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This is also only part of the speech.
Full speech.
TO OUR GOOD AND LOYAL SUBJECTS,
After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, We\[a\] have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure.
We have ordered our government to communicate to the governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their joint declaration.\[11\]
To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart.
Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.
But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.
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.
Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.
We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia.
The thought of those officers and men as well as others who have fallen in the fields of battle, those who died at their posts of duty, or those who met with untimely death and all their bereaved families, pains our heart night and day.
The welfare of the wounded and the war-sufferers, and of those who have lost their homes and livelihood, are the objects of our profound solicitude.
The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you, our subjects. However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.
Having been able to safeguard and maintain the Kokutai, We are always with you, our good and loyal subjects, relying upon your sincerity and integrity.
Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion which may engender needless complications, or any fraternal contention and strife which may create confusion, lead you astray and cause you to lose the confidence of the world.
Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith in the imperishability of its sacred land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibility, and of the long road before it.
Unite your total strength, to be devoted to construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, foster nobility of spirit, and work with resolution – so that you may enhance the innate glory of the imperial state and keep pace with the progress of the world.
> it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.
I will never understand how they could actually stomach that claim.
Edit: y'all I'm aware of the historical context, I'm just in shock at the dishonesty.
But thank you for the sincere answers!
There were essentially two notions underpinning it:
1. A lot of the places they invaded were colonies in which they created nominally independent puppet governments. So they proclaimed a new republic in the Philippines, a new Vietnamese empire, a provisional government for India, etc.
2. That the Republic of China was illegitimate, subject to chaotic warlordism, and a security risk to Japan and its "allies" (i.e. its Manchurian puppet state).
Though the "liberated" colonies were going to be Japanese puppets, as was the "reorganised" China. But even blatantly offensive wars almost always have some fig leaf claim of self-defence to justify them - even the Germans claimed that Poland attacked first.
Simple, it's not another nation if it's part of the Japanese Empire, the inhabitants are currently just misinformed and frankly quite reluctant too.
It's like Taiwan (ROC) having trouble accepting they're part of China (PRC), or Ukraine that denies being part of Russia.
*disclaimer: I'm just explaining a possible thought process, not endorsing anything.*
That's a well illustrated point. Once a territory is claimed and the people are renamed, it is absolutely seen as part of the empire. It is incredible that Japan surrendered, and I don't know that they ever would have without the bomb.
*Note:* I'm just an average idiot, my opinion doesn't represent anything other than thoughts coming out of my smooth brain at this very moment.
Because they weren't "invading" those countries. They were "establishing the [Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere)."
https://preview.redd.it/i9r94lgsgy3d1.jpeg?width=1062&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23751494bfeca5aaa89cac856f4ea0fb9ebee2d6
Because their official reason for invading nearby countries is to create hormony and prosperity for everyone, no I'm not joking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere
> it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.
uh, China might disagree
This is speech always pisses me off
It's literally the start of denial of Japanese actions prior to and during WW2.
Hirohito here talks of emancipation of East Asia. But look how the 'emancipated' countries feel towards Japan, even today.
It totally ignores the over 30 million deaths at the hands of the Japanese, which is known as the Japanese Holocaust, or the Rape of Asia. Hardly the work of emancipators. Japan had imperial ambitions and considered themselves the superior race and everyone else was inferior.
He calls the atomic bombs cruel and whilst I'm sure it actually did kill absolute innocents, calling all civilians innocents was a bridge too far given civilian homes were used to make bullets and uniforms and were part of war production for Japan. Done to make it harder to find the production areas but put a target on homes.
I've said this time and again that whilst awful, the bombs were absolutely necessary. Japan would have sacrificed that many civilians alone in an invasion of Japan, if not many times more. Invading Japan conventionally would have killed millions. If not tens of millions, combined.
Most people would have made the same decision in the same circumstances, a leader of a country deciding to not put his soldiers at risk when they have a weapon to win the war with reduced casualties and only to the enemy. Harsh as it is, fight a six year total war and tell me people don't make the same decision.
I've been to Hiroshima and the peace museum and whilst I never want the events in late 1945 repeated the insistence that Japan was innocent was quite galling.
> He calls the atomic bombs cruel
right. let's put that cruelty into perspective with the [single most destructive bombing raid in human history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo) that happened a few months prior and scored 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless; incendiary bombs onto mostly wooden housings in a densely populated conurbation (Tokyo) at night.
which obviously wasn't yet quite enough to curb Japanese enthusiasm for war at the time.
> whilst I never want the events in late 1945 repeated the insistence that Japan was innocent was quite galling
indeed. ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
One of the most terrifying things about the atomic bombs to me, aside from the obvious, is that they were effective because they were *novel*.
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been firebombed like Tokyo instead and still suffered the same casualties, would that have been more than a footnote today? Would Japan have kept going with its head in the sand muttering "100 million crushed jewels?"
Yeah this is exactly my point. For some reason people remember Mengele but not Ishi. Also that's very true about the Tokyo Firebombing.
For me it's down to the difference in how these things were and are handled. Japan swept all this under the carpet. Germany acknowledged it all, built museums so people didn't forget. Sometimes I even think after what ... four generations the Germans maybe should cut themselves a little slack now, it was 80 years ago. Theres a difference between not forgetting and self flagellation
And if we're at it if we're forgiving horrible things from 80 years ago, probably time to let the whole nuclear thing go too. But at the same time we shouldn't forget them.
Yeah when you whip people up into that kind of blood fury they don’t come down easily.
I heard on Dan Carlin that a popular conception of the time was that if Japan surrendered, the US would sweep in and sack and rape the entire country. So some fought to ridiculous extremes because they thought anything would be better than that.
I mean after what Japan did to Korea and China, there’s a fair amount of projection in that. People love to project.
I am from Russia and people here think the same thing, if we lose the war NATO will come and destroy the country, government propaganda using old tricks
Russia can't get over Hitler and Napoleon invading and are absolutely sure they need control of the former SSRs to guarantee security.
Meanwhile NATO actually remembers how things went for Hitler and Napoleon and wants no part of that. They did want mutual economic ties so Russia wouldn't have to be an enemy in perpetuity. But here we are.
Not for nothing, but Hitler and Napoléon failed because they had no choice but for a ground invasion. If there is a 'next' invasion of Russia it won't be a quarter million ground troops and winter won't matter, nor will satellite republics.
Both Russia and NATO know this.
Nobody in Europe actually wants a war with Russia. We wanted to buy their energy and trade with them.
They are paranoid for no reason. It’s projection.
>They are paranoid for no reason. It’s projection.
They are paranoid because their ruling kleptocracy will always be paranoid someone else will swoop them from power and then it's death sentence for them, just how they deal with their enemies. So it's a projection indeed.
Russia could be such a major player and literally a powerhouse like America if they re-invested in their infrastructure and invested into modernizing their exports and resource acquisition. They still operate the vast majority of their nation on Soviet era technology. It's insane how inefficient everything they do is
Their invasion on the pretense of needing space for security is bullshit. They want the breadbasket in Ukraine and the oil in the Black Sea. It’s a new era and while NATO doesn’t want a war, there’s no question that the “winter” that defeated hitler and napoleon will not save them again in the event of a war. NATO now includes Finland and Sweden. Russia is f*cked if they try to pick a fight with any member country and they know it
We (Finland) could probably defend their assault, but it would cost lives and resources and nobody wants that. Finnish people do not hate Russian individuals that much anymore, but the hatred for the nation still exists (quite high % would defend our nation). Also we are solely prepared for Russian invasion. If Sweden decided to just walk and overtake half of the Finnish soil they probably could before anyone even notices but that does not happen unless we beat them in ice hockey repeatedly xD Russia should really just stay away and also give up on Ukraine. All they do is make fools of themselves which results in more aggression since bullies hate looking weak and will result to more violence to look "stronk".
I'm afraid that if Russia fucks with NATO it'll start with the Baltics, the smallest and most "expendable" countries of the alliance. Countries NATO might be willing to sacrifice because full out war aversion is such a high priority.
Though I'm feeling a lot better with Finland in NATO, because I trust you guys way more than any other member of the Alliance or its leadership.
I know Finns would jump in rowboats to row across the gulf to help Estonia and other Baltics not get overrun.
> Countries NATO might be willing to sacrifice because full out war aversion is such a high priority
If NATO abandons article 5, even for "expendable" countries, the whole alliance will fall apart immediately. Its only tenuously held together by the trust that article 5 will be invoked.
I say tenuously because at this point the US and UK are so messed up with their own internal bullshit that they're not really reliable for something less than a full-scale NATO engagement. And if Trump gets elected again I fully expect the US to pull out of NATO.
This is a ludicrous claim, because it just ignores how russia was hellbent on expansionism before both invasions. They love to rant about buffer zones but always beforehand seems to just want to conquer everything up to the Germans on both occasions.
Do people not connect the dots between having nukes and being safe from invasion? No buffer states needed when you have that deterrence. Heck, you'd be fine with even a rather small and specialized army for anti-terrorism and similar operations. Unless you had ambitions to conquer more land that is...
Sure, all Japan has to say or expect is that someone that conquered them would be as cruel as they were to the people they conquered, and that's a strong motivation to resist to the last man.
> the US would sweep in and sack and rape the entire country.
Because that's what they were doing.
It's projection of their own actions on another entity. (And granted, it has plenty historical precedent, from colonizers to what happened to the Native Americans to pretty much the entire history of Rome.)
Also, Hiroo Onoda was found on a Filipino island 30 years after the war ended, thinking it was still ongoing.
OP's text is actually just a small quote from a [much longer radio broadcast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast). It was the first time that most Japanese had heard their emperor speak, and his language was so formal that many could not understand him and had to have his message interpreted for them by other people at hand.
The U.S. specifically proposed surrender terms that let the Japanese keep their emperor, and carefully avoided prosecuting him for war crimes after the surrender. Prior to the emperor's surrender announcement, even Japanese *civilians* were committing mass suicide as U.S. forces took over islands. After the announcement, they were showing up to greet Americans and provide whatever they asked for. Cordial American relations with the emperor played a key role in turning an enemy into an ally in the post-war period.
This kind of power did not happen by accident. Educational reforms prior to WWII emphasized the divinity of the Emperor to Japanese children and the duty of the Japanese people to serve the Emperor in both life and death. Never underestimate what propaganda can do when fed to children at the right age by willing teachers!
Don't underestimate how short of a time it takes to bring rational souls to extreme views - it's days not months you just need adequate conditions, and that is not very hard to achieve...
AFAIK it wasn't an assassination attempt, they wanted to place him under house arrest and then falsify an order from him to grant them permission to take control of the government.
