Japanese war crimes so bad?

[Rising Sun*]

Interesting paper on Japanese war crimes but with much wider consideration of the inconsistent and hypcritical attitudes of other nations towards Japanese war crimes compared with those of other nations.

Worth a read if you're seriously interested in the moral, political, nationalistic and racial dimensions of these issues.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rijs/pdfs/mccormack.pdf

[Panzerknacker]

I think the problem is not how the crimes are condidered overseas...but how the japs still worship their dead criminals !!

That is why when I hear about "the japanese fought according to the bushido code..." and all that stupid sentences is really vomitive to me, many people dont recall how those monkeys executed prisoners just for the fun.

[Rising Sun*]

I think the problem is not how the crimes are condidered overseas...but how the japs still worship their dead criminals !!

I think it might be hard to distinguish between the usual reverence for war dead which all Japanese, like people in all other nations, are entitled to have and worshipping their dead criminals, which I think is confined to a smaller nationalist group which, unfortunately, also happens to be prominent in government and business and has been since the war.

That is why when I hear about "the japanese fought according to the bushido code..." and all that stupid sentences is really vomitive to me, many people dont recall how those monkeys executed prisoners just for the fun.

Most executions of prisoners were probably for training purposes to get their troops used to killing, particularly with the bayonet; for racist reasons, especially with the Chinese but also with hated Westerners who had often humiliated Japan in the preceding eight years or so; and because of their bastardised Bushido code which held soldiers who surrendered in contempt.

That doesn't alter the barbarity of the Japanese in WWII, unlike during their war with Russia around 1905, but if we can understand the reasons we can also learn how to avoid it happening again.

[Chevan]

Does the Japane revisionism wonder you RS?
What is sense to guit the Japs for refusing of their crimes , if even in the Europe some of peoples look at NAzy more positively them right after the war..
I think the any state has the tend deny or decrease its own crimes toward other nations.
So the Japane is not an exclusion.
You simply can't bring up your young generation if the EVERYBBODY around just repeat - how your ancestors were bas..rd.And guilt you in all Possible Crimes.
This is not honest.
Executed american POWs by the Japanes (http://aeronautics.ru/archive/wwii/baltic_nazis/latvia/images/wwii_photo_0121.jpg)
I heared the poor people have been executed right after the US Firebombing raids in Japane

[Rising Sun*]

Does the Japane revisionism wonder you RS?
What is sense to guit the Japs for refusing of their crimes , if even in the Europe some of peoples look at NAzy more positively them right after the war..
I think the any state has the tend deny or decrease its own crimes toward other nations.
So the Japane is not an exclusion.
You simply can't bring up your young generation if the EVERYBBODY around just repeat - how your ancestors were bas..rd.And guilt you in all Possible Crimes.
This is not honest.
Executed american POWs by the Japanes (http://aeronautics.ru/archive/wwii/baltic_nazis/latvia/images/wwii_photo_0121.jpg)
I heared the poor people have been executed right after the US Firebombing raids in Japane

That's why I posted the link to the article in #1, because it all depends on where people stand. And we're all victims of our own national histories, which are all inclined to leave out our bad bits while including the enemy's bad bits.

Fact is, the Western Allies against Japan could be pretty barbarous at the personal level, although not on the institutionalised scale of the Japanese on the Burma Railway and Bataan and Singapore and so on.

Still, there are accounts of, for example, Australian troops in New Guinea murdering Japanese POW's after action. I don't mean the precautionary execution of wounded or apparently dead Japanese to stop them detonating grendades and so on immediately after action, but taking prisoners away and bayoneting or shooting them. Same with the Americans in various places. Don't know about the British in Burma.

Other forms of barbarism occurred, like American soldiers running a jeep with Japanese skulls wired over the headlights and collecting various Japanese body parts and prising gold from the teeth of dead and even dying Japanese (from memory, see William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness and Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed for some examples).

I can't get your link to load, but I suspect it refers to the Fukuoka executions of American POW's.

It's interesting to compare the American bombings which led to them with earlier American attitudes to bombing civilians. Where the world was horrified by the fairly small death toll at Guernica and Rotterdam and Coventry before and early in the war, by the end of the war death from the air on previously unimaginable scales had become commonplace and acceptable, which had to influence later generations such as in our attitudes to what is acceptable.

One Man’s Justice


By Mark Ealey and Yoshimura Akira

Mark Ealey translates and Introduces Yoshimura Akira’s novel probing the moral equation underlying the Pacific War in a novel that explores American firebombing of Japanese cities and the Japanese revenge killing of U.S. POWs.

Throughout history, acts of hypocrisy have come easily to the world’s Great Powers. In 1938, in reaction to Japan’s “barbarous” bombing of Chinese civilians, the United States placed a “moral embargo” on the supply of planes and aviation equipment to Japan. One year later, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the following appeal:

The President of the United States to the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and His Britannic Majesty, September 1, 1939

The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of the hostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth during the past few years, which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands of defenseless men, women, and children, has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity.

If resort is had to this form of inhuman barbarism during the period of the tragic conflagration with which the world is now confronted, hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings who have no responsibility for, and who are not even remotely participating in, the hostilities which have now broken out, will lose their lives. I am therefore addressing this urgent appeal to every government which may be engaged in hostilities publicly to affirm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event, and under no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities, upon the understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all of their opponents. I request an immediate reply.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

For a number of years thereafter, the United States did indeed refrain from targeting civilian populations in its bombing campaigns against the Axis powers. Less than seven years later, however, at a time when Roosevelt was still president, American strategic bombing was taking a toll on German and particularly Japanese civilians in numbers previously unknown in the history of warfare. With the firebombing of Japanese cities in the spring and summer of 1945, and culminating in the dropping of the atomic bombs, the hypocrisy of the “moral embargo” was exposed as clearly as in the fiction of “The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” espoused by the American foe, Japan. By the summer of 1945, bombing civilians had become so routine that three days after the destruction of Hiroshima tens of thousands more people were incinerated in Nagasaki, and the last mass bombing raid on the already shattered city of Tokyo occurred just hours before Japan’s surrender on August 15. In seven short years, the American interpretation of the bombing of civilian targets had conveniently changed from branding it as an act of “inhuman barbarism” to making it the centerpiece of the American way of war and a strategic imperative that would dominate all future wars.

We know from horrific images and records of atrocities at Nanking that Japanese inhumanity towards the Chinese people was often delivered with the bayonet and the sword. By contrast, the American fliers in their B-29 Superfortresses were comfortably distanced from their victims, sowing death from thousands of feet up in the sky. In the fire-bombing of 64 Japanese cities in the spring and summer of 1945, each mission comprised hundreds of B-29s loaded with clusters of napalm-filled incendiaries to set houses alight and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs designed to deter those who rushed to fight the fires.

International readers have been treated to ample description of Japanese war atrocities in histories, novels and films, but rarely have they encountered the depiction of U.S. military acts such as the terror bombing of civilians or other illegal acts. Yoshimura offers precisely this perspective.

After Japan’s surrender, the commander of the U.S. 20th Air Force, General Curtis LeMay, was quoted as saying: “Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.” As LeMay suggests, the concept of criminality in war was firmly embedded in the equation of victory and defeat, or as the Japanese saying goes: kateba kangun, makereba zokugun (“The acts of the victorious army are justified, but those of the defeated are condemned.”)

Of course, none of the victors faced charges in the Tokyo War Crime Trials. However, in the final days of the war, acts of vengeance were committed against captured bomber crews. A total of 16 captured American pilots and crew members were brutally killed in Fukuoka in August 1945, some by vivisection in a new phase of the murderous experiments carried out earlier in China in biowarfare Unit 731. http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/1884

[alephh]

We're all victims of our own national histories, which are all inclined to leave out our bad bits while including the enemy's bad bits.

That's wise, should be the slogan of all history forums. :-)

I strongly feel that anyone should (if they can) read what """enemy""" writes about your country/history. Can be a real eye-opener.


_

[Rising Sun*]

I strongly feel that anyone should (if they can) read what """enemy""" writes about your country/history. Can be a real eye-opener.

Definitely.

I despise what the Japanese did in some of their more barbaric moments 1941-45, but the fact remains that they were bloody good soldiers and their commanders were bloody good tacticians and that the war might have been avoided if the West had been less exploitative of, contemptuous and hostile towards, and less demanding of Japan. And if Japan's leaders had been less contemptuous of and hostile to the Western nations, along with various other attitudes peculiar to Japan.

But we'll never understand those causes of the war if those of us in the nations which Japan attacked persist in trying to understand the war and its causes from the simplistic view that the Japanese were a bunch of primitive bastards who started the war with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and we were defending ourselves against barbaric aggressors.

Western arrogance and contempt towards Japan and the Japanese forced them, in their view and in an understandble view, into a corner where they had to come out fighting.

If we can free ourselves of selfish nationalistic and victim views and try to understand the other side's thinking and conduct we have a reasonable chance of avoiding future conflict. That chance improves dramatically if both sides can free themselve of selfish views and try to understand the other side.

[Cojimar 1945]

Honoring the dead from the war in Germany and Japan seems like a dicey issue because even soldiers who did not personally commit atrocities against civilians were still fighting for an unjust cause and their deaths were in vain and accomplished nothing.

[Rising Sun*]

Honoring the dead from the war in Germany and Japan seems like a dicey issue because even soldiers who did not personally commit atrocities against civilians were still fighting for an unjust cause and their deaths were in vain and accomplished nothing.

The same could be said of Western soldiers dying and being wounded and serving in Iraq, on one point of view.

Does that disentitle them from being honoured by their nations for their service and sacrifice?

The philosopher Bertrand Russell took the view on Nazis that no good can come from service in a bad cause, which supports your position.

If it's that simple and clear, then if the plotters who tried to assassinate Hitler to save Germany had succeeded they would not have been deserving of any respect because they were serving in an army engaged in a bad cause.

