# Why were the Japanese so cruel in World War II? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 22, 2010, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034 "2010-12-22T02:36:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/161 "2010-12-27T03:53:27Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > I wouldn’t read too much into that, everyone used bennies to prevent sleepiness. [“Memorandum on the Use of Benzedrine and Methedrine in War”](http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt08/benzedrine-and-methedrine.html), [“Stimulants for Members of the German Luftwaffe”](http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt08/stimulants.html) both intelligence reports on German military use of stimulants in WWII originally published in Tactical and Technical Trends. [Use of Contents of First-Aid Kits & Packets](http://med-dept.com/application.php) of the US Army, I seem to recall Cornelius Ryan mentioning in A Bridge Too Far that amphetamines used during the siege of Arnhem caused more problems than they were worth once soldiers came down from them. The USAF still uses [go pills](http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/021028-speed1.htm) of dextroamphetamine for very long flights. It’s quite a distance from things like these to full blown meth-addicted violent behavior. I don’t have a cite, but a psychiatrist I know says that although the ostensible reason for the development of **Provigil** is the treatment of narcolepsy, in fact there was never a real market for that and the military was at least partially involved in it. I also remember reading the term ‘special forces popcorn’ in a Vietnam vet’s biography regarding stimulant use. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/162 "2010-12-27T05:08:02Z")
> [@HubZilla](#): > > Especially to the Chinese. I just finished watching “John Rabe” on Netflix, about where a Nazi was disgusted by the Japanese atrocities (you know you got it bad if he’s writing Hitler to tell the Japanese to cool it). Besides the movie’s Rape of Nanking, there were the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign massacres and Unit 731. Don’t look that last one up if you have a weak stomach. > > While Hitler is synonomous with WWII atrocities, the Japanese sure gave him a run for his money in China. And elsewhere, too, like the Bataan Death March, Burma Road, and the Manila Massacre (more casualties than the Tokyo firebombings or atomic bombs). Never mind the hell ships and comfort women. > > I recall some of their POW mistreatment comes from their Bushido code about the contempt of surrendering. But how does one explain all the civilian massacres and atrocities that occurred? > > Did they have their own version of Mein Kampf? Seeing the similarities, did they have an Axis deal: “you eliminate the Jews, we’ll depopulate China” This thread should have begun and ended with “they’re human, and human beings are known to commit worse atrocities than this”. The Japanese hardly come anywhere close to what China did to their own people, or what white settlers did to Native Americans, the Roman Empire, or the slave trade, the Mongols storming through Asia, Genghis Khan in China, oh man I can go on FOREVER with this. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/163 "2010-12-27T05:33:42Z")
“Why does a disease have a specific pathology?” “The beginning and end of any answer is that they’re microbes, and microbes have done far worse. What this microbe does isn’t as bad as what Ebola, the Black Death or the flesh eating virus do, anyways.” “Well, why did the European settlers in North America mistreat the native population?” “They were human, and human beings have done much worse. Besides, what they did wasn’t as bad as…” “Why did…” “Others are similar, and it wasn’t as bad as…” “Why…” “Shut up”, he explained. As I pointed out earlier, there is an aspect of ‘it steam engines when it comes steam engine time’, but throwing up our hands and refusing to analyze things at all, and pretending that we don’t even need a basic degree of curiosity for unique trends in history, is simply an abdication. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/164 "2010-12-27T05:35:36Z")
I don’t buy this kind of answer for a second. Nobody else _at the time_ was doing what Japan was doing in World War II. The fact that even the _Nazis_ were shocked by it says something about how uniquely scary it was _at the time_. Do you get what I mean here? What is the point of comparing things over hundreds of years of history when it’s well understood that human civilization undergoes changes about what is generally accepted to be right and wrong. (This is in response to the post _above_ the previous one by **FinnAgain.** ) Also, I am not aware of anything that whites did to Indians that equaled the Japanese war crimes. They did some very evil things, but they didn’t dissect people alive _in an organized way_ in the name of “science”. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/165 "2010-12-27T06:00:10Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > This thread should have begun and ended with “they’re human, and human beings are known to commit worse atrocities than this”. Bullshit. The answer to the OP is that the Japanese culture (military culture, mainly) at the time helped breed a lot of sociopaths and gave them guns. For some answers from the horse’s mouth, we see from **soplatole** ’s link the following: > [@](#): > > In the Japanese-made film Japanese Devils (2001) by Minori Matsui, 14 former Japanese soldiers who served in China were asked why atrocities were committed. They said that horrible things were done to civilians not out of stress or fanaticism but rather because they regarded the Chinese as less than human and potential spies; they wanted to be a member of the group; and they were worried that if they didn’t do terrible things their manhood would be questioned. > > Committing atrocities was condoned and even encouraged. **One man in the film said that he and his comrades wiped out an entire village simply for the thrill of it. Another said he burned a mother and her newborn baby alive and stuck around to hear their screams.