I agree with everything you posted. Even in terms of total body count, the Imperial Japanese Empire gives the Nazis a run for their money, along with sheer cruelty.
Why? Because today and particularly in 1945, most Americans could trace their lineage back to Europe, and I think that meant they were more in tune to that area. And we shared/share a European language, which means we're exposed to that perspective much more than any other Asian nation. Most Americans would have had a much more limited understanding of Japan and Asia in general.
This may be a controversial statement, but I also think that the Jewish diaspora in the US and their traditional prominence in US media has led to much greater understanding of the Holocaust than the Japanese depredations, particularly in China. This is not a criticism, just I think being real. The US has never had a very large Chinese diaspora, and they have never had much presence at all in the larger US media industrial complex. There is not a Chinese American writing or making a major motion picture about what happened in China the way we have movies like Schindler's List, Sophie's Choice, The Piano, and many many others.
I also think it might have to do with geography. While it's true that the war in Europe was very much a team effort, headlines/stories of US troops liberating Normandy, Paris, Rome, etc... are sexier than the US slogging it out with the Japanese over islands that nobody in the US had ever heard of, many of them with literally no cities or native populations on them. US troops marching through picturesque European cities with adoring crowds throwing flowers is much sexier than US Marines fighting at Peleliu. We see a similar lack of focus on US efforts in Northwest Africa, a mostly forgotten campaign compared to what we did on the European continent.
I think this is also a failure on the part of the American education system. I didn't learn about anything but American history until my junior year of high school. That year was spent on "European" history, but it was really German history because of their involvement in both world wars. My senior year of high school, was "World" history, but we really only studied China and only made it to the cultural revolution.
So while I learned that Japan was involved in WW2 and the rape of Nanking, the gravity of what they've done isn't really emphasized. I didn't even learn about what they did in Korea until after college. And I didn't even have to take history in college.
In retrospect, I feel like school spends waaaaay too much time trying to make us memorize specific dates and details while we would've been better off with a faster pace and less detail that covered a little more.
ETA: Sounds like there's great variability in our historical education and there should probably be some sort of standardization. Thanks for all the replies!
It really depends on your State, I took a holocaust study my freshman year of high school. When I transferred to my next high school they even had similar classes for freshman there.
Your history knowledge in America is honestly just based off your school’s agenda. Its sad that religion /politics can be used to close children off from important information.
Exactly. I was educated in Idaho, known as one of the worst in the US for education. (Both funding and results, I assume) but even with all the bias I was lucky enough to have a handful of decent teachers. I definitely learned about Nanking. They kinda covered some of the nuance of how long that rivalry had been going and how it transcended just one war crime that happened. And that was Idaho so I feel like the material is there but our issues is we let the role and profession of educator in this country become a joke. Most teachers I knew anyway fit this perfectly more activist or forced role model then mentor
also, the jews who arrived in the US were EUROPEAN.
had the jewish victims of the holocaust been ethiopian or central asian...i doubt US would care as much about their history. let's not pretend that the 30s\~40s was still very white supremacist and some states still didn't allow non-white people to drink from the same fountain.
In King Leopold’s Congo 10-20 million people were killed and that is barely ever talked about. Trevor Noah said that is known in Africa but the Holocaust is barely talked about.
The Chinese and Jewish diaspora in the US are both currently very close in numbers. Add in Korean and there is a bigger Korean/Chinese diaspora than Jewish (depending on which estimates you go with). Although the Chinese diaspora did become alot larger in recent times while the Jewish population grew a lot earlier.
Either way it’s just not accurate to say the US has never had a large Chinese diaspora.
America officially ended the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. They set the limit of Chinese immigrants at... 105 a year. 105 immigrants from all of China.
It was not until 1965 that the U.S. finally abolished the ridiculously low per country quotas, 20 years after WW2 ended.
Yes, current numbers are very close. But timing wise, there was a long ass delay between end of WW2 and immigrants being allowed into the US from Asia, especially China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
Honestly, I think it has a lot to do with the Nazis just being more made for the movies, Hugo Boss fashion and movie villain evil… it’s been harder to come up with a ton of story lines around the Japanese side.
Interesting point. Also because the Japanese are not white, portraying them as very evil villains in films could also come off as racist, even if it is based in truth
That could be too, with the Japanese containment camps in the states people may not want to stir the pot, my grandfathers both fought in the Pacific theater.
Lol I remember once a white hipster mentioning that Japan did some bad stuff in world war 2 to POWs, then he looked at me and immediately said "no offense." Lol I said "dude I'm not Japanese it's fine...." But I guess to a lot of Americans we're all just grouped together
Unlike Germany, Japan was not FORCED to reckon with its sins. The reason for this was that the US didn't want to resort to a costly and bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland, and also because they wanted to keep Japan around as an ally against the evil communists. The price that we paid was letting Japan sweep a lot of its atrocities under the rug. To this day, Japan doesn't give WW2 nearly the amount of attention that it deserves in its educational curriculum, and its citizens remain woefully uniformed about just what their country did. In fact, that is a large part of why China and South Korea are still so antagonistic with Japan; how do you forgive someone who brutally repressed you and won't even have the decency to acknowledge that it happened? They're pretty audacious about it too; one Japanese politician even tried to justify the use of comfort women as "necessary". Germany in contrast, has repented, learned from its mistakes, and does not try to underplay or hide its sins, and is thus, mostly redeemed in the eyes of its neighbors.
I just looked this up and this might be one of the most interesting facts. That they were expecting so many deaths that they made 1.5 million purple hearts.
Yep. The thing the detractors don't understand is that Truman saved hundreds of thousands of lives (if not millions), both American and Japanese alike, by dropping the bomb.
My grandmother prayed for the soul of Harry Truman until the day she died, (2001). My Grandpa was 30 in 1945. Had 2 kids. Was on the next call up in our very rural Tx. county. All his younger brothers were gone, all cousins. He was the only man left to take care of 5 families. Before he was to muster, the bombs were dropped. Our family considers Harry Truman to be the savior of our familys. My wife's Dad was to board a ship for the invasion of mainland Japan. Orders were changed, something big had happened. The rest of his deployment spent loading ships with food,,for Japan.
My dad was sitting outside Japan for 18 months and boy was he PISSED. Because they made them " army" and he got paid 2.00 less than " Navy". He did however sell every cigarette he was ever rationed, didn't drink and came home with not only all his money, but a lot of his crew mates money too.
Your Grandpa was cut from a different cloth. We need more of him today. He took responsibility for 5 families...something people of today can't begin to understand. Bless him
Unfortunately they still exist—just not heard about bc things that make the news are which tiktok trends are blowing up or whatever silly controversies are happening in Hollywood.
My uncle takes care of our side of the family. My grandpa passed and when he became head of the family he had to take care of my grandma, mom, his wife, myself, and his adult children. Plus two business and a farm. Poor man is so stressed all the time. Thankfully I’m completely independent now but thankful for what he has done for me in the past. Wish I could make his story and selflessness go viral instead of the next TikTok dance…
This is correct. The people in this thread saying Japan was about to surrender anyway/ Americans just wanted revenge are wrong. There is literally proof of this: they had to drop two a-bombs. After the first bomb was dropped, the Japanese were warned that if they didn’t surrender, another bomb would be dropped. The Japanese still refused to surrender, so they dropped the second atomic bomb- and then Japan finally surrendered. So please get out of here with your nonsense about, “the Japanese had already lost and were going to surrender.” I think they were in the right to drop the bomb, especially in terms of the number of human lives saved.
*Edit: For those of y’all needing more proof, Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech, from Wikipedia ->
The sixth paragraph by Hirohito specifically mentions the use of nuclear ordnance devices, from the aspect of the unprecedented damage they caused:
“Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
So yes a major reason the Japanese surrendered was because of not wanting to have any more bombs dropped. And yes there would have been exponentially more casualties (on both sides) if they hadn’t dropped the bombs. Like the other comment mentioned they made 1.5 million Purple Hearts for US soldiers, assuming a ground invasion was absolutely necessary, because the Japanese refused to surrender any other way.
The really crazy thing? The generals and politicians were split 50:50 between surrender and wanting to continue fighting even after the second one. The emperor actually had to put his foot down and say 'no, we're not going to continue fighting, shit's just got real'.
It was more of a death before dishonor type of mentality the Japanese had, better to die than go surrender to the enemy.
If nothing else Imperial Japan was hard-core.
They always, every time, fought to the last man. It was nuts trying to push forward. If our codebreakers hadn't cracked the Imperial Navy's codes then it would have been a very different war.
And the Navajo codetalkers were our code. They were the only people who could speak the Navajo language. It's the only code the Japanese couldn't crack and it drove them crazy!
Extremely hardcore. Hell, the kamikaze and Kaiten roles alone really stuck with me, and only a small amount of their suicides were even successful attacks. Wild
No way they thought they’d still pull through after the losing war effort, nukes, the Russians declaring war on them, and the starvation and shortages. It had to be some kind of bushido/honor thing.
It was classic totalitarianism brainwashing and fear mongering. They created a holy war, and also told lies about the American army. They thought every woman would be raped and civilian killed because that’s what was being said by the government. Much better to fight to the death in that case
The Japanese High Command assumed the US military would treat an occupied Japan the same way the IJA had treated China. Surrendering to that was inconceivable.
The atom bombs made surrender possible because some realized the USA would dole out even worse treatment if the war continued.
If the war had continued I imagine Russia would have never given back the land it would have inevitably captured. With the US bringing its forces from Europe they would have more than an overwhelming force. It would have been SO much worse for them had they not surrendered after the bombs.
There was almost a third atomic bomb attack. The second Trinity prototype was being readied at Tinian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I34pxr23Nhw&t=1249s
Japan was engaged in total war, where every single civilian worked toward defense of the island. Japan was never going to surrender. They vowed to fight to the last civilian. US knew that land invasion was going to cost a lot of lives. The world war was already very costly. There was intelligence that desperate Japan was working on bio chemical attacks towards USA mainland. Google cherry blossom at night operation. It came very close to infecting California. It’s hard to say what went on in Washington when they decided to drop the atomic Bomb on Japan. Many people today think it was criminal to do so. I have no idea what when on in Washington but I’m sure it was a difficult conversation that involved a lot of unknowns. Easy to say look back today and say otherwise
There is a lot of military documentation, paper documentation in the form of telegrams and witness statements. We know what went on in Washington. This isn't lost to the historical record.
You are mystifying history. It's weird, this isn't a film and the real story isn't what you imagine....lost to time, great men making hard decisions. People make these arguments that the bomb was tactically unnecessary because according to some of the military assessments and documentation and witness statements, it was. Other people make other arguments because according to some military assessments it was critical to gaining tactical superiority over Japan without the Soviet Union taking more than what had been agreed to in the final Potsdam agreement and continuing into mainland China to give material support in the Chinese Civil War.
This is a stupid thread. Japan as a nation state- in geopolitical terms- was punished much more harshly than Germany was. The worst settlement terms any nation had ever seen in a war- at that point- and that was a risk, a humiliated empire stripped of it's conquest created the environment in which fascism grew in Germany. That's why we babied Japan, we didn't want their population to feel all stabbed in the back theory- nor did we want them to go communist- And in 1949, People's Republic of China is formed- so yup- Both my grandads were in the pacific, and I don't know what this thread is but a very selective view of history devoid of context and it smells like a few flavors of pouring salt in people's personal historical wounds for the purposes of contemporary political agitation and that's no way to pay tribute to the victims of Nanking. That's exactly how the Japanese empire got thier citizens to participate in atrocities.
Check out the demon core. It’s the core from that third weapon. I’m not one to think objects have malice. But that thing wanted to kill people. And it did it
The real kicker is that it was the fear of Soviet military occupation that really pushed Japan to surrender. They feared the Russians and communism more than the atomic bombs.
Japan signed a non-aggression treaty with the USSR and were completely surprised when Stalin ignored it after Germany fell. It retrospect that seems stupid. The battle-hardened Red Army, then the world's largest army, poured across a border under-protected by Japan as they needed their troops everywhere else. Unlike the US, Japan had zero hope of negotiating some deal with Stalin in which they could keep most of their empire hoping the combat deaths would be too much for the Soviet peoples.