More clearly, Oskar Schindler would not be deserving of any honour because he was also part of the Nazi apparatus.

I don't think these things are simple or clear.

[Mick Grinter]

There are a lot of things we would like to keep in the closet.
What we must remember is We are not responsible for the crimes of our fathers.

[Chevan]

If we can free ourselves of selfish nationalistic and victim views and try to understand the other side's thinking and conduct we have a reasonable chance of avoiding future conflict. That chance improves dramatically if both sides can free themselve of selfish views and try to understand the other side.

Unfortinatelly mate the entire history course proves the otherwise.
Hardly we have learned the lesson of World War 1 enough good.
Besides the mankind and its leaders are enough stoopid to provoke the other bloody wars in future.
BTW an excellent your previous post.
Are you not abusing of the good will toward Japanes:)?

[Nickdfresh]

I would say that in most respects WWII was even worse than WWI. While atrocities against POWs and civilians took place in the First World War, the total war against civilians and seeming callous indifference to human life, starting with the Nazis and seeping down to everyone else during WWII, is simply mind boggling...

Although, the Japanese were brutalizing the Chinese population by 1931...

[Rising Sun*]

I would say that in most respects WWII was even worse than WWI. While atrocities against POWs and civilians took place in the First World War, the total war against civilians and seeming callous indifference to human life, starting with the Nazis and seeping down to everyone else during WWII, is simply mind boggling...

Although, the Japanese were brutalizing the Chinese population by 1931...

What changed things, so that we went from modest massacres to attempts at genocide?

The means were there long before it started, e.g. the Japanese could have done it against the Russians about 35 years before they got stuck into everyone else. The North probably could have done it to the South after the Civil War nearly a century before if it had put its mind to it instead of just carpetbagging the South, as distinct from the often appalling conditions of POW's on both sides in that first of modern wars.

Fascism, in its various European and Japanese forms, seems to be the tipping point to me.

That seems to coincide with the rise of other factors for competition on economic, geographic and population scales, such as Japan lacking natural resources and drowning in an expanding population it couldn't support on its own land and America expanding industrially beyond the dreams of most nations while colonial nations like Britain and France rested on their colonial laurels.

Did nations and humans just expand local massacres in the competition for local resources to a larger scale, because we had the industrial need and capacity to do so?

[gumalangi]

their deaths were in vain and accomplished nothing.

their oath and loyalty to whatever they fought,.. for what matter most,.. at least to them

[HAWKEYE]

This has been one of the best discussions I've read in these forums. Very clear minded and informative.

[Cojimar 1945]

I don't think the war in Iraq rises to the level of what the Japanese were doing.

If the Japanese who died fighting in the war should be honored why should the war criminals be treated any differently given the acceptance of such brutality by the leadership? The Japanese military leaders seem to have felt the most barbaric crimes were perfectly acceptable so murdering civilians would have just been doing ones patriotic duty. Rape of Nanking-style behavior occurred on such a vast scale that you cannot claim that such behavior was out of the ordinary or not considered acceptable.

[herman2]

The United States calls a halt to war crime prosecutions

With the Cold War intensifying, the government of President Harry S. Truman felt that Japan needed to be moulded into an American ally and a bulwark against the spread of communism. Truman believed that these aims would be difficult to achieve if the Japanese people were alienated by continuing prosecutions of their war criminals. For this reason, the United States called a halt to further war crimes prosecutions when twenty-five "Class A" war criminals had been sentenced to death or imprisonment at the end of 1948. The decision to halt the prosecutions was entirely based on political expediency. It had nothing to do with issues of legality, morality, or humanity.

Immediately after the death sentences had been carried out on seven "Class A" war criminals in December 1948, General MacArthur released a large number of the remaining "Class A" suspects from detention. When the gates of Sugamo Prison were opened, some of Japan's worst war criminals were released. Many of these suspected war criminals were able to move smoothly into politics, the bureaucracy, and big business. At the same time, MacArthur began to wind down the "Class B" and "Class C" trials.

From the time that the Americans decided to halt the war crimes prosecutions, Australian prosecutions of Japanese war criminals were obstructed by lack of cooperation from the US military.

In 1952, President Truman's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, authored a peace treaty with Japan. This treaty waived the rights to compensation of every prisoner of the Japanese during WW II. Truman granted complete amnesty to every Japanese war criminal who was not then serving a term of imprisonment. Unlike Germany where intensive de-Nazification procedures were employed to prevent former Nazis entering parliament and the bureaucracy, the United States allowed Japanese war criminals to enter parliament and find employment in the government bureaucracy. A striking exmple of this difference of approach between Japan and Germany is the case of convicted war criminal Nobusuke Kishi who was able to rise to the office of Prime Minister of Japan in 1957.

It has been estimated by the US Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations that at least several thousand Japanese escaped prosecution as a result of the premature termination of war crime prosecutions by the United States in 1949.

So it can be fairly argued that, on grounds of political expediency, the American government facilitated the continuing refusal by Japan to acknowledge its war guilt and war crimes by protecting Emperor Hirohito from prosecution as a war criminal and by turning a blind eye to atrocities committed by thousands of Japanese war criminals
http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforAustralia/JapWarCrimes/USWarCrime_Coverup.html

[aly j]

Is chopping of pows heads when there still alive is classed as Bad War Crimes. Personaly,i rather get shot or hanged.

http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/pow_camps_japan.htm

[ptimms]

Please, please, just try and contribute something useful. How can chopping some poor f***ers head off with a sword not be a crime ???!!! Or did you see a History Channel programme that said it was OK.

That's not to mention the abuse of the English language that you call typing.


AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[aly j]

Please, please, just try and contribute something useful. How can chopping some poor f***ers head off with a sword not be a crime ???!!! Or did you see a History Channel programme that said it was OK.

That's not to mention the abuse of the English language that you call typing.


AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wast sure, i was to scared to say it was a crime, just in case you guys abuse me.
What do i have to do, i put proof up here,i still get picked on, i proofed on my typing, i still get picked on. And may i point out that you can actually look the history channel up on the net and it proofs its the same has the net information.
PS- Is this a He-Man Women Hating Hater Site.
YOURE like a pack of wolves picking on the weak. Truce

[tankgeezer]

Okay all of you,no ganging up now.This is not a chat room where you can rant, and tantrum against each other. this is a reasonable, and intelligent site. there are expectations of behavior that are spelled out in the rules. Even if you are not very old, all are expected to comport themselves in an adult, and thoughtful manner.
This is no place for childish behavior, so please do not engage in it. Not everyone is a native English speaker, and despite what some believe, English is a very difficult language to use if its not your native tongue. To be clear, this is not directed towards anyone in particular, but lately the timber of the posts, and thread topics on this site are trending toward the juvenile. Should things continue in this vein, Admin. will most likely begin issuing cautions to those in need of them.. This is just a friendly heads up, so relax. (but mind what I say so I dont have to go :twisted: on anybody)

[Hunter]

The jap war crimes were horriable, have you read about Changi? The stravation and disease. Just ask a POW who survived jap concertration camps.

[Walther]

From what I've heard in the Philippines (my Missus comes from there), the behaviour of Japanese troops depened much on the individual unit commanders. Some let their troops rape, steal and murder, while others kept them under tight control, and also managed to keep the dreaded Kempetai secret police out of their area of command, and actually went on friendly terms with the local population (e.g. marriages between Japanese soldiers and Filipino women).

One thing though is that Japanese soldiers were from recruitment on abused and brutalised, e.g. beatings and other corporal punishment was very common in the Japanese army.
Also, the Japanese military leadership had a doctrine of letting the troops live of the land, with minimum supplies, in a way which was common in Europe until the end of the Napoleonic wars, to simplify their logistics. Thus Japanese soldiers in the field were forced to steal food to survive.

Jan

[aly j]

The jap war crimes were horriable, have you read about Changi? The stravation and disease. Just ask a POW who survived jap concertration camps.

Very bad. One in three died cause bye staravation and disease and other causes.

http://www.historyonthenet.com/WW2/pow_camps.japan.htm

[Chevan]

Very bad. One in three died cause bye staravation and disease and other causes.


Only one third died?
What a kind human Japs, in the Eastern front about 60% of soviet POWs died in Nazis labor/concentrtion camps.

[Rising Sun*]

Only one third died?
What a kind human Japs, in the Eastern front about 60% of soviet POWs died in Nazis labor/concentrtion camps.

To the extent that anyone can work it out, it was about the same or even worse death rate (60%) for Asian slave labourers used by the Japanese on the Burma Railway and elsewhere, but they don't count in most Western histories which are focused only on the Westerners' experience. Which pretty much reflects a lot of the attitude of Westerners to Asians at the time, without which we might not have had the war in the first place.

The Asian labourers died in large part because they were just huge groups of individuals who lacked the cohesion, organisation and discipline of the POWs, so that they didn't have organised food, support and health systems, such as they were, to support them under Japanese rule.

[aly j]

Only one third died?
What a kind human Japs, in the Eastern front about 60% of soviet POWs died in Nazis labor/concentrtion camps.

Did you know that the japs chop off pows heads when there still alive.
have you ever heard what happend to aussie pows in japans camps before?:shock:
Truce

[Chevan]

The Asian labourers died in large part because they were just huge groups of individuals who lacked the cohesion, organisation and discipline of the POWs, so that they didn't have organised food, support and health systems, such as they were, to support them under Japanese rule.

DO you mean the Allied POWs did have the anything kinda organisation, support and medical service in Japanese camps?

[Chevan]

Did you know that the japs chop off pows heads when there still alive.

like the nazic killed the "partisans" in the East?Look what they did in Yugioslavia.
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showpost.php?p=130630&postcount=37
It was a common their tactic here.SO hardly Japs can exceeded Nazis.

have you ever heard what happend to aussie pows in japans camps before?:shock:
Truce
Yes.
And did you hear about Gas Chambers of Aushwitz that have been initially tested with Soviet POWS?

