About the time they figured that communism was THE big threat.
At that point a lot of social changes that had been enforced under McArthur were undone, like the breaking up of industrial power houses. That would have been what?, 1948?
So it is up to the individual to forgive, but you are willing to condemn millions for their place of birth?
A Japanese kid who, in 1945, got into the Army or Navy at 16, (who was certainly too young to have helped start the war), would be a 74 year old retiree, today. Anyone old enough to have committed an atrocity would probably be closer to 80 and anyone old enough to have actually helped formulate a policy to engage in the war would probably be over 90. How many of those nonagenarians do you believe are actually running car companies? Your policy of “if you want to forgive them” implies that it is acceptable to choose to withhold “forgiveness” from people who had nothing to do with prosecuting the war and were, in most cases, not born or were young children when it ended.
In 1955, or even 1975, your position had some glimmer of rationalization. In 2003, it is simply perpetuating mindless hatred.
You are not withholding forgiveness, you are holding a grudge.
How long should someone be held accountable for atrocities that they did not commit?
Why do you people keep on making up strawmen?
and they should act irrational because…?
Your forgetting the attack was 58 years ago. 58 years ago. My mom wasn’t even alive then, neither were most of the Japanese alive now. Why keep hating? Do you get off on the hate? Is your life so empty you need to hate something to justify your existance?
I don’t give a fuck what color she is. I find your blanket condemnation of the grandchildren of people who hurt your and my grandparents insensitive and insulting to you, them, and me, someone in “your group.” You need to grow up, son, or come up with a rational explination why 3 year old Michiko deserves your hate. Haven’t you noticed the cirlce of violence crap that plagues certain parts of the world? And now you’re defending it here?
please show where Susanann was terrorised in a Japanese POW camp. And, no, since they lived through the actual hating, not heard it second hand based on 60 year old stories.
Not my straw man. The analogy originally drawn was that buying cars (or otherwise forgiving the Japanese people for actions comitted in the second world war) is like black people getting all lovey dovey with the KKK. When clearly neither the workers nor probably the executives at Toyota had anything to do with the war. Therefore, this is all just an excuse to hate people for the sins of their fathers (or their former government, even better), which is as silly as despising me for what my slaveholding ancestors did.
I have read further commentary in this thread on this issue, so my apologies if it appears that I’m jumping on this, but Hitler used the USSR’s non-signatory status of the Geneva Convention as a justification for the Commissar Order and the general horrific treatment of Soviet prisoners to those who had qualms about it. As a purely legal matter, this idea is a complete wash. Article 82 of the Convention states:
Link is here. Germany was a signatory and bound to treat Soviet prisoners accordingly, whether the USSR had signed the convention itself or not.
True Story.
Apparently, the Germans simply declared a large part of the city off limits to the japs and told them to stay off or they’d be embarrassed before their governement. Whenever the Japs went a-prowling, the German officers would drive around and tell them to leave.
The germans of WWII are a fascinating study in contradictions and politics. Strange people, from all sorts of political stripes.
I think that technically goes out the window if the non-signatory violates the Geneva Convention’s rules. But I don’t have the coument in front of me.
I have been horrified by reading what happened in the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March and the many, many other atrocities committed by Japanese troops during and just prior to WWII. Those Japanese WERE japs, gooks, slopes … subhuman creatures because they behaved in a subhuman manner. I’m not at all sorry about Hiroshima, Nagasaki or the fire-bombing of Tokyo. They brought it on themselves, and any amount of suffering inflicted on the Japanese was well and truly deserved (I’m completely cool with the fire-bombing of Dresden for similar reasons.)
I think Japan has changed greatly in the last 58 years, but still, I don’t completely TRUST those changes and always look for signs that the old attitudes might be returning … I feel the same way about Germany.
I think you’d have to be pretty stupid not to.
I hope you look at every country in the world when looking for those attitudes, because it wasn’t because of some defective German/Japanese gene, they are just like you and me. They are human, and can easily become the horror that is humanity. You could easily be in that place yourself, and you’d be a fool to think it couldn’t happen to you. You’d be surprised what people, even yourself, do when they become desperate or scared.
Nope, Article 82 is pretty clear in its wording that the convention “must be respected by the High Contracting Parties under all circumstances.” The link I provided earlier is to the complete text of the Geneva Convention relating to Prisoners of War. The only way a nation can bow out of being bound by the convention is laid out in Article 96, concerning the right to denounce the treaty. If done in peacetime, the party is bound to respect the convention for 1 year following the denunciation. If done in wartime, the party is bound to follow the convention until the conclusion of peace in the current war, 1 year following the denunciation, or until the reparation of prisoners is concluded, whichever occurs last.
Sure, it CAN happen here, in fact it HAS happened here in the U.S. – the Trail of Tears wesn’t a picnic, after all. The mass extermination of a lot of Indian tribes rightfully makes others view us with suspicion. I would expect no less.
Still, I think some cultures are a lot more prone to violence than others. I’m not so worried about the present-day Japanese and the Germans, but when I hear about neo-Nazi movements in Germany or militants in Japan, my ears prick up. I look for more violence from Islamic cultures generally than from cultures dominated by Buddhism. Of the Islamists, I expect more shit from the Wahhabists than from the Shiites generally.
It’s just a matter of paying attention.
Sure, it CAN happen here, in fact it HAS happened here in the U.S. – the Trail of Tears wesn’t a picnic, after all. The mass extermination of a lot of Indian tribes rightfully makes others view us with suspicion. I would expect no less.