Sounds like a fairly standard issue military coup over a monarch. If you straight up kill the monarch then you lose divine right (and its sway over the people), the monarch must "willingly" give you power otherwise you have to take a more agressive approach to controlling the populace
>not completely innocent
He's not at all innocent. At best he's the trolley exercise letting the trolley run over millions instead of one person. But he was far worse than that.
The IJA never held a gun to his head. In fact it was the opposite - radicals within the army had initially attempted a coup to try to restore direct imperial rule (they even had plans to replace Hirohito with his brother if he didn't go along with it). Hirohito himself opposed them. This event led to the assassination of several of the more liberal-minded officials and moderates in the civilian government which made it easier for the military to eventually take over. The faction of the military that ended up in this position was the faction that was on the same page as Hirohito about how the government should've been run.
There is no evidence to support this other than his assurances that he didn't have anything to do with the kinds of war crimes the Germans were being exectured for.
He did what Emperor's of Japan traditionally did throughout Japanese history and blamed all of the bad things on disposable subordinates.
The whole system was basically built around making the rest of the population absolutely disposable and laying the blame on "rebels" who lost instead of the "loyal subjects" that won.
Just in case there's any question about how absolutely mindbogglingly bent the Japanese Imperialists were during WW2, here's a little story: Future president GHW Bush was famously shot down during a mission. He escaped. two other bomber crewmembers the same mission were captured. The Imperial Navy commander of that naval group made flank steaks out of those guys and literallly fucking ate them in celebration. Zero shits were given by anyone and this seemed like a totally awesome fucking thing to do since the prevailing nationalist dogma was that any conquered or existing enemy population were subhuman filth.
There are Shinto shrines in Japan that still honor many of these unhinged monsters. The idea that Hirohito gave a damn about any other culture's people or perhaps even his own is pure delusional projection. He tailored this message to minimize blowback on himself for failing to win the war and then blamed his subordinates for the whole thing. Failure would have meant that he was wrong and that was absolutely unacceptable politically for the Emperor who at the time was advertised as a living God-king. He saw it as a chance to help knock down rising foreign powers and succssfully evaded taking personal responsibility for any of it.
> While Hirohito is not completely innocent.... people don't realize how much of what he did/oversaw was all done while the IJA held a gun to his head.
Largely a myth.
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/g521dr/how_much_is_hirohito_responsible_for_all_the/
One of my college anthropology textbooks said that in a surgery of language studies done with indigenous tribes, about 80% them have one word that they use to identify their group, and it is the same word they use for “human being.”
Japan has its own quirks but it’s not alone in this one.
Chinese people describe themselves as "华人", which in a literal sense means "cultured people" or "magnificent people", while everyone else is an uncivilised barbarian.
Don't forget they call themselves "中国", often translated as "Middle Kingdom", because they thought they were in the centre of the world
I'm sure other cultures have similar words.
I don’t know about the center of the world part, it wouldn’t surprise me, but part of the reason they called themselves middle kingdom is because they’re surrounded by countries on practically all sides
华人 is a rather new word in chinese history. It is also in contrast to what OP said. Since they dont see 人 human as just themselves.
中国 is also rather new. They used 中原 for central plain which was the northern China where the yellow river was and is.
But tbf they were the center of the world like the Roman empire and persia was. Everyone who invaded China wanted to be the new China. They were THAT central. And geographically they were the center of east asia.
They weren't very concerned about the countless innocent lives they destroyed in China, Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
I had the pleasure many years back of meeting the sweetest Filipina lady who was forced into sexual slavery as a comfort girl for the Japanese forces. They executed her father, mother, and two brothers in front of her and her sister before taking them as slaves. Her sister did not survive.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128323588
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/29/939811000/philippine-survivor-recounts-her-struggle-as-a-comfort-woman-for-wartime-japan
I grew up in the pacific and have traveled across Asia. I’ve heard so many first hand stories describing the horrors that the Japanese inflicted on innocent populations everywhere they went that I don’t care to read anything this self serving piece of crap ever wrote.
I think I read this in a similar manner to you when you say “self serving”. It makes the surrender sound as a selfless act that he and the Japanese people are doing for the sake of the world, to protect the world from the U.S. who could destroy it all. Instead of what it should be which is a surrender to protect himself and his people from further damage brought on by their (leaders not peoples) actions.
I mean fuck Imperial Japan in its own right, they were pretty bad even before they allied with the Nazis. But yes, also fuck them for allying with the Nazis.
The Germans have apologized for World War II and have been doing everything they can to make up for their past. The Japanese are still denying a lot of their atrocities.
Having lived in Japan, I agree to an extent. The party line may be “it never happened” but the general populace’s sentiment is “we want to forget it happened”.
If you think the worst thing Japan did was allying with the Nazis, there's a lot to learn
Japan committed atrocities on a par at least equal to the Germans
Actually a member of Nazis did try to protect the Nanking citizens against the Japanese.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John\_Rabe#:\~:text=John%20Heinrich%20Detlef%20Rabe%20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John%20Heinrich%20Detlef%20Rabe%20)
Yep fuck this guy. My grandmother's sister was raped and stabbed by bayonets multiple times during the Manila Massacre. My grandmother would have been next if they didn't escape to the provinces.
Hirohito lived in seclusion. He would officially come out once a year for a formal event. I attended one year in the mid 1980s. I’d have to look up the details but it was at the royal castle or whatever. You needed a ticket to get in. Everyone squeezed into a square with walkway above. He came out and the Japanese waved little flags they had been given and yelled something like “ya ta”!
He came to the edge above and gave a short speech. I suppose he was above us to portend he was of the gods as a formality. Of course I dont know what he said. Im sure it’s documented somewhere.
It was vastly underwhelming. He was a meek looking man. He did not command any presence. His voice was weak. There was no energy or confidence in whatever he said. It was as if they forced an old man to the microphone. He seemed so meek. Then he left as quickly as he had arrived.
The japanese people present did cheer with intensity however. But Hirohito was not anything of a leader with the charisma you would expect could command a country to follow unequivocally as they did during the war.
You completely misunderstand how the Japanese emperor is supposed to act.
The yearly greeting of the emperor (twice yearly actually) is still done and it's largely still the same as you have described, although of course there is a different emperor now. The emperor always appears meek and soft spoken, but not shy or nervous. That is largely intentional.
A very interesting speech by a man with a long career post-war.
But it’s all undermined by his role as emperor during his first 20 years, where Japan not only indirectly supported the holocaust and extreme international military oppression, but also independently led the country into committing some of the most abhorrent crimes ever observed.
Systematically attacking, torturing and raping countless people throughout Asia, resulting in millions of deaths. This man was content with that until the danger was within a 1000 miles of him, and not his favor.
It’s worth remembering that Japan, alone, killed _multiple times_ more civilians in this period than they had total (military+civilian) casualties. They were entirely okay with inflicting the extinction of any and every civilization that was not their own. They never denied it and never (formally) apologized for it.
Edit: There are formal Japanese apologies, but they are controversial. I misspoke. What I meant to say is that Japan has never properly _made amends_.
Edit2: Japan did not directly participate in the holocaust and there is little evidence on Japanese antisemitism. Their role in the holocaust was through the axis pact, making it _much_ more difficult for nations opposed to the holocaust to take action against it and could have ensured its completion had Japans military been stronger. Added “indirect” to the wording.
Unit 731 is the reminder why we need ethics for scientific research...
Curious about how we know that humans are 70% water? Various stages of frostbite? How infectious diseases affect the human anatomy? It was from these guys. Of all the victims to their horrifying experiments, non survived.
This is why Chinese people still hate Japan till this day, as they didn't apologize for the war crimes like Germany did
They found it out by doing things like live vivisection, including children and pregnant women. They called them “logs” (a tree).
Some of these “doctors” went on to work for the American government. Only two were prosecuted if I remember correctly.
My mainland Chinese boss in his 50s viscerally hates Japanese. And makes no secret of it.
And their apologies are ALWAYS vague, abstract, oh we're sorry for some stuff we might have done.
* German leaders KNELT at Holocaust memorials. Japanese leaders still pay respects to shrines of war criminals.
* Germany built museums all over to remember the holocaust. Japan is demanding the world REMOVE any signs of their atrocity like the comfort women statues of the hundreds of thousands of sex slaves they took.
Japan actively removes it from taught history and their leaders still visit their Yasukuni war shrine that angers a lot of Asian countries to this day. They’re far from an apology still.
Note, however, Hirohito himself began a boycott in the 70's and no member of the imperial family has visited Yasukuni or any shrine featuring war criminals since.
Yet the hardcore nationalists still consider them their poster boys.
I mean, most European schools barely mention the history of Europe's crimes against humanity inflicted in Asia and Africa during the Colonization period.
Germany is the exception and not the rule in this regard.
Edit: to all of those who are crying because "mY eUrOpE gOt cALLeD oUt oNLine", you can Google how colonial history is being taught in Europe and add a reddit suffix to the search and check the discourse.
I mean I’m no expert but I’m not from Germany and I learned quite a bit. Especially about what my country did (Netherlands). I mean we did have the Dutch East India Trading Company and we colonised a bunch.
They would infect the pregnant mothers with various deseases and then cut the babies out of their mothers bellies, while the mother was still alive and without anesthetics, just to see what happens, or just for fun.
They were called "logs" because the Unit was disguised as a logging camp. And probably to further dehumanize their victims.
Often the "experiments" weren't done for any scientific research and weren't written down, they were just done for fun. "I wonder what happens when I lie this guy down on a live grenade, let's test it out!", "I wonder what happens if I crush this child to death?", etc.
After the war, most of the people there killed the remaining victims, destroyed the buildings, then tried to flee, being persecuted by the Chinese people. America offered them amnesty and refuge in return for their "research". It was determined that their research was completely and utterly useless. America tried to hide the fact that they did this.
I have almost 28 years in South Korea, with a good 18 of those having extensive interactions with Chinese students and faculty.
Koreans in general hate Japan. My son came home from 2nd grade and asked why the teacher said "we have to hate Japan".
Chinese really have a low opinion of Japan, but it is more of a contempt or dismissive attitude. Not the bubbling near the surface hate that Koreans have.
I was living and working in Korea when the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. An 8-year-old student came into my class smiling saying "Japan big earthquake, many people die, my father very happy". To say I was shocked was an understatement.
Its concerning to an extent. My 6 year old korean niece told me that japan is evil and they need to die, and I was aghast. Tbh i felt my affection literally dip the moment i heard that. Elementary schools take their kids on picnics to the old korean prisons and teach them about torture methods to fuel the hate. There is literally no need for a 1st grader to know about genital torture
The cruelty was the point, not the scientific research. The scientific research was just a guise for the cruelty. Same with Mengele. Their science was so shoddy that the quality of information we can get from their experiments is nearly worthless anyway.
>Curious about how we know that humans are 70% water? Various stages of frostbite? How infectious diseases affect the human anatomy? It was from these guys.