[Rising Sun*]

DO you mean the Allied POWs did have the anything kinda organisation, support and medical service in Japanese camps?

They were still soldiers, sailors and airmen subject to military discipline and, more importantly compared with the Asian civilians, used to working as an organised group rather than disorganised individuals.

The health aspects go well beyond medical services but get down to field hygiene, leadership and obedience to orders.

Australian POWs in some places on the Burma Railway survived better than British POWs because of the simple measures that Australians were banned from drinking water which had not been boiled first to kill disease and because they were required to dip their mess kits into boiling water to kill disease before being served such food as there was, which was also cooked to kill disease.

The medical services did the best they could with the very limited resources available, such as using sharpened teaspoons to scrape out infected tropical ulcers and using adapted non-medical tools to amputate limbs without anaesthetic, although the Japanese had Red Cross supplies which they could have made available and some of which they stored till the end of the war.

There were some legendary doctors from various Allied nations on the Burma Railway (and in less awful but still poor circumstances in camps such as Changi) who worked tirelessly with few instruments and almost no supplies in disease ridden conditions. They were in constant battles with the Japanese (often Koreans) to try to prevent very sick men being forced to work under terrible conditions. The doctors on many occasions suffered beatings, imprisonment, and the risk of execution by the Japanese in trying to protect their men.

While the POWs existed under appalling conditions with appalling medical services, they were vastly better off than the Asian labourers who had no organised leadership or any of the other benefits of military organisation and medical personnel.

Probably the most important factor in survival was having mates. They could look after each other in various ways, sometimes quite small but critical to survival such as feeding men too ill to move and otherwise tending to them until they recovered enough to work again.

The Asian labourers generally lacked all these advantages as they were individuals brought randomly together without any group organisation to ensure that everybody got fed and often without mates to support them, not to mention lacking medical services.

The relative number of deaths shows the difference.

In all, about 13,000 Australians worked on the railway, among some 60,000 POW and about 200,000 conscripted native labourers from various Asia countries. Some 2646 Aussie POW died among the 13,000 POW deaths in total, and at least 80,000 Asian labourers. The lower rate of deaths amongst POWs can be attributed to the presence of about 150 doctors, many British, 43 Australian, with some Dutch and one or two Americans, and the many medical orderlies, mostly volunteers, who worked on the railway, spread from Thailand to Burma, and who treated the injured and sick, and gradually developed systems for minimising infectious disease. http://www.pows-of-japan.net/articles/37.htm

[aly j]

like the nazic killed the "partisans" in the East?Look what they did in Yugioslavia.
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showpost.php?p=130630&postcount=37
It was a common their tactic here.SO hardly Japs can exceeded Nazis.

Yes.
And did you hear about Gas Chambers of Aushwitz that have been initially tested with Soviet POWS?

Hi Chevan
This thread is about japan and not germany, the point is, every one nose about the nazis and the jewish people and not much is said about japan.
Did you hear what happened to aussies pows in japan pow camps, aussies pows could of passed as jewish holurcast victims.

[Rising Sun*]

aussies pows could of passed as jewish holurcast victims.

No, they couldn't.

The motivations, processes and effects of the Nazi treament of Jews in the Holocaust had no similarity with Japan's treatment of Australian or any other POWs in WWII. Which can readily be demonstrated by the absence at the end of the war of about six million Jews who were alive when it started, and the growth by about one per cent of Australia's population over the same period from the seven and a half million at the start of the war.

Please, please, PLEASE, PUHLEASE stop posting drivel. Better still, just stop posting!

[aly j]

No, they couldn't.

The motivations, processes and effects of the Nazi treament of Jews in the Holocaust had no similarity with Japan's treatment of Australian or any other POWs in WWII. Which can readily be demonstrated by the absence at the end of the war of about six million Jews who were alive when it started, and the growth by about one per cent of Australia's population over the same period from the seven and a half million at the start of the war.

Please, please, PLEASE, PUHLEASE stop posting drivel. Better still, just stop posting!

Yes youre right about six million jews compared with the aussie but still they were skilitons when ww2 finshed. And im allowed to post if i want to. I can go and get proof to proof it.Any way can you please please please stop posting 3 pages full at one time.

[Rising Sun*]

And im allowed to post if i want to.

So it seems, which is dragging the board down to an unprecedented level of published ignorance for a serious military history site, and it's all your own work.

I can go and get proof to proof it.

You can go and stick your head up a dead bear's bum for all I care, but it won't alter the fact that you're posting crap.

Any way can you please please please stop posting 3 pages full at one time.

know. im aloud 2 post if eye wont 2 expesully wen I no 3 pages uv knowing stuff wot u doant. An eye can proof it if u wont from mi tyme lyfe photto buk of whorl wore II witch proofs efferyting eye say wif picshures an efferyting about efferyting wot ever hapend in da wore

[herman2]

LOL..That last post was hilarious RS..!

[aly j]

So it seems, which is dragging the board down to an unprecedented level of published ignorance for a serious military history site, and it's all your own work.



You can go and stick your head up a dead bear's bum for all I care, but it won't alter the fact that you're posting crap.



know. im aloud 2 post if eye wont 2 expesully wen I no 3 pages uv knowing stuff wot u doant. An eye can proof it if u wont from mi tyme lyfe photto buk of whorl wore II witch proofs efferyting eye say wif picshures an efferyting about efferyting wot ever hapend in da wore
Oh shit, I forgot im talking to RS- I better roll out the red carpet.
You actually sound like a normal man typing how you did, i like it better than youre old way.

[Rising Sun*]

I better roll out the red carpet.

It isn't customary on military history sites to advertise that you have your period.

Then again, nothing you've done is customary on a military history site, or useful.

[aly j]

It isn't customary on military history sites to advertise that you have your period.

Then again, nothing you've done is customary on a military history site, or useful.

RS, How would you know about periods. You need to know women first but what women would volinteer to go with you.hehehe.
Oh i forgot you must of look it up on the internet, the only way of you knowing about women.

[Rising Sun*]

Oh i forgot you must of look it up on the internet, the only way of you knowing about women.

That would make two of us, kitty cat.

[aly j]

That would make two of us, kitty cat.

I dont need to look women up on the internet, i can just look at myself.

[herman2]

Meow!~~...lol

[aly j]

Meow!~~...lol

Hi Herman, Was that post for me or for RS im not sure.

[herman2]

For RS, cause he is calling you Kitty Kat....

[aly j]

For RS, cause he is calling you Kitty Kat....

I cant complain about being called Kitty Kat. Its better than being called troll or dum.

[namvet]

the Japs did commit genocide. just like the Nazi's. I posted this somewhere on here. UNIT 731 (UNIT 731)

[Rising Sun*]

the Japs did commit genocide. just like the Nazi's. I posted this somewhere on here. UNIT 731 (UNIT 731)

Terrible though they were, the Japanese actions at Harbin weren't genocide, which refers to the extermination of a racial, national, ethnic, or religious group. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007043

[namvet]

Terrible though they were, the Japanese actions at Harbin weren't genocide, which refers to the extermination of a racial, national, ethnic, or religious group. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007043

well the difference is the Nazi's we're mainly after the Jews. the Japs didn't care about race. they murdered em all.

[windrider]

Terrible though they were, the Japanese actions at Harbin weren't genocide, which refers to the extermination of a racial, national, ethnic, or religious group. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007043

Holy cow !
judging from that video, Dr. Mengele and the nazis were nice guys compared to the japanese...:shock::shock::shock::shock:

[aly j]

Hey everyone.
Put it this way.
Both had bad war crimes but express it in there own way.

Germany- Starvation and Gassing.

Japan- Starvation and Decapintating pows heads off when still alive.
If you dont agree, theres no need to be rude towards me. Cheers

[Chevan]

well the difference is the Nazi's we're mainly after the Jews. the Japs didn't care about race. they murdered em all.
You obviously don't know much about Nazis terror in the East.
They also pretty didn't care about race when they mass killed the peoples for instance in Poland or Ukraine.

[Nickdfresh]

The Nazi-Germans and their allies probably murdered more people than anyone. However --with live vivisections of Chinese by "Unit 731," and the fact that China (under Japanese occupation) suffered the highest per-capita death rate in WWII-- I think the Imperial Japanese get some style points...

And the Japanese did indeed care about race! Everyone elses' was subhuman according to them!

[Chevan]

The Nazi-Germans and their allies probably murdered more people than anyone. However --with live vivisections of Chinese by "Unit 731," and the fact that China (under Japanese occupation) suffered the highest per-capita death rate in WWII-- I think the Imperial Japanese get some style points...

And how about vivisection of prisoners in Concentration camps?
The groups of soviet POWs, jews was rounded up for medical experiments.
The one of such "experiments" that i've read, was when group of polish girls( probably jews) have been specialy infected with Gas gangrene.The other "experiment" was to learn how many people can survive without FOOD or ( other case) WATER.
So i seriously doubt that Japs might excel Nazis in "medical experiments"

And the Japanese did indeed care about race! Everyone elses' was subhuman according to them!
Oh
It was so familiar for Nazis - everyone else was subhuman.Even the peoples who colloborated with them.They thought everyone non-germans was second-sort peoples.Even their ally kinda Romanians, who alwyas were feeding worse than the GErmans soldiers.

[Rising Sun*]

the fact that China (under Japanese occupation) suffered the highest per-capita death rate in WWII!

Was that just deaths during the period, or deaths caused by the Japanese?

Given the Chinese population, a per capita death rate probably would have dwarfed anyone else's in absolute numbers as well.

Do you have any comparisons?

[Rising Sun*]

Oh
It was so familiar for Nazis - everyone else was subhuman.Even the peoples who colloborated with them.They thought everyone non-germans was second-sort peoples.Even their ally kinda Romanians, who alwyas were feeding worse than the GErmans soldiers.

