Why were the Japanese so cruel in WW2?

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

All that means is that they would kill Edmonton faster.

The Japanese exterminated near every person in China that they came across, or at least tried to.

You do realize that about a third of China was under occupation by Japan during the war.

[Nage Waza]

Originally Posted by PIMking

Wrong,

I've got family that fought in ww2 for the Germans. They were forced at gunpoint at 12 and 14 year old boys in Munich to fight. The later fled west and surrendered to the Americans. There were rumors about it but nothing was set in stone. Got to remember that this wasn't the age of TV and Internet, so the information that was out wasn't that great. It would be hard to think that your leaders would be capable of trying to kill off and entire race of people.

Are you trying to say that the German civilians did not know there was genocide against Jews (and assorted other groups) taking place? The entire German government, pretty much at all stages, were part of the process. From the labeling of Jews, to enacting laws against them, to ghettos, to trains, to concentration camps, was a big project that the military only did a portion of the work. Bureaucrats did much of the rest. Civilians were also being fed a load of crap to be a part of the process. Businesses would bid on who built the machinery used to commit genocide...And the soliders were certainly not keeping quiet, they all talked and spoke about what they did.

Who knows how many were aware of gas chambers, but many witnessed their neighbors yanked out of houses and either shot on the street or beaten and dragged away, and did nothing. Not that I think you are saying this, but the vast majority knew something bad was happening. It is amazing how evil people are capable of becoming.

I was just skimming through the wiki on the holocaust, the entire sequence of events is terrifying. Part of the article states that even those who planned to overthrow Hitler still considered the plan to deal with Jews reasonable (which goes towards how deeply the populace believed the propaganda against Jews).

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by cal_guy

You do realize that about a third of China was under occupation by Japan during the war.

Yes I did thank you.

[McG]

i am astonished and appalled at the loosey goosey "facts" being tossed around on this thread which can barely be considered as personal opinion; there seems to be lots of other people's opinions being stated as fact. people referencing wikipedia as some kind of historical reference point, people practicing revisionist history left and right, people stating fact when it is nothing more than a hand me down story is frankly scary and brings the whole concept of historical accuracy to its knees.

what is fact? with respect to the events, all we really have to go on are documented, irrefutable facts. what are those, specifically? well, we just better all move over to a new main topic on CP about historical events and our interpretations of what they meant and what really happened. it is difficult to find exact, irrefutable evidence about events in war throughout history. even "agreed" facts and events tend to be coloured by winners and losers.

to apply the logic, knowledge, and emotion of decades and centuries to these events is an interesting exercise, but certainly won't yield insight into what really happened.

good on the CP community for engaging in such a passionate debate on an emotionally charged matter.

the object of war is to subvert your opponent to your views and wishes. ultimately, the reason for wars is to protect what you believe to be rightfully and justifiably yours; an obvious disagreement occurs. for those of a machiavellian persuasion, the end justifies the means. i don't know what that means to this thread in particular, but i am sure that i can think of something.

paraphrasing here...but as a wise person once said, if you need any doubts about history just read the eye witness accounts of a traffic accident.

oh and one final thought...

when people toss around numbers like "million", it doesn't mean much. how about a thought for one single person, with hopes and dreams like every one of us before and after them. and multiply that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by ten. and that by 5 to 7. yup. that is the number estimated to have died in WW2. and the estimate is 6:1 on allied to axis casualties, including civilians.

ordinarily, i try not to stay up late at night trying to fix "internet wrongs". in this case however, i implore people to study history, to learn the mistakes of those before us, and try to understand so that we don't make the same mistakes again.

i fear from this thread that we have a long way to go.

i'm not holier than thou though... come on over for some beers and let me tell you about what the english have done to the scots and scotland...and then we can get into some real revisionist history correction. i am just as bad as the next person...it all depends upon the topic i suppose.

pardon for the interruption. please continue with the revisionism! i have to head over to the darryl sutter threads to see what historical inaccuracies are being bandied about over there!

[Cowperson]

when people toss around numbers like "million", it doesn't mean much. how about a thought for one single person,

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic" - Joseph Stalin, thought to have killed tens of millions of Ukrainians purely for revenge.

Cowperson

[Nage Waza]

Originally Posted by McG

i am astonished and appalled at the loosey goosey "facts" being tossed around on this thread which can barely be considered as personal opinion;

quote snipped

I am astonished by the length of your post and how little there was of anything of substance in it.

Instead of insulting everyone in this thread, why don't you refute what you think was wrong?

[valo403]

Originally Posted by Nage Waza

quote snipped

I am astonished by the length of your post and how little there was of anything of substance in it.

Instead of insulting everyone in this thread, why don't you refute what you think was wrong?