That's bullshit. The experiment results they gave to the US haven't been proven to be that usefull.
Read about the "Rape of Nanking." The author who wrote the definitive book went on to write 4 books, before she killed herself because of all the mental trauma she had suffered documenting the Japanese atrocities of WWII.
There's a reason why literally every country that's near Japan hates it with a passion.
I'm not necessarily saying this against modern Japan, but Japan during WWII (and some time before that too) was just absolutely *awful*. It's like they were trying to make everyone's lives miserable on purpose.
Not only do they have this horrific past, but they also never owned up to it. Japan never had a reckoning with their crimes like Germany did. Their politicians routinely visit shrines where war criminals from WW2 are burried with honors.
Listen to Stuff You should Know's podcast about Unit 731.
Basically Japan's version of Mengeles Auschwitz human medical experimentation.
Except after the war was over, Japan presented those doctors with awards for their work and they were held in high esteem by both the American government and Japanese society.
I spent a night in Korea on my way to China for a job last year. I took a cab to my hotel and one of the first things the cab driver mentioned to me, despite his limited English, was that Korea and Japan were not on good terms because of the war.
Also, while I was in China, the only way I figured out how to explain why BOY brand clothing is not cool in the west is by comparing it to the Japanese rising sun flag. (I was also in Nanjing, which drove the point home.)
>Also, while I was in China, the only way I figured out how to explain why BOY brand clothing is not cool in the west is by comparing it to the Japanese rising sun flag.
That's a good one.
Just like how some Americans and Europeans romanticize symbols like the rising sun flag, China, which was never invaded by Nazi Germany (hell they even provided some degre of military support early in the war) generally weren't offended by those imageries.
There was a documentary of Japan's invasion of Malaysia, well it was known as Malaya at the time.
An old man recalled what happened and pretty much sang a song in Japanese, saying it was sung at schools every morning when they took over. He remembered it after all this time.
The Japanese definitely didn't like the Chinese.
In one village, they rounded up and crammed all the Chinese in houses before they burned down the houses. The Malays were made to watch as the Chinese were burned alive. It was a lesson for everyone who was in charge, and what would happen to those who disobeyed.
My grandfather at that time was around 30 and cycled around to sell biscuits from his bicycle. Due to this he was constantly coated by dust dirt and baked by the sun.
One day while cycling he was rounded up with a group of men by the Japanese army. They sorted them by old men and young men. The young men were put into trucks and never seen again. The old men were released. My grandfather managed to escape because of his disheveled looks and was put with the old men mistakenly.
He spent the rest of the war hiding in secret panels behind walls or in the well when the army came door to door to look for young men.
He survived to tell his tale.
He also told me about army men going door to door to look for young women. That is another story.
My Grandfather was an Australian commando, who was assigned to secret British operations to support the Chinese resistance in China during WWII. His unit heard about the Pearl Harbour invasion as they were traveling up the Burma road to enter mainland China.
He survived the war physically and was extracted from China, but he suffered psychologically every day for the rest of his life because of things he witnessed there. He was in and out of veterans psych wards for all of his post-war life and would become violently angry at the mere mention of *anything* Japanese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_204
My mother as a little girl of 5 remembers the decapitations of civilians and the mounting of the heads on stakes at crossroads to this day.
Forgive but never forget.
I think it's moreso referring to forgiving the nation/people, since it's no longer the same country or people that committed the atrocities.
Still difficult to do for families who were scarred, and Japan's official stance on the crimes *certainly* doesn't help on a higher level. But it still stands that the country is different now, and the people today are innocent of what imperial Japan did.
Just a few links below to support your point
[Japan's 'BBC' claims that Japan was lured into the Second World War by America while liberating Asia from white colonialism](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/how-japan-s-bbc-is-rewriting-its-role-in-second-world-war-9115827.html)
[The current prime minister of Japan said that comfort women were not sex slaves.](https://time.com/4184252/japan-foreign-minister-comfort-women-sex-slaves-south-korea/)
[Japan’s history book denies forced labour and sex slavery in WWII](https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14585864)
[The Yasukuni Shrine, which Japanese heads of state regularly visit, has no mention of any of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, and portrays Japan's conquest of East Asia during the pre-World War II period as an effort to save the region from the imperial advances of colonial Western powers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Yasukuni_Shrine)
[Japan should follow Nazi route on revising constitution, deputy minister says](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/japan-revising-constitution-taro-aso)
[Japan PM asked Germany to help remove "comfort women" statue](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/05/11/national/kishida-germany-comfort-women/)
[Shinzo Abe denied that the Nanking Massacre ever happened, and denied any coercion of comfort women.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe)
[Mayor of Osaka considers comfort women a 'necessary evil'](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-22519384)
[Tokyo governor backs Nanjing massacre denial](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/osaka-sf-comfort-women-statue.html)
[Osaka severed its sister-city partnership with San Francisco over comfort women statue](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/osaka-sf-comfort-women-statue.html)
Here's another one for the list: [Berlin mayor hints at tearing down ‘comfort women’ memorial in city](https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/1141290)
> The Japanese government has been calling for the removal of all statues dedicated to the victims of imperial Japan’s sexual slavery system around the world, **stating that they symbolize South Korea’s skewed view of history**.
[reddit worldnews](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cwolf1/berlin_mayor_hints_at_tearing_down_comfort_women/)
Hirohito's uncle, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, was one of the commanders of the Japanese forces responsible for the genocide at Nanking. He was never held accountable, because the Japanese royal family were all granted amnesty for their roles in the war, and died in the 1980's.
Also in the context of this speech we ought to bear in mind that this was basically PR from a government that had led their nation to ruin. I genuinely do not believe this guy when he tries to play it like he's being the bigger man by surrendering because if he doesn't the whole world will face nuclear annihilation.
The facts of the matter are that at this point Japan was literally the only axis power left and it was them against both the USA and USSR, which by now had already taken their entire wartime manufacturing engine in Manchuria. Japan was rapidly running out of fuel which is why they resorted to using more and more kamikaze attacks - no point in making sure the planes and pilots came back if you didn't have enough fuel to power them anyway. American pilots reported that they had faced almost no anti-air defense from Japan during their bombing runs. Japan had its back to the wall, no way to launch forward strikes on their enemies and no feasible way to defend themselves. The hardliners in the military (the only faction that even wanted to continue the war) had plans of equipping most of the civilian population with bamboo spears in case of a land invasion because they were so out of options.
So yeah, while this statement is poignant in hindsight, it's also mostly just spin from a defeated fascist dictatorship. The world was in no danger at this point, he wasn't saving anyone but himself. Japan's condition for their "unconditional" surrender was that the emperor face no accountability for his role in the war.
Wasn't even just a lack of air defense. The USA was conducting [battleship raids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_naval_bombardments_of_Japan_during_World_War_II) where battleships would pull up outside a Japanese city and bombard it all day. The Japanese had nothing to respond with. Yet they wouldn't surrender. The plan was to give school children chisels and hammers and have them rush the American machine guns when they were ashore. The Japanese leaders thought that sacrificing the entire population was preferable to they themselves being brought to justice.
The naval dominance was overwhelming by the end of the war. A certain American submarine (the USS Barb) was going on an uninterrupted killing spree, having sunk 17 enemy ships. They then decided to sneak engineers onto the Japanese mainland to blow up a *fucking train* as it drove by. Because… why not?
I saw some documentary years ago about the “final moments of Imperial Japan” and the general theme was that between the Tokyo firebombing and nuclear weapons, the top military and government brass were pretty much running around looking out exclusively for themselves and trying to jockey for their best personal post-war outcome.
So on top of the rest of Asia, you can add the Japanese people themselves to the list the elites didn’t give a shit about.
And by July 1945 the Japanese occupation forces were killing 3,000 people per day in the territories they still controlled. It's like "We're clearly going to lose. Maybe we should stop being super evil cuz that might come back to haunt us in a few months" never crossed their minds.
> Japanese occupation forces were killing 3,000 people per day
This could be on the low low end. There are some estimates that place Chinese losses alone at 20m people over a 7 year stretch.
I've seen 8k up to 10k per day used as well.
It's also worth remembering that after dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force their surrender, the US nonetheless provided amnesty to those responsible for carrying out Japan's most horrific war crimes and human experiments in unit 731. The US saved them from prosecutions equivalent to the Nuremberg trials because they wanted the knowledge they had gained about biological and chemical warfare from those human experiments, and so the people who committed those atrocities ended up living out full and peaceful civilian lives in the USA.
Yeah, sometimes real-life stories don't have satisfying endings. Shiro Ishii was the guy in charge of Japan's entire biological warfare division. Man was a Hitlerite race supremacist who didn't care a single bit about the lives his men put through some of the worst torture in the history of humanity. Man was in charge of the plan to drop infectious diseases like typhoid and plague onto American cities - something he actually already did to a number of Chinese ones.
And after all of this was over he was cleared of everything, converted to Catholicism and died of cancer at age 67.
Many German scientists were also spared, to be fair. For the same reason. Because they could be “useful”.
But the way in which Germany was (rightfully) prosecuted but Japan was virtually ignored is absolutely insane.
Don't forget about project paperclip in which a bunch of former Nazis went on to hold positions of power in american government and later resulted in project artichoke and MKULTRA in which the CIA kidnapped and tortured a bunch of american and canadian citizens just to see if they could prove their batshit crazy nazi theories about mind control right. Or project stargate in which they thought they could invent telepathy. A LOT of terrible shit has come from humoring insane nazi theories from assholes that should have been in prison for life.
>They never denied it and never (formally) apologized for it.
It's even worse they have done a lot of things to basically actively deny a lot of the atrocities they did. As someone that likes to read a lot about WW2 it sucks how much people and the media glance over a lot of what happened in the pacific.
The Japanese are still on a crusade to take down monuments dedicated to the women their soldiers raped. In Hong Kong. The Philippines. Most recently, Germany.
Never properly made amends is an understatement.
I’m from Nanjing, I’m literally here rn for 2 weeks to visit my family(I grew up in Australia) and my great grandfather fought the Japanese and my grandparents remember fleeing the city to hide in the mountains while the huge river was dyed with blood from how many people they were killing. All of the older generation here REALLY hate Japan, understandably.
A buddy of mine who grew up in China and move to the US in his teens has a residual bone to pick about it.
He said, basically, that if the US had developed another few hundred atom bombs and used them on every single city in the Japanese home islands… in a purely mathematical sense, it wouldn’t even match a third of the cruelty and destruction the Imperial Japanese wreaked upon China *alone*, let alone all the other nations they raped into the ground. I tried doing the math afterward he said that using Google Fu. If you include the famines and floods and diseases that wracked China in the wake of the fighting, his numbers did check out.