True, but the Nazis used inferior others who allied with them in the same way that the Japanese used inferior Koreans (admittedly under different conditions as Korea was a Japanese colony as distinct from a recently occupied country) and others from occupied countries.

Ubermensch of any national or ethnic origin never had any trouble using untermensch to achieve their aims.

[Rising Sun*]

Hey everyone.
Put it this way.
Both had bad war crimes but express it in there own way.

Germany- Starvation and Gassing.

Japan- Starvation and Decapintating pows heads off when still alive.
If you dont agree, theres no need to be rude towards me. Cheers

The Holocaust was a crime against humanity which started before and continued during the separate event of WWII.

War crimes were different and, in general, related to military activities and the treatment of military personnel during and after action.

P.S. Do you think it would have been possible to starve POWS when they weren't alive and that there would have been much point to decapitating POWs when they weren't alive?

[aly j]

The Holocaust was a crime against humanity which started before and continued during the separate event of WWII.

War crimes were different and, in general, related to military activities and the treatment of military personnel during and after action.

P.S. Do you think it would have been possible to starve POWS when they weren't alive and that there would have been much point to decapitating POWs when they weren't alive?
I see youre point RS ^.
But they the pows some were alive when these war crimes where committed.

[Chevan]

The Holocaust was a crime against humanity which started before and continued during the separate event of WWII.

War crimes were different and, in general, related to military activities and the treatment of military personnel during and after action.



Mate there were no border between jewish Holocaus and mass murdering of civils, pows and other "low races" on the East indeed.
The figure of killed civils ONLY in the former USSR were about 10 mln ( pluss about 2 mln of victims of holocaust).
Did you hear that among prisoners of Aushwitz there were a essential part of soviet pows.They were treated to death also.
Besides some actions of SS and police on the occuped territories of East were DISGUSTING( kinda mass burning the civils alive in barracks) Those peoples were FAR not ONLY jews but mostly simple peasants.

[bruser]

There are many ANZAC pows who don't ask much,just an apology from the japs,but the little yellow bastards still refuse. Looking at japan today it makes you wonder who won the bloody war.The japs did everything in the name of there bloody emperor who should have been tried and hung.

[Major Walter Schmidt]

All this is interesting...
In Japan, this rascist aspect of the Great Pacific War is almost never discussed.
Mostly, they focus on the Military taking over the democratic Government and spewing propaganda around as well as the "Heroes fighting for a lost/flawed cause" theme.

[Major Walter Schmidt]

There are many ANZAC pows who don't ask much,just an apology from the japs,but the little yellow bastards still refuse. Looking at japan today it makes you wonder who won the bloody war.The japs did everything in the name of there bloody emperor who should have been tried and hung.

1. The Japnese Emperor was intentionaly left alive by the GHQ so that the Japanese citizens wont start something like a Gurella movement.
2. Most Japanese soldiers fought, like most other combatants from most any war, for their family and country.

Now, cut the crap, OK?

[flamethrowerguy]

There are many ANZAC pows who don't ask much,just an apology from the japs,but the little yellow bastards still refuse. Looking at japan today it makes you wonder who won the bloody war.The japs did everything in the name of there bloody emperor who should have been tried and hung.

"Yellow bastards", that's a full-mouthed statement for a first post!

[Rising Sun*]

1. The Japnese Emperor was intentionaly left alive by the GHQ so that the Japanese citizens wont start something like a Gurella movement.
2. Most Japanese soldiers fought, like most other combatants from most any war, for their family and country.

Now, cut the crap, OK?

The Emperor survived because of MacArthur and his understanding of the importance of preserving him because of his significance to the Japanese to allow a manageable Occupation, despite the fact that the Emperor was fully involved in Japan's war of aggression and only decided to surrender when the survival of the Imperial line was threatened. Bruser is correct that the little bastard should have been tried and hung, as Hitler would have been if he'd been captured alive.

Many Japanese and their colonial Korean and Formosan soldiers behaved like primitive, brutal, murdering, sadistic, and cannibalistic beasts who gloried in bloodshed, torture, and murder just for the sake of it. Whether it is explained through some corrupted Bushido code or something else is immaterial to the inhumanity of their actions.

If it was done for their families and country, then neither their families nor country were worth the much more benevolent treatment they got under Mac and from the Allies generally.

There was no fighting or soldierly conduct involved in the endless massacres of civilians and prisoners of war, not to mention working them to death, carried out by Japanese soldiers in victory in 1941-42 and in occupation in later years and in retreat at the end of the war. Such as their depredations in Manila in 1941-42 when it had been declared an open city but was still attacked and in 1945 when they massacred thousands of Filipinos while retreating from the Americans.

Sandakan did not involve soldiers fighting for their families and country in 1945 when Japan knew it was beaten. There was nothing even remotely like it, or like many other Japanese outrages such as the massacres of Chinese after the Singapore surrender, by any Allied troops in the theatre. Six men surviving by escaping from the nearly 2,400 during the Sandakan outrage by Japan in the dying days of the war when it was trying to obliterate the living human evidence of its outrages was not soldiers fighting for their families and country, but just the actions of men whose contempt for human life renedered their own lives worthless, yet the Allies did not exterminate them out of hand in the same way as they might have in full justice.

At the time of the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, only six prisoners had survived the horrors of the Sandakan prisoner of war camp and the Sandakan Death Marches. They had escaped into the jungle either during the death marches or at Ranau. 2,390 prisoners from the Sandakan camp had been murdered by the Japanese in cold blood or by starvation, sickness, and overwork. http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforAustralia/JapWarCrimes/TenWarCrimes/Sandakan_Death_March.html

I am well aware from wide reading, including the diaries of Japanese dead in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, that many Japanese soldiers were no different to their enemies in wishing to survive the war and return to their families, but the fact remains that Japanese soldiers were in many instances the willing instruments of an inhuman militarism and the national culture behind it which gloried in brutality and inhumanity, both towards its own soldiers and much more towards its enemies when they were defenceless.

If there is any crap to be cut, it should have been the crap the Japanese inflicted on the rest of the world 1941-45, or 1931-45 if you had the misfortune to be Chinese.

[Chevan]

If there is any crap to be cut, it should have been the crap the Japanese inflicted on the rest of the world 1941-45, or 1931-45 if you had the misfortune to be Chinese.
well said.
from other had - is there the collective guilt of nation?
Or is it just the crimes of separate peoples?
i don't think that the Japane nation in general can be blamed ( as well as German one) in the EXCLUSIVE EVIL only becouse they've losed a total war with us.
As well as Chineses who genocided each other during their inner civil war that , accidentally, was happend at the same time ,hardly migh cry they are much better then japaneses.
This is Asia.

[Rising Sun*]

from other had - is there the collective guilt of nation?
Or is it just the crimes of separate peoples?
i don't think that the Japane nation in general can be blamed ( as well as German one) in the EXCLUSIVE EVIL only becouse they've losed a total war with us.

The citizens of a nation cannot be collectively guilty for the acts of the nation, but the citizens who supported those actions can be.

So that, for example, people who were enthusiastic Nazis in 1933 / 37 / 41 and who by 1945 when things weren't going their way forgot they had ever been Nazis were, in my view, still liable to be brought to account after the war for the evil they supported.

And I really don't care if, like Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes, they knew nothing, because it was their job to know. Rather like Republicans in America whose votes supported the rendition program and other abuses of human rights in the current era.

Conversely, there were many Germans and many people in other Axis nations who either did not support or opposed the actions of their governments and who should not be held liable for those actions. Not that it mattered when the indiscriminate bombs were falling on Dresden or Tokyo, or afterwards when almost everyone claimed to be in the good camp. Mussolini's body wasn't hung for public condemnation in the twenties, for the simple reason that he had a lot of support then when he was on a roll. It's only failed leaders and regimes that have no supporters after the event.

[Nickdfresh]

There are many ANZAC pows who don't ask much,just an apology from the japs,but the little yellow bastards still refuse. Looking at japan today it makes you wonder who won the bloody war.The japs did everything in the name of there bloody emperor who should have been tried and hung.

Please try to refrain from such epithets such as "little yellow bastards."

The War is long over...

[bruser]

Just telling the truth YANK.I am now on a good well run british site,Goodbye.

[Rising Sun*]

Just telling the truth YANK.I am now on a good well run british site,Goodbye.

New Zealand was bloody glad to be chockers with Yank soldiers in WWII (as indeed were many New Zealand women glad be chockers with Yanks in WWII), when American, Australian, and Dutch forces were about all that stood between Kiwiland and Japanese conquest of The Land of the Long White Cloud.

In particular, elements of the magnificent 1st Division, USMC, which fought in the crucial land battles on Guadalcanal to stem Japan's eastern advance towards New Zealand were stationed in New Zealand before emabarking for Guadalcanal. And New Zealand was grateful to have them there at the time, and lucky that they helped defeat the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

As for the British, they did sweet FA in the defence of New Zealand while your soldiers fought long and hard in the Mediterranean for Britain and provided a lot of aircrew for Britain's war in Europe. Meanwhile, America provided the bulk of the forces and fought most of the major actions that allowed New Zealand to survive the Japanese onslaught. I hope the British site you're so happy on now is run better than the British managed the defence of Malaya and Burma, and New Zealand.

The whole of the world outside America recognises that some Yanks can be a right royal pain in the arse, particularly under their current administration, but those of us in countries like Australia, New Zealand, France and elsewhere who owe our freedom from Axis victory in WWII in part to America's human sacrifices, industrial efforts, and spirit in WWII would be churlish to use YANK as an epithet on a WWII history site as you have done, at least without explaining it.

So, exactly what did America do that was wrong in saving New Zealand from Japanese invasion, apart from giving you the freedom to be hostile to Yanks instead of being a slave, or corpse, under Nippon?


