Well, yes. That’s why I was asking for clarifications. Because you’re not making any sense to me.
Still aren’t, for that matter.
What does that mean?
And you follow this with three long paragraphs detailing why the Holocaust was so much worse than other war atrocities.
You make some good points but why call your attempt to distinguish different levels of human depravity, silly. I think its useful to recognize the relative depravity involved.
Still I think once you reach high enough level of depravity, you max out on outrage. We shouldn’t go easier on the Japanese because their actions were demonstrably less depraved than the German actions. They both deserve maximum outrage. IMHO.
Don’t worry, that’s just a sign that you are possibly but not definitely an anti-Japanese racist.
Why, the next thing you know you’ll be making lists of everybody in politics who you remember who “looks Japanese” to you (and picking up a few random Asians as collateral damage) and suggesting that they should be investigated due to their inherently untrustworthy nature.
It means any and all managing is done to appease the managers/leaders above them. It can mean anything from not reporting bad news (certainly not unique to Japan), to not looking out for your subordinates or believing that you are supposed to set an example for them. It also means that promotion is based almost exclusively on seniority and who didn’t ‘screw up’ rather than who was actually a good leader.
Specifically my focus was to point out the differences, because I think sometimes people make the gross oversimplification of equating Japan’s wartime actions and Nazi Germany. I think it is silly to try and ‘measure’ atrocities - what is your barometer? If simply number of deaths, Mao Zedong or Stalin may well be at the top of the list, for example. But I don’t think it is silly to look at events in larger picture terms: Nazi Germany, in totality, was very different to WWII Japan’s soldiers atrocities, and understanding the specific conditions and reasons why such events occurred is important for trying to keep them from happening again.
That and all such events, regardless of number of lives cost or who committed them, deserve maximum outrage goes without saying.
I don’t think anyone thinks that there is anything genetic. In fact one of the points made several times is how big a contrast there is with the behavior of the Japanese during their earlier war with Russia. I don’t think anyone here is trying to say that the cause was genetic.
Terrible things happened. But not always the same terrible things. Gacy and Dahmer did what they did because they were mentally ill. Do you think it is useful to study them and try and figure out how they became what they were and how to identify or even prevent future monsters? Or should we shrug our shoulders and say they were no worse than anyone else and we should just accept them? We can’t prevent everything, but we can to lessen the horror of the world.
Why does it offend you so much that people want to discuss what factors made this specific set of atrocities possible? Is that we are not discussing every other set as well? Would it make sense to say that no one should fund research on earthquakes unless they give equal funding to hurricanes? The two are both natural disasters, but they are different.
For example, I find it interesting that one possible point of divergence in Nazi vs. Imperial Japanese behavior is the scapegoat vs superiority factor. Both regimes focuses on their supposed inherent superiority. But Japanese culture was fairly homogeneous. For them the inferiors were all outside rather than mixed in like Germany. How much did that change the way things played out?
It think it would show a marked decrease in the level of participants advancing into lethal levels. I base this on research into the effects that knowledge of marketing tactics has on their effectiveness. The more subjects understood about how advertising works, the less effective it was.
I have not seen the movie, but I may add it to my Netflix queue. I have seen a documentary covering the experiments and the after effects (including how some participants kept going on their own after it was called off.
I hope I’m not one of the strawmen:(
Not that difficult really. Just another historical example of just how powerful the mix of nationalism, xenophobia and the emperor’s (substitute for any/all “divine” creatures, real or not) cult-like following – particularly upon the ruling Japanese armed forces – and you’ll get robot-like warriors for whom morality, as we generally understand it, becomes irrelevant in pursuit of The Higher Goal. Which is none other than the one set by their superiors as they interpret their so-called Higher Power.
Deluded? No doubt. Part of the Human Condition? You betcha’
Ah, okay, I think I get it now. I thought you were quoting Orwell to describe the people posting in this thread. But you were quoting him to describe the Japanese in the first half of the 20th century. That’s where I was confused.
Which posters hinted at that?
Are you saying the Nanking Massacre was worse than what white settlers did to the Native Americans? Really?
I just want to be sure I translated what you said correctly, because we’re talking about the fact that white settlers reduced the Native American population from 12-15 million in just one Carribbean region to under 300,000 nationwide by the time they were done. That, sir, makes Nanking look like a street brawl and eclipses even Hitler.