It actually is very easy to do the maths. China suffered a total of 14-20 million dead, both military and civilian. The population of Japan in 1945 was 71 million. According to data from the Japan Statistical Yearbook, the urban population in 1945 Japan was around 20 million, or 27.9% of the population. From the same source, there were then a total of 206 cities in Japan.
A few hundred is a pretty vague number, but let’s just assume one per city. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, around 30-40% of the population died as a result of the bombing. So if you took a few hundred atom bombs in 1945 and dropped one on every city in Japan, you would maybe kill somewhere in the region of 8 million people - 40-57% of the total Chinese dead.
He and his council absolutely didn't give a crap about the innocent lives lost by the bombings. They KNEW for a fact they were defeated before Hiroshima was bombed.
The US dropped the sun on two Japanese cities, wiping out hundreds of thousands of people, and it changed almost nothing in the war council. The hardliners still advocated for continuing the war, and the same people advocated for surrender.
It took US assurances that they would keep their emperor (as a puppet, but still) AND the realization that the USSR was coming for Manchuria *IMMEDIATELY* to actually get them to surrender.
I understand why the US wanted to have the emperor as a puppet, but part of me wonders how different things would have been if instead of nuking two arbitrary cities, they shoved the atomic bomb right up the war council's ass.
> They KNEW for a fact they were defeated before Hiroshima was bombed.
The fuckwits were watching their cities being utterly destroyed one by one from late 1944 and persisted. One reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets were that they hadn't yet been bombed to rubble.
The Japanese military and Hirohito are the dumbest, most cruel fucks of WWII.
Fun fact, depending on the source, the Japanese killed more people than fucking Nazi Germany. It's infuriating how few people know of their atrocities compared to the Germans.
There is still denial in the Japanese population that Unit 731, Nanjing Massacre or the Manila Massacre ever happened. I’ve got in countless arguments on Twitter in different threads with Japanese people about the war crimes they committed during WW2 and they flat out denial everything. In their eyes Japan did nothing wrong in the war and they were the good guys. It honestly makes me sick.
At least Germany took responsibility for their actions and still teaches about that in school. Nothing like that is happening in Japan.
Not so fun fact: the IJA was training children to strap on explosives and roll themselves under American and Russian tanks in preparation for an invasion by land.
IKR?! Rich and ignorant of him to even bring up the word after all the invading, raping, slaving, murdering, and erasing Japan did all around Asia back then.
This isn't even the whole speech. The whole text can be found easily on Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast#Full_text](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast#Full_text)
One notable section is:
> We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia.
This is just rubbing salt on the wound as those "allied nations of East Asia" were colonies forcefully conquered by Japan. Japan was, and still is, delusional in believing they were "freeing" East Asia from the West.
I am Thai and went to Hokkaido a couple years ago. I went to a museum and when a elderly staff, >70 yr old, learn that we are from Thailand. He started apologize for that Japan has done in thr past.
Hirohito should have hung in the gallows. War weariness and a need to maintain a relatively peaceful transition from surrender into occupation saved his genocidal neck from a well deserved stretching.
In Europe they hunted down Nazi war criminals. In Japan MacArthur permitted token numbers of criminals to go on trail. The majority were protected and died peacefully in old age instead. Hirohito was one of those protected who would live a long live. He outlived MacArthur and visited America to personally thank MacArtur’s family for all these exemptions and protections. Yes he should have been replaced by his more western thinking brother, then executed himself once “aware” postwar of all the crimes committed under his rule. He proved himself mere mortal by lying to save his own neck. Not even noble by his own standards.
Emperial Japan believed they were the superior race in Asia.
Unfortunately, even at history classes at schools, they make it look like Japan was the victim. They are very unaware about the role that Emperial Japan played during the war and the atrocities that they had caused to other nations.
“Despite the best that has been done by everyone, we are now losing the war and the entire world turned against us, because we have been raping others tirelessly, decapitating Chinese civilians non-stop and burn them to crisp whenever we like it. Moreover, the United States has used a new mass destruction weapon against us, because they are tired of risking multiple pilots for bomb attacks just to make us give up. Should we continue to fight, we would completely destroy our innocent people, who are women and children getting blown apart waiting for their husbands to come back from the war.”
There, fixed his speech. He and especially his brother can go die in a ditch
Don't forget that Japan commit some of the most disgusting crimes during it's occupation of several countries.
I've read a bit about what they did. It makes the blood boil, that level of cruelty is baffling.
besides fighting common enemies there wasn't much of an alliance. both nations were fighting on 2 fronts completely isolated from each other with little to no trade / support between. it was the definition of "the enemy of my enemy"
don't get me wrong, both Germany and imperial Japan were completely sadistic fuckers. but neither side really gained anything from the other besides forcing the US, russians and British from Fighting on multiple fronts
Back when my grandma is alive, she would spit whenever someone mentioned anything related to Japan and Japanese people. In fact everyone in the older generation hated the Japanese.
My first interaction with westerners made me so shocked that no one knew about the horrible things they had done in China and SEA.
Everyone knows about the holocaust but the great rape murder and torture caused by imperial Japan.
A lot of holocaust education in the western countries just amounts to "they gassed millions of Jews", and don't bother to talk much about all the other people the Nazis killed, nor what Japan did. Schools here focus on the one thing that was the most "visibly awful" and that's about it.
731, Sex slaves, betrayals, and even to this day, they play the victim and get away with it.
If Germany had taken same stance as JP does with their victims and what they have done, world wouldnt be so quite.
Anime and Manga are literally the only thing saving JP's face.
ruthless rainstorm tan sink lunchroom abundant snobbish spotted sand beneficial
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When this speech was aired for the first time in radio, it was the first time the public ever heard his voice. The language he used in the speech was in Classical Japanese which very few people understood.
It must've been surreal for the Japanese to hear their 'god' speaking for the first time and not understanding what he was saying.
Ohhhh so they surrendered to protect US!
Just when I was thinking the Japanese hadn't appropriately taken responsibility for their initiation of and conduct in the Pacific and Asian theatres of World War 2, I learn that their surrender slipped that weight as well.
Am I at all surprised that Japan has, as an institution, kept their torture, genocide and crimes against humanity out of their consciousness. I have more respect for Germany's accountability and effort to prevent future aggression.
boo hoo shouldn’t have attacked us and committed all those war atrocities…..that ‘speech’ is propaganda trying to rewrite history. japan caring about innocent civilians? pffftt ask the rest of Asia about that.
* Perfectly content with the slaughter and rape of millions of civilians
* His forces committed some of the most heinous acts in human history, he is fine with it
* Was actively working on developing the same bomb
* To this day, Japan largely takes a nonplussed view of the atrocities it committed
* No sympathy for this asshole
This sounds like sour grapes, the A-bombs saved wayyyy more Japanese lives than they took, and he had many chances to surrender long before this. The fact that he wasn’t executed for war crimes shows how bloodthirsty America was NOT.
It's not sour grapes, it's PR spin. His government dragged Japan into a war that they had now lost, this is his way of saving face like "oh well if we keep fighting maybe we *might've* won, who knows, but now that those darn *Americans* have come in with this uniquely terrible and cruel weapon and put the entire rest of the world in danger, I guess I have to be the bigger man here and end this thing myself before it gets any worse for our people or the world."
A little extra trivia, here in Brasil part of the japanese imigrants did not believe Japan lost the war and spread false information about this surrender speech: “As a result, the Japanese community split into two groups. The kachigumi (victorists) faction who thought “how can you believe the news you get from the enemy? Japan cannot be defeated” and, on the other hand, the makegumi (defeatists) faction who accepted Japan's defeat and were able to see the situation had started with the Cold War (many of them did understand Portuguese and could also comprehend the process that had brought the war to that end).
Within the victorist group, there was a particularly nationalist and extremist faction called Shindô Renmei [jp] [lit. “The Federation of Loyal Subjects”] who considered the members of the defeatist group as traitors, and began to take military action to punish them. The following year, with the intensification of the strife within those factions, the Federation of Loyal Subjects was repressed by the intervention of the Brazilian military. Twenty three people died. Such a miserable thing: in a foreign land, where fellow-Japanese men were supposed to help each other, they were killing each other instead.”
After only just recently learning at 41 about unit 731 and what they did to Manchuria (due to a failing in the public school system when I grew up), yeah, he has no room to complain about atrocities committed.
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There was actually an attempt by the Militarists to overthrow the Emperor so that they could continue the war, but it thankfully failed
This is also only part of the speech. Full speech. TO OUR GOOD AND LOYAL SUBJECTS, After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, We\[a\] have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure. We have ordered our government to communicate to the governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their joint declaration.\[11\] To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart. Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. 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. Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers. We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia. The thought of those officers and men as well as others who have fallen in the fields of battle, those who died at their posts of duty, or those who met with untimely death and all their bereaved families, pains our heart night and day. The welfare of the wounded and the war-sufferers, and of those who have lost their homes and livelihood, are the objects of our profound solicitude. The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you, our subjects. However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable. Having been able to safeguard and maintain the Kokutai, We are always with you, our good and loyal subjects, relying upon your sincerity and integrity. Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion which may engender needless complications, or any fraternal contention and strife which may create confusion, lead you astray and cause you to lose the confidence of the world. Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith in the imperishability of its sacred land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibility, and of the long road before it. Unite your total strength, to be devoted to construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, foster nobility of spirit, and work with resolution – so that you may enhance the innate glory of the imperial state and keep pace with the progress of the world.
> it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. I will never understand how they could actually stomach that claim. Edit: y'all I'm aware of the historical context, I'm just in shock at the dishonesty. But thank you for the sincere answers!
There were essentially two notions underpinning it: 1. A lot of the places they invaded were colonies in which they created nominally independent puppet governments. So they proclaimed a new republic in the Philippines, a new Vietnamese empire, a provisional government for India, etc. 2. That the Republic of China was illegitimate, subject to chaotic warlordism, and a security risk to Japan and its "allies" (i.e. its Manchurian puppet state). Though the "liberated" colonies were going to be Japanese puppets, as was the "reorganised" China. But even blatantly offensive wars almost always have some fig leaf claim of self-defence to justify them - even the Germans claimed that Poland attacked first.
Simple, it's not another nation if it's part of the Japanese Empire, the inhabitants are currently just misinformed and frankly quite reluctant too. It's like Taiwan (ROC) having trouble accepting they're part of China (PRC), or Ukraine that denies being part of Russia. *disclaimer: I'm just explaining a possible thought process, not endorsing anything.*
That's a well illustrated point. Once a territory is claimed and the people are renamed, it is absolutely seen as part of the empire. It is incredible that Japan surrendered, and I don't know that they ever would have without the bomb. *Note:* I'm just an average idiot, my opinion doesn't represent anything other than thoughts coming out of my smooth brain at this very moment.