P.S. For members outside the refined environs of Australia and New Zealand, "chockers", or "choc a block" = full up.

[Nickdfresh]

Just telling the truth YANK.I am now on a good well run british site,Goodbye.

Don't let the door hit your arse' on the way out!

[Major Walter Schmidt]

Just telling the truth YANK.I am now on a good well run british site,Goodbye.

Im Japanese, and I realy do not appreciate such racial remarks as "Yellow basytards".
Thank you.

[Krad42]

The citizens of a nation cannot be collectively guilty for the acts of the nation, but the citizens who supported those actions can be.

So that, for example, people who were enthusiastic Nazis in 1933 / 37 / 41 and who by 1945 when things weren't going their way forgot they had ever been Nazis were, in my view, still liable to be brought to account after the war for the evil they supported.

And I really don't care if, like Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes, they knew nothing, because it was their job to know. Rather like Republicans in America whose votes supported the rendition program and other abuses of human rights in the current era.

Conversely, there were many Germans and many people in other Axis nations who either did not support or opposed the actions of their governments and who should not be held liable for those actions. Not that it mattered when the indiscriminate bombs were falling on Dresden or Tokyo, or afterwards when almost everyone claimed to be in the good camp. Mussolini's body wasn't hung for public condemnation in the twenties, for the simple reason that he had a lot of support then when he was on a roll. It's only failed leaders and regimes that have no supporters after the event.

Maybe...However, it always amazes me when someone sings the song of "it was their job to know" or "they should be held accountable because they supported the regime". There are many things that our own government does that we don't know about and that is the way it has always been and always will be. If that is the case in a democracy, I can't imagine how efficient hiding things must have been in a dictatorial government. When I was in Army Intelligence, there were a lot of things that we did in order to do our duty and nobody had a clue. I'm sure that the same is true today as well. The fact is that most people simply go about the mundane job of surviving day to day. We have jobs and families, and those things have priority. The average American doesn't have a clue about many things and my guess is that there were plenty of Germans that didn't have a clue either.
As to accountability, I doubt that people who voted for Bush and that were against the war in Iraq would consider themselves accountable for many things that have been done in Iraq and Guantanamo. They couldn't have foreseen certain events back on that November day. While most Germans may have been excited about the prospect of a strong Germany, I doubt that the average German would have foreseen the grand scope of things and how far would it all go.
The concept of collective guilt, whether is of the entire nation or of those that originally may have supported the Nazis is a form of oppression...a way to keep them in line. Therefore, it is a concept that I reject wholeheartedly. To me, the real guilty ones are only the ones that gave the orders, the ones that executed them...not the average Joe who proudly hung a swastika flag from his window without direct knowledge of what was happening.
As for the Japanese, they surely committed enough atrocities, but certainly haven't paid the same price as the Germans. Then again, the victims of the Japanese really don't have much of a voice. My guess would be that, if there is anybody that wishes to have an apology from Japan, they will be waiting until hell freezes over.

[SS Ouche-Vittes]

the emperor was not for the war at all, he's not to be blamed completely. he was pressured by his military leaders like Tojo.

[Rising Sun*]

Maybe...However, it always amazes me when someone sings the song of "it was their job to know" or "they should be held accountable because they supported the regime". There are many things that our own government does that we don't know about and that is the way it has always been and always will be. If that is the case in a democracy, I can't imagine how efficient hiding things must have been in a dictatorial government.

Rather than matters kept secret by governments, I had in mind things which were known or which common sense says would have had to be known by the people concerned which they later claim, rather unconvincingly when called to moral or legal account, not to have known about.

A current example is the rendition program which I mentioned. Another is the Bush Administration's re-writing of domestic and international law to permit torture. These are well publicised issues which seem to be supported by some people because, presumably, it suits their 'the end justifies the means' opinions and because, like the Nazis and Japanese in WWII, they regard the people subjected to that treatment as lesser human beings who do not deserve the same rights because they are seen as threats to the people engaging in the bad conduct. If bin Laden somehow managed to conquer America, he'd be struggling to find anyone who knew anything about such things, just as happened in Germany and Japan.

When I was in Army Intelligence, there were a lot of things that we did in order to do our duty and nobody had a clue. I'm sure that the same is true today as well. The fact is that most people simply go about the mundane job of surviving day to day. We have jobs and families, and those things have priority. The average American doesn't have a clue about many things and my guess is that there were plenty of Germans that didn't have a clue either.

I'm not taking the position that civilians should be held accountable for things they didn't and couldn't have known about.

As to accountability, I doubt that people who voted for Bush and that were against the war in Iraq would consider themselves accountable for many things that have been done in Iraq and Guantanamo. They couldn't have foreseen certain events back on that November day.

I agree.

But if they defend or support things such as Abu Ghraib, the rendition program, and torture after they became known, then I think they are, at the very least, morally accountable.

While most Germans may have been excited about the prospect of a strong Germany, I doubt that the average German would have foreseen the grand scope of things and how far would it all go.

Probably.

After all, the Nazis never got more than about a third of the German vote. And their evil nature probably didn't become apparent to most Germans until well after they gained power.

The concept of collective guilt, whether is of the entire nation or of those that originally may have supported the Nazis is a form of oppression...a way to keep them in line.

I view it as a form of justice, by bringing people to account for their actions.

To me, the real guilty ones are only the ones that gave the orders, the ones that executed them...not the average Joe who proudly hung a swastika flag from his window without direct knowledge of what was happening.

I don't think it's that simple.

Take a Korean conscripted into service by Japan. He's from a colony which has been ruthlessly oppressed and exploited by Japan and at the bottom of a brutal system where he regularly gets knocked about physically by Japanese, who also regularly knock their own people about and most of whom have contempt for and power over Koreans. He's put in charge of a work gang on the Burma railway and knows he'll be knocked about if his gang doesn't perform, so he knocks his gang about, both to make them perform and in transferring brutality down the line. He's in a better position than a trusty in a Nazi concentration camp who ensures his own survival by doing what he has to do to survive, even if it means knocking other prisoners about and selecting them for punishment or death. But they're both trying to survive in an awful system they were forced into.

Conversely, the average German Joe who proudly hangs out a Nazi flag does it as a completely voluntary action. And, by the time the war starts, he'd have to be blind, deaf and living in a hole in the ground since 1923 not to know what the Nazis stood for after, for example, Kristallnacht; the anti-Jewish citizenship and economic laws; rabid anti-Jewish propaganda. His post-war claims of "I knew nothing" at least have the support of Albert Speer claiming the same thing, despite being the overlord of, among other things, the Reich's slave labour industry about which he later (when facing trial for his actions) claimed to know nothing. Claims which, unfortunately for poor old Albert who successfully presented himself to the world as "the good Nazi" in a magnificent piece of post-war personal propaganda, have been thoroughly disproved by documents recording various meetings he attended

Similarly, Japanese claims of ignorance are equally unconvincing. One has only to look at the rabid anti-Chinese propaganda leading up and during the invasion of China in the thirties and to events such as the huge publicity given to, and public interest in and support for, a competition by two Japanese officers in China to be the first to behead 100 Chinese. Yet there has been a whole post-war industry at government level in Japan devoted to denying any misconduct in China or elsewhere after the war began.

Then again, the victims of the Japanese really don't have much of a voice.

I think they do, such as the Korean comfort women who got US Congressional support.

The problem is that their voice is rarely heard at Japanese government levels.

My guess would be that, if there is anybody that wishes to have an apology from Japan, they will be waiting until hell freezes over.

Japan has 'apologised' formally a number of times, but the problem is that the 'apologies' were couched in language which to Western ears lacked a complete apology and were evasive, rather like Hirohito's broadcast to the Japanese announcing the surrender because "the war, not necessarily having gone to Japan's advantage" (or words close to that). The other problem is that whatever 'apologies' were offered, there was contrary activity going on in Japan such as its education system busily presenting a sanitised view of Japan's war which undermined the sincerity of the 'apology'. There is a good treatment of the apology issue here http://www.asiaquarterly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=115&Itemid=40

[Rising Sun*]

the emperor was not for the war at all, he's not to be blamed completely. he was pressured by his military leaders like Tojo.

He may, on one view, have been reluctant to go to war but, once Japan had gone to war and was winning, he was very happy with it and heavily invovled in it. Then a few years later he realised when Japan was on the ropes, with the prospect of another American atom bomb landing a bit closer to his home as the Soviets rampaged across Manchuria and into the Kurile Islands, that losing the war threatened the survival of the Imperial line.

The view you present is the one put forward by those who wish to minimise his involvement in Japan's actions.

However, if you go back to the primary historical documents, notably the records of Imperial Conference before and during the war, you will find that the Emperor was fully aware of the implications of the proposed actions and that he took a keen interest in considering aspects affecting the prospects of Japanese success in its war of aggression. On one view, he carefully positioned himself so that he was not responsible for anything, apart from the minor action of approving every major action at Imperial Conference. On another view, he was in it up to his ears. Either way, he definitely was not an opponent of Japan's war from start to finish, but rather the opposite.

It was certainly the case that Hirohito was in the awkward position of being in many respects a revered figurehead rather than an imperial ruler with complete power, and that like some of his predecessors he was at remote risk of being deposed or killed by those under him if he frustrated their ambitions. But the fact remains that he chose to take an active role in the path to war and in prosecuting the war when he could equally well have survived by being the poor captive little puppet of the military which he has been presented as since the war by those committed to preserving the Imperial line, which after all was his dominant purpose in agreeing to others' proposals for war and ultimately in him overriding some of his military people to surrender before the Imperial line was wiped out.