Still, I think some cultures are a lot more prone to violence than others. I’m not so worried about the present-day Japanese and the Germans, but when I hear about neo-Nazi movements in Germany or militants in Japan, my ears prick up. I look for more violence from Islamic cultures generally than from cultures dominated by Buddhism. Of the Islamists, I expect more shit from the Wahhabists than from the Shiites generally.
It’s just a matter of paying attention.
Nope!!!
I TOTALLY disagree.
They may be like YOU!!, but they are not like me or any American born soldier that I know of, or that I am related to.
American attitudes WERE different than the germans and the japanse.
The american people, did not, and would not elect a leader like Hitler or that Japanese emporer.
The american people also would not keep someone in power who was like them.
Our american soldiers and officers did not treat Japanese and german prisoners like they treated us, in fact, our boys were horrified to find out what the Japanese and Nazis did.
I dont know any american born doctor who would take out all the organs of a heathy prisoner and then let him die, just for the fun of it or to show others how to take out organs.
I dont know of any american born soldier, enlisted or officer, who would torture prisoners of war like the japanese did, or who would participate in running the gas chambers and slave labor camps in europe like the Nazis did just to steal the gold teeth of dead prisoners.
If you think the japanese soldiers and Nazi soldiers were just as “humane” as our American boys, you dont know what you are talking about, and you never talked to anyone who was a prisoner, and you never talked to any american soldier who freed the people from the german concentration camps.
Furthermore, I think your statement insults our American born boys in our armed forces.
The only one who would be “surpised” is YOU, when you realize that most American born citizens are not monsters, and would not do dishonorable or tortuous things to other people no matter how desparate or scared they are.
Susanann, you need to read up on your U.S. history. Specifically, some of the things that were done to the Indians, and some of the things that were done in bloody Kansas prior to the Civil War. Also, a little place called My Lai in Vietnam.
I agree with you that Americans operated on a moral plane that was far superior to the Germans and the Japanese during WWII. but history shows we’re capable of doing some fairly awful things at times.
My Lai was famous because it was a single rare incident.
Lt Calley was dishonorably discharged and also went to prison for it.
FYI, My Lai was not the common practice of American soldiers who served in Vietnam.
I find your comment extremely degrading/demeaning/insulting to all of our American born boys who served in Vietnam.
It should be noted that neither Hitler nor Hirohito were elected. Hitler came to power/high office through a behind the scenes deal - the Nazis had only a plurality (I don’t think they even had a majority when in coalition with Nationalists - it took the acquiescence of the Catholic Center and the purging of the Communists to “legally” give the Nazis power). This does not change German popular complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities. The Imperial Government of the WWII period was the result of a militarist semi-coup over the late twenties and through the thirties, making true civil government (and pro-peace policies) very dangerous for its advocates.
Furthermore, it should be noted that early in the war American soliders were reluctant (as a result of propoganda both true and false) to take Japanese prisoners. I am pretty sure that one Marine battalion had as its motto “Takes no prisoners” and there are other anecdotal reports of prisoners being killed out of hand - only a minimum necessary for intelligence were capture. Legendary sub captain Mush Morton was known for machine-gunning survivors of ships he sank (the truth as to whether or not they were in fact reaching for their rifles to fire at his sub went down with him) I certainly agree that the scale and official tolerance/sanction of this certainly did not reach that of the Japanese. But to say thay we would NEVER do something like this is not accurate either.
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/guadc/GC-13.htm
http://www.hilltoptimes.com/story.asp?edition=82&storyid=2190
As an aside, the following book goes into the racial aspects of the Asian/Pacific portion of WWII. Read it a while ago, pretty good. If I get a chance this weekend (and the thread is still active Tuesday) I may try and verify some of the above:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/039450030X/qid=1062084797/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/102-3936909-1664136?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
From http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/english/MarApr01/rielly.asp
(A site on the relationship between tight small unit cohesion and the potential development of norms divergent from the army and society it represents)
Speaking of Okinawa, Pelileu, etc
Of course as I quote these works seated in my air conditioned office in 2003 it is easy for me to condemn such acts as inhuman and unAmerican. My perspective would no doubt be different if I were stuck in the jungle with too many buddies dying around me and too much war between me and home. If I saw another member of my unit kill enemies trying to surrender I honestly don’t know if I’d report them.
Quite untrue. Lest you imagine that anything I am writing is an attempt to impugn the honor of Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen, it is not. Japanese behavior during the war was inexcusably barbaric. However, the Pacific War was extremely brutal, and the conduct of Allied personal matched the environment they were in. From John W. Dower’s War Without Mercy:
The collection of gold teeth, bones and skulls of Japanese dead as trophies was fairly practice. One of the more brutal accounts from Sledge’s With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa is of an American Marine slitting the cheeks of a still living Japanese soldier in order to remove gold teeth with the butt of his K-bar. Life Magazine ran an issue during the war with a photo of a family with the skull of a dead Japanese soldier that their son in the service had sent back to them. James J. Fahey’s Pacific War Diary tells how he kept a sliver of bone from a dead Japanese kamikaze pilot that had crashed into his ship to mail back to his sister. Russell Spurr’s A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze mission of the Battleship Yamato contains accounts of American planes strafing the life rafts and helpless survivors of sinking Japanese vessels – a common practice on both sides. In Admiral Samuel Elliot Morrison’s History of US Naval Operations in World War II, the semi-official history of the US Navy, he recounts the rescued commander of a sunken US warship after the Naval Battle Guadalcanal begging the gunner on a rescue vessel to stop firing at the heads of Japanese sailors bobbing in the water lest mistakes at identification be made.
Never mind, Dissonance seems to have War without Mercy on hand.