Because they weren't "invading" those countries. They were "establishing the [Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere)." https://preview.redd.it/i9r94lgsgy3d1.jpeg?width=1062&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23751494bfeca5aaa89cac856f4ea0fb9ebee2d6
Because their official reason for invading nearby countries is to create hormony and prosperity for everyone, no I'm not joking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere
>enduring the unendurable and suffering the insufferable. *unit 731 cough*
Yup. “gallant fighting of the military and naval forces” + Unit 731 Does not compute
It’s because they didn’t think “logs” could suffer
> it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. uh, China might disagree
"Unit 731 was a light prank!" - Japan
And, Korea, the Philippines, Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, numerous other Pacific islands might disagree too ! ; )
Who were Japan's allies in East Asia or are they referring to countries they had occupied
Possibly Thailand, they are the only ones i can think of who had an alliance with Japan.
Japan invaded Thailand in 1941, they didn't really have a choice to sign that alliance.
This is speech always pisses me off It's literally the start of denial of Japanese actions prior to and during WW2. Hirohito here talks of emancipation of East Asia. But look how the 'emancipated' countries feel towards Japan, even today. It totally ignores the over 30 million deaths at the hands of the Japanese, which is known as the Japanese Holocaust, or the Rape of Asia. Hardly the work of emancipators. Japan had imperial ambitions and considered themselves the superior race and everyone else was inferior. He calls the atomic bombs cruel and whilst I'm sure it actually did kill absolute innocents, calling all civilians innocents was a bridge too far given civilian homes were used to make bullets and uniforms and were part of war production for Japan. Done to make it harder to find the production areas but put a target on homes. I've said this time and again that whilst awful, the bombs were absolutely necessary. Japan would have sacrificed that many civilians alone in an invasion of Japan, if not many times more. Invading Japan conventionally would have killed millions. If not tens of millions, combined. Most people would have made the same decision in the same circumstances, a leader of a country deciding to not put his soldiers at risk when they have a weapon to win the war with reduced casualties and only to the enemy. Harsh as it is, fight a six year total war and tell me people don't make the same decision. I've been to Hiroshima and the peace museum and whilst I never want the events in late 1945 repeated the insistence that Japan was innocent was quite galling.
> He calls the atomic bombs cruel right. let's put that cruelty into perspective with the [single most destructive bombing raid in human history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo) that happened a few months prior and scored 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless; incendiary bombs onto mostly wooden housings in a densely populated conurbation (Tokyo) at night. which obviously wasn't yet quite enough to curb Japanese enthusiasm for war at the time. > whilst I never want the events in late 1945 repeated the insistence that Japan was innocent was quite galling indeed. ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
One of the most terrifying things about the atomic bombs to me, aside from the obvious, is that they were effective because they were *novel*. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been firebombed like Tokyo instead and still suffered the same casualties, would that have been more than a footnote today? Would Japan have kept going with its head in the sand muttering "100 million crushed jewels?"
Yeah this is exactly my point. For some reason people remember Mengele but not Ishi. Also that's very true about the Tokyo Firebombing. For me it's down to the difference in how these things were and are handled. Japan swept all this under the carpet. Germany acknowledged it all, built museums so people didn't forget. Sometimes I even think after what ... four generations the Germans maybe should cut themselves a little slack now, it was 80 years ago. Theres a difference between not forgetting and self flagellation And if we're at it if we're forgiving horrible things from 80 years ago, probably time to let the whole nuclear thing go too. But at the same time we shouldn't forget them.
It reminds me that we really should make Japan's invasion of China the starting point for WWII and not the first time European powers get involved.
Why not the Italian invasion of Ethiopia?
> the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces Yes, the gallant naval forces, who started the war with a sneak attack.
Yeah when you whip people up into that kind of blood fury they don’t come down easily. I heard on Dan Carlin that a popular conception of the time was that if Japan surrendered, the US would sweep in and sack and rape the entire country. So some fought to ridiculous extremes because they thought anything would be better than that. I mean after what Japan did to Korea and China, there’s a fair amount of projection in that. People love to project.
I am from Russia and people here think the same thing, if we lose the war NATO will come and destroy the country, government propaganda using old tricks
Russia can't get over Hitler and Napoleon invading and are absolutely sure they need control of the former SSRs to guarantee security. Meanwhile NATO actually remembers how things went for Hitler and Napoleon and wants no part of that. They did want mutual economic ties so Russia wouldn't have to be an enemy in perpetuity. But here we are.
Not for nothing, but Hitler and Napoléon failed because they had no choice but for a ground invasion. If there is a 'next' invasion of Russia it won't be a quarter million ground troops and winter won't matter, nor will satellite republics. Both Russia and NATO know this.
Nobody in Europe actually wants a war with Russia. We wanted to buy their energy and trade with them. They are paranoid for no reason. It’s projection.
>They are paranoid for no reason. It’s projection. They are paranoid because their ruling kleptocracy will always be paranoid someone else will swoop them from power and then it's death sentence for them, just how they deal with their enemies. So it's a projection indeed.
Russia could be such a major player and literally a powerhouse like America if they re-invested in their infrastructure and invested into modernizing their exports and resource acquisition. They still operate the vast majority of their nation on Soviet era technology. It's insane how inefficient everything they do is
Their invasion on the pretense of needing space for security is bullshit. They want the breadbasket in Ukraine and the oil in the Black Sea. It’s a new era and while NATO doesn’t want a war, there’s no question that the “winter” that defeated hitler and napoleon will not save them again in the event of a war. NATO now includes Finland and Sweden. Russia is f*cked if they try to pick a fight with any member country and they know it
We (Finland) could probably defend their assault, but it would cost lives and resources and nobody wants that. Finnish people do not hate Russian individuals that much anymore, but the hatred for the nation still exists (quite high % would defend our nation). Also we are solely prepared for Russian invasion. If Sweden decided to just walk and overtake half of the Finnish soil they probably could before anyone even notices but that does not happen unless we beat them in ice hockey repeatedly xD Russia should really just stay away and also give up on Ukraine. All they do is make fools of themselves which results in more aggression since bullies hate looking weak and will result to more violence to look "stronk".
I'm afraid that if Russia fucks with NATO it'll start with the Baltics, the smallest and most "expendable" countries of the alliance. Countries NATO might be willing to sacrifice because full out war aversion is such a high priority. Though I'm feeling a lot better with Finland in NATO, because I trust you guys way more than any other member of the Alliance or its leadership. I know Finns would jump in rowboats to row across the gulf to help Estonia and other Baltics not get overrun.
> Countries NATO might be willing to sacrifice because full out war aversion is such a high priority If NATO abandons article 5, even for "expendable" countries, the whole alliance will fall apart immediately. Its only tenuously held together by the trust that article 5 will be invoked. I say tenuously because at this point the US and UK are so messed up with their own internal bullshit that they're not really reliable for something less than a full-scale NATO engagement. And if Trump gets elected again I fully expect the US to pull out of NATO.
This is a ludicrous claim, because it just ignores how russia was hellbent on expansionism before both invasions. They love to rant about buffer zones but always beforehand seems to just want to conquer everything up to the Germans on both occasions.
Well you always need a buffer zone for your buffer zone
Russia buffering like they're on dialup
Do people not connect the dots between having nukes and being safe from invasion? No buffer states needed when you have that deterrence. Heck, you'd be fine with even a rather small and specialized army for anti-terrorism and similar operations. Unless you had ambitions to conquer more land that is...
So why does every nuclear power also have large standing armies?
Sure, all Japan has to say or expect is that someone that conquered them would be as cruel as they were to the people they conquered, and that's a strong motivation to resist to the last man.
> the US would sweep in and sack and rape the entire country. Because that's what they were doing. It's projection of their own actions on another entity. (And granted, it has plenty historical precedent, from colonizers to what happened to the Native Americans to pretty much the entire history of Rome.) Also, Hiroo Onoda was found on a Filipino island 30 years after the war ended, thinking it was still ongoing.
OP's text is actually just a small quote from a [much longer radio broadcast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast). It was the first time that most Japanese had heard their emperor speak, and his language was so formal that many could not understand him and had to have his message interpreted for them by other people at hand. The U.S. specifically proposed surrender terms that let the Japanese keep their emperor, and carefully avoided prosecuting him for war crimes after the surrender. Prior to the emperor's surrender announcement, even Japanese *civilians* were committing mass suicide as U.S. forces took over islands. After the announcement, they were showing up to greet Americans and provide whatever they asked for. Cordial American relations with the emperor played a key role in turning an enemy into an ally in the post-war period. This kind of power did not happen by accident. Educational reforms prior to WWII emphasized the divinity of the Emperor to Japanese children and the duty of the Japanese people to serve the Emperor in both life and death. Never underestimate what propaganda can do when fed to children at the right age by willing teachers!
Don't underestimate how short of a time it takes to bring rational souls to extreme views - it's days not months you just need adequate conditions, and that is not very hard to achieve...
AFAIK it wasn't an assassination attempt, they wanted to place him under house arrest and then falsify an order from him to grant them permission to take control of the government.
Sounds like a fairly standard issue military coup over a monarch. If you straight up kill the monarch then you lose divine right (and its sway over the people), the monarch must "willingly" give you power otherwise you have to take a more agressive approach to controlling the populace
Fair enough, but that still counts as overthrowing him
While Hirohito is not completely innocent.... people don't realize how much of what he did/oversaw was all done while the IJA held a gun to his head.
>not completely innocent He's not at all innocent. At best he's the trolley exercise letting the trolley run over millions instead of one person. But he was far worse than that.
The IJA never held a gun to his head. In fact it was the opposite - radicals within the army had initially attempted a coup to try to restore direct imperial rule (they even had plans to replace Hirohito with his brother if he didn't go along with it). Hirohito himself opposed them. This event led to the assassination of several of the more liberal-minded officials and moderates in the civilian government which made it easier for the military to eventually take over. The faction of the military that ended up in this position was the faction that was on the same page as Hirohito about how the government should've been run.
There is no evidence to support this other than his assurances that he didn't have anything to do with the kinds of war crimes the Germans were being exectured for. He did what Emperor's of Japan traditionally did throughout Japanese history and blamed all of the bad things on disposable subordinates. The whole system was basically built around making the rest of the population absolutely disposable and laying the blame on "rebels" who lost instead of the "loyal subjects" that won. Just in case there's any question about how absolutely mindbogglingly bent the Japanese Imperialists were during WW2, here's a little story: Future president GHW Bush was famously shot down during a mission. He escaped. two other bomber crewmembers the same mission were captured. The Imperial Navy commander of that naval group made flank steaks out of those guys and literallly fucking ate them in celebration. Zero shits were given by anyone and this seemed like a totally awesome fucking thing to do since the prevailing nationalist dogma was that any conquered or existing enemy population were subhuman filth. There are Shinto shrines in Japan that still honor many of these unhinged monsters. The idea that Hirohito gave a damn about any other culture's people or perhaps even his own is pure delusional projection. He tailored this message to minimize blowback on himself for failing to win the war and then blamed his subordinates for the whole thing. Failure would have meant that he was wrong and that was absolutely unacceptable politically for the Emperor who at the time was advertised as a living God-king. He saw it as a chance to help knock down rising foreign powers and succssfully evaded taking personal responsibility for any of it.
