the wrong, but their society and culture cannot let them come right out, admit it, and make it all over with. Therefore, things will take more time than we are used to, and will be done a different way… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pm-of-japan-is-a-war-crime-denier/394342.md?page=3)