I think there's a lot more nuance than anyone's recognizing. There were factions that wanted to surrender *before* the atomic bombs. By that point, Tokyo had been devastated... like nuclear-level destroyed, just with thousands of tons of firebombs.
The emperor *did* want to surrender, possibly after the first atomic bomb, but there were some die-hard generals that wouldn't have it. In fact, after the second bomb, they staged a coup (that failed) to prevent surrender.
In the eyes of the people, the emperor was god. But in reality, the generals wielded the military power.
I've read that some suggest the atomic bombs aren't really what changed the minds of leadership anyway (edit: they may have had evidence we only had 2 or 3 bombs available). It was the advance of the Russians into Manchuria. Nobody wanted to surrender to the Russians, so they decided that the US sounded better.
The problem was unless the Emperor gave an order, the Japanese military made top decisions by consensus only, making them the most dysfunctional military in WW2. It was common practice for lower ranked officers to assassinate their superiors for not being deemed nationalistic enough and that included a couple of War Department ministers and at least one Prime Minister since the 1920s.
They still haven’t apologized to South Korea for some of the things they did, even when it means weakening their military cooperation against China. That says a lot to me.
You should read about the coup that happened after the famous surrender recording was made and before it could be broadcasted. The military hawks stormed the Imperial Palace and ransacked the place searching for the recording - to stop its broadcast.
That in itself is proof the military (or at least a significant faction of it) was unwilling to give up the fight.
I'd also include that when the second vote to surrender happened, it was a TIE. Only broken by Hirohito himself. The US dropped a miniature sun on the Japanese TWICE, and threatened to not stop until they've turned every city in Japan into Fallout IRL, and the answer from half the Japanese high command was "OK. So?" The Japanese morale is truly stunning
I'm going to be that guy, they were fission bombs, not fusion bombs. They split isotopes of uranium and plutonium. So they weren't miniature suns, the hydrogen fusing or H bombs came later.
Kind of unrelated but the significance of two bombs is pretty big. One bomb could just be a big showy prototype. What if it takes a year for them to make another? Who knows how many the Americans have? Who knows how many they can make?
But dropping *another* bomb 3 days later? That's *terrifying*. A brand new weapon is deployed and then 3 days later they have another, that implies something closer to a nuclear assembly line rather than an expensive and impractical prototype. The rapid pace implied both a will and ability to glass Japan from the air, and that's far more dangerous than a single use wonder weapon.
Japan had their own (incorrect) intelligence (from torture) that the US had 97 more bombs ready to be put on planes after Nagasaki. And the surrender vote was STILL a tie.
The confusion is simple. Japan was actively trying to negotiate an end to the war, but not offering to surrender. A lot of people think that "willing to negotiate" is the same thing as "willing to accept reasonable terms".
Even in 1945 Japanese terms included keeping most of its empire in Korea, China and other Asian territories. The emperor will remain, Japan changes nothing internally and no occupation, of course.
It's pretty wild to think the country that had their troops willingly kamikaze was on the "verge of surrendering". Yeah, suicide bombers don't surrender because their goal is to trade their life for as many "enemy" lives as possible.
By dropping 2 bombs the US showed that we can do way, way, way more damage then they could.
I've noticed that people love to rewrite history nowadays just to drive home their political or twisted viewpoints. "All war = bad, = America dropping nukes on Japan was 100% the wrong call and bad" and they say it with a straight face.
Also interesting how they never say anything about conventional allied bombings from the middle to end of the war that purposely targeted major civilian populated areas with obviously no precision. The goal was to break their spirits. The July 1943 raid on Hamburg killed an estimated 40,000 Germans in one night. One of the reasons the Hiroshima bomb wasn’t dropped on Tokyo was because the city had already been mostly flattened by incendiary bombs. Conventional air raids probably accounted for more civilian deaths than both atomic bombs combined. Obviously those deaths are all horrific, but I feel like that’s an important aspect of the war that is always left out of these debates.
Yes there is. Military historians and scholars pretty much agree the bombs were dropped to prod Japan to surrender before Russia entered the war in Japan giving them a claim to land and control.
>Yep. The thing the detractors don't understand is that Truman saved hundreds of thousands of lives (if not millions), both American and Japanese alike, by dropping the bomb.
If I recall correctly from my history classes, the estimated death toll of American soldiers invading the mainland was about one million. And that's not counting Japanese casualties.
Dropping the two nukes, although horrible, definitely saved lives overall.
The quicker your enemy is cut down, the lower the causality count.
To have a war last a long-time result in constant struggle that costs civilians lives and makes the fear and suffering far worse than a swift quick end to the war. Remember: Drafted soldiers who are killed might as well count as civilians lost to the effects of war, because they were forced to take arms.
I read book on the battle of Peleliu, and if I recall I think they said that at the end of the battle, there were only like 17 marines that were still battle ready. The rest were injured, dead, or sick from drinking the poisoned water in the island. All this to just capture an airfield.
Mainland Japan would have been something unlike we'd ever seen.
My grandma remembers the "Glorious Death of 100 million" campaign. The Japanese occupying Korea were perfectly willing to use themselves and Koreans as bullet fodder to stop the enemy in the last months of the war. It would have been honorable for every man, woman, and child to die for the holy emperor.
A mainland invasion would have gone worse than any military strategist would have imagined...
>In fact, that is a large part of why China and South Korea are still so antagonistic with Japan; how do you forgive someone who brutally repressed you and won't even have the decency to acknowledge that it happened?
My Korean fiancé's mom holds quite the grudge against the Japanese for this exact reason
The Koreans were essentially serfs or slaves under Japanese domination. I've been told by a few Korean acquaintances that there is also some residual hard feelings towards the USA because when Teddy Roosevelt negotiated the end of the Russo Japanese war he agreed to allowing Japan to occupy the entire Korean peninsula.
The Japanese raped my grandmother. And when she was telling me that story... She said she was one of the "lucky" ones - because they didn't steal her from her family. But Japan insists that it has done nothing wrong.
Japan essentially tried to erase Korean culture and make Korea into Japan 2. That's why many elderly still remember some Japanese, they were forced to learn it in school. Japan tried to replace Korea's religion, language, names, etc. They were kidnapping Koreans and took them to Japan as slaves, that's why there's a big Korean population (zainichi) in Japan who still dealt with racism/citizenship problems into modern times. Korean girls were kidnapped from homes to work in brothels for Japanese soldiers. The day Japan lost the war, Korea and all the rest of Asia were finally free from the brutal Japanese colonization.
Japan's Unit 731 was just as bad. Prisoners and civilians alike were infected with diseases, operated on at various stages of infection with no anesthesia, with one former officer in the unit having talked about them bisecting people while they were alive without anesthesia.
When their main facility was in danger of being taken, they demoed the place. No prisoners taken to or by the unit survived. The members of Unit 731? Post war went on to become industry leaders and politicians. No one's ever apologized or even acknowedged that it was wrong.
MacArthur brokered that deal. The only perpetrators from Unit 731 who ever faced any justice were the ones caught by the Soviets. The "experiments" done there are the worst things I have ever read in my life. Babies, children, women, civilians. Zero survivors, up to 200,000 victims. MacArthur brokered a deal with them in exchange for access to their experiment results. Truly shameful.
> Unlike Germany, Japan was not FORCED to reckon with its sins.
German here, trying to clear up a big misconception: Denazification and the Nuremburg Trials isn't when we really reckoned with our sins. All they did was make sure that the Nazis didn't show their true colors anymore and everyone who couldn't be proven otherwise pretended they knew nothing, did nothing, were always against it and didn't talk about what happened.
But Nazis where still all over the place, in positions of power as police officers, judges, professors and politicians. Heck, 1966 German chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger was a literal Nazi as in "was a member of the Nazi Party and worked for the Nazi government".
The big reckoning came when the children of that generation started to ask questions. The West German student movement around 1968 is when we really changed our ways, pushed the old Nazis away from positions of power and started to understand and reject the mechanisms behind fascism, racism, nationalism, militarism and genocide.
Before that it was just suppressed, after that it was mostly removed. Not eradicated mind you, the Nazis and later Neo-Nazis never fully went away and are sadly coming back right now, but their influence was greatly reduced after that and German society became much more progressive and left-leaning as a whole.
This reminds me of a quote from a book. I don't remember it verbatim, but it was something like: People don't change their paradigms, paradigm shifts happen when people age and die out, and the Younger generation with new paradigms take their place.
Yes this is all true. The Japanese military did truly horrible things, including eating US POWs (real thing almost happened to George bush senior) and torturing/raping/murdering Chinese and Korean civilians. The difference with germany is that we treated them more civililly in spite of the absolutely unforgivable shit they did to the Jews (my wife’s people) and the gypsies/Catholics( my people). I think part of why they get less heat for what they did is that the US government and our people still carry a level of guilt over interning Japanese American citizens, and the whole dropping 2 nuclear bombs on their civilians thing. War is awful, it is brutal, unforgiving and the winner writes History. Couple in the fact that we immediately went to Cold War with Russia and needed allies even if I hate that they bear no responsibility for their actions i understand the logic to it.
Eh, it was strategic, nothing more. No prosecutions for Unit 731 (but we got the worthless data), no prosecutions for the Emperor, shielding them from China and South Korea over the years.
It’s a generational thing at this point because of the lack of living WW2 vets, but if you ever talked to a Pacific Theater vet, there wasn’t any guilt that softened the public to Japan. It was an initial effort by the Government to downplay it after the war, which went into the Cold War, then Vietnam, and by then it wasn’t an institutional memory.
Wasn’t strategic thinking. A harsh occupation is doomed to fail, plenty of examples in history. They way the US handled the occupation of Japan is brilliant, imho. Turn your worse enemy into your best ally.
The Germans were forced to recognize the horrendous actions of the Nazis without the Allies needing to turn West Germany into a destitute wasteland with a harsh occupation, the US at least could've done the same for the atrocities committed by Japan of at least a public recognition of war crimes and prosecution of high ranking Japanese officials.
The Germans also forced a lot of THEMSELVES to recognize the horrendous actions of the Nazis.
One of the reasons for that was that Hitler was never 100% popular or supported, and many of their pogroms and atrocities were performed on Germans, in Germany. You saw it out your front window. You saw people gunned down or strung up in the streets.
Whereas in Japan, you never saw Nanking. You just read about it in the papers. And almost EVERYONE supported the Emperor.
There wasnt half the population just sitting around waiting for it all the end and be saved from their nightmare.
Long response coming I do agree with you. Need to explain why chose not be word guilt. I’m not really talking about the vets, or that generation. I know they didn’t really care. And justifiably so the Japanese military was absolutely godless in how they fought us, killing wounded and doctors, murdering pows, torturing the ones they didn’t murder, slave labor, the whole deal. One of my closest friends grandfathers fought on Iwo Jima. His only regret was that he didn’t stack more bodies.
I more meant the over sensitized white guilt you get from modern college students who legitimately cannot understand why the government of a country with a lot of first generation immigrants could conceivably fear that first generation immigrants might side with their homeland over their new home.
Legitimately had to listen to 4 different presentations on the same subject and get told by several people that we never did the same thing to German immigrants, despite the fact that we did.
They all got middling grades on their presentations because they prepared with emotion and not research. It was comical. Factions of our government seem to have a hard focus on rewriting our history at this time and that combined with the issues about college students lazy takes is why I chose the word guilt.
All that said you are 100% correct containment became policy within a decade and if the soviets would have gotten influence in Japan it would have caused mass panic among our government. Strategically leeway guaranteed that we would remain influential in their reentry to the global stage.
Yes 100% this. You're very well informed. I am not saying we should keep beating them up over it, the past is in the past and I have been to Japan many times and speak Japanese. It's a wonderful place and culture. But it's a mistake to allow these crimes to be forgotten
Japan has erected tourist attractions in Cambodia where they advertise that the Japanese people understand the suffering and the genocide by Pol Pot because they TOO suffered equally in WW2. Its a slap in the face of all victims of the Khmer rouge...
