During WWII, over 27,000 Americans were captured and interned by the Japanese. Only 16,000 of these POWs made it home. Because of horrible conditions and forced labor, death rates for American POWs in Japanese prison camps were 30 times higher than for POWs in German prison camps. We need to tell the private Japanese companies that profited from American slave-labor to remedy their wrongs. Please visit http://www.justiceforvets.org and click on the “Take Action” icon to have your voice heard by U.S. legislators and help our veterans. Thank you.
We also need to tell the private American companies who profited from rounding up Japanese-Americans and sending them to internment camps, after buying off their business, farms and homes for pennies on the dollar.
We also need to reprimand Ford for having entered into business with Nazi Germany during World War II. Let’s clean our own house before we start chastising someone else, hm?
Of course, because only one wrong could be righted at any given time.
Ah, Chance I seem to recall that The President apologized to interned Japanese-Americans, and that Congress authorized $20,000 payments to survivors.
Saying that we need to clean up our own house before we criticize others–where do you draw the line? Maybe we should tell Holocaust survivors looking for restitution, “sorry the U.S. can’t help you because we aren’t perfect ourselves.” Maybe we shouldn’t have agreed to sanctions against South Africa, because after all, who are we to tell another country what to do since we don’t have our own house in order.
I can’t think of another country that tries as hard as we do to right the wrongs of our past. We killed Indians, we enslaved Africans. But our free press, liberal academia, and the general goodness of the American people ensures that these wrongs aren’t swept under the rug.
I guess that I am somewhat miffed that adsobie writes a perfectly reasonable post about the excrutiatingly horrible experience that our POW’s went through and all he gets for his trouble is a semi-lecture about how those poor veterans should keep quiet because American isn’t perfect.
adsobie, there are two things we generally do not like around here. One is people who do a drive-by, posting some message without intent to discuss or return. Another is [/url=“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=83713”]duplicating threads. If you are trying to raise awareness about the issue you are going about it the wrong way. The mods will be with you shortly.
Another thing we really dislike is people who do not preview! Will the mods please fix that coding while they’re here? Merci much
Faults with the poster aside I’ll add my 2¢.
While the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent was an ugly chapter in history the Bataan death march was far worse. America has a lot to apologize for but let’s keep a little perspective.
It becomes difficult for reparations to make up for crimes the further we get from the actual event. If you wait until all the original victims are dead it may be impossible to come up with a solution that satisfies everyone.
Unfortunately for the many living US vets who suffered as POWs under the Japanese our own government is to blame for them never recieving compensation. Macaurthur may have been more concerned with a stable occupation of Japan than with justice.
Been there, done that. I suspect that this thread will generate many of the same points as the thread linked above.
To play the part of Troll’s Advocate for a little bit, I do think that Japan hasn’t properly faced up to some of its wartime atrocities. Currently a big issue in the news here is Japanese textbooks distorting the nature of the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Personally, I think that this issue is far more important than the issue of compensating victims.
As an Australian, I understand US anger toward Japan. Our men were also beaten, starved, and worked to death. Many older Australians harbour a resentment toward the Japanese which will never allow forgiveness. I respect and understand the view of these older people, but I do not take it as gospel. I was born thirty-five years after the Japanese surrender. I have a very close Japanese internet friend who was born even later. She has been to Australia before, and wants to come again. She asked me what she should say to any people she might meet who still remember the war: should she apologise? I told her an an apology is out of the question, and that all she needs to do is to show that she understands the full extent of what happened, and is horrified by it. Like most intelligent Japanese people, her opinion is that the Japanese were the bad guys, and the US and other allies were the good guys -at least up until Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After that, it became blurred somewhat.
I don’t think that, sixty years later, it is an issue.
What Japan (and Germany) did during WWII was evil and disgusting.
Twenty-five even. Damn maths…
They preached the virtues of not previewing. Delete that. It was supposed to be at the top. Sheesh, two corrections for one post.
