No, I’m well aware of the justifications for the mass slaughter of non-combatants.
It’ll be “not the case” when people stop trying to claim the Japanese were particularly different or extreme in their morality.
Well, *one *of us can’t resist, that’s true - can’t resist misusing the term, that is.
Mentioning is nothing. Note I didn’t comment on the many previous posts in the thread about what the Japanese did and didn’t do. Hinting that the Japanese were uniquely indoctrinated and nationalistic in the course of doing so is not the same thing as mentioning the acts they committed. One is history, one is (piss-poor) armchair psychology. Yeah, you didn’t say they were unique in so many words, not that I said you did, but “not quite the same” carries the same implication. Of course, your subsequent postings have confirmed that inference.
I’m sure the historians who’ve extensively analyzed the death cult ethos that pervaded Japan before and during WWII, would be amused at your dismissal of their research as “(piss-poor) armchair psychology”.
Having one’s leaders pumping up the population to effectively accept mass suicide is indeed “particularly different” from the path taken by Allied leaders. Not wanting to accept this is a form of denial that is both laughable and revolting.
Rather than reacting to someone’s “hinting” or “definite implication” of a point they did not espouse and have taken pains to explain to you, it’d be better if you read their posts for comprehension in the first place.
Historians are not psychologists…but cites would be nice, anyway
Propaganda is propaganda.
Probably about as laughable and revolting as I find shrugging off firebombings and atomic bombs…
Funny, though, that I drew the *correct *inference - you’ve continued to defend the uniqueness of the Japanese wartime mindset, even in this very post. So apparently there’s nothing wrong with my reading comprehension.
There’ve been a number posted in this thread already. Your reading can start with Ian Toll’s “The Conquering Tide” and James Bradley’s “Flyboys” (both of which relate tragic events from both the American and Japanese points of view). The WWII Japanese death cult and its consequences are also discussed here.
Another indefensible “it’s all the same, we did it too” argument.
And where have I done this? How does linking such bombings to the die-to-the-last-civilian mentality mean “shrugging off” such horrific consequences or claiming they were necessary (note that I don’t think atomic weapons should have been used, at least without a warning drop on a non-populated area. Interestingly, one of the few U.S. military leaders to criticize the use of atomic bombs was Admiral Bill Halsey, he of “kill more Japs”).
Another link for you (it won’t aid in developing reading comprehension*, but might improve your English usage.
Let’s try using the word in a sentence: Leaders of imperialist Japan were not unique in harboring racist views, but far exceeded their Allied ocunterparts in regards to the brutal consequences of holding such views.
*the definition of “reading comprehension” is not “I ignore what I’ve read to make it come out the way I want”.
I have NEVER said the U.S. never did anything wrong, ever. However, I believe we’re speaking of WWII here, not U.S. history in general.
I’m not saying you have to like the U.S. But I cannot agree that the Allies and the Axis powers were equivalent. (Actually, most of the Allied war crimes were committed by the Soviets.) Keep in mind, though, at the time of the two WWs, the U.S. was only starting to emerge as THE world power, along with the Soviet Union. Prior to that, Britain had been top dog.
And while I agree that the U.S. was indeed capable of being vile (the Tuskeegee experiments weren’t the only instance) I still do not think they would be on the same level as the Holocaust. You’re free to disagree, of course.
But for now, let’s stick to WWII. And I was speaking of your comparison (if I was wrong, correct me) of the U.S.'s racist propaganda to the Japanese’s use of Kamikazes and their own war crimes. I cannot, in good conscience, as much as I dislike what we did, say they were equivalent. “They did it too!” is never a good defense.
The argument over the atomic bombs is probably for a different thread. NOT because I want to defend the U.S. here, but because it tends to derail things – this is about Japan. (I WILL say, however, that when it comes to the choice to bomb Japan, racism probably wasn’t a factor. If Germany hadn’t all but defeated, there’s a good chance they might have been a target.)
You are wrong, and I’m correcting you: I didn’t compare US propaganda to Japanese war crimes and suicide attacks, I just compared it to Japanese propaganda.
Well I apologize for the misunderstanding. At the same time, it’s not like it’s the first time racism was used in war time propaganda – have you seen some of the stuff from WWI?
It was pretty much standard, sadly. (This isn’t me defending it, so much as saying, “human beings are assholes, what else is new?” I’m becoming more and more of a cynic as I age.)
Yup, no differences between acts by the Allies and the Axis. Quite the thought for Memorial Day.
As for the concept expressed by another poster earlier in this thread that kamikaze-style attacks were “successful”:
There was a syndicated story in my local paper today about the American retaking of the island of Attu in the Aleutians in 1943 (a largely forgotten theater in WWII). American casualties were heavy, but nowhere near those of the Japanese :
“About 200 Japanese soldiers died in the assault, and the remaining 500 or so held grenades to their bellies and pulled the pins. It was the first official case of “gyokusai,” a Japanese euphemism for annihilation or mass suicide in the name of Emperor Hirohito, which increasingly occurred in other Japanese battlefields.”
Gyokusai is the “shattered jewel” philosophy that led Japanese leaders to approvingly contemplate the deaths of the entire Japanese civilian population in heroic opposition to their enemies. It’s not clear how the sacrifices that were actually carried out (including leaving unprotected/unsupplied garrisons on remote islands to die to the last man, or encouraging civilian suicides on Saipan) led the Japanese to “victory”. In addition, the embrace of “bushido” also meant the Japanese military devoted scant resources to recovering downed pilots, because you were supposed to die in battle. That failure to protect skilled pilots (an increasingly scarce resource) is linked to Japan’s downfall in the Pacific.
Death cults are destructive to their practitioners and history shows they are doomed to fail.
All the “death cult” mantra comes across to me as cultural snobbery. Japanese culture–influenced by Confuciousism and Buddahism and Shintoism–has different ideas about the conditions for an honorable life and an honorable death than the traditional Western Christian views. That doesn’t make one culture objectively better than the other.
Ultra nationalists in Japanese society, primarily in the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, hijacked and distorted a number of cultural norms.
Take for example the views of the Emperor. The ultra nationalists took what had been more respect and forced a reverence to where people would die trying to rescue his photograph from burning buildings.
The conduct of the Japanese military in the Russo Japanese war was extremely different than that during WWII. Outside observers actually praised Japan for its treatment of Russian POWs.
The views of dying were similar. There had always been a part of suicide within a samurai code, but it was never what has been portrayed in the media. There never were large numbers of seppuku (harakiri) and in fact many people avoided taking their own lives by claiming to be too ill to perform it. This would create a house arrest which could last for years.
There developed a “death cult” in the Japanese military in the years leading up to the war. I already discussed this in my prior post.
I just wanted to point out that the so-called bushido practiced by the nutcases in WWII was a very strong distortion of the historical bushido as practiced by the samurais.
This is reflected in the treatment of prisoners of war. One common misconception is that Japanese mistreated POWs because of this concept of bushido, that real fighters were supposed to die in battle and those who surrendered were worse than animals.
Yet, as I pointed at in my previous post, the Japanese treatment of Russian POWs in the Russo Japanese war was quite honorable.
The ultra nationalists who increasing gained power in the 1920s through the 30s and then into the war developed their own fanatical codes of conduct which cannot be conflated with traditional Japanese society.
I do not believe that this danger of a normal society becoming radicalized is limited to societies such as Japan. I believe it’s something that all people need to be on guard to ensure that does not occur.