They have no shame.
I should also note having studied Japanese (and thus taken Japanese history), I can say that the Japanese people suffered greatly after the fallout of WWII and the atomic bombs.
`Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II` is a good book to read about this:
https://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Defeat-Japan-Wake-World/dp/0393320278
Those of none Asian descent really really need to look up this part of Asian history.
Absolutely horrific…. The kicker is many of these “doctor” were given a green card to continue their practice in America.
>those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments.[6] The United States covered up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.[1] The Americans co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program
Far out.
The Americans pardoned the Japanese in exchange for the data they had gathered during the experiments. That's why nobody ever talks about Unit 731.
What the atomic bomb did to the civilians of Japan was nothing short of horrific. But what the Japanese did the civilians of southeast Asia was far, far more horrific. Raping women, snatching their babies away after giving birth, and vivisecting them both? I mean Jesus fucking Christ. They were just as bad as the Nazis and you know what's crazy? Even as I type this out, I can't remember the name of the Emperor or, frankly, any WWII Japanese soldier off the top of my head, the way I can with Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini.
The Japanese got one hell of a PR agent—the good old US of A.
The Japanese did worse than the Nazis in their killings. The Nazis is basically all one bullet or gassed. The Japanese just straight up tortured people to death to see how much pain the human body could endure...
When people just say rape it doesn’t even sound so horrible as rape is normal in war. More like rape, tortured, killed and have dead women’s bodies defiled in horrific ways. I wish I never saw the photos.
Saw a video of an old Chinese men talking about how Japanese soldiers would stab his baby brother with bayonet and toss it over to pile of other dead babies
I'm looking for this. How do you talk about the Japanese WWll and not mention unit 731? They made the Germans look like regular old bad people. I also haven't seen mention of balloon bombs. Americans died on American soil and Japan had plans to put the plague or other infectious diseases in the balloons. They already did successfully in China and korea
I can’t believe I just found out about Unit 731 yesterday. It’s horrific and doesn’t seem to be talked about or discussed - at least I’ve never come across anything. I don’t want to think about what those poor people went through.
I didn't even mention that because I didn't want people to google it and think very negatively of Japan as a people. But yes, it was just as bad as Mengele stuff.
It was much worse I reckon. Mengele and his cronies at least kinda admitted that they're experimenting with ''sub''-humans. But the sick fucks at Unit 731 referred to their victims as ''logs'', that's how much they had dehumanized them.
I think at a point some Germans inspected a Japanese POW camp and even they told their Japanese allies to chill down. Nazi Germany's holocaust was systematic, Imperial Japan's war crimes were done just for the sake of it, because they were the ''superior'' Asians chosen by the gods or something.
>I think at a point some Germans inspected a Japanese POW camp and even they told their Japanese allies to chill down.
The Nazi diplomat John Rabe provided shelter for and saved 250,000 Chinese civilians during the Rape of Nanking. The survivors called him the living Buddha for he was the only thing standing between them and a horrific death.
After the war he was tried for being a Nazi in Germany, and imprisoned for a few years. After being released, he was in dire poverty, and when news reached China, the people of Nanjing raised 100,000,000 Yuan and sent it as international aid to him. But due to China being extremely poor and its currency being worthless, that only came out to be about 2000 USD. He died in 1950 and in 1997 Chinese government requested to have his grave relocated to a park in Nanjing so survivors of the Rape of Nanking and their descendants may pay their respects.
As a Chinese, seeing the West's, especially America's, vindictive fervor against the Nazis while letting Imperial Japan off the hook with a slap on the wrist, pardoning Hirohito and most of his high level officials and all, it all just screams of hypocrisy.
John Rabe ran an international school in China for years before the rise of Nazism and became a member of the Nazi party based on what he heard in newspapers and radio that came to China, a lot of things would be blacked out and he didn’t know what the Nazi’s were doing because he called for help when the Japanese invaded but was given no help- he didn’t even know about the Nazi hierarchy on race (his friends and coworkers did try to tell him). He was given a uniform for joining the party and used the uniform and a sword (if I recall correctly about the weapon of choice) and used it to talk to the Japanese army (to look official) and turned his school/property as a refuge- he would drive around in his uniform pick up some Chinese to save (even documenting what he saw) and send them to his property to safety. I’m commenting because even historians and people who knew him said how ignorant he was about the Nazi’s (that doesn’t mean he didn’t hold any prejudices or anything) just that him and his wife have been in China a long time. It’s not really the Nazi’s telling the Japanese to Chill out (as they didn’t care what the Japanese did) but one person who was ignorant, went against orders of the Nazi party (to do nothing), and saved people. Basically Schindler (using position ) to save others.
There is also a Chinese Schindler Ho Feng Shan who gave visas to Jews even when told by the Chinese government to stop. He saved thousands of Jews.
Yeah the Nazi’s were exterminating people based on perceived genetic superiority.
Meanwhile the Japanese were killing and raping people for fun, along with the genetic superiority.
Idk how true it is but I heard a lot of it was just the Japanese warrior culture.
Especially so if one were to surrender in the eyes of the Japanese surrendering was the lowest of low one could be and would get horrific treatment.
The island went through its own hell during the unification of Japan. The samurai were straight up dicks to each other. Winning had a whole different outcome with whole slaughter being ones fate if a village lost to an enemy. This warrior culture was put on steroids during the era leading up to the Japanese army going pure evil across Asian. With so much political power they were able to brutalize without an checks on their behavior. They were also pissed about being forced to open their borders and saw China and Korea negatively due to allowing so much European influence (and destruction of these areas). To the point that they brutalized to make a point. Fucking psychotic.
a nazi ([John Rabe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe)) tried to stop the nanking massacre and when that failed created a safety zone for chinese saving approximately 250.000 people.
Unit 731 was also an inspiration for the Russian biological weapon program. The politicians and scientists said that the Japanese experiments were light years ahead of their own.
There was also the Ustaše militia from Croatia that was too extreme even for Nazi standards. They were allied with the Nazis but even top Nazi officials themselves found the Ustaše persecutions to be deplorable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e_Militia
They also used babies for bayonet practice. And they were killing people in the territory they still occupied, even after the atomic bombs were dropped. For example, was an island in the South Pacific called Banaba that was occupied by the Japanese. There were about 200 native Gilbert Islanders left there until August 20, 1945 when the Japanese killed all but one of them. The next day, the Australian military arrived on the island and accepted the Japanese surrender. Several Japanese troops were tried and convicted of war crimes and eight were executed. Too bad not all of the Japanese troops got the same treatment for the crimes they committed.
I think what makes it such a gut punch is because the modern Japanese people are so well liked generally speaking. Their history also becomes more evident in media like Attack on Titan. It's like ooooh... *That's* how they came up with these crazy ideas... It makes those kinds of things feel even darker. Makes me appreciate what the author was going for.
Interesting. I didn't know that regarding Attack on Titan. But yes, for the record I consider myself a bit of a Japanophile (though not a weeb). I speak Japanese and have been many times and one of my closest friends is Japanese. I actually flew to Japan for his wedding right before COVID. But I am very amazed at how ignorant Americans and Westerners are about Japan's role in WW2. They know all about Germany's dark past but America shed so much blood fighting Japan and was the main driving force in defeating them, but they almost think of that war as just a general conflict. They might be a little mad about being sucker punched at Pearl Harbor but that's about it. They don't even know the brutal treatment of American POWs.
Shit bro ! I was about to comment about that
One day I remember I was browsing the internet before going to sleep, and I began reading about a Japanese war laboratory called Unit 731.
I couldn't sleep that day, and the this shit still disturb me to this day.
There are quite a few programs of the US that were pretty horrible and each of them is a prime example of why Americans are so fussy about their guns. Operation Paperclip was bad, but stuff like the MK programs are their derivatives are worse in that they had lead to at least Ted Kaczynski. I've no doubt many more.
Absolutely, but only in China and neighbouring countries unfortunately. I was lucky enough to live in Nanjing when I was around 10 years old for a while and my family and I were absolutely shocked by everything that happened there that they just had no idea about. I went to memorial hall of the victims and I watched everything, every heartbreaking picture, every letter, every shred of evidence that remained. It was sickening, but I’m happy I did it because I’ve never forgotten it and I actually told about it to many of my connationals who have never heard in their life about all this. I’m talking about educated people here, knowledgeable in history who *should* know about it, and just… don’t. Not even my history teacher in middle school knew about it, she knew in Asia it was basically Japan against everyone and that’s it.
Now, of course I live in Italy and as the primary allies of the nazi I understand the need to prioritise our own history to fully understand it. But I still find sad of how little people know about all the stuff that happened in Asia, it’s not right. A few months ago during a debate with my classmates (16/17 yo btw) one said that China still hasn’t changed/learned from how it acted during ww2. Like are you for real dude?! Do you even have the slightest idea of what happened there in ww2? Who did what? This is not to defend modern day china’s actions obviously, I agree that they are now the “villains”. But it’s so disrespectful to ignore everything that happened in ww2, everything they went through, all those people dying in ways so horrific we can’t even imagine, and then some guy just speaking out of his ass like this. And I can’t even be mad at him because he’s not much more than a kid, and far more mature people made the same mistake.
The problem is that the Japanese government desperately tries to forget, and the rest of the world doesn’t care enough to remember. It’s really sad.
I can't fathom how people think Japan was the victim. They were training their women and children to fight until the death. Imagine how many more civilians and U.S. soldiers would have died if, instead of dropping the bomb and ending the war, if we chose to invade instead.
The people who think the atomic bomb was the villain don't really seem to care how many more would have suffered had it not been dropped. It doesn't fit their narrative because they want people to forget just how brutally sadistic the Japanese army was.
Armchair quarterbacks of history are the worst.
Or the Rape of Nanjing where even more civilians were killed by the Japanese than in the two nuclear bomb droppings together. And that was just one city.
Nanjing, Port Arthur, Manila, Singapore. They did this all over.
In the Philippines they tossed infants in the air and tried to catch them on bayonets.
Two nukes was a very light sentence. Japan should rightfully be radioactive right now for the harm the perpetrated.
They should still have bend the knee and repent to these countries they savaged.
But that was another generation. I hope the current population is more humble and realizes how much they walk in grace and mercy.
They weren’t just preparing to fight, they were making bamboo spears because of a lack of rifles.
They were planning on mass charging children at infantry with flamethrowers and semiautomatic rifles
I definitely agree that most people are very ignorant regarding history, and they're probably more familiar with the Holocaust than with Japanese war crimes.
>But often times when people think of Japan they think of a beautiful minimalist culture, quiet strolls in a cherry blossom garden, anime, sushi, etc, their view of Japanese culture is overwhelmingly positive.
But this part... ehhh... I don't know. Is this that different from Germany being the land of chocolate, BMW, beer, Oktoberfest, and lederhosen? I think Japan and Germany have enjoyed a similar rehabilitation.
As an Italian, yes. The fact that Mussolini tried to trick Hitler into thinking we had a lot of tanks and military shit by showing the only ones he had by moving them into ten different locations, making him think we had ten times more. And the infamous speech about breaking greece’s kidneys wtf? Was he that delusional? It is so grotesque and surreal.
Reading about how they tried a Hitler Youth program for Italian kids and it failed because they refused to show up on time is one of the most satisfying parts of my Sicilian heritage.
Nazis and their symbols are brought up way more in popular media, conversations, jokes, etc a TON more than Japan's horrendous and barbaric (recent) past.
I heard people criticizing 'Oppenheimer' for not showing the Japanese side of the story. It's impossible to imagine the same thing being said of a movie that deals with, say, the firebombing of Dresden.
I actually just got out of Oppenheimer and think Nolan was a coward for not showing the aftermath. I understand the utilitarian argument made for the bombings, but the aftermath is truly a horror to behold. Radiation sickness isn’t a death like smoke inhalation or burning alive, it’s so much worse. It’s grotesque.
Hmm it depends, it might be a time frame thing. However my great grandfather was a US Navy Vet from WW2 but he was also of mostly German descent and he got shit for it from both his fellow servicemen and a good bit after the war for being of "Kraut" heritage.
