(Probably not what you meant, but still worth mentioning. He’s a man who deserves to be remembered).
So, it’s the War of Western Aggression?
My first visit to Japan was actually more than 30 years ago. My more recent experience living there was about 10 years ago.
It’s interesting that you keep making statements about Japan “today”, “now”, “these days”, etc., when you’re really describing either things that happened more than 20 years ago or things you’ve simply imagined. Of course there are WWII veterans alive in Japan today, as well as other people old enough to remember the war years, and in my experience younger Japanese people know more about WWII than you’re giving them credit for.
Define “some” and we can have a discussion. There’s always a few percent of the population which is nuts.
From wiki.
pfffffft. In a country of over 100 million, there are 15k ultra nationalists.
In WWII, the country as a whole was not truly fanatical. The military, especially the IJA was, but the population was not.
I see. Does that tend to be more of a hotbed of Japanese nationalism than elsewhere?
Not in Tokyo, at least.
Are the Japanese also in denial about maybe it might’ve been a good idea to surrender after we nuked Hiroshima?
I’m sure thinking in Japan probably is different now from when Dave Barry wrote his book in the 1990s.
Aren’t there? Mr. Neville’s grandfather, who was a WWII veteran, died just a few years ago. The last known WWI veteran, Frank Buckles, died in 2011. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates there are over a million surviving WWII vets in the US as of 2014. AIUI, life expectancies in Japan are on par with or longer than those in the US. I would expect there to still be some WWII veterans alive in Japan.
To be fair, my high school history classes in the US didn’t have too much more than that on WWII. It came near the end of the semester, when time was running out. Maybe Japanese history classes have the same problem. Running out of time to cover the stuff toward the end of the syllabus is not unique to history classes, in my experience.
Would you want to tell young kids details about sadistic medical experiments, women forced into prostitution, and soldiers eating POWs (all of which the Japanese military in WWII did)? That kind of thing would probably get a TV-MA rating if you showed it on TV. You could make a very reasonable argument that it’s not suitable for kids under 18.
Or more politely put “The Pacific Unpleasantness”
I don’t think that link is a good example of a Japan’s war crimes. While I assume some of those cut down were civilian, I don’t see where the article says as much. The article mentions that one of the swords was damaged on a helmet and that both officers fought on the front line. If two US Marines fought hand to hand combat against members of ISIS and killed 106 and 105 respectively they would get medals.
Well, they’re right, it’s not. An apology is not policy. That’s just what those words mean.
However, it indisputably IS Japanese national policy to constitutionally forbid itself from foreign military adventures, so in fact there is policy demonstrating a commitment to avoid the very thing they’ve apologized for.
[QUOTE=Kamakiri]
One could say that Admiral Nagumo, who came up with Pearl Harbor, and who had been educated in the States, was extremely sanguine about Japan’s chances in any war with the US. He gave Japan 'six months of unchallenged victories."
[/QUOTE]
You are confused. Nagumo Chuichi was the commander of the First Air Fleet during the Battle of Midway, and proved to be somewhat unsuited for the command.
The sentiments to which you are referring were expressed by Yamamoto Isoruku, Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet (in essence, almost the entire Imperial Japanese Navy.) That said, Yamamoto’s sentiments were shared by quite a few Japanese general officers. The Japanese staff included many men who were not fools, and knew Japan was in serious trouble.
Well, yes, but they still pushed Japan into war…or failed to raise any real objections.
I thought that the army pushed them into war.
Mostly, yes, but Rick mentioned “…Japanese general officers. The Japanese staff…” not just the Naval staff. The Army contained far more War Hawks than the Navy, but the Navy was itching to show what it’s powerful new fleet could do.
Had they seriously fired on anyone since the Tsushima strait?
I only ever spent about a week in Tokyo, but I find it difficult to believe that, in a city of 13+ million people with a fair number of inhabitants old enough to remember the war years, the only ones willing to say anything about WWII at all are the Japanese equivalent of neo-Nazis and that this has resulted in the young people of Tokyo knowing nothing about the period except what the far-right nutjobs tell them.
That many young people in Japan don’t know very much about the war I can easily believe, although in fairness I doubt the average young American knows much about WWII. That far-right nutjobs exist in Japan I know for a fact; I met one (although AFAIK only the one) myself when I was living there. However, Kamakiri has been making more extreme claims than that.
No one listens to the ultra nationalists. They have their blaring sound trucks which everyone hates, but not a significant number of followers.
I think this pretty much sums up the entire thread, minus minor hijacks.
Isn’t western Japan somewhat more nationalist/hawkish than Eastern Japan? Is there a west = conservative, east = liberal dynamic in Japan?
Yes. In the coastal areas of China, from '37+.
Do they still do this? Why don’t they just have websites and Facebook pages, like wingnuts in other countries do?