Here is a useful summary of some of the issues affecting his conduct. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=168161&sectioncode=22

[Krad42]

Nothing about WW2 was that simple or black and white. It is easy for us to look back and say that the average German knew what the Nazis stood for and should have known better. We're looking at it with the eyes of two to three generations later. Krystallnacht was actually condemned by many Germans and there was somewhat of a backlash because of it. There is also a big difference between thinking that maybe Jews have something to do with the country's problems and they should leave, and "let's round them up and kill them all!" And, even if the average German would have known, what was he/she supposed to do about it? In this country, we're free to ridicule and speak ill of our leaders and their decisions anytime that we want without fearing that we're going to end up in some prison. That was not the case for the Germans. The Germans were in dire straits when Hitler came along. They believed his message of hope and many may have been racist, just as many are in America and many other countries. But, there is a line, as fine as it might be, between not liking a group of people and killing everyone that belongs to that group. I refuse to believe that every German that believed in Hitler's promises had murderous intentions or was completely aware that murder was in the horizon. Blaming millions of people for the actions of a percentage is not only unfair, but it is the same mentality that has been used for genocide! Let's just blame everybody and make them pay! I refuse to have that mentality and I will always speak up against it because when we spread that kind of thinking, we're only a few steps away of being like the ones we condemn.

As for the Japanese, their "apologies" have been empty. In spite of the actions of certain groups to bring attention to the victims of the Japanese, the fact is that if you ask the average American about the Holocaust, everyone knows about it. If you speak about Japanese crimes, most of them will look at you with a blank stare. That isn't a coincidence. In my line of work, I encounter many, many Japanese people. For the most part, they're very nice people, some of whom I have in high regard. But, they won't speak of the war much and they certainly do not acknowledge the crimes perpetrated by the Japanese during the war. As a matter of fact, there seems to be more of a regret that they lost the war than anything else. And I agree that the Emperor was just as guilty. Unlike the average German, he was in a position to stand for something. Instead, he took an active role.

[ww11freak34]

the japanese sliced pows head of with katanas they were evil

[Rising Sun*]

the japanese sliced pows head of with katanas they were evil

While a form of 'evil' was institutionalised in Japanese military training and conduct, and in those parts of Japanese society which cheered the militarists on, the Japanese didn't have a monopoly on 'evil' conduct in WWII.

Among the many recorded instances of 'evil' Allied conduct towards Japanese are instances of Australians bayoneting Japanese POWs to death (can't recall sources); Americans prising gold out of the teeth of dead and even just wounded but conscious Japanese (probably in William Manchester, Goodbye Darkness and or Sledge, following); Americans driving jeeps with Japanese skulls wired over the headlights (Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed), as well as the routine execution of wounded Japanese on the battlefield, albeit to minimise the risk of suicidal attacks and detonations.

Rather than categorising the Japanese as evil, and by implication categorising the Allies as good, a biblical observation might be more accurate by ascribing responsibility to those who do evil things rather than to a whole racial or national group.

21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. Mark 7:21

[Chevan]

Nothing about WW2 was that simple or black and white. It is easy for us to look back and say that the average German knew what the Nazis stood for and should have known better. We're looking at it with the eyes of two to three generations later. Krystallnacht was actually condemned by many Germans and there was somewhat of a backlash because of it. There is also a big difference between thinking that maybe Jews have something to do with the country's problems and they should leave, and "let's round them up and kill them all!" And, even if the average German would have known, what was he/she supposed to do about it? In this country, we're free to ridicule and speak ill of our leaders and their decisions anytime that we want without fearing that we're going to end up in some prison. That was not the case for the Germans. The Germans were in dire straits when Hitler came along. They believed his message of hope and many may have been racist, just as many are in America and many other countries. But, there is a line, as fine as it might be, between not liking a group of people and killing everyone that belongs to that group. I refuse to believe that every German that believed in Hitler's promises had murderous intentions or was completely aware that murder was in the horizon. Blaming millions of people for the actions of a percentage is not only unfair, but it is the same mentality that has been used for genocide! Let's just blame everybody and make them pay! I refuse to have that mentality and I will always speak up against it because when we spread that kind of thinking, we're only a few steps away of being like the ones we condemn.

As for the Japanese, their "apologies" have been empty. In spite of the actions of certain groups to bring attention to the victims of the Japanese, the fact is that if you ask the average American about the Holocaust, everyone knows about it. If you speak about Japanese crimes, most of them will look at you with a blank stare. That isn't a coincidence. In my line of work, I encounter many, many Japanese people. For the most part, they're very nice people, some of whom I have in high regard. But, they won't speak of the war much and they certainly do not acknowledge the crimes perpetrated by the Japanese during the war. As a matter of fact, there seems to be more of a regret that they lost the war than anything else. And I agree that the Emperor was just as guilty. Unlike the average German, he was in a position to stand for something. Instead, he took an active role.
VEry reasonable post IMO.
As for Japane denial position - but do we condemn our own relation and crimes to them.
Hardly.
I think there are a sort of double-standards.We've wrote a tonns of papers about their cruel treating of pows, inhuman medical experiments and ets, but how about own nuclear experiment over their population in 1945?Is it a crime?
Of course no , we will say, we "saved a millions" of their lives, bombing them to hell and making them to surrender.
And if somebody argue, we get the poin- the japans themself have killed a millions of Chineses, so is it so bad to kill couple of handreds of thousands of them additionally?
But if to get their point - was the mass murdering of civils in Tokio and Hiroshima so necessary for our victory?
if i was a Japan i would never agree with it.And elementary japane national proud wouldn't let me to admit such anti-japane morale that probably had an rasist-based origin.
I think that Japans feel themself as a victims, ( not a victims of Commintern:)) but a victims of our dual Victory-morale.

[Krad42]

VEry reasonable post IMO.
As for Japane denial position - but do we condemn our own relation and crimes to them.
Hardly.
I think there are a sort of double-standards.We've wrote a tonns of papers about their cruel treating of pows, inhuman medical experiments and ets, but how about own nuclear experiment over their population in 1945?Is it a crime?
Of course no , we will say, we "saved a millions" of their lives, bombing them to hell and making them to surrender.
And if somebody argue, we get the poin- the japans themself have killed a millions of Chineses, so is it so bad to kill couple of handreds of thousands of them additionally?
But if to get their point - was the mass murdering of civils in Tokio and Hiroshima so necessary for our victory?
if i was a Japan i would never agree with it.And elementary japane national proud wouldn't let me to admit such anti-japane morale that probably had an rasist-based origin.
I think that Japans feel themself as a victims, ( not a victims of Commintern:)) but a victims of our dual Victory-morale.

Thanks, Chevan! Since you bring up the bombings over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I must clarify my position on those. I know that there is another thread about this, so I won't go deep into it except to reply to your post.

The argument of whether it is okay for us to kill a couple of hundred thousand of them since they also killed so many doesn't "fly" with me. It has always been my position that, if the Allies uphold such a self-righteous position of "we're fighting evil", then we should hold ourselves to higher values. In my view, some of the things that were done to the German people after their surrender were war crimes. Also, in my view, the bombings over Germany in late 1944 and in 1945, and the atomic bombings over Japan are war crimes. I know that my position is not very popular around here. However, the argument that we saved so many by dropping the atomic bombs has never seemed very credible to me. Not only did we kill so many right away, but the suffering that we caused and the decades of additional effects due to those blasts are so great!!! How many actual military personnel did we kill? The great majority were civilians. People argue that those cities were major industrial centers and that there was a lot there that the enemy could use against the Allies. It is kind of hard to tell since everything was destroyed and little "evidence" was left. None of it can really be proved, except for what the propaganda tells us.

So, I agree with you in that we usually don't condemn our own crimes. On the contrary, we tend to always justify them and hold our enemies to a different measuring standard as we hold ouselves!

Krad42

[Chevan]

Thanks, Chevan! Since you bring up the bombings over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I must clarify my position on those. I know that there is another thread about this, so I won't go deep into it except to reply to your post.

The argument of whether it is okay for us to kill a couple of hundred thousand of them since they also killed so many doesn't "fly" with me. It has always been my position that, if the Allies uphold such a self-righteous position of "we're fighting evil", then we should hold ourselves to higher values. In my view, some of the things that were done to the German people after their surrender were war crimes. Also, in my view, the bombings over Germany in late 1944 and in 1945, and the atomic bombings over Japan are war crimes. I know that my position is not very popular around here. However, the argument that we saved so many by dropping the atomic bombs has never seemed very credible to me. Not only did we kill so many right away, but the suffering that we caused and the decades of additional effects due to those blasts are so great!!! How many actual military personnel did we kill? The great majority were civilians. People argue that those cities were major industrial centers and that there was a lot there that the enemy could use against the Allies. It is kind of hard to tell since everything was destroyed and little "evidence" was left. None of it can really be proved, except for what the propaganda tells us.

So, I agree with you in that we usually don't condemn our own crimes. On the contrary, we tend to always justify them and hold our enemies to a different measuring standard as we hold ouselves!

Krad42

Well , yes, although your position is uncommon around here, i think you are very honest.
That make me feel a personal respect to you.
Actualy we tend to justify our own deeds in war, especialy it might be so proper applied to Eastern front.

[Rising Sun*]

Also, in my view, the bombings over Germany in late 1944 and in 1945, and the atomic bombings over Japan are war crimes.

What distinguishes them from other similar events that weren't war crimes?

For example, what makes bombing German cities in late 1944 - 45 war crimes if the previous bombings weren't?

[Major Walter Schmidt]

Nothing about WW2 was that simple or black and white. It is easy for us to look back and say that the average German knew what the Nazis stood for and should have known better. We're looking at it with the eyes of two to three generations later. Krystallnacht was actually condemned by many Germans and there was somewhat of a backlash because of it. There is also a big difference between thinking that maybe Jews have something to do with the country's problems and they should leave, and "let's round them up and kill them all!" And, even if the average German would have known, what was he/she supposed to do about it? In this country, we're free to ridicule and speak ill of our leaders and their decisions anytime that we want without fearing that we're going to end up in some prison. That was not the case for the Germans. The Germans were in dire straits when Hitler came along. They believed his message of hope and many may have been racist, just as many are in America and many other countries. But, there is a line, as fine as it might be, between not liking a group of people and killing everyone that belongs to that group. I refuse to believe that every German that believed in Hitler's promises had murderous intentions or was completely aware that murder was in the horizon. Blaming millions of people for the actions of a percentage is not only unfair, but it is the same mentality that has been used for genocide! Let's just blame everybody and make them pay! I refuse to have that mentality and I will always speak up against it because when we spread that kind of thinking, we're only a few steps away of being like the ones we condemn.