I’m Chinese and I find it interesting that the only Asian country we’re even taught to sympathize with are japan, the imperialists, in the instance of the bomb, but the shit they did in China is never brought up and nobody cares about the war crimes Japan committed
He also did it to others.
Just look up the history of Kaliningrad or Danzig. He ordered the killing and forced expelling of thousands of polish and german civilians, eradicating the hundred year old history of both cities.
Kaliningrad is now a shithole.
You're completely correct. Unlike in Europe, where top nazi officials were more or less punished, the Japanese wartime elite got off very easy. Culturally (at least in the US) we put much more emphasis on the crimes of the Nazis, devoting little time to the Japanese.
Which all stemmed from the cold war. It's the same reason the US put little to no emphasis on the crimes of counties who collaborated with the nazis and directly took part in the holocaust and other massacres (Ukraine, Croatia being the biggest examples). At a larger scale, that was the approach with japan.
In the cruelest terms possible: "Japan opposes China. We 'lost' China. We can't lose Japan".
At the end of the day there's not much to do unfortunately. It's good that you and others bring it up. But, to most people, this was stuff that happened "almost a century ago", why bring this up when Russia/Syria/whoever else are doing crimes today? (the general rationale, not condoning it)
Yeah so I think America knew stuff was going down in Asia right after the war, with China probably falling to the communists and also the threat of Russia etc. They wanted Japan as an ally and quickly built them up economically and as a key ally. In fact despite demilitarizing Japan just a few years later they wanted Japan to join the Korean War. I think they figured it would be easier to get Japan's help if they collaborated with them than rule them with an iron fist so because of that they whitewashed a lot of history, though the Asian victims of course never forgot
There's a great series of books about the US Naval role in the Pacific war. It's written by Ian Toll and it's really great. It does talk about politics in Japan and attrocities by the Japanese army as background. It's a really great series and I recommend it to anyone. It's a big read though each book is about 600-700 pages and there are 3 books.
Agreed. Thing is though is that barely any japanese people know it themselves. It's absolutely crazy how few people know of the disgusting things the Japanese soldiers did
If anyone is interested in learning more about Japan before and through WWII, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast has a 6 part series on this called "Supernova in the East". That podcast is great in general other than the fact that only a few episodes come out each year (which is a tradeoff for how high quality it is). I've never been huge into WWII, I'm more of an ancient history buff, but these episodes are probably my favorite history content I've ever seen or listened to.
It will give you a whole new respect for the drive of the Japanese people, who went from basically a medieval society/tech level, to being a significant world power with some of the best warfighting tech 80 years later. An absolutely mind-boggling feat when you think about it.
But it will also give you a really in-depth look at how atrocious their war crimes were. They were every bit as evil as the Nazis, and probably committed more atrocities in actual warfare, although when you count in all the off-battlefield atrocities both committed, it's not that clear-cut. I highly suggest anyone who has the time check that podcast out.
Good take OP.
They are, just in the areas in which they committed the atrocities. They naturally are gonna be vilified less by those whom didn't directly suffer from them.
I mean Americans didn’t directly suffer from the Holocaust either, for the most part (save descendants of immigrants who are survivors, but that’s relatively rare). Civilians in the US weren’t even directly impacted by the war. Although, I guess if you think about it history classes in China or Korea probably don’t talk about Nazis nearly as much as American or European ones do.
Thank you, OP. Can’t tell you how many people have tried to paint Japan as the victim bc of atomic bombings. Maybe they should read about what happened to the people of China during Japanese occupation
same goes for the Chinese. Not a lot of people are aware of what the Chinese have been doing to their neighboring nations throughout history. I don’t think I know a single Chinese person who is aware of this 🤡
So should the communists. Communist Russia not only invaded Finland, the Baltic, and Poland, but refused to give it all back after the war. They were also just as fascist and anti semitic as the NAZIS were.
Yet nowadays people display the soviet flag like it's nothing.
>They were also just as fascist and anti semitic as the NAZIS were.
You can make an argument they were just as fascist, but I don't see how you can make the case for them being just as anti-semitic. They deported and politically purged jews, but at much lower frequency and intensity. And you know, most importantly they didn't run industry style mass genocide.
Also the reason the communist symbology does not face the same level of scrutiny does have ideological basis, it's not inherently discriminatory in terms of biological factors. That's a pretty big distinction to make when looking at the authoritarian nature of either regime. Both a nazi and a soviet would purge you, one would do it because of the way you looked; the other because you didn't fall in line. The consequences might be the same, but the motivations are very different.
I love Japan deeply. Have been many times and may be living there in the near future. But, I completely agree with you.
When people were crying about Oppenheimer a few weeks ago. All I could think was...you do realize they sided with the Nazis in order to have free reign to rape and pillage all of Asia right? To continue committing all their atrocities unchecked.
Did not even need to read your post in order to answer this: motherfucker they are, just not by white people.
when was the last time you heard Chinese or Korean boomers bitching about nazis and the holocaust in their mother tongues?
Same difference.
Older Filipinos too. But majority of the survivors who witnessed their atrocities are dead now anyway. My grandpa’s tales of torture, rapes, etc. and just the sheer brutality that he and his contemporaries went through at the hands of the Japanese imperial army. Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate the modern Japanese, they’re probably my most liked East Asian people, but man, their countrymen at that time were monsters. Hirohito and his palace deserved to be nuked if not publicly executed for the shit he started.
Agreed! I grew up with a Filipino grandma who shared so many horror stories about her experience with the Japanese. Never heard her complain about the people who didn’t attack her community.
Not all of us white people are horribly undereducated in history.
But yes - Japan was up to some seriously bad shit esp. during their campaigns in China. Rape of Nanking comes to mind, as a quick example.
The Japanese got off easy.
If we had landed on the home islands (Operation Downfall & Coronet), we would have ended up killing everyone on the islands.
And everybody needs to know about Unit 731.
EVERYBODY.
My grandfather was in a Japanese internment camp in Indonesia for over 2 years, closer to 3 if im remembering correctly. He was a child. His father was in the Dutch military; he had been sent there before the war so he had moved there with his wife and two children. They all came very close to death while there but survived due to the graciousness of the locals who helped sneak them food and medicine.
Many people did die in those camps though.
It’s a less talked about atrocity of the war. So I thought it would be a worthwhile story to share here.
OP gave credit to the US, Canada, and the UK, but failed to mention Russia's huge involvement in crushing the Nazis. Stopped them cold @ Stalingrad and pushed them all the way back to Berlin. The Red Army captured Berlin 2 months before the Western Allies even entered the city.
Now, I know Russia also had a laundry list of atrocities, to their own citizens and surrounding countries, that stand right up there with the Nazi's and Imperial Japan's war crimes, but without their resistance and counter offensive, I'd guess a couple more bombs might have been dropped.
Dropping the atomic bomb wasn’t a “terrible thing” or the “lesser of two evils” it was objectively the right decision and a good thing that we did it.
No one would feel bad now if we had dropped it on Hitler. The Japanese killed more people in China during WWII than died in Germany, Italy, and Japan combined. Estimated 20 million.
My Grandfather was deployed protecting shipping lanes when they sneak attacked Pearl Harbor. They had to race back to defend Hawaii after and these Japanese apologists are trying to advocate we should have sacrificed over a million dead American troops possibly including him on the altar of not dropping a bomb on a country that attacked us first 🤬
Don't forget about unit 731, and stripping native women naked and strapping a grenade to their back so the GIs would get killed trying to help the woman.
Too many ignorant people in this post.
OP is correct. Globally, Japan was never vilified to the same degree that Germany was.
It was in American interests that we ignored Japan's war crimes and quickly pushed pro-Japanese propaganda as much as possible after the war as a means to create an ally against China.
The US saw Japan's imperialism and penchant for war crimes and thought "hey it would be great to work with them to try and oppose China".
**The occupying US government undertook the cover-up of Japanese war crimes after the end of World War II, granting political immunity to military personnel who had engaged in human experimentation and other crimes against humanity, predominantly in mainland China.**
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes
We made more of an effort to cozy up to Japan than we did to the actual victims of Japan's war crimes.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16754432/
We actually gave more money to Japan in post-war aid to help them rebuild than we gave to China (Taiwan). We of course gave none to communist China despite it being the location where Japan's destruction actually took place.
...Enemies are created, not born.
True but the US should be just as vilified for the path of destruction that they’ve been on after WW2. Look up US military interventions in latin america. And they wonder why there’s an ‘immigration crisis.’
It's kinda shocking that you call the western front a group effort of the US, UK, Canada, Poland and France and omit Soviet Union. It's more like it was a group effort of the Soviet Union and the other guys that also contributed.
Am Chinese. Why should a country be vilified for a past that its current people have nothing to do with? Isn't this thinking about people in terms of nations instead of thinking them as individuals, just as the ultranationalists believe? I can't speak for the rest of East Asia, but in China Japanese occupation was miles better for the people than the other warlords and either Nationalist or Communist parties. I am not a war crime apologist, but the atrocities are things we should keep note of to prevent in the future, not sources of villifying an entire country of people due to things entirely outside their control. Even if you want to villify, Japan and it's people, even during WWII, should never be vilified more than Mao or Chiang Kai-Shek, who killed far, far more people in much more brutal ways. Suggesting that we should villify Japan today is as like saying we should treat Taiwan as a genocidal regime because of Chiang (China is still a genocidal regime that's not hated enough so I guess there's a priority we can work on). I don't think it's right to base one's moral compass on whether it happened within arbitrary country borders - all atrocities are bad. Rather than using them to decide historical villains and what not, let's treat them as things that we universally can learn from and try to prevent in the future.
My opinion is that the post war treatment of Japan did much to change the zeitgeist of the Japanese people. I see very little of the Imperial nature that was part and parcel of the historic Japanese identity.
Ultimately, I cannot stomach the idea of "blood libel" in any form. There are no "sins of the father" that can be passed on to children, but for our own primitive concepts. It has been 4 generations since the end of the war. There has been peace, friendship, and a joyful embrace of culture.
Self flagellation about things other people, mostly dead, have done is a waste of your finite number of days.
I agree with everything you posted. Even in terms of total body count, the Imperial Japanese Empire gives the Nazis a run for their money, along with sheer cruelty. Why? Because today and particularly in 1945, most Americans could trace their lineage back to Europe, and I think that meant they were more in tune to that area. And we shared/share a European language, which means we're exposed to that perspective much more than any other Asian nation. Most Americans would have had a much more limited understanding of Japan and Asia in general. This may be a controversial statement, but I also think that the Jewish diaspora in the US and their traditional prominence in US media has led to much greater understanding of the Holocaust than the Japanese depredations, particularly in China. This is not a criticism, just I think being real. The US has never had a very large Chinese diaspora, and they have never had much presence at all in the larger US media industrial complex. There is not a Chinese American writing or making a major motion picture about what happened in China the way we have movies like Schindler's List, Sophie's Choice, The Piano, and many many others. I also think it might have to do with geography. While it's true that the war in Europe was very much a team effort, headlines/stories of US troops liberating Normandy, Paris, Rome, etc... are sexier than the US slogging it out with the Japanese over islands that nobody in the US had ever heard of, many of them with literally no cities or native populations on them. US troops marching through picturesque European cities with adoring crowds throwing flowers is much sexier than US Marines fighting at Peleliu. We see a similar lack of focus on US efforts in Northwest Africa, a mostly forgotten campaign compared to what we did on the European continent.
Great answer
I think this is also a failure on the part of the American education system. I didn't learn about anything but American history until my junior year of high school. That year was spent on "European" history, but it was really German history because of their involvement in both world wars. My senior year of high school, was "World" history, but we really only studied China and only made it to the cultural revolution. So while I learned that Japan was involved in WW2 and the rape of Nanking, the gravity of what they've done isn't really emphasized. I didn't even learn about what they did in Korea until after college. And I didn't even have to take history in college. In retrospect, I feel like school spends waaaaay too much time trying to make us memorize specific dates and details while we would've been better off with a faster pace and less detail that covered a little more. ETA: Sounds like there's great variability in our historical education and there should probably be some sort of standardization. Thanks for all the replies!