** > > The soldiers claimed their brutal training—in which they were beaten by their superiors and subjected to cruel hazing by their peers with the object of crushing their “arrogant” individuality—turned them from village farm boys into heartless soldiers who were able to kill without feeling. Bolding mine. It takes a sociopath to kill an entire village “for the thrill of it” or to burn a mother and her baby alive and stick around to hear the screams. These were sociopaths, pure and simple. It looks like sociopaths are not simply born that way, they can be created by a culture and a certain upbringing and training. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/166 "2010-12-27T06:03:43Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Not to downplay the evil of the Germans at all, but the Japanese never get their due - I consider them to be as evil or more than the Germans, but you almost never hear about it, whereas you’ve heard about the holocaust at least 100,000 times in your life. That’s because the Chinese aren’t heading most of the Hollywood studios. If they had been, we’d have seen a gazillion movies about Japanese war atrocities. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/167 "2010-12-27T06:22:09Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > This thread should have begun and ended with “they’re human, and human beings are known to commit worse atrocities than this”. > > The Japanese hardly come anywhere close to what China did to their own people, or what white settlers did to Native Americans, the Roman Empire, or the slave trade, the Mongols storming through Asia, Genghis Khan in China, oh man I can go on FOREVER with this. This, over and over. Of course, saying so makes you an “America-hater” or worse, a “self-hating American” to use the parlance of a well known rabidebater. Oh well… ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/168 "2010-12-27T06:33:54Z")
This thread is so full of strawmen it’s fucking insane. Who in _this thread_ has ever said that you’re an America-hater or any other such statement for believing one thing or another? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/169 "2010-12-27T06:35:40Z")
In other words Red, caught in such absurdities as equating damage done to inanimate flesh with live and anesthetized vivisection and claiming that the fact of Japanese troops not being fungible with other troops of the same time period, you would much prefer to change the subject. Simply for the record, the “Grrr, America!” rhetoric is not because of the abrogation of judgment and knowledge that Jacquelope’s position represents, but the nonsense you’re trying to sell whereby you claimed that even a single poster in this thread was being racist, xenophobic or believed Japanese people to be “sub-human” if they argued that America’s conduct wasn’t fungible with Japan’s during WWII. And as Argent points out, that’s not “America hating”, but screwing with a discussion in order to claim that Americans who realize that their country’s actions weren’t the same as Japan’s during WWII are racists and yadda yadda yadda. Just to keep things straight and factual, as always. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/170 "2010-12-27T06:48:36Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > This thread is so full of strawmen it’s fucking insane. Who in _this thread_ has ever said that you’re an America-hater or any other such statement for believing one thing or another? > [@FinnAgain](#): > > …All of that of course being bound up in the **delightfully shitty “Grrrr, America!” nonsense** whereby if Americans realize that the conduct of the Japanese army during WWII was not fungible with other nations’ modes of war, then they’re ignorant and/or racist. – bolding mine. A turd would smell as shitty if called by any other name. Clear? TTFN ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/171 "2010-12-27T06:57:31Z")
So, to sum up, caught in such absurdities as equating damage done to inanimate flesh with live and un-anesthetized vivisection and claiming that the fact of Japanese troops not being fungible with other troops of the same time period makes one a racist, and arguing for a blatant moral equivalency while denying that you’re doing just that, you would much prefer to change the subject. \*And you will respond with complaints over how unfairly your bullshit argument is being dealt with, if someone points out that you are slandering Americans who dare to hold different points of view from yours if theirs are actually based on facts and reason… when after all you don’t hate America as a nation you just think that any American is a cryotp-racist if they don’t believe that live-vivisection is equivalent to desecrating corpses. \* In other words, you’ve got less than nothing. If this was a class, your argument would have to stay late after class just to fail. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/172 "2010-12-27T07:49:06Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > This, over and over. Of course, saying so makes you an “America-hater” or worse, a “self-hating American” to use the parlance of a well known rabidebater. > > Oh well… Oh piffle. That would make sense if the majority of the posts said ‘well their japs, they’ve always been that way, always will, that’s why we still have bases there.’ But that’s not how it’s been, the couple of posters that hinted at that were called out on it. yeah, ok , so everybodies as full of shit as everybody else, everyone has blood on their hands, so what. I think it’s established history that the axis powers commited war crimes that were an order of magnitude greater both in quantity and quality than those commited by the allies. If you disagree, now would be the time to put up some evidence. OTOH, that doesn’t seem like the Japanese I know today, and it doesn’t sound like the samuri as I’ve read about them, and it doesn’t seem like the Germans I knew when I lived in Germany and it doesn’t seem the like Germans who participated in the christmas truce during ww1. So it begs the question, why did they go so far from what their previous governments had done and what was considered appropriate at the time. I’d like to know precisely because I think it \*wasn’t \*something intrinsic in those people, so maybe we could learn to avoid it. Maybe you’d like it better if we asked the question ‘why did the allies show so much more restraint during ww2, then the axis?’ ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/173 "2010-12-27T15:28:02Z")