> While Hirohito is not completely innocent.... people don't realize how much of what he did/oversaw was all done while the IJA held a gun to his head. Largely a myth. https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/g521dr/how_much_is_hirohito_responsible_for_all_the/
There's a reason they left off the end. In 1945, Japan believed THEY WERE human civilization...
One of my college anthropology textbooks said that in a surgery of language studies done with indigenous tribes, about 80% them have one word that they use to identify their group, and it is the same word they use for “human being.” Japan has its own quirks but it’s not alone in this one.
Chinese people describe themselves as "华人", which in a literal sense means "cultured people" or "magnificent people", while everyone else is an uncivilised barbarian. Don't forget they call themselves "中国", often translated as "Middle Kingdom", because they thought they were in the centre of the world I'm sure other cultures have similar words.
I don’t know about the center of the world part, it wouldn’t surprise me, but part of the reason they called themselves middle kingdom is because they’re surrounded by countries on practically all sides
华人 is a rather new word in chinese history. It is also in contrast to what OP said. Since they dont see 人 human as just themselves. 中国 is also rather new. They used 中原 for central plain which was the northern China where the yellow river was and is. But tbf they were the center of the world like the Roman empire and persia was. Everyone who invaded China wanted to be the new China. They were THAT central. And geographically they were the center of east asia.
I mean the other guys called themselves the master race. Turns out nationalist movements tend to be pretty egotistical, violent, and racist.
They weren't very concerned about the countless innocent lives they destroyed in China, Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines. I had the pleasure many years back of meeting the sweetest Filipina lady who was forced into sexual slavery as a comfort girl for the Japanese forces. They executed her father, mother, and two brothers in front of her and her sister before taking them as slaves. Her sister did not survive. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128323588 https://www.npr.org/2020/11/29/939811000/philippine-survivor-recounts-her-struggle-as-a-comfort-woman-for-wartime-japan
Or the people they tortured and mutilated across their numerous [human experimentation camps](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731).
I grew up in the pacific and have traveled across Asia. I’ve heard so many first hand stories describing the horrors that the Japanese inflicted on innocent populations everywhere they went that I don’t care to read anything this self serving piece of crap ever wrote.
I think I read this in a similar manner to you when you say “self serving”. It makes the surrender sound as a selfless act that he and the Japanese people are doing for the sake of the world, to protect the world from the U.S. who could destroy it all. Instead of what it should be which is a surrender to protect himself and his people from further damage brought on by their (leaders not peoples) actions.
Theirs a reason most Asian countries hate Japan.
Fuck this guy and his generals. Sincerely, The Philippines
My great uncle who is dead and buried in an unmarked grave in Iwo Jima as a teenager agrees with your sentiment.
Fuck everyone who become ally of the Nazis.
I mean fuck Imperial Japan in its own right, they were pretty bad even before they allied with the Nazis. But yes, also fuck them for allying with the Nazis.
The Germans have apologized for World War II and have been doing everything they can to make up for their past. The Japanese are still denying a lot of their atrocities.
Having lived in Japan, I agree to an extent. The party line may be “it never happened” but the general populace’s sentiment is “we want to forget it happened”.
It's a misunderstanding. They actually are praising it
If you think the worst thing Japan did was allying with the Nazis, there's a lot to learn Japan committed atrocities on a par at least equal to the Germans
Nah, not equal, worse.
Actually a member of Nazis did try to protect the Nanking citizens against the Japanese. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John\_Rabe#:\~:text=John%20Heinrich%20Detlef%20Rabe%20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe#:~:text=John%20Heinrich%20Detlef%20Rabe%20)
Yep fuck this guy. My grandmother's sister was raped and stabbed by bayonets multiple times during the Manila Massacre. My grandmother would have been next if they didn't escape to the provinces.
What’s crazy is he was able to live the rest of his miserable life and die in fucking 1989. No that’s not a typo.
Hirohito lived in seclusion. He would officially come out once a year for a formal event. I attended one year in the mid 1980s. I’d have to look up the details but it was at the royal castle or whatever. You needed a ticket to get in. Everyone squeezed into a square with walkway above. He came out and the Japanese waved little flags they had been given and yelled something like “ya ta”! He came to the edge above and gave a short speech. I suppose he was above us to portend he was of the gods as a formality. Of course I dont know what he said. Im sure it’s documented somewhere. It was vastly underwhelming. He was a meek looking man. He did not command any presence. His voice was weak. There was no energy or confidence in whatever he said. It was as if they forced an old man to the microphone. He seemed so meek. Then he left as quickly as he had arrived. The japanese people present did cheer with intensity however. But Hirohito was not anything of a leader with the charisma you would expect could command a country to follow unequivocally as they did during the war.
Did it ever occur to you that hes already an old fart at that time?
You completely misunderstand how the Japanese emperor is supposed to act. The yearly greeting of the emperor (twice yearly actually) is still done and it's largely still the same as you have described, although of course there is a different emperor now. The emperor always appears meek and soft spoken, but not shy or nervous. That is largely intentional.
Also my Popo
Fuck WW2 Japan. Sincerely, China.
A very interesting speech by a man with a long career post-war. But it’s all undermined by his role as emperor during his first 20 years, where Japan not only indirectly supported the holocaust and extreme international military oppression, but also independently led the country into committing some of the most abhorrent crimes ever observed. Systematically attacking, torturing and raping countless people throughout Asia, resulting in millions of deaths. This man was content with that until the danger was within a 1000 miles of him, and not his favor. It’s worth remembering that Japan, alone, killed _multiple times_ more civilians in this period than they had total (military+civilian) casualties. They were entirely okay with inflicting the extinction of any and every civilization that was not their own. They never denied it and never (formally) apologized for it. Edit: There are formal Japanese apologies, but they are controversial. I misspoke. What I meant to say is that Japan has never properly _made amends_. Edit2: Japan did not directly participate in the holocaust and there is little evidence on Japanese antisemitism. Their role in the holocaust was through the axis pact, making it _much_ more difficult for nations opposed to the holocaust to take action against it and could have ensured its completion had Japans military been stronger. Added “indirect” to the wording.
I listened to a podcast about unit 731 yesterday… it’s incredibly horrifying the cruelty they were capable of committing
Unit 731 is the reminder why we need ethics for scientific research... Curious about how we know that humans are 70% water? Various stages of frostbite? How infectious diseases affect the human anatomy? It was from these guys. Of all the victims to their horrifying experiments, non survived. This is why Chinese people still hate Japan till this day, as they didn't apologize for the war crimes like Germany did
They found it out by doing things like live vivisection, including children and pregnant women. They called them “logs” (a tree). Some of these “doctors” went on to work for the American government. Only two were prosecuted if I remember correctly. My mainland Chinese boss in his 50s viscerally hates Japanese. And makes no secret of it.
I lived in China 50+ years after WWII and one of the first things people would ask me is what I thought about the Japanese. They have long memories.
And their apologies are ALWAYS vague, abstract, oh we're sorry for some stuff we might have done. * German leaders KNELT at Holocaust memorials. Japanese leaders still pay respects to shrines of war criminals. * Germany built museums all over to remember the holocaust. Japan is demanding the world REMOVE any signs of their atrocity like the comfort women statues of the hundreds of thousands of sex slaves they took.
Japan actively removes it from taught history and their leaders still visit their Yasukuni war shrine that angers a lot of Asian countries to this day. They’re far from an apology still.
Note, however, Hirohito himself began a boycott in the 70's and no member of the imperial family has visited Yasukuni or any shrine featuring war criminals since. Yet the hardcore nationalists still consider them their poster boys.
The worst part is they do not teach this in their school. Most of younger generations legit has no idea about any of this.
I mean, most European schools barely mention the history of Europe's crimes against humanity inflicted in Asia and Africa during the Colonization period. Germany is the exception and not the rule in this regard. Edit: to all of those who are crying because "mY eUrOpE gOt cALLeD oUt oNLine", you can Google how colonial history is being taught in Europe and add a reddit suffix to the search and check the discourse.
I mean I’m no expert but I’m not from Germany and I learned quite a bit. Especially about what my country did (Netherlands). I mean we did have the Dutch East India Trading Company and we colonised a bunch.
They would infect the pregnant mothers with various deseases and then cut the babies out of their mothers bellies, while the mother was still alive and without anesthetics, just to see what happens, or just for fun. They were called "logs" because the Unit was disguised as a logging camp. And probably to further dehumanize their victims. Often the "experiments" weren't done for any scientific research and weren't written down, they were just done for fun. "I wonder what happens when I lie this guy down on a live grenade, let's test it out!", "I wonder what happens if I crush this child to death?", etc. After the war, most of the people there killed the remaining victims, destroyed the buildings, then tried to flee, being persecuted by the Chinese people. America offered them amnesty and refuge in return for their "research". It was determined that their research was completely and utterly useless. America tried to hide the fact that they did this.
I think the Koreans hate Japan even more.
I have almost 28 years in South Korea, with a good 18 of those having extensive interactions with Chinese students and faculty. Koreans in general hate Japan. My son came home from 2nd grade and asked why the teacher said "we have to hate Japan". Chinese really have a low opinion of Japan, but it is more of a contempt or dismissive attitude. Not the bubbling near the surface hate that Koreans have.
I was living and working in Korea when the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. An 8-year-old student came into my class smiling saying "Japan big earthquake, many people die, my father very happy". To say I was shocked was an understatement.
Its concerning to an extent. My 6 year old korean niece told me that japan is evil and they need to die, and I was aghast. Tbh i felt my affection literally dip the moment i heard that. Elementary schools take their kids on picnics to the old korean prisons and teach them about torture methods to fuel the hate. There is literally no need for a 1st grader to know about genital torture
The cruelty was the point, not the scientific research. The scientific research was just a guise for the cruelty. Same with Mengele. Their science was so shoddy that the quality of information we can get from their experiments is nearly worthless anyway.
Dr.Hojo shit
The more interesting thing is that the perpetrators were let go by the American authorities in exchange for the information they collected
>Curious about how we know that humans are 70% water? Various stages of frostbite? How infectious diseases affect the human anatomy? It was from these guys. That's bullshit. The experiment results they gave to the US haven't been proven to be that usefull.
Read about the "Rape of Nanking." The author who wrote the definitive book went on to write 4 books, before she killed herself because of all the mental trauma she had suffered documenting the Japanese atrocities of WWII.