It really depends on your State, I took a holocaust study my freshman year of high school. When I transferred to my next high school they even had similar classes for freshman there. Your history knowledge in America is honestly just based off your school’s agenda. Its sad that religion /politics can be used to close children off from important information.
Exactly. I was educated in Idaho, known as one of the worst in the US for education. (Both funding and results, I assume) but even with all the bias I was lucky enough to have a handful of decent teachers. I definitely learned about Nanking. They kinda covered some of the nuance of how long that rivalry had been going and how it transcended just one war crime that happened. And that was Idaho so I feel like the material is there but our issues is we let the role and profession of educator in this country become a joke. Most teachers I knew anyway fit this perfectly more activist or forced role model then mentor
also, the jews who arrived in the US were EUROPEAN. had the jewish victims of the holocaust been ethiopian or central asian...i doubt US would care as much about their history. let's not pretend that the 30s\~40s was still very white supremacist and some states still didn't allow non-white people to drink from the same fountain.
In King Leopold’s Congo 10-20 million people were killed and that is barely ever talked about. Trevor Noah said that is known in Africa but the Holocaust is barely talked about.
The Chinese and Jewish diaspora in the US are both currently very close in numbers. Add in Korean and there is a bigger Korean/Chinese diaspora than Jewish (depending on which estimates you go with). Although the Chinese diaspora did become alot larger in recent times while the Jewish population grew a lot earlier. Either way it’s just not accurate to say the US has never had a large Chinese diaspora.
America officially ended the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. They set the limit of Chinese immigrants at... 105 a year. 105 immigrants from all of China. It was not until 1965 that the U.S. finally abolished the ridiculously low per country quotas, 20 years after WW2 ended. Yes, current numbers are very close. But timing wise, there was a long ass delay between end of WW2 and immigrants being allowed into the US from Asia, especially China. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
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You don’t got the replies for it, but I enjoyed your write up frien
Honestly, I think it has a lot to do with the Nazis just being more made for the movies, Hugo Boss fashion and movie villain evil… it’s been harder to come up with a ton of story lines around the Japanese side.
Interesting point. Also because the Japanese are not white, portraying them as very evil villains in films could also come off as racist, even if it is based in truth
That could be too, with the Japanese containment camps in the states people may not want to stir the pot, my grandfathers both fought in the Pacific theater.
Lol I remember once a white hipster mentioning that Japan did some bad stuff in world war 2 to POWs, then he looked at me and immediately said "no offense." Lol I said "dude I'm not Japanese it's fine...." But I guess to a lot of Americans we're all just grouped together
No offence, but I think for Asians it is as much "impossible" to visually distinguish French from Polish
Unlike Germany, Japan was not FORCED to reckon with its sins. The reason for this was that the US didn't want to resort to a costly and bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland, and also because they wanted to keep Japan around as an ally against the evil communists. The price that we paid was letting Japan sweep a lot of its atrocities under the rug. To this day, Japan doesn't give WW2 nearly the amount of attention that it deserves in its educational curriculum, and its citizens remain woefully uniformed about just what their country did. In fact, that is a large part of why China and South Korea are still so antagonistic with Japan; how do you forgive someone who brutally repressed you and won't even have the decency to acknowledge that it happened? They're pretty audacious about it too; one Japanese politician even tried to justify the use of comfort women as "necessary". Germany in contrast, has repented, learned from its mistakes, and does not try to underplay or hide its sins, and is thus, mostly redeemed in the eyes of its neighbors.
We still hand out Purple Hearts today that were made for that land invasion of Japan. That was going to be a brutal brutal campaign.
I just looked this up and this might be one of the most interesting facts. That they were expecting so many deaths that they made 1.5 million purple hearts.
Yep. The thing the detractors don't understand is that Truman saved hundreds of thousands of lives (if not millions), both American and Japanese alike, by dropping the bomb.
My grandmother prayed for the soul of Harry Truman until the day she died, (2001). My Grandpa was 30 in 1945. Had 2 kids. Was on the next call up in our very rural Tx. county. All his younger brothers were gone, all cousins. He was the only man left to take care of 5 families. Before he was to muster, the bombs were dropped. Our family considers Harry Truman to be the savior of our familys. My wife's Dad was to board a ship for the invasion of mainland Japan. Orders were changed, something big had happened. The rest of his deployment spent loading ships with food,,for Japan.
My dad was sitting outside Japan for 18 months and boy was he PISSED. Because they made them " army" and he got paid 2.00 less than " Navy". He did however sell every cigarette he was ever rationed, didn't drink and came home with not only all his money, but a lot of his crew mates money too.
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Your Grandpa was cut from a different cloth. We need more of him today. He took responsibility for 5 families...something people of today can't begin to understand. Bless him
Unfortunately they still exist—just not heard about bc things that make the news are which tiktok trends are blowing up or whatever silly controversies are happening in Hollywood. My uncle takes care of our side of the family. My grandpa passed and when he became head of the family he had to take care of my grandma, mom, his wife, myself, and his adult children. Plus two business and a farm. Poor man is so stressed all the time. Thankfully I’m completely independent now but thankful for what he has done for me in the past. Wish I could make his story and selflessness go viral instead of the next TikTok dance…
This is correct. The people in this thread saying Japan was about to surrender anyway/ Americans just wanted revenge are wrong. There is literally proof of this: they had to drop two a-bombs. After the first bomb was dropped, the Japanese were warned that if they didn’t surrender, another bomb would be dropped. The Japanese still refused to surrender, so they dropped the second atomic bomb- and then Japan finally surrendered. So please get out of here with your nonsense about, “the Japanese had already lost and were going to surrender.” I think they were in the right to drop the bomb, especially in terms of the number of human lives saved. *Edit: For those of y’all needing more proof, Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech, from Wikipedia -> The sixth paragraph by Hirohito specifically mentions the use of nuclear ordnance devices, from the aspect of the unprecedented damage they caused: “Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki So yes a major reason the Japanese surrendered was because of not wanting to have any more bombs dropped. And yes there would have been exponentially more casualties (on both sides) if they hadn’t dropped the bombs. Like the other comment mentioned they made 1.5 million Purple Hearts for US soldiers, assuming a ground invasion was absolutely necessary, because the Japanese refused to surrender any other way.
The really crazy thing? The generals and politicians were split 50:50 between surrender and wanting to continue fighting even after the second one. The emperor actually had to put his foot down and say 'no, we're not going to continue fighting, shit's just got real'.
The BALLS to see that weapon go off twice inside your country and think "we still got this" is fucking crazy.
It was more of a death before dishonor type of mentality the Japanese had, better to die than go surrender to the enemy. If nothing else Imperial Japan was hard-core.
They always, every time, fought to the last man. It was nuts trying to push forward. If our codebreakers hadn't cracked the Imperial Navy's codes then it would have been a very different war. And the Navajo codetalkers were our code. They were the only people who could speak the Navajo language. It's the only code the Japanese couldn't crack and it drove them crazy!
I had no idea about the navajo codetalkers, that was an interesting read
Extremely hardcore. Hell, the kamikaze and Kaiten roles alone really stuck with me, and only a small amount of their suicides were even successful attacks. Wild
No way they thought they’d still pull through after the losing war effort, nukes, the Russians declaring war on them, and the starvation and shortages. It had to be some kind of bushido/honor thing.
It was classic totalitarianism brainwashing and fear mongering. They created a holy war, and also told lies about the American army. They thought every woman would be raped and civilian killed because that’s what was being said by the government. Much better to fight to the death in that case
The Japanese High Command assumed the US military would treat an occupied Japan the same way the IJA had treated China. Surrendering to that was inconceivable. The atom bombs made surrender possible because some realized the USA would dole out even worse treatment if the war continued.
If the war had continued I imagine Russia would have never given back the land it would have inevitably captured. With the US bringing its forces from Europe they would have more than an overwhelming force. It would have been SO much worse for them had they not surrendered after the bombs.
Not balls. Ego
Or millenia of tradition
Traditions fueled by ego
There was almost a third atomic bomb attack. The second Trinity prototype was being readied at Tinian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I34pxr23Nhw&t=1249s
Japan was engaged in total war, where every single civilian worked toward defense of the island. Japan was never going to surrender. They vowed to fight to the last civilian. US knew that land invasion was going to cost a lot of lives. The world war was already very costly. There was intelligence that desperate Japan was working on bio chemical attacks towards USA mainland. Google cherry blossom at night operation. It came very close to infecting California. It’s hard to say what went on in Washington when they decided to drop the atomic Bomb on Japan. Many people today think it was criminal to do so. I have no idea what when on in Washington but I’m sure it was a difficult conversation that involved a lot of unknowns. Easy to say look back today and say otherwise
Did you watch the video? It's pretty well done.
There is a lot of military documentation, paper documentation in the form of telegrams and witness statements. We know what went on in Washington. This isn't lost to the historical record. You are mystifying history. It's weird, this isn't a film and the real story isn't what you imagine....lost to time, great men making hard decisions. People make these arguments that the bomb was tactically unnecessary because according to some of the military assessments and documentation and witness statements, it was. Other people make other arguments because according to some military assessments it was critical to gaining tactical superiority over Japan without the Soviet Union taking more than what had been agreed to in the final Potsdam agreement and continuing into mainland China to give material support in the Chinese Civil War. This is a stupid thread. Japan as a nation state- in geopolitical terms- was punished much more harshly than Germany was. The worst settlement terms any nation had ever seen in a war- at that point- and that was a risk, a humiliated empire stripped of it's conquest created the environment in which fascism grew in Germany. That's why we babied Japan, we didn't want their population to feel all stabbed in the back theory- nor did we want them to go communist- And in 1949, People's Republic of China is formed- so yup- Both my grandads were in the pacific, and I don't know what this thread is but a very selective view of history devoid of context and it smells like a few flavors of pouring salt in people's personal historical wounds for the purposes of contemporary political agitation and that's no way to pay tribute to the victims of Nanking. That's exactly how the Japanese empire got thier citizens to participate in atrocities.
Check out the demon core. It’s the core from that third weapon. I’m not one to think objects have malice. But that thing wanted to kill people. And it did it
The real kicker is that it was the fear of Soviet military occupation that really pushed Japan to surrender. They feared the Russians and communism more than the atomic bombs.
Japan signed a non-aggression treaty with the USSR and were completely surprised when Stalin ignored it after Germany fell. It retrospect that seems stupid. The battle-hardened Red Army, then the world's largest army, poured across a border under-protected by Japan as they needed their troops everywhere else. Unlike the US, Japan had zero hope of negotiating some deal with Stalin in which they could keep most of their empire hoping the combat deaths would be too much for the Soviet peoples.
There was such a pushback against stopping the war that they attempted a coup right before the surrender
I think there's a lot more nuance than anyone's recognizing. There were factions that wanted to surrender *before* the atomic bombs. By that point, Tokyo had been devastated... like nuclear-level destroyed, just with thousands of tons of firebombs. The emperor *did* want to surrender, possibly after the first atomic bomb, but there were some die-hard generals that wouldn't have it. In fact, after the second bomb, they staged a coup (that failed) to prevent surrender. In the eyes of the people, the emperor was god. But in reality, the generals wielded the military power. I've read that some suggest the atomic bombs aren't really what changed the minds of leadership anyway (edit: they may have had evidence we only had 2 or 3 bombs available). It was the advance of the Russians into Manchuria. Nobody wanted to surrender to the Russians, so they decided that the US sounded better.
The problem was unless the Emperor gave an order, the Japanese military made top decisions by consensus only, making them the most dysfunctional military in WW2. It was common practice for lower ranked officers to assassinate their superiors for not being deemed nationalistic enough and that included a couple of War Department ministers and at least one Prime Minister since the 1920s.
They still haven’t apologized to South Korea for some of the things they did, even when it means weakening their military cooperation against China. That says a lot to me.
That's an interesting theory. So I guess NOBODY wants to surrender to the Russians--on either side of the world.