I think that the best thing that the Japanese could do would be to acknowledge their own actions in WWII to themselves more fully.
At present they are taught very little in school about the details of their role mostly the general sweep of history.
German children are taught these things, about how a civilised society can be perverted by the unscrupulous, but it seems that Japan has yet to do this.
The idea is not to perpetuate guilt but to realise that all societies should be vigilent.
not to make the original idea any less …
but going on along this line of thinking dosent half the world owe the indians of north and south america some dough then ?
and im sure the east indians have a case against the uk
maybe we should do like the pope did and have a year of apology and forgiveness
>> I do think that Japan hasn’t properly faced up to some of its wartime atrocities.
>> Personally, I think that this issue is far more important than the issue of compensating victims.
I totally agree but it is not only Japan. Most countries in that part of the world are much more culturally closed and racist than western countries.
I have found many young Chinese people who harbor resentment and even hate towards the Japanese which can only be explained by popular and government fed nationalism.
I remember when Jiang Zemin went to Japan and demanded their textbooks reflect the truth of history… I got into a big argument about this with a Chinese friend. Yes, the Japanese committed horrendous crimes against the Chinese people and should own up to it but the Chinese government has caused the death of many more Chinese and will not owen up to it so it is in no position to demand the Japanese do it.
I think western allies did a pretty good job after the war of condemming the Nazi horrors without condemming the German people as a whole. I think no westerners born after the war would hold any animosity against the German people on account of what Germany did. We know to separate the sin from the sinner. But I think this has not happened in Asia. Japan has not owned up to its crimes and the nations who suffered them have not separated them from the Japanese people themselves. it would be very easy for tensions to flare up again in the region and that is one reason American presence is required there.
In summary: The japanese are teaching a very distorted history, but so are the other nations in the area, especially China. They all need to (a) discover the truth and (b) put it behind them and develop friendly relations. they have a long way to go.
Too bad this thread hasn’t been closed as was the identical one on MPSIMS.
Not quite true. It authorized $20k payments to internees OR their 1st generation descendants. I lived in LA’s Little Tokyo the year the payments were disbursed, and all the young Japanese kids were driving new cars, they bragged about spending the government payoff on new Toyotas and Hondas.
If this entitlement-mentality bozo ever manages to get his payoff, I expect similarly stupid results.
We all know that history is written by the victors. It just amazes me that some people want to go back and make sure the vanquished keep memorizing some chapters. . .
adsobie, I’m sure you’ll see all the posts against doing a ‘drive-by’ advertisement. I’ll just add that I’m disgusted that people like you want to put this matter back onto the plates of the ‘bleeding-heart liberals’ who feel the need to redress the wrongs done by past generations. Don’t get me wrong, I fully appreciate what my great uncle has done, my neighbor back home did, my Scoutmaster, my boss, etc., but to beat a dead horse is just too much. War doesn’t determine who’s right, it determines who’s left. “Rewinning the war” every time someone wants money is no way to conduct ourselves, and is highly disrespectful by ignoring the thousands of lives unfortunately lost on both sides of any conflict.
Tripler
Now I’m all pissed off. . .
Well said, Trip! I’m a Viet Nam vet, and all that matters to me is that I have the respect of thousands of my brothers and sisters who also just did what needed doing.
Nobody owes me shit!
Quasi
I don’t think this is Mundane or Pointeless.
I don’t either, but y’all know which side of the fence I’m on. Reparations should be made once and only once, immediately after resolution of the conflict, to redress the potential suffering that conflict will and not could cause in the future. Compensation should only be made to put out the little fires immediately sprung from a conflagration, not from the smouldering ashes some 50 years later. . .
Quasimodem, I’m not going to bore you with the “Thank you!” or the “You’ve sacrificed so much!” that I feel are very overused. I will say, I respect you and all the others I know, because you did what you had to at a determined time, and for that I thank all veterans, whether the cause was just or not, both enemy and ally. . .
Tripler
Sheesh. I’m getting down off my soapbox, like, now.