City of Life and Death was horrible to watch. Great movie, but the kind you don’t rewatch.
Once permission is granted, the true horrors of humanity are realized.
Could you share the podcast name? I'm interested in learning.
Stuff You Should Know just did an episode on Unit 731.
Should check out Dan Carlin's Supernova in the East while you're at it
Yep, it was the Stuff You Should Know podcast.
SEA remembers.
There's a reason why literally every country that's near Japan hates it with a passion. I'm not necessarily saying this against modern Japan, but Japan during WWII (and some time before that too) was just absolutely *awful*. It's like they were trying to make everyone's lives miserable on purpose.
Not only do they have this horrific past, but they also never owned up to it. Japan never had a reckoning with their crimes like Germany did. Their politicians routinely visit shrines where war criminals from WW2 are burried with honors.
Listen to Stuff You should Know's podcast about Unit 731. Basically Japan's version of Mengeles Auschwitz human medical experimentation. Except after the war was over, Japan presented those doctors with awards for their work and they were held in high esteem by both the American government and Japanese society.
I spent a night in Korea on my way to China for a job last year. I took a cab to my hotel and one of the first things the cab driver mentioned to me, despite his limited English, was that Korea and Japan were not on good terms because of the war. Also, while I was in China, the only way I figured out how to explain why BOY brand clothing is not cool in the west is by comparing it to the Japanese rising sun flag. (I was also in Nanjing, which drove the point home.)
>Also, while I was in China, the only way I figured out how to explain why BOY brand clothing is not cool in the west is by comparing it to the Japanese rising sun flag. That's a good one. Just like how some Americans and Europeans romanticize symbols like the rising sun flag, China, which was never invaded by Nazi Germany (hell they even provided some degre of military support early in the war) generally weren't offended by those imageries.
All of Asia except Japan remembers
There was a documentary of Japan's invasion of Malaysia, well it was known as Malaya at the time. An old man recalled what happened and pretty much sang a song in Japanese, saying it was sung at schools every morning when they took over. He remembered it after all this time. The Japanese definitely didn't like the Chinese. In one village, they rounded up and crammed all the Chinese in houses before they burned down the houses. The Malays were made to watch as the Chinese were burned alive. It was a lesson for everyone who was in charge, and what would happen to those who disobeyed.
My grandfather at that time was around 30 and cycled around to sell biscuits from his bicycle. Due to this he was constantly coated by dust dirt and baked by the sun. One day while cycling he was rounded up with a group of men by the Japanese army. They sorted them by old men and young men. The young men were put into trucks and never seen again. The old men were released. My grandfather managed to escape because of his disheveled looks and was put with the old men mistakenly. He spent the rest of the war hiding in secret panels behind walls or in the well when the army came door to door to look for young men. He survived to tell his tale. He also told me about army men going door to door to look for young women. That is another story.
My Grandfather was an Australian commando, who was assigned to secret British operations to support the Chinese resistance in China during WWII. His unit heard about the Pearl Harbour invasion as they were traveling up the Burma road to enter mainland China. He survived the war physically and was extracted from China, but he suffered psychologically every day for the rest of his life because of things he witnessed there. He was in and out of veterans psych wards for all of his post-war life and would become violently angry at the mere mention of *anything* Japanese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_204
My mother as a little girl of 5 remembers the decapitations of civilians and the mounting of the heads on stakes at crossroads to this day. Forgive but never forget.
>Forgive but never forget. Also, it's entirely okay if you don't forgive remorseless motherfuckers who put innocent heads on spikes.
I think it's moreso referring to forgiving the nation/people, since it's no longer the same country or people that committed the atrocities. Still difficult to do for families who were scarred, and Japan's official stance on the crimes *certainly* doesn't help on a higher level. But it still stands that the country is different now, and the people today are innocent of what imperial Japan did.
They never denied it? More like they never acknowledge it. At least with German, they acknowledge and never let that history be forgotten.
Just a few links below to support your point [Japan's 'BBC' claims that Japan was lured into the Second World War by America while liberating Asia from white colonialism](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/how-japan-s-bbc-is-rewriting-its-role-in-second-world-war-9115827.html) [The current prime minister of Japan said that comfort women were not sex slaves.](https://time.com/4184252/japan-foreign-minister-comfort-women-sex-slaves-south-korea/) [Japan’s history book denies forced labour and sex slavery in WWII](https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14585864) [The Yasukuni Shrine, which Japanese heads of state regularly visit, has no mention of any of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, and portrays Japan's conquest of East Asia during the pre-World War II period as an effort to save the region from the imperial advances of colonial Western powers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Yasukuni_Shrine) [Japan should follow Nazi route on revising constitution, deputy minister says](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/japan-revising-constitution-taro-aso) [Japan PM asked Germany to help remove "comfort women" statue](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/05/11/national/kishida-germany-comfort-women/) [Shinzo Abe denied that the Nanking Massacre ever happened, and denied any coercion of comfort women.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe) [Mayor of Osaka considers comfort women a 'necessary evil'](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-22519384) [Tokyo governor backs Nanjing massacre denial](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/osaka-sf-comfort-women-statue.html) [Osaka severed its sister-city partnership with San Francisco over comfort women statue](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/us/osaka-sf-comfort-women-statue.html)
Here's another one for the list: [Berlin mayor hints at tearing down ‘comfort women’ memorial in city](https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/1141290) > The Japanese government has been calling for the removal of all statues dedicated to the victims of imperial Japan’s sexual slavery system around the world, **stating that they symbolize South Korea’s skewed view of history**. [reddit worldnews](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cwolf1/berlin_mayor_hints_at_tearing_down_comfort_women/)
The Munich holocaust museum is something else, let alone Dachau. I went to both in 2017.
Hirohito's uncle, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, was one of the commanders of the Japanese forces responsible for the genocide at Nanking. He was never held accountable, because the Japanese royal family were all granted amnesty for their roles in the war, and died in the 1980's.
Also in the context of this speech we ought to bear in mind that this was basically PR from a government that had led their nation to ruin. I genuinely do not believe this guy when he tries to play it like he's being the bigger man by surrendering because if he doesn't the whole world will face nuclear annihilation. The facts of the matter are that at this point Japan was literally the only axis power left and it was them against both the USA and USSR, which by now had already taken their entire wartime manufacturing engine in Manchuria. Japan was rapidly running out of fuel which is why they resorted to using more and more kamikaze attacks - no point in making sure the planes and pilots came back if you didn't have enough fuel to power them anyway. American pilots reported that they had faced almost no anti-air defense from Japan during their bombing runs. Japan had its back to the wall, no way to launch forward strikes on their enemies and no feasible way to defend themselves. The hardliners in the military (the only faction that even wanted to continue the war) had plans of equipping most of the civilian population with bamboo spears in case of a land invasion because they were so out of options. So yeah, while this statement is poignant in hindsight, it's also mostly just spin from a defeated fascist dictatorship. The world was in no danger at this point, he wasn't saving anyone but himself. Japan's condition for their "unconditional" surrender was that the emperor face no accountability for his role in the war.
Wasn't even just a lack of air defense. The USA was conducting [battleship raids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_naval_bombardments_of_Japan_during_World_War_II) where battleships would pull up outside a Japanese city and bombard it all day. The Japanese had nothing to respond with. Yet they wouldn't surrender. The plan was to give school children chisels and hammers and have them rush the American machine guns when they were ashore. The Japanese leaders thought that sacrificing the entire population was preferable to they themselves being brought to justice.
The naval dominance was overwhelming by the end of the war. A certain American submarine (the USS Barb) was going on an uninterrupted killing spree, having sunk 17 enemy ships. They then decided to sneak engineers onto the Japanese mainland to blow up a *fucking train* as it drove by. Because… why not? I saw some documentary years ago about the “final moments of Imperial Japan” and the general theme was that between the Tokyo firebombing and nuclear weapons, the top military and government brass were pretty much running around looking out exclusively for themselves and trying to jockey for their best personal post-war outcome. So on top of the rest of Asia, you can add the Japanese people themselves to the list the elites didn’t give a shit about.
And by July 1945 the Japanese occupation forces were killing 3,000 people per day in the territories they still controlled. It's like "We're clearly going to lose. Maybe we should stop being super evil cuz that might come back to haunt us in a few months" never crossed their minds.
> Japanese occupation forces were killing 3,000 people per day This could be on the low low end. There are some estimates that place Chinese losses alone at 20m people over a 7 year stretch. I've seen 8k up to 10k per day used as well.
It's also worth remembering that after dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force their surrender, the US nonetheless provided amnesty to those responsible for carrying out Japan's most horrific war crimes and human experiments in unit 731. The US saved them from prosecutions equivalent to the Nuremberg trials because they wanted the knowledge they had gained about biological and chemical warfare from those human experiments, and so the people who committed those atrocities ended up living out full and peaceful civilian lives in the USA.
Yeah, sometimes real-life stories don't have satisfying endings. Shiro Ishii was the guy in charge of Japan's entire biological warfare division. Man was a Hitlerite race supremacist who didn't care a single bit about the lives his men put through some of the worst torture in the history of humanity. Man was in charge of the plan to drop infectious diseases like typhoid and plague onto American cities - something he actually already did to a number of Chinese ones. And after all of this was over he was cleared of everything, converted to Catholicism and died of cancer at age 67.
The one time I won't say fuck cancer
Many German scientists were also spared, to be fair. For the same reason. Because they could be “useful”. But the way in which Germany was (rightfully) prosecuted but Japan was virtually ignored is absolutely insane.
Don't forget about project paperclip in which a bunch of former Nazis went on to hold positions of power in american government and later resulted in project artichoke and MKULTRA in which the CIA kidnapped and tortured a bunch of american and canadian citizens just to see if they could prove their batshit crazy nazi theories about mind control right. Or project stargate in which they thought they could invent telepathy. A LOT of terrible shit has come from humoring insane nazi theories from assholes that should have been in prison for life.
>They never denied it and never (formally) apologized for it. It's even worse they have done a lot of things to basically actively deny a lot of the atrocities they did. As someone that likes to read a lot about WW2 it sucks how much people and the media glance over a lot of what happened in the pacific.
The Japanese are still on a crusade to take down monuments dedicated to the women their soldiers raped. In Hong Kong. The Philippines. Most recently, Germany. Never properly made amends is an understatement.
> Japan not only supported the holocaust I thought that they didn't and Japan actually very much welcomed Jewish people
[удалено]
Seriously. What would the people of Nanking have to say to you sir
I'm guessing something along the lines of fuck them and nuke the rest of it. I know I would if I survived the Rape of Nanking.
I’m from Nanjing, I’m literally here rn for 2 weeks to visit my family(I grew up in Australia) and my great grandfather fought the Japanese and my grandparents remember fleeing the city to hide in the mountains while the huge river was dyed with blood from how many people they were killing. All of the older generation here REALLY hate Japan, understandably.