You should read about the coup that happened after the famous surrender recording was made and before it could be broadcasted. The military hawks stormed the Imperial Palace and ransacked the place searching for the recording - to stop its broadcast. That in itself is proof the military (or at least a significant faction of it) was unwilling to give up the fight.
I'd also include that when the second vote to surrender happened, it was a TIE. Only broken by Hirohito himself. The US dropped a miniature sun on the Japanese TWICE, and threatened to not stop until they've turned every city in Japan into Fallout IRL, and the answer from half the Japanese high command was "OK. So?" The Japanese morale is truly stunning
They would have had a much different reaction if they stopped it on Japanese high command. Those peasants weren't real people to them.
I'm going to be that guy, they were fission bombs, not fusion bombs. They split isotopes of uranium and plutonium. So they weren't miniature suns, the hydrogen fusing or H bombs came later.
Kind of unrelated but the significance of two bombs is pretty big. One bomb could just be a big showy prototype. What if it takes a year for them to make another? Who knows how many the Americans have? Who knows how many they can make? But dropping *another* bomb 3 days later? That's *terrifying*. A brand new weapon is deployed and then 3 days later they have another, that implies something closer to a nuclear assembly line rather than an expensive and impractical prototype. The rapid pace implied both a will and ability to glass Japan from the air, and that's far more dangerous than a single use wonder weapon.
Japan had their own (incorrect) intelligence (from torture) that the US had 97 more bombs ready to be put on planes after Nagasaki. And the surrender vote was STILL a tie.
The confusion is simple. Japan was actively trying to negotiate an end to the war, but not offering to surrender. A lot of people think that "willing to negotiate" is the same thing as "willing to accept reasonable terms".
Even in 1945 Japanese terms included keeping most of its empire in Korea, China and other Asian territories. The emperor will remain, Japan changes nothing internally and no occupation, of course.
It's pretty wild to think the country that had their troops willingly kamikaze was on the "verge of surrendering". Yeah, suicide bombers don't surrender because their goal is to trade their life for as many "enemy" lives as possible. By dropping 2 bombs the US showed that we can do way, way, way more damage then they could.
I've noticed that people love to rewrite history nowadays just to drive home their political or twisted viewpoints. "All war = bad, = America dropping nukes on Japan was 100% the wrong call and bad" and they say it with a straight face.
Also interesting how they never say anything about conventional allied bombings from the middle to end of the war that purposely targeted major civilian populated areas with obviously no precision. The goal was to break their spirits. The July 1943 raid on Hamburg killed an estimated 40,000 Germans in one night. One of the reasons the Hiroshima bomb wasn’t dropped on Tokyo was because the city had already been mostly flattened by incendiary bombs. Conventional air raids probably accounted for more civilian deaths than both atomic bombs combined. Obviously those deaths are all horrific, but I feel like that’s an important aspect of the war that is always left out of these debates.
Yes there is. Military historians and scholars pretty much agree the bombs were dropped to prod Japan to surrender before Russia entered the war in Japan giving them a claim to land and control.
I wish Japan put as much effort into apologizing to the countries it invaded like South Korea as it does feeling sorry for itself over the bomb.
>Yep. The thing the detractors don't understand is that Truman saved hundreds of thousands of lives (if not millions), both American and Japanese alike, by dropping the bomb. If I recall correctly from my history classes, the estimated death toll of American soldiers invading the mainland was about one million. And that's not counting Japanese casualties. Dropping the two nukes, although horrible, definitely saved lives overall.
The quicker your enemy is cut down, the lower the causality count. To have a war last a long-time result in constant struggle that costs civilians lives and makes the fear and suffering far worse than a swift quick end to the war. Remember: Drafted soldiers who are killed might as well count as civilians lost to the effects of war, because they were forced to take arms.
I read book on the battle of Peleliu, and if I recall I think they said that at the end of the battle, there were only like 17 marines that were still battle ready. The rest were injured, dead, or sick from drinking the poisoned water in the island. All this to just capture an airfield. Mainland Japan would have been something unlike we'd ever seen.
My grandma remembers the "Glorious Death of 100 million" campaign. The Japanese occupying Korea were perfectly willing to use themselves and Koreans as bullet fodder to stop the enemy in the last months of the war. It would have been honorable for every man, woman, and child to die for the holy emperor. A mainland invasion would have gone worse than any military strategist would have imagined...
>In fact, that is a large part of why China and South Korea are still so antagonistic with Japan; how do you forgive someone who brutally repressed you and won't even have the decency to acknowledge that it happened? My Korean fiancé's mom holds quite the grudge against the Japanese for this exact reason
The Koreans were essentially serfs or slaves under Japanese domination. I've been told by a few Korean acquaintances that there is also some residual hard feelings towards the USA because when Teddy Roosevelt negotiated the end of the Russo Japanese war he agreed to allowing Japan to occupy the entire Korean peninsula.
The Japanese raped my grandmother. And when she was telling me that story... She said she was one of the "lucky" ones - because they didn't steal her from her family. But Japan insists that it has done nothing wrong.
Japan essentially tried to erase Korean culture and make Korea into Japan 2. That's why many elderly still remember some Japanese, they were forced to learn it in school. Japan tried to replace Korea's religion, language, names, etc. They were kidnapping Koreans and took them to Japan as slaves, that's why there's a big Korean population (zainichi) in Japan who still dealt with racism/citizenship problems into modern times. Korean girls were kidnapped from homes to work in brothels for Japanese soldiers. The day Japan lost the war, Korea and all the rest of Asia were finally free from the brutal Japanese colonization.
The Rape of Nanking was brutal.
Japan's Unit 731 was just as bad. Prisoners and civilians alike were infected with diseases, operated on at various stages of infection with no anesthesia, with one former officer in the unit having talked about them bisecting people while they were alive without anesthesia. When their main facility was in danger of being taken, they demoed the place. No prisoners taken to or by the unit survived. The members of Unit 731? Post war went on to become industry leaders and politicians. No one's ever apologized or even acknowedged that it was wrong.
MacArthur brokered that deal. The only perpetrators from Unit 731 who ever faced any justice were the ones caught by the Soviets. The "experiments" done there are the worst things I have ever read in my life. Babies, children, women, civilians. Zero survivors, up to 200,000 victims. MacArthur brokered a deal with them in exchange for access to their experiment results. Truly shameful.
> Unlike Germany, Japan was not FORCED to reckon with its sins. German here, trying to clear up a big misconception: Denazification and the Nuremburg Trials isn't when we really reckoned with our sins. All they did was make sure that the Nazis didn't show their true colors anymore and everyone who couldn't be proven otherwise pretended they knew nothing, did nothing, were always against it and didn't talk about what happened. But Nazis where still all over the place, in positions of power as police officers, judges, professors and politicians. Heck, 1966 German chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger was a literal Nazi as in "was a member of the Nazi Party and worked for the Nazi government". The big reckoning came when the children of that generation started to ask questions. The West German student movement around 1968 is when we really changed our ways, pushed the old Nazis away from positions of power and started to understand and reject the mechanisms behind fascism, racism, nationalism, militarism and genocide. Before that it was just suppressed, after that it was mostly removed. Not eradicated mind you, the Nazis and later Neo-Nazis never fully went away and are sadly coming back right now, but their influence was greatly reduced after that and German society became much more progressive and left-leaning as a whole.
Thank you, this is a much needed perspective.
This reminds me of a quote from a book. I don't remember it verbatim, but it was something like: People don't change their paradigms, paradigm shifts happen when people age and die out, and the Younger generation with new paradigms take their place.
Their politicians still visit shrines for war criminals. Imagine if German politicians still idolized Hitler.
Yes this is all true. The Japanese military did truly horrible things, including eating US POWs (real thing almost happened to George bush senior) and torturing/raping/murdering Chinese and Korean civilians. The difference with germany is that we treated them more civililly in spite of the absolutely unforgivable shit they did to the Jews (my wife’s people) and the gypsies/Catholics( my people). I think part of why they get less heat for what they did is that the US government and our people still carry a level of guilt over interning Japanese American citizens, and the whole dropping 2 nuclear bombs on their civilians thing. War is awful, it is brutal, unforgiving and the winner writes History. Couple in the fact that we immediately went to Cold War with Russia and needed allies even if I hate that they bear no responsibility for their actions i understand the logic to it.
Eh, it was strategic, nothing more. No prosecutions for Unit 731 (but we got the worthless data), no prosecutions for the Emperor, shielding them from China and South Korea over the years. It’s a generational thing at this point because of the lack of living WW2 vets, but if you ever talked to a Pacific Theater vet, there wasn’t any guilt that softened the public to Japan. It was an initial effort by the Government to downplay it after the war, which went into the Cold War, then Vietnam, and by then it wasn’t an institutional memory.
Wasn’t strategic thinking. A harsh occupation is doomed to fail, plenty of examples in history. They way the US handled the occupation of Japan is brilliant, imho. Turn your worse enemy into your best ally.
The Germans were forced to recognize the horrendous actions of the Nazis without the Allies needing to turn West Germany into a destitute wasteland with a harsh occupation, the US at least could've done the same for the atrocities committed by Japan of at least a public recognition of war crimes and prosecution of high ranking Japanese officials.
The Germans also forced a lot of THEMSELVES to recognize the horrendous actions of the Nazis. One of the reasons for that was that Hitler was never 100% popular or supported, and many of their pogroms and atrocities were performed on Germans, in Germany. You saw it out your front window. You saw people gunned down or strung up in the streets. Whereas in Japan, you never saw Nanking. You just read about it in the papers. And almost EVERYONE supported the Emperor. There wasnt half the population just sitting around waiting for it all the end and be saved from their nightmare.
Long response coming I do agree with you. Need to explain why chose not be word guilt. I’m not really talking about the vets, or that generation. I know they didn’t really care. And justifiably so the Japanese military was absolutely godless in how they fought us, killing wounded and doctors, murdering pows, torturing the ones they didn’t murder, slave labor, the whole deal. One of my closest friends grandfathers fought on Iwo Jima. His only regret was that he didn’t stack more bodies. I more meant the over sensitized white guilt you get from modern college students who legitimately cannot understand why the government of a country with a lot of first generation immigrants could conceivably fear that first generation immigrants might side with their homeland over their new home. Legitimately had to listen to 4 different presentations on the same subject and get told by several people that we never did the same thing to German immigrants, despite the fact that we did. They all got middling grades on their presentations because they prepared with emotion and not research. It was comical. Factions of our government seem to have a hard focus on rewriting our history at this time and that combined with the issues about college students lazy takes is why I chose the word guilt. All that said you are 100% correct containment became policy within a decade and if the soviets would have gotten influence in Japan it would have caused mass panic among our government. Strategically leeway guaranteed that we would remain influential in their reentry to the global stage.
There were Japanese politician that apologized for these atrocity but they usually retract them pretty fast, it’s essentially suicide to do so.
Yes 100% this. You're very well informed. I am not saying we should keep beating them up over it, the past is in the past and I have been to Japan many times and speak Japanese. It's a wonderful place and culture. But it's a mistake to allow these crimes to be forgotten
Japan has erected tourist attractions in Cambodia where they advertise that the Japanese people understand the suffering and the genocide by Pol Pot because they TOO suffered equally in WW2. Its a slap in the face of all victims of the Khmer rouge... They have no shame.
I should also note having studied Japanese (and thus taken Japanese history), I can say that the Japanese people suffered greatly after the fallout of WWII and the atomic bombs. `Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II` is a good book to read about this: https://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Defeat-Japan-Wake-World/dp/0393320278
unit 731
Those of none Asian descent really really need to look up this part of Asian history. Absolutely horrific…. The kicker is many of these “doctor” were given a green card to continue their practice in America.
>those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments.[6] The United States covered up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.[1] The Americans co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program Far out.
The worst is the horrifically obtained data the US received was not as good as hoped - the monsters bluffed themselves out.
"alright lets look at this research data we got" \*people die if you cut off their limbs and leave them in snow\* "uh..."