As for the Japanese, their "apologies" have been empty. In spite of the actions of certain groups to bring attention to the victims of the Japanese, the fact is that if you ask the average American about the Holocaust, everyone knows about it. If you speak about Japanese crimes, most of them will look at you with a blank stare. That isn't a coincidence. In my line of work, I encounter many, many Japanese people. For the most part, they're very nice people, some of whom I have in high regard. But, they won't speak of the war much and they certainly do not acknowledge the crimes perpetrated by the Japanese during the war. As a matter of fact, there seems to be more of a regret that they lost the war than anything else. And I agree that the Emperor was just as guilty. Unlike the average German, he was in a position to stand for something. Instead, he took an active role.

I would have to disagree on that. Though he played a minor role, most of the policies were shaped by the Tojo cabinet, which was pretty much, the Army.
For example, the Manshuria incident was mostly coordinated by Officers but not exactly approved by the Emperor, started the Sino-Japanese War.

[Major Walter Schmidt]

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Rising Sun*]

Please correct me if I am wrong.

No disrespect to you, but I think you're wrong in swallowing the widely promulgated and widely accepted line that Hirohito was a minor player, a mere captive puppet of the military.

It is a misconception to see the Emperor as a captive of the army. The navy also had a minister in Cabinet, who pushed the IJN view. The IJA and IJN were separate fiefdoms under the Emperor and ran their own affairs, often more in competition than co-operation with each other. Usually these competing views were thrashed out at the Liaison Conference between the IJA and IJN, which was the level below Imperial Conference where the Emperor presided, and presented to the Emperor for decision or discussion, as in this example http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Strategy/Strategy-B.html

Imperial Conference was, on one view, the Emperor as just a rubber stamp for decisions made at Liaison Conferences between the army and navy or, on another view, where he approved such decisions after a lot of behind the scenes work by him and or his advisers.. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=BWqEkwH1KRMC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=wetzler+hirohito+imperial+conference&source=bl&ots=VlDn_KSkPH&sig=Fu5SQL5ZFoKMPH1C-1dhMVPZ6E0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

I think that on all the evidence of Imperial Conferences and other documents and recollections which survived the war the best which can be said in Hirohito’s favour is that he might have been reluctant to start the war, but he was right up the front of the bandwagon and playing furiously after Japan’s stunning early victories. As he was, at the other end of the war, equally enthusiastic in jumping off the bandwagon and surrendering, primarily to ensure the survival of the Imperial line rather than the nation he had allowed to be destroyed around him for the past couple of years, when he knew Japan was beaten.

In fairness to the Emperor he was in a potentially, but never actually, awkward position where he knew that some of his predecessors had been assassinated or held captive by earlier ‘militarists’ over many centuries and that he might have been unable to control the army if the generals used it against him. In reality, the militarists’ re-creation and elevation during the 1920s and 1930s of the Emperor from just the constitutional head under the 1890 Meiji Constitution to the spiritual fount of Japanese life and the imperial being to which all servicemen dedicated their lives made it impossible for the militarists to assassinate, depose or control him, so it is fanciful to argue that he was at real risk of being killed or toppled. I think he had to know that himself.

The Emperor’s successful intervention in the 26 February 1936 attempted armed coup d’etat by ultranationalist army elements demonstrated that he had control over the IJA and IJN, as illustrated by army troops abandoning the positions they had seized in Tokyo after being presented with copies of the Emperor’s order to the IJA and IJN to suppress the rebellion. His success over ultranationalists on that occasion is hardly consistent with him being a captive of the Tojo nationalist clique a few years later, regardless of the extra power which the militarists might have gained in the interim.

Hirohito’s true war conduct was conveniently reconstructed and minimized by the Allies – primarily MacArthur – after the war for purposes related to making the occupation of Japan manageable and, later, America’s anti-communist stance and wars where Japan became a crucial base and bulwark against both Chinese and Russian communist expansion into Asia and the Pacific. It was contrary to American interests to hold the Emperor responsible for Japan’s WWII conduct as that war faded into the past and when any attempt to do so could only alienate large sections of the Japanese populace to America’s contemporary and future disadvantage in a bigger confrontation with the communist powers of much greater importance to America, and more generally to the Western powers which were more or less aligned with America’s anti-communist stance.

Herbert Bix http://www.binghamton.edu/history/faculty/bix.htm has long studied Hirohito and he rejects the ‘Hirohito as puppet’ view.

The Emperor, Modern Japan and the U.S.-Japan Relationship: an Interview with Herbert Bix

The foremost Western authority on the life and times of Emperor Hirohito -- known posthumously as the Emperor Showa -- talked to The Japan Times about the role of Japan's former "living god" and his place in history in comparison with other powerful twentieth century leaders including Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt and George W. Bush.

In 2000, historian Herbert P. Bix shattered the image of Emperor Hirohito as a mere figurehead who was detached from Japan's imperialist warmongering in the first half of the 20th century.

Bix argued in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, which won him the Pulitzer Prize, that the emperor was intimately involved in the decision-making behind his military's ruthless campaigns. Hence Bix contends, the Emperor bore heavy moral, legal and political responsibility.

Bix explains why Japan will be unable to realize its full democratic potential without re-evaluating Emperor Showa. Bix also explores what lessons today's world leaders can learn from a study of this enigmatic figure.

At the postwar Tokyo war crimes tribunal, the Allies indicted 28 Japanese war leaders for "crimes against peace," "violations against the laws and customs of war" and "crimes against humanity," including the Nanjing atrocities in 1937-38 and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Seven were hanged.

Bix maintains that Emperor Showa was shielded from trial by Allied commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his staff, who feared communists and wanted to harness the Emperor's domestic popularity to hasten Japan's recovery, and so suppressed damning evidence of his war involvement.

In this interview, Bix ranges widely from wartime Japan and the U.S. at war to Washington's contemporary policies in Iraq.


How did you come to write "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan?"

I wanted to write a history of modern Japan. I was interested in the Emperor and I wanted to situate the Emperor and the imperial institution in the entire modernization process.

I wanted to show the development of the Emperor's personality, his ways of thinking and his involvement in public life.
Did you set out to determine whether he was a dictator who should be held accountable for Japan's role in World War II?

I knew from the very outset that he wasn't a dictator, and that dictatorship was not in the Japanese historical experience. The Emperor was a participant in a pluralistic decision-making system. Yet no one had questioned his responsibility for the war in light of the central position he played in political and military affairs.

1. Crown Prince Hirohito on July 20, 1923

The Emperor died in January 1989, just when the Cold War order was collapsing and the new era of instability was setting in. That's when some important material started to become available. I got a copy of Kinoshita Michio's diary of the wartime imperial entourage published by Bungei Shunju in 1990. I was also sent a copy of the Showa Emperor's monologue that he dictated for the Occupation authorities early in 1946 that Bungei Shunju published at the end of 1990.

When I read those, I said, Aha! Here is a human being like the rest of us, and . . . with this new material I could return to the study of the institution, having previously written about the emperor system very schematically and abstractly -- as most people did.

This new evidence made me want to revise outdated and erroneous views. Japanese people -- and the world -- had been told only about the Emperor's innocence in starting the Pacific War and his heroism in ending it. It now became possible to look seriously into the question of Hirohito's war responsibility.

In other words, I started off in search of the real Hirohito because I had doubts about the official view. And . . . I found that none of the claims about him could stand careful scrutiny. continued .....

[Rising Sun*]

How would you contrast Hirohito's responsibility with that of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini? In other words, did Hirohito bear responsibility for the onset of fascism in the same way as those European dictators?

I argue that he bore moral, legal and political responsibility of the highest degree for the war -- and that responsibility extended also to war atrocities.


3. Emperor Hirohito at a military parade in May 1937

Hirohito stood at the center of a system of power that disciplined the Japanese people to be loyal subjects of the imperial state.
What distinguished him from a Hitler or a Mussolini, or for that matter, a Churchill or a Roosevelt or any other Western leader, is that he stood at the head of a state and was considered to be a living deity. What other modern state at that time was headed by a living deity?

Hirohito received an education in idealized Confucian norms and in Bushido. He was taught above all to be a benevolent monarch and he wanted to live up to those ideals. As a result, he was not only very active behind the scenes, but also sharper than most historians and political observers recognized.

Hirohito was Imperial Japan's hereditary head of state; he was the supreme commander of Japanese forces. He was also a religious leader and the nation's chief pedagogue. Because he lived in a world of high politics, naturally he engaged in politics. made choices. His choices had consequences.

Here is a man who bore enormous responsibility for the consequences of his actions in each of his many roles. Yet, he never assumed responsibility for what happened to the Japanese and Asian peoples whose lives were destroyed or harmed by his rule.

Hirohito often gave orders without issuing commands. This isn't unique to Japan. It is the "voiceless order" technique that high officials in countries around the world routinely employ. It's acting by not acting -- we see this in American history as well.
I gave the examples of the Nanjing Massacre, which I believe Hirohito had to know about. And I talked about his roles in helping to undermine political parties and the rule of Cabinet government, and in delaying surrender. In every period, he plays a role in politics and military decision-making -- but he came to military decision-making gradually.