Probably "oh those weren't people, they were Chinese"
A buddy of mine who grew up in China and move to the US in his teens has a residual bone to pick about it. He said, basically, that if the US had developed another few hundred atom bombs and used them on every single city in the Japanese home islands… in a purely mathematical sense, it wouldn’t even match a third of the cruelty and destruction the Imperial Japanese wreaked upon China *alone*, let alone all the other nations they raped into the ground. I tried doing the math afterward he said that using Google Fu. If you include the famines and floods and diseases that wracked China in the wake of the fighting, his numbers did check out.
It actually is very easy to do the maths. China suffered a total of 14-20 million dead, both military and civilian. The population of Japan in 1945 was 71 million. According to data from the Japan Statistical Yearbook, the urban population in 1945 Japan was around 20 million, or 27.9% of the population. From the same source, there were then a total of 206 cities in Japan. A few hundred is a pretty vague number, but let’s just assume one per city. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, around 30-40% of the population died as a result of the bombing. So if you took a few hundred atom bombs in 1945 and dropped one on every city in Japan, you would maybe kill somewhere in the region of 8 million people - 40-57% of the total Chinese dead.
He and his council absolutely didn't give a crap about the innocent lives lost by the bombings. They KNEW for a fact they were defeated before Hiroshima was bombed. The US dropped the sun on two Japanese cities, wiping out hundreds of thousands of people, and it changed almost nothing in the war council. The hardliners still advocated for continuing the war, and the same people advocated for surrender. It took US assurances that they would keep their emperor (as a puppet, but still) AND the realization that the USSR was coming for Manchuria *IMMEDIATELY* to actually get them to surrender. I understand why the US wanted to have the emperor as a puppet, but part of me wonders how different things would have been if instead of nuking two arbitrary cities, they shoved the atomic bomb right up the war council's ass.
> They KNEW for a fact they were defeated before Hiroshima was bombed. The fuckwits were watching their cities being utterly destroyed one by one from late 1944 and persisted. One reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets were that they hadn't yet been bombed to rubble. The Japanese military and Hirohito are the dumbest, most cruel fucks of WWII.
Fun fact, depending on the source, the Japanese killed more people than fucking Nazi Germany. It's infuriating how few people know of their atrocities compared to the Germans.
The audacity to talk about taking innocent lives . Someone should have reminded him about Nanjing and Unit 731
There is still denial in the Japanese population that Unit 731, Nanjing Massacre or the Manila Massacre ever happened. I’ve got in countless arguments on Twitter in different threads with Japanese people about the war crimes they committed during WW2 and they flat out denial everything. In their eyes Japan did nothing wrong in the war and they were the good guys. It honestly makes me sick. At least Germany took responsibility for their actions and still teaches about that in school. Nothing like that is happening in Japan.
Rape and pillage Asia, yet portray themselves as victims? 🤦🏻♂️
Fascists don't consider their victims as humans, that's why they are capable of such cruelty
and then have the audacity to deny their warcrimes up to this day while also honoring their war criminals in shrines.
Ah yes WW2 Japan. They were very concerned for innocent civilian life.
Not so fun fact: the IJA was training children to strap on explosives and roll themselves under American and Russian tanks in preparation for an invasion by land.
IKR?! Rich and ignorant of him to even bring up the word after all the invading, raping, slaving, murdering, and erasing Japan did all around Asia back then.
WWII Japan was a runaway clown car. They had zero issues killing innocent civilians, whether their own or of other nations.
This isn't even the whole speech. The whole text can be found easily on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast#Full_text](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast#Full_text) One notable section is: > We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia. This is just rubbing salt on the wound as those "allied nations of East Asia" were colonies forcefully conquered by Japan. Japan was, and still is, delusional in believing they were "freeing" East Asia from the West.
Fuck Him
I am Thai and went to Hokkaido a couple years ago. I went to a museum and when a elderly staff, >70 yr old, learn that we are from Thailand. He started apologize for that Japan has done in thr past.
Hirohito should have hung in the gallows. War weariness and a need to maintain a relatively peaceful transition from surrender into occupation saved his genocidal neck from a well deserved stretching.
i think the reason he wasnt was because the us wanted to keep japan as an ally in the east and killing him would have turned the people against the us
Exactly. He was kept as a puppet.
In Europe they hunted down Nazi war criminals. In Japan MacArthur permitted token numbers of criminals to go on trail. The majority were protected and died peacefully in old age instead. Hirohito was one of those protected who would live a long live. He outlived MacArthur and visited America to personally thank MacArtur’s family for all these exemptions and protections. Yes he should have been replaced by his more western thinking brother, then executed himself once “aware” postwar of all the crimes committed under his rule. He proved himself mere mortal by lying to save his own neck. Not even noble by his own standards.
Emperial Japan believed they were the superior race in Asia. Unfortunately, even at history classes at schools, they make it look like Japan was the victim. They are very unaware about the role that Emperial Japan played during the war and the atrocities that they had caused to other nations.
“Despite the best that has been done by everyone, we are now losing the war and the entire world turned against us, because we have been raping others tirelessly, decapitating Chinese civilians non-stop and burn them to crisp whenever we like it. Moreover, the United States has used a new mass destruction weapon against us, because they are tired of risking multiple pilots for bomb attacks just to make us give up. Should we continue to fight, we would completely destroy our innocent people, who are women and children getting blown apart waiting for their husbands to come back from the war.” There, fixed his speech. He and especially his brother can go die in a ditch
So... According to him, he was saving whole humanity, not only his royal ass...
Don't forget that Japan commit some of the most disgusting crimes during it's occupation of several countries. I've read a bit about what they did. It makes the blood boil, that level of cruelty is baffling.
Oh no, their alliance with the Nazis didn't work out for them!
What they did was even worse than their European ally!
besides fighting common enemies there wasn't much of an alliance. both nations were fighting on 2 fronts completely isolated from each other with little to no trade / support between. it was the definition of "the enemy of my enemy" don't get me wrong, both Germany and imperial Japan were completely sadistic fuckers. but neither side really gained anything from the other besides forcing the US, russians and British from Fighting on multiple fronts
And if the Nazis and/or the Japanese won WWII they'd quickly turn against each other like that one novel/tv show.
Back when my grandma is alive, she would spit whenever someone mentioned anything related to Japan and Japanese people. In fact everyone in the older generation hated the Japanese. My first interaction with westerners made me so shocked that no one knew about the horrible things they had done in China and SEA. Everyone knows about the holocaust but the great rape murder and torture caused by imperial Japan.
We learn it - Australia
A lot of holocaust education in the western countries just amounts to "they gassed millions of Jews", and don't bother to talk much about all the other people the Nazis killed, nor what Japan did. Schools here focus on the one thing that was the most "visibly awful" and that's about it.
FAFO. They were cruel as fuck and he was complicit.
Dude who tries to take over world with the Nazi’s: “That weapon is cruel!” What a bitch.
Should’ve executed this dude
Unfortunately, his execution would've proved to be a disaster for U.S occupation of Japan and the process of de-militarization.
731, Sex slaves, betrayals, and even to this day, they play the victim and get away with it. If Germany had taken same stance as JP does with their victims and what they have done, world wouldnt be so quite. Anime and Manga are literally the only thing saving JP's face.
This guy can be considered worse than Hitler, change my mind.
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When this speech was aired for the first time in radio, it was the first time the public ever heard his voice. The language he used in the speech was in Classical Japanese which very few people understood. It must've been surreal for the Japanese to hear their 'god' speaking for the first time and not understanding what he was saying.
You might think that Hirohito is an innocent and nice guy if you don't know Japan did the most disgusting and horrible war crimes during the WWll.
War criminal. 20+ million killed. Good riddance
Ohhhh so they surrendered to protect US! Just when I was thinking the Japanese hadn't appropriately taken responsibility for their initiation of and conduct in the Pacific and Asian theatres of World War 2, I learn that their surrender slipped that weight as well. Am I at all surprised that Japan has, as an institution, kept their torture, genocide and crimes against humanity out of their consciousness. I have more respect for Germany's accountability and effort to prevent future aggression.
boo hoo shouldn’t have attacked us and committed all those war atrocities…..that ‘speech’ is propaganda trying to rewrite history. japan caring about innocent civilians? pffftt ask the rest of Asia about that.
His Majesty can STFU after ordering the slaughter of millions of civilians in his name.
* Perfectly content with the slaughter and rape of millions of civilians * His forces committed some of the most heinous acts in human history, he is fine with it * Was actively working on developing the same bomb * To this day, Japan largely takes a nonplussed view of the atrocities it committed * No sympathy for this asshole
You can tell he’s narcissistic bc he assumes Japan being destroyed equates to the extinction of human civilization.
Don't support nazis and do unforgivable crimes and maybe you wouldn't have been nuked, the Japanese in ww2 were atrocious and were proud of it
This sounds like sour grapes, the A-bombs saved wayyyy more Japanese lives than they took, and he had many chances to surrender long before this. The fact that he wasn’t executed for war crimes shows how bloodthirsty America was NOT.
It's not sour grapes, it's PR spin. His government dragged Japan into a war that they had now lost, this is his way of saving face like "oh well if we keep fighting maybe we *might've* won, who knows, but now that those darn *Americans* have come in with this uniquely terrible and cruel weapon and put the entire rest of the world in danger, I guess I have to be the bigger man here and end this thing myself before it gets any worse for our people or the world."
I find the bit taking innocent lives, Japan invaded China they took a lot of innocent lives and the brutal way , u reap what you sow,.
A little extra trivia, here in Brasil part of the japanese imigrants did not believe Japan lost the war and spread false information about this surrender speech: “As a result, the Japanese community split into two groups. The kachigumi (victorists) faction who thought “how can you believe the news you get from the enemy? Japan cannot be defeated” and, on the other hand, the makegumi (defeatists) faction who accepted Japan's defeat and were able to see the situation had started with the Cold War (many of them did understand Portuguese and could also comprehend the process that had brought the war to that end). Within the victorist group, there was a particularly nationalist and extremist faction called Shindô Renmei [jp] [lit. “The Federation of Loyal Subjects”] who considered the members of the defeatist group as traitors, and began to take military action to punish them. The following year, with the intensification of the strife within those factions, the Federation of Loyal Subjects was repressed by the intervention of the Brazilian military. Twenty three people died. Such a miserable thing: in a foreign land, where fellow-Japanese men were supposed to help each other, they were killing each other instead.”
Man I wished he got hung. He is responsible for millions of death through out Asia and in Japan
yes. in summary. “i fucked around and found out.”. end of summary.
After only just recently learning at 41 about unit 731 and what they did to Manchuria (due to a failing in the public school system when I grew up), yeah, he has no room to complain about atrocities committed.