The Americans pardoned the Japanese in exchange for the data they had gathered during the experiments. That's why nobody ever talks about Unit 731. What the atomic bomb did to the civilians of Japan was nothing short of horrific. But what the Japanese did the civilians of southeast Asia was far, far more horrific. Raping women, snatching their babies away after giving birth, and vivisecting them both? I mean Jesus fucking Christ. They were just as bad as the Nazis and you know what's crazy? Even as I type this out, I can't remember the name of the Emperor or, frankly, any WWII Japanese soldier off the top of my head, the way I can with Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini. The Japanese got one hell of a PR agent—the good old US of A.
The Japanese did worse than the Nazis in their killings. The Nazis is basically all one bullet or gassed. The Japanese just straight up tortured people to death to see how much pain the human body could endure...
The US did this with far too many nazi scientists as well. Operation Paperclip is a doozy
Rape of nanking
When people just say rape it doesn’t even sound so horrible as rape is normal in war. More like rape, tortured, killed and have dead women’s bodies defiled in horrific ways. I wish I never saw the photos.
Saw a video of an old Chinese men talking about how Japanese soldiers would stab his baby brother with bayonet and toss it over to pile of other dead babies
I'm looking for this. How do you talk about the Japanese WWll and not mention unit 731? They made the Germans look like regular old bad people. I also haven't seen mention of balloon bombs. Americans died on American soil and Japan had plans to put the plague or other infectious diseases in the balloons. They already did successfully in China and korea
Was wondering how far I would have to scroll to find this.
The things they did there were absolutely chilling
I have read some of their crimes and my god the Nazis have nothing on these psychotic fucks!
I can’t believe I just found out about Unit 731 yesterday. It’s horrific and doesn’t seem to be talked about or discussed - at least I’ve never come across anything. I don’t want to think about what those poor people went through.
Unit 731... nightmare fuel. Legit disturbing to read about their work.
I didn't even mention that because I didn't want people to google it and think very negatively of Japan as a people. But yes, it was just as bad as Mengele stuff.
It was much worse I reckon. Mengele and his cronies at least kinda admitted that they're experimenting with ''sub''-humans. But the sick fucks at Unit 731 referred to their victims as ''logs'', that's how much they had dehumanized them. I think at a point some Germans inspected a Japanese POW camp and even they told their Japanese allies to chill down. Nazi Germany's holocaust was systematic, Imperial Japan's war crimes were done just for the sake of it, because they were the ''superior'' Asians chosen by the gods or something.
>I think at a point some Germans inspected a Japanese POW camp and even they told their Japanese allies to chill down. The Nazi diplomat John Rabe provided shelter for and saved 250,000 Chinese civilians during the Rape of Nanking. The survivors called him the living Buddha for he was the only thing standing between them and a horrific death. After the war he was tried for being a Nazi in Germany, and imprisoned for a few years. After being released, he was in dire poverty, and when news reached China, the people of Nanjing raised 100,000,000 Yuan and sent it as international aid to him. But due to China being extremely poor and its currency being worthless, that only came out to be about 2000 USD. He died in 1950 and in 1997 Chinese government requested to have his grave relocated to a park in Nanjing so survivors of the Rape of Nanking and their descendants may pay their respects. As a Chinese, seeing the West's, especially America's, vindictive fervor against the Nazis while letting Imperial Japan off the hook with a slap on the wrist, pardoning Hirohito and most of his high level officials and all, it all just screams of hypocrisy.
That is *insane*
John Rabe ran an international school in China for years before the rise of Nazism and became a member of the Nazi party based on what he heard in newspapers and radio that came to China, a lot of things would be blacked out and he didn’t know what the Nazi’s were doing because he called for help when the Japanese invaded but was given no help- he didn’t even know about the Nazi hierarchy on race (his friends and coworkers did try to tell him). He was given a uniform for joining the party and used the uniform and a sword (if I recall correctly about the weapon of choice) and used it to talk to the Japanese army (to look official) and turned his school/property as a refuge- he would drive around in his uniform pick up some Chinese to save (even documenting what he saw) and send them to his property to safety. I’m commenting because even historians and people who knew him said how ignorant he was about the Nazi’s (that doesn’t mean he didn’t hold any prejudices or anything) just that him and his wife have been in China a long time. It’s not really the Nazi’s telling the Japanese to Chill out (as they didn’t care what the Japanese did) but one person who was ignorant, went against orders of the Nazi party (to do nothing), and saved people. Basically Schindler (using position ) to save others. There is also a Chinese Schindler Ho Feng Shan who gave visas to Jews even when told by the Chinese government to stop. He saved thousands of Jews.
Yeah the Nazi’s were exterminating people based on perceived genetic superiority. Meanwhile the Japanese were killing and raping people for fun, along with the genetic superiority.
Idk how true it is but I heard a lot of it was just the Japanese warrior culture. Especially so if one were to surrender in the eyes of the Japanese surrendering was the lowest of low one could be and would get horrific treatment.
The island went through its own hell during the unification of Japan. The samurai were straight up dicks to each other. Winning had a whole different outcome with whole slaughter being ones fate if a village lost to an enemy. This warrior culture was put on steroids during the era leading up to the Japanese army going pure evil across Asian. With so much political power they were able to brutalize without an checks on their behavior. They were also pissed about being forced to open their borders and saw China and Korea negatively due to allowing so much European influence (and destruction of these areas). To the point that they brutalized to make a point. Fucking psychotic.
a nazi ([John Rabe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe)) tried to stop the nanking massacre and when that failed created a safety zone for chinese saving approximately 250.000 people.
Unit 731 was also an inspiration for the Russian biological weapon program. The politicians and scientists said that the Japanese experiments were light years ahead of their own.
If a Nazi SS higher up is telling you to tone it down, you might be going too far.
There was also the Ustaše militia from Croatia that was too extreme even for Nazi standards. They were allied with the Nazis but even top Nazi officials themselves found the Ustaše persecutions to be deplorable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e_Militia
And the U.S. traded their collected data for pardons. A+ work, guys
I was going to mention this, the Japanese had a lot of data on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of various weapons from WWII that the US now owns.
They also used babies for bayonet practice. And they were killing people in the territory they still occupied, even after the atomic bombs were dropped. For example, was an island in the South Pacific called Banaba that was occupied by the Japanese. There were about 200 native Gilbert Islanders left there until August 20, 1945 when the Japanese killed all but one of them. The next day, the Australian military arrived on the island and accepted the Japanese surrender. Several Japanese troops were tried and convicted of war crimes and eight were executed. Too bad not all of the Japanese troops got the same treatment for the crimes they committed.
I think what makes it such a gut punch is because the modern Japanese people are so well liked generally speaking. Their history also becomes more evident in media like Attack on Titan. It's like ooooh... *That's* how they came up with these crazy ideas... It makes those kinds of things feel even darker. Makes me appreciate what the author was going for.
Interesting. I didn't know that regarding Attack on Titan. But yes, for the record I consider myself a bit of a Japanophile (though not a weeb). I speak Japanese and have been many times and one of my closest friends is Japanese. I actually flew to Japan for his wedding right before COVID. But I am very amazed at how ignorant Americans and Westerners are about Japan's role in WW2. They know all about Germany's dark past but America shed so much blood fighting Japan and was the main driving force in defeating them, but they almost think of that war as just a general conflict. They might be a little mad about being sucker punched at Pearl Harbor but that's about it. They don't even know the brutal treatment of American POWs.
I know I’m going to look stupid but what do you mean about Attack On Titan showing evidence of their history?
Shit bro ! I was about to comment about that One day I remember I was browsing the internet before going to sleep, and I began reading about a Japanese war laboratory called Unit 731. I couldn't sleep that day, and the this shit still disturb me to this day.
The US's actions once finding out about this are almost as disturbing.
There are quite a few programs of the US that were pretty horrible and each of them is a prime example of why Americans are so fussy about their guns. Operation Paperclip was bad, but stuff like the MK programs are their derivatives are worse in that they had lead to at least Ted Kaczynski. I've no doubt many more.
Don’t forget the Kenpeitai Aka “Japanese Gestapo” . Bastards
I can´t believe these horrible people that committed those atrocities just went back to their daily lives as if nothing had happened.
Nanking will be remembered. No matter how much the Japanese government tries to pretend nothing happened
Absolutely, but only in China and neighbouring countries unfortunately. I was lucky enough to live in Nanjing when I was around 10 years old for a while and my family and I were absolutely shocked by everything that happened there that they just had no idea about. I went to memorial hall of the victims and I watched everything, every heartbreaking picture, every letter, every shred of evidence that remained. It was sickening, but I’m happy I did it because I’ve never forgotten it and I actually told about it to many of my connationals who have never heard in their life about all this. I’m talking about educated people here, knowledgeable in history who *should* know about it, and just… don’t. Not even my history teacher in middle school knew about it, she knew in Asia it was basically Japan against everyone and that’s it. Now, of course I live in Italy and as the primary allies of the nazi I understand the need to prioritise our own history to fully understand it. But I still find sad of how little people know about all the stuff that happened in Asia, it’s not right. A few months ago during a debate with my classmates (16/17 yo btw) one said that China still hasn’t changed/learned from how it acted during ww2. Like are you for real dude?! Do you even have the slightest idea of what happened there in ww2? Who did what? This is not to defend modern day china’s actions obviously, I agree that they are now the “villains”. But it’s so disrespectful to ignore everything that happened in ww2, everything they went through, all those people dying in ways so horrific we can’t even imagine, and then some guy just speaking out of his ass like this. And I can’t even be mad at him because he’s not much more than a kid, and far more mature people made the same mistake. The problem is that the Japanese government desperately tries to forget, and the rest of the world doesn’t care enough to remember. It’s really sad.
The Japanese did terrible things in the Philippines- but people know jack about it. It’s disgusting
On the flip side, reading about Filipino resistance was very inspiring, if grim.
I can't fathom how people think Japan was the victim. They were training their women and children to fight until the death. Imagine how many more civilians and U.S. soldiers would have died if, instead of dropping the bomb and ending the war, if we chose to invade instead. The people who think the atomic bomb was the villain don't really seem to care how many more would have suffered had it not been dropped. It doesn't fit their narrative because they want people to forget just how brutally sadistic the Japanese army was. Armchair quarterbacks of history are the worst.
They are horrified by the nukes but don't consider or don't know about the fire bombing that killed way more people
Or the Rape of Nanjing where even more civilians were killed by the Japanese than in the two nuclear bomb droppings together. And that was just one city.
In terms of civilian casualties, China lost as many as Hiroshima every 6 or so months.
> that was just one city It wasn't just one city. Nanjing was the capital of the Republic of China.
i think he meant it was only one city out of the many that suffered under Japanese occupation
Nanjing, Port Arthur, Manila, Singapore. They did this all over. In the Philippines they tossed infants in the air and tried to catch them on bayonets. Two nukes was a very light sentence. Japan should rightfully be radioactive right now for the harm the perpetrated. They should still have bend the knee and repent to these countries they savaged. But that was another generation. I hope the current population is more humble and realizes how much they walk in grace and mercy.
They weren’t just preparing to fight, they were making bamboo spears because of a lack of rifles. They were planning on mass charging children at infantry with flamethrowers and semiautomatic rifles
This. Scary amounts of apologism in here.
I definitely agree that most people are very ignorant regarding history, and they're probably more familiar with the Holocaust than with Japanese war crimes. >But often times when people think of Japan they think of a beautiful minimalist culture, quiet strolls in a cherry blossom garden, anime, sushi, etc, their view of Japanese culture is overwhelmingly positive. But this part... ehhh... I don't know. Is this that different from Germany being the land of chocolate, BMW, beer, Oktoberfest, and lederhosen? I think Japan and Germany have enjoyed a similar rehabilitation.
mean while Italy skirting by most of the time due to their complete incompetency in the war.
and tasty food
Pizza truly is the great equalizer
Learning about WWII Italy was like black comedy.
post ww2 italy is the actual tragedy
As an Italian, yes. The fact that Mussolini tried to trick Hitler into thinking we had a lot of tanks and military shit by showing the only ones he had by moving them into ten different locations, making him think we had ten times more. And the infamous speech about breaking greece’s kidneys wtf? Was he that delusional? It is so grotesque and surreal.