You want to first start with Christopher Columbus and the Taino population. You know, hacking kids to pieces and feeding them to dogs and what not. He started the fight by taking Taino as slaves, they retaliated, and he came back and wiped out 5 million Taino right off the bat. Hitler only did a little worse in his whole career than Christopher Columbus did. And many more genocidal maniacs followed him.
That’s right. Christopher Columbus, by himself, made Nanking look trivial. He made an entire people extinct.
Probably refers to:
It may or may not be what she meant. Seeing as she also used the term “Japs” in other posts it left me wondering. I asked if she meant that the Japanese were predisposed to cruelty but I don’t think I got a response.
^ Pretty much. If that had been the way the whole thread was going, I’d have seen Redfury’s point.
That is part of the reason I don’t like the “well people have been doing horrible things for centuries” argument. We now possess the ability to exterminate ourselves.
If the accounts that the Rape of Nanking was intentionally carried out to intimidate other Chinese cites to surrender, then how was our bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that much different?
It seems clear that the purpose of the bombing was to so vividly visit the horror of further conflict on the Japanese so that they would lose their taste for it.
The thing that makes the Japanese and Nazis worse than the Americans is not what they did but why they did it. The Japanese and Germans were aggressors, to me that makes all the difference in the world.
Is it? Mind you again, it’s not about some sort of moral equivalency, but rather war atrocities on their own.
You can read both views here: Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasakii
Personally, I’m undecided – though firmly on the side of The Allies.
Indeed. Which can be said of many atrocities committed in wars throughout history.
Perhaps so. But letting your enemy dictate (excuse?) your own morals/ethics is hardly ideal in the greater scope of the advance of humanity in conflict-- as rightfully posed by Strassia.
And yet…we did NOT do what the Japanese did. Unless you have proof otherwise? :dubious:
(And YET AGAIN, “they did it too!” is not a valid argument)
First, I gently suggest you go read up on Tuskegee. This lasted 40 years - into the 1970s, and some 25 years after a general treatment had become standard - and was only stopped after news of the ‘research’ was leaked to the press.
Secondly, go and read up on other examples of unethical biomedical researchin the US. It has happened much more frequently in the past than most people know, and runs the gamut of radiation and chemical experiments to psychological, torture, and pharmaceutical experiments. Not surprisingly, almost all instances were by the CIA and/or military, or doctors/researchers.
**Damuri Ajashi **tries to make the case that the ‘why’ behind the actions means what Germany/Japan did was ‘worse’ than what the US did. Flip that around: Japan, for example, was in the middle of a war. And I don’t think we can even imagine what those hellacious conditions would do to a person. The Tuskegee researchers can’t hardly use that as an excuse for treating poor black men as second-class citizens.
…that they started…
Come back after you’ve read up on your history. It isn’t nearly as simple as that, I’m afraid. As has been said by others many times, Japan was merely doing what the US, France, the UK, and Russia had been doing - imperialist expansion. Japan’s primary interest was taking control of China’s natural resources, an area where US had been dominant. Note this quote from the American Ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew:
Some say Japan’s biggest mistake was being late to the club of industrialized imperialist countries, and not being located in Europe. If the US hadn’t been upset at possibly losing control of its interests in China, WWII in Asia would have looked very very different.
This of course has zero bearing on the actions and atrocities that actually occured in the war, of course. But to say that ‘Germany and Japan started the war’ is a gross oversimplification of the circumstances. If someone at school harasses and pesters and threatens someone who finally gets pisssed and punches the bully - who started the fight? I’m not necessarily equating the US/Europe with the bully here, merely pointing out that fights don’t start only when someone throws a punch.
None of that seems to be along the same scope as Nanjing.
And again, “they/we did it too!” is not a fucking excuse.
Even though Japan has changed so much from the WWII era, I’ve spoken with many Japanese who still hate the culture and it’s disregard for individuality and rights. The past 20 years seem to finally be making a difference there, but the memories linger on for many. Non-ethnic Japanese still face discrimination. Some still expect women to be subservient to men (one of my clients was a company owned by a Japanese man, he expected Japanese female engineers to stop their work to serve tea). The Japanese still only haltingly admit to their actions during WWII, and always whitewash the history. If this represents 65 years of change, I don’t find the brutality then all that surprising.