Good thing the Allied powers had the saintly [Russians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#World_War_II) on their side. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/174 "2010-12-27T16:58:38Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > Good thing the Allied powers had the saintly [Russians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#World_War_II) on their side. Unlike such doves and saints like Spain which sent the [250th Blue Division](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Division) to fight alongside their pals the Nazis and have the dubious distinction of remaining a fascist country ruled by [His Excellency Generalísimo Don Francisco Franco](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco) until **1975**? ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/175 "2010-12-27T17:33:13Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Unlike such doves and saints like Spain which sent the [250th Blue Division](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Division) to fight alongside their pals the Nazis and have the dubious distinction of remaining a fascist country ruled by [His Excellency Generalísimo Don Francisco Franco](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco) until **1975**? Yet another example of an extremely cruel MF. Was he unique as well? Is that your point? ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/176 "2010-12-27T17:41:15Z")
> [@](#): > > …I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish civil war. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence. Recently I drew up a table of atrocities during the period between 1918 and the present; there was never a year when atrocities were not occurring somewhere or other, and there was hardly a single case when the Left and the Right believed in the same stories simultaneously. And stranger yet, at any moment the situation can suddenly reverse itself and yesterday’s proved-to-the-hilt atrocity story can become a ridiculous lie, merely because the political landscape has changed… [**George Orwell**](http://orwell.ru/library/essays/Spanish_War/english/esw_1) Much more at source. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/177 "2010-12-27T17:53:47Z")
And the relevance of the Orwell quote is… ---
**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:** [December 27, 2010, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/178 "2010-12-27T18:13:10Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Because what we did was NOT ON THE SAME LEVEL AS THE JAPANESE OR THE NAZIS. > > [Unit 731](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) > > [Japanese War Crimes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes) > > When the U.S. starts vivisection on POWs, including children and infants, then come back. Can we ever really call infants prisoners of war? I mean what threat to they pose that you would have to imprison them or their nursing mothers during war? ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/179 "2010-12-27T18:37:16Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > And the relevance of the Orwell quote is… Oh, I dunno. Perhaps this bit? > [@](#): > > …But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence… Of course, that would never happen in the SDMB, the last bastion of unbiased free-thought. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2010, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034/180 "2010-12-27T18:44:01Z")
**Damuri Ajashi** , hell if I know. > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > This thread should have begun and ended with “they’re human, and human beings are known to commit worse atrocities than this”. > > The Japanese hardly come anywhere close to what China did to their own people, or what white settlers did to Native Americans, the Roman Empire, or the slave trade, the Mongols storming through Asia, Genghis Khan in China, oh man I can go on FOREVER with this. I’d like to see a cite for ANY of the [following](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre) being down to the Native Americans. (BTW, what WOULD happen if you removed someone’s stomach and connected the esophagus directly to the intestines? Just curious) Is it anti-German to ask what made the Nazis so cruel? Does it mean I hate Germans when I say I can’t fathom what would posess someone to participate in the Holocaust directly? (Work in a concentration camp) You’d have to be a monster to do so. The _people_ who did these things are monsters. I am not saying that the Japanese people are monsters. But those people who actually did these things? Yes, they’re inhuman monsters. Just as Mengele and his ilk were. Saying, “they’re human” doesn’t cut it. What made THESE HUMANS do such a thing? What part of their culture at that time created such an atmosphere? And fuck the whole “well, we did it too!” The fuck we did. (I’ve often said MY only regret as far as the A-bombs were that Hitler wasn’t alive to piss his pants when he heard about the fucking things) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-the-japanese-so-cruel-in-world-war-ii/565034.md?page=10)