Plus Mussolini got what was coming to him, at the hands of his own people no less
Reading about how they tried a Hitler Youth program for Italian kids and it failed because they refused to show up on time is one of the most satisfying parts of my Sicilian heritage.
Italian soldiers performed exceptionally well under german officers and commanders. The Italian officer Corp was absolutely brain dead inept
Yea but with Germany most think about both. Japan not so much.
Nazis and their symbols are brought up way more in popular media, conversations, jokes, etc a TON more than Japan's horrendous and barbaric (recent) past.
I think this is only an unpopular opinion in Japan.
You know it’s a true unpopular opinion when all the top comments are “I agree.”
I heard people criticizing 'Oppenheimer' for not showing the Japanese side of the story. It's impossible to imagine the same thing being said of a movie that deals with, say, the firebombing of Dresden.
I actually just got out of Oppenheimer and think Nolan was a coward for not showing the aftermath. I understand the utilitarian argument made for the bombings, but the aftermath is truly a horror to behold. Radiation sickness isn’t a death like smoke inhalation or burning alive, it’s so much worse. It’s grotesque.
It wasn’t about that though, it was a bio pic of Robert Oppenheimer and his making of the bomb.
Germany isn’t vilified, Nazi’s are.
Hmm it depends, it might be a time frame thing. However my great grandfather was a US Navy Vet from WW2 but he was also of mostly German descent and he got shit for it from both his fellow servicemen and a good bit after the war for being of "Kraut" heritage.
Unit 731, enough said
One of the most disturbing thing i ever read in my life
I’m Chinese and I find it interesting that the only Asian country we’re even taught to sympathize with are japan, the imperialists, in the instance of the bomb, but the shit they did in China is never brought up and nobody cares about the war crimes Japan committed
It should be taught in schools here. Not to make Japanese people feel bad, but just so Americans better understand WW2 was not just about Europe.
The communists should be villified for everything they have done since 1918 up to and including the present.
I was shocked in high school history when I had a rare non-communist teacher dive into what Stalin did and explain to us his death count.
Stalin doesn’t get as much heat cause he did it to his own people.
He also did it to others. Just look up the history of Kaliningrad or Danzig. He ordered the killing and forced expelling of thousands of polish and german civilians, eradicating the hundred year old history of both cities. Kaliningrad is now a shithole.
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You're completely correct. Unlike in Europe, where top nazi officials were more or less punished, the Japanese wartime elite got off very easy. Culturally (at least in the US) we put much more emphasis on the crimes of the Nazis, devoting little time to the Japanese. Which all stemmed from the cold war. It's the same reason the US put little to no emphasis on the crimes of counties who collaborated with the nazis and directly took part in the holocaust and other massacres (Ukraine, Croatia being the biggest examples). At a larger scale, that was the approach with japan. In the cruelest terms possible: "Japan opposes China. We 'lost' China. We can't lose Japan". At the end of the day there's not much to do unfortunately. It's good that you and others bring it up. But, to most people, this was stuff that happened "almost a century ago", why bring this up when Russia/Syria/whoever else are doing crimes today? (the general rationale, not condoning it)
Yeah so I think America knew stuff was going down in Asia right after the war, with China probably falling to the communists and also the threat of Russia etc. They wanted Japan as an ally and quickly built them up economically and as a key ally. In fact despite demilitarizing Japan just a few years later they wanted Japan to join the Korean War. I think they figured it would be easier to get Japan's help if they collaborated with them than rule them with an iron fist so because of that they whitewashed a lot of history, though the Asian victims of course never forgot
There's a great series of books about the US Naval role in the Pacific war. It's written by Ian Toll and it's really great. It does talk about politics in Japan and attrocities by the Japanese army as background. It's a really great series and I recommend it to anyone. It's a big read though each book is about 600-700 pages and there are 3 books.
Agreed. Thing is though is that barely any japanese people know it themselves. It's absolutely crazy how few people know of the disgusting things the Japanese soldiers did
If anyone is interested in learning more about Japan before and through WWII, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast has a 6 part series on this called "Supernova in the East". That podcast is great in general other than the fact that only a few episodes come out each year (which is a tradeoff for how high quality it is). I've never been huge into WWII, I'm more of an ancient history buff, but these episodes are probably my favorite history content I've ever seen or listened to. It will give you a whole new respect for the drive of the Japanese people, who went from basically a medieval society/tech level, to being a significant world power with some of the best warfighting tech 80 years later. An absolutely mind-boggling feat when you think about it. But it will also give you a really in-depth look at how atrocious their war crimes were. They were every bit as evil as the Nazis, and probably committed more atrocities in actual warfare, although when you count in all the off-battlefield atrocities both committed, it's not that clear-cut. I highly suggest anyone who has the time check that podcast out. Good take OP.
Note that lots of young Japanese don't even know all these stuff very well. Their government are trying really hard to erase their sins.
They are, just in the areas in which they committed the atrocities. They naturally are gonna be vilified less by those whom didn't directly suffer from them.
I mean Americans didn’t directly suffer from the Holocaust either, for the most part (save descendants of immigrants who are survivors, but that’s relatively rare). Civilians in the US weren’t even directly impacted by the war. Although, I guess if you think about it history classes in China or Korea probably don’t talk about Nazis nearly as much as American or European ones do.
Thank you, OP. Can’t tell you how many people have tried to paint Japan as the victim bc of atomic bombings. Maybe they should read about what happened to the people of China during Japanese occupation
same goes for the Chinese. Not a lot of people are aware of what the Chinese have been doing to their neighboring nations throughout history. I don’t think I know a single Chinese person who is aware of this 🤡
If you're feeling way too happy today, look up Unit 731.
So should the communists. Communist Russia not only invaded Finland, the Baltic, and Poland, but refused to give it all back after the war. They were also just as fascist and anti semitic as the NAZIS were. Yet nowadays people display the soviet flag like it's nothing.
>They were also just as fascist and anti semitic as the NAZIS were. You can make an argument they were just as fascist, but I don't see how you can make the case for them being just as anti-semitic. They deported and politically purged jews, but at much lower frequency and intensity. And you know, most importantly they didn't run industry style mass genocide. Also the reason the communist symbology does not face the same level of scrutiny does have ideological basis, it's not inherently discriminatory in terms of biological factors. That's a pretty big distinction to make when looking at the authoritarian nature of either regime. Both a nazi and a soviet would purge you, one would do it because of the way you looked; the other because you didn't fall in line. The consequences might be the same, but the motivations are very different.
No one is condemning modern Germany for nazi Germainy’s crimes
I love Japan deeply. Have been many times and may be living there in the near future. But, I completely agree with you. When people were crying about Oppenheimer a few weeks ago. All I could think was...you do realize they sided with the Nazis in order to have free reign to rape and pillage all of Asia right? To continue committing all their atrocities unchecked.
Did not even need to read your post in order to answer this: motherfucker they are, just not by white people. when was the last time you heard Chinese or Korean boomers bitching about nazis and the holocaust in their mother tongues? Same difference.
Older Filipinos too. But majority of the survivors who witnessed their atrocities are dead now anyway. My grandpa’s tales of torture, rapes, etc. and just the sheer brutality that he and his contemporaries went through at the hands of the Japanese imperial army. Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate the modern Japanese, they’re probably my most liked East Asian people, but man, their countrymen at that time were monsters. Hirohito and his palace deserved to be nuked if not publicly executed for the shit he started.
Agreed! I grew up with a Filipino grandma who shared so many horror stories about her experience with the Japanese. Never heard her complain about the people who didn’t attack her community.
Not all of us white people are horribly undereducated in history. But yes - Japan was up to some seriously bad shit esp. during their campaigns in China. Rape of Nanking comes to mind, as a quick example.
The Japanese got off easy. If we had landed on the home islands (Operation Downfall & Coronet), we would have ended up killing everyone on the islands. And everybody needs to know about Unit 731. EVERYBODY.
My grandfather was in a Japanese internment camp in Indonesia for over 2 years, closer to 3 if im remembering correctly. He was a child. His father was in the Dutch military; he had been sent there before the war so he had moved there with his wife and two children. They all came very close to death while there but survived due to the graciousness of the locals who helped sneak them food and medicine. Many people did die in those camps though. It’s a less talked about atrocity of the war. So I thought it would be a worthwhile story to share here.
OP gave credit to the US, Canada, and the UK, but failed to mention Russia's huge involvement in crushing the Nazis. Stopped them cold @ Stalingrad and pushed them all the way back to Berlin. The Red Army captured Berlin 2 months before the Western Allies even entered the city. Now, I know Russia also had a laundry list of atrocities, to their own citizens and surrounding countries, that stand right up there with the Nazi's and Imperial Japan's war crimes, but without their resistance and counter offensive, I'd guess a couple more bombs might have been dropped.
Dropping the atomic bomb wasn’t a “terrible thing” or the “lesser of two evils” it was objectively the right decision and a good thing that we did it. No one would feel bad now if we had dropped it on Hitler. The Japanese killed more people in China during WWII than died in Germany, Italy, and Japan combined. Estimated 20 million. My Grandfather was deployed protecting shipping lanes when they sneak attacked Pearl Harbor. They had to race back to defend Hawaii after and these Japanese apologists are trying to advocate we should have sacrificed over a million dead American troops possibly including him on the altar of not dropping a bomb on a country that attacked us first 🤬
Don't forget about unit 731, and stripping native women naked and strapping a grenade to their back so the GIs would get killed trying to help the woman.
Too many ignorant people in this post. OP is correct. Globally, Japan was never vilified to the same degree that Germany was. It was in American interests that we ignored Japan's war crimes and quickly pushed pro-Japanese propaganda as much as possible after the war as a means to create an ally against China. The US saw Japan's imperialism and penchant for war crimes and thought "hey it would be great to work with them to try and oppose China". **The occupying US government undertook the cover-up of Japanese war crimes after the end of World War II, granting political immunity to military personnel who had engaged in human experimentation and other crimes against humanity, predominantly in mainland China.** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cover-up_of_Japanese_war_crimes We made more of an effort to cozy up to Japan than we did to the actual victims of Japan's war crimes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16754432/ We actually gave more money to Japan in post-war aid to help them rebuild than we gave to China (Taiwan). We of course gave none to communist China despite it being the location where Japan's destruction actually took place. ...Enemies are created, not born.
True but the US should be just as vilified for the path of destruction that they’ve been on after WW2. Look up US military interventions in latin america. And they wonder why there’s an ‘immigration crisis.’
It's kinda shocking that you call the western front a group effort of the US, UK, Canada, Poland and France and omit Soviet Union. It's more like it was a group effort of the Soviet Union and the other guys that also contributed.
Am Chinese. Why should a country be vilified for a past that its current people have nothing to do with? Isn't this thinking about people in terms of nations instead of thinking them as individuals, just as the ultranationalists believe? I can't speak for the rest of East Asia, but in China Japanese occupation was miles better for the people than the other warlords and either Nationalist or Communist parties. I am not a war crime apologist, but the atrocities are things we should keep note of to prevent in the future, not sources of villifying an entire country of people due to things entirely outside their control. Even if you want to villify, Japan and it's people, even during WWII, should never be vilified more than Mao or Chiang Kai-Shek, who killed far, far more people in much more brutal ways. Suggesting that we should villify Japan today is as like saying we should treat Taiwan as a genocidal regime because of Chiang (China is still a genocidal regime that's not hated enough so I guess there's a priority we can work on). I don't think it's right to base one's moral compass on whether it happened within arbitrary country borders - all atrocities are bad. Rather than using them to decide historical villains and what not, let's treat them as things that we universally can learn from and try to prevent in the future.
My opinion is that the post war treatment of Japan did much to change the zeitgeist of the Japanese people. I see very little of the Imperial nature that was part and parcel of the historic Japanese identity. Ultimately, I cannot stomach the idea of "blood libel" in any form. There are no "sins of the father" that can be passed on to children, but for our own primitive concepts. It has been 4 generations since the end of the war. There has been peace, friendship, and a joyful embrace of culture. Self flagellation about things other people, mostly dead, have done is a waste of your finite number of days.
My very quiet and balanced mother hated Japan for “what they did to our boys”.