For example, regarding the delayed surrender. At the end, in 1945, the army and the navy and the Supreme War Leadership Council and the Cabinet, all had reasons to bring the lost war to an end short of Japan's further destruction and unconditional capitulation to the Anglo-Americans. But only the Emperor had the sovereign power to resolve the issue, and he was more concerned about preserving an empowered monarchy -- with himself on the throne -- than he was about saving the lives of his people.

At the end, during June and into July, when the American terror bombing of Japanese civilian targets reached its peak, Hirohito showed no determination to bring the war to an end. This needs to be assessed against the dominant American and Japanese view that credits him with making the heroic decision to end the war.

He never took responsibility for the war that was carried out in his name. Japanese people, the young men of whom 2.6 million would die, went to war believing that they were defending their country, showing their loyalty to him. The war was a tragedy both for Asian people who Japan conquered and for the Japanese people, both military and civilians

In the end, with Japan in ruins, following the firebombing of Japanese cities, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet entry into the war in Manchuria, Japan negotiated surrender terms that preserved Hirohito on the throne.

Through all this, the emperor never acknowledged loyalty to his subjects, still less to other war victims. The only responsibility he acknowledged was to his ancestors.

In the book, you portray a coterie of officials raising Hirohito to be the hands-on, authoritarian leader that his own father, Emperor Taisho, never was. Should Hirohito's upbringing, in which he appears to have been the product of intense indoctrination, not absolve him to some degree from responsibility for the militarist departure from the "Taisho democracy" movement and for Japan's wartime atrocities?

I never said that he was groomed to be an authoritarian leader. I wrote that he was socialized to be a benevolent monarch.
"Authoritarianism" was assumed in the Japanese political context. Emperor Meiji was his model, not his father, and he was the product of an intense socialization and indoctrination process. I don't think this absolves him, to any serious degree, from responsibility for the destruction of Taisho democracy.

Why not? Surely, many liberal thinkers today would argue that someone who grows up in an authoritarian environment, and later becomes authoritarian himself, cannot be held entirely to blame, due to the experience of their upbringing.

Yes, there were extenuating circumstances, but that didn't absolve him from political, or moral, or legal responsibility. Particularly in the case of his sanctioning wars of aggression.

I imagine that many Japanese nationalists reading your book would say, "What right have you to tell us we shouldn't have done this, when we were living in an era of violent, global Western imperialism? This was the only way for the Emperor to defend his nation."

This was an age of imperialism, but Japan like other nations had options. Japan could have pursued different foreign policy choices in late Meiji [1868-1912], in Taisho [1912-26] and in early Showa [1926-89] -- a different foreign policy vis-a-vis Korea, China and the Western countries. But Japan's leaders in each period chose not to do so.

In Meiji and most of Taisho, the so-called realist decision-makers of Imperial Japan acted prudently. The problem was that at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the '30s they lost their bearings and made one error after another. But there were always options. Japan always had options; it didn't have to become a rogue state that brought disaster not only to Asian countries but to the Japanese people as well. continued .....

[Rising Sun*]

Do you see any similarities between the way Hirohito and his key advisers went about their business and the conduct of today's world leaders?

Today Japan confronts a world shaped by a new militarism that has arisen in the United States, a new face of empire, a government in Washington that has not hesitated to launch and justify wars of aggression.

The United States after 9/11 launched a war against Afghanistan and then a few years later, ignoring the Security Council, the Bush administration launched an illegal war against Iraq.

You might say that the Americans' preventive war against Iraq was in many ways far worse, than Japan's attack on an American military base, in an American colony, in December 1941.

Stop and think about it: Pearl Harbor was an act of aggression directed against a naval base in the Pacific that belonged to the most powerful nation in the world, an act that initiated the Pacific War. By contrast, the Iraq war was launched by the world's only hyperpower against a defenseless country that has already resulted in more than 100,000 civilian Iraqi deaths. In this respect a better comparison might be with Japan's Manchurian Incident of 1931 in which the military used a pretext to seize Manchuria and create Manchukuo, leading Japan on the road to war that would take more than ten million Chinese deaths over fifteen years.

Oil, military bases, and revenge were important factors in the decision of the Bush administration to go to war in Iraq. That war had nothing to do with either Bush administration claims linking the war to 9/11 or to Iraqi possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In both Manchuria and Iraq, the reasons for going to war were fabricated.

Do you think Hirohito should have been tried and punished, and if so, how?

I never said he should. What I did say was that the Japanese people should have been allowed to freely discuss his role, and he should have been allowed to abdicate. Indeed, he should have been encouraged to abdicate, and the Japanese people should have been encouraged to freely debate the Emperor's role and the role of the Imperial institution. But Gen. MacArthur and the Truman administration shielded the Emperor. Not only was he protected from prosecution, but he was never even called to testify at the Tokyo Trials, and the documents concerning his war responsibility were placed off limits.

I think the joint efforts of Americans and Japanese to preserve the Imperial institution, each for different reasons in what I call a de-facto partnership, had disastrous consequences whose impact continues to be felt in Japanese politics and in the U.S.-Japan relationship.

Do you believe a segment of the Japanese conservative leadership wants to wage war again?

Well, they want to be able to wage war without restriction. They call it being a "normal" state. Of course this is highly regressive, because Japan remains a leader precisely because it has the non-nuclear principles and it's not a major exporter of arms to other countries.

But many conservatives are dissatisfied with Japan's long subordination to the United States. Japan has a sort of satellite, or client, relationship with Washington. A person like the governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro, attracts that wing of the party that is quite dissatisfied, and he transfers his frustration to China. I think this only adds to complications in East Asia.

You see the conservatives using every opportunity to exploit fear -- fear of North Korea, fear that Japan might be invaded. Japan has a pretty strong military that is perfectly capable of defending itself. It's inconceivable that any foreign country would invade Japan.

But we're seeing politics here. We're seeing an effort on the part of the conservatives, the LDP, to revise the Constitution, particularly to eliminate Article 9 that restricts Japanese capacity to fight overseas wars.

What significance do you see in Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's long-held insistence on visiting Yasukuni Shrine?

That question really goes back to how we define the era in which we're living, because, not only is the Asia-Pacific War "history," but the Occupation is history, and the postwar period is history. The Cold War is over. The political situation is one of searching for a new threat so as to impose discipline and reorder things.

In this new environment, the Japanese people remain divided on the meaning of the war and postwar experiences. Memories of the Asia-Pacific War have evolved: a younger generation with no experience of war has come on the scene, and a minority of influential elites -- overrepresented, of course, in the LDP -- have asserted publicly an affirmative view of the war.

I think the actions of the prime minister and likeminded conservatives in his Cabinet in visiting Yasukuni Shrine and seeking to eliminate Article 9 of the Constitution have to be set against this lack of national consensus as well as against the new international configuration of powers offers to change Japan.

It's demonstrably untrue that the Japanese people have never changed their views of the last, lost war. But Koizumi's actions allow many Chinese and Korean people, and other peoples in Asia, to have that false view.

Germany seems to have fared better than Japan in grappling with its wartime past. What must Japan do to put World War II behind it once and for all, and normalize relations with Asian neighbors?

German elites found it in their national interest to gain the trust of their European neighbors, and to quickly reintegrate into western Europe. Over the last quarter century, they've done rather well in grappling with their legacy of their war criminality and overcoming the past.

But the circumstances for Japan were entirely different.

During the early years of the Occupation, Japanese intellectuals went much further than their German counterparts in grappling with issues of war responsibility. This has not been sufficiently appreciated.

At the same time, however, there is no unified "Japan" that hews to erroneous views of the past. Divisions remain deep. Every generation of Japanese has revisited World War II, and will continue to do so.

This is a revised and abbreviated version of an interview by Eric Prideaux that appeared in The Japan Times: August 9, 2005. Eric Prideaux is a staff writer for The Japan Times. This article appeared in Japan Focus on August 26, 2005. http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/1871

[Major Walter Schmidt]

The Emperor’s successful intervention in the 26 February 1936 attempted armed coup d’etat by ultranationalist army elements demonstrated that he had control over the IJA and IJN, as illustrated by army troops abandoning the positions they had seized in Tokyo after being presented with copies of the Emperor’s order to the IJA and IJN to suppress the rebellion. His success over ultranationalists on that occasion is hardly consistent with him being a captive of the Tojo nationalist clique a few years later, regardless of the extra power which the militarists might have gained in the interim.


Actually that one was only in the name of the Emperor... the 2/26 incident was not supported or co-ordinated by the Emperor.

[Rising Sun*]

Actually that one was only in the name of the Emperor... the 2/26 incident was not supported or co-ordinated by the Emperor.

Yes, but my point was that although elements of the army rebelled the Emperor's authority was still sufficient to persuade them to abandon their rebellion, which demonstrates that he was not a mere figurehead and had real power over the army if he chose to exercise it.

[Rising Sun*]

Here is an example, from a book I am currently reading, of the Emperor's active involvement in pursuing Japan's war aims at the decisive moment following Japan's defeat at the Battle of Midway.

On 8 June in Tokyo, the chief of the Navy General Staff, Admiral Nagano, appeared before Emperor Hirohito to explain events at Midway. Hirohito's chief aide, the Marquis Koichi Kido, lord keeper of the privy seal, was present: 'I had supposed that the news of the terrible damage would have caused him untold anxieties, but his countenance did not show the least bit of change. He said that the setback was severe and regrettable, yet nothwithstanding that, he told Nagano to make certain that the morale of the navy did not deteriorate and the the future policy of the navy did not become inactive and passive.'. Bob Wurth, 1942:Australia's Greatest Peril, Macmillan, Sydney, 2008 (1st ed.), pp. 258-9

Those were the actions and comments of a man directing events, not a prisoner of them.

[Rising Sun*]

Go ahead, die JAP, ...

While vigorous discussion is welcome, and while it is accepted that there are still strong feelings about things which happened in the war, pointless and inflammatory comments such as your quoted one are not acceptable. Please refrain from such comments in future.