Maybe re-read the first part, where he points out that there is very little in terms of absolute fact when it comes to the things being discussed here. Kind of hard to refute things when someone has decided it is factual, when in reality it is a mixture of loose facts and opinion spun to paint a picture that is to the liking of the particular audience. Treating things in this realm as if they are black and white is naive, there is a whole lot of grey area.

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by valo403

Maybe re-read the first part, where he points out that there is very little in terms of absolute fact when it comes to the things being discussed here. Kind of hard to refute things when someone has decided it is factual, when in reality it is a mixture of loose facts and opinion spun to paint a picture that is to the liking of the particular audience. Treating things in this realm as if they are black and white is naive, there is a whole lot of grey area.

When tens of millions are dead, it's not very grey. It's very much black and white.

The grey area is the how and the why of it, the new battleground for those seeking to shape history to their satisfaction or political position.

An article on "The Suicide Order of 1945" on Okinawa and the controversy over re-writing history to suit nationalists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/wo...20iht-oki.html

Cowperson

[Thor]

Wow powerful stuff:

"I heard my sister calling out, 'Kill me now, hurry,"' Nakamura said, recalling how his 20-year-old sister panicked at the approach of U.S. soldiers. His mother took a rope and strangled his sister.
"I tried to also strangle myself with a rope," he recalled, lifting his now-weatherbeaten hands to his neck. "But I kept breathing. It is really tough to kill yourself."
Minutes later, the Americans took them captive.
"The U.S. soldier touched me to check if I had any weapons," he recalled. "Then he gave us candy and cigarettes. That was my first experience on coming out of the cave."
His mother lived into her 80s.
"We talked about the war," said Nakamura, who became a village leader. "But to the end, she never once talked about killing her daughter."

From Cowperson's link

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic" - Joseph Stalin, thought to have killed tens of millions of Ukrainians purely for revenge.

Cowperson

I remember one night over beers talking with one of my Sarges who was working towards a history degree, and he told me a story that he probably stole from someone else

"A man was walking through a war zone when he suddenly saw a young girl lying dead, he instantly dropped to his knee's sobbing and crying and cursing god "Why oh god why do you let such terrible things happen to innocent people" he finally collected himself and sniffling walked on to wear he was two children lying dead in a ditch he breaks into tears again "Why do bad things happen to innocents" He collects himself and walks on and see's 5 dead children lying in a ditch he slowly shakes his head "How terrible" He then moves on and comes across a mass grave with thousands of children lying dead he stops and looks into the grave and say "It was war, this happens""

Take it for what it is.

[valo403]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

When tens of millions are dead, it's not very grey. It's very much black and white.

The grey area is the how and the why of it, the new battleground for those seeking to shape history to their satisfaction or political position.

An article on "The Suicide Order of 1945" on Okinawa and the controversy over re-writing history to suit nationalists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/wo...20iht-oki.html

Cowperson

Even headcounts can become a grey area, although that wasn't my original point. There are simply so many variables involved that any analysis that doesn't consider that the reports are skewed in many different directions is faulty. That's not to say that there isn't a middle ground in which things are relatively certain, but when you start discussing blame and the like the word fact becomes pretty suspect.

[cal_guy]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Yes I did thank you.

And I bet you realize that the population in the occupied areas immediately after the war was not 0.

[CaptainCrunch]

Oh I see, so we're now equivalating based on stats, it was only 23 million out of 800, gosh darn those Japanese troops for being so civilian friendly.

I still don't buy the fact that just because there is a larger population base that 23 million is somehow a stat that points out that the Japanese weren't so bad in their war conduct.

And of you look at the atrocities that the Japanese committed they were heavily focused on the death of civilian males and children, while using woman as their sex toys.

The fact that they didn't manage to exterminate everyone is based around the fact that they ran out of time, not that they were gentle.

[GirlySports]

I don't think anyone is saying the Japanese weren't evil. Just saying that you can't quantify their evil compared to other evils just based on numbers.

Rape of women is a prize of war, has been since there was war!

We're all somehow related to Genghis Khan.

[FlamingLonghorn]

Originally Posted by algernon

This sort of sentiment is why people dismiss animal activists as COMPLETELY INSANE.

Hating an entire nation of people because some fishermen are asswipes? LOL.

I hate all Eastern Canadian former bar-owning, former-vegetarian reptile-breeding Chicken-devourers. They are hypocrites, and ignore the simple truth that Chickens are people too!!!

I like how you took what he said and applied it to all animal rights activists much in the way he hates all Japanese based on what a few do to whales. And you call him a hypocrite?

[worth]

A little off topic, but can anyone provide some links to Canada's involvement in the Pacific war? Reading over some wiki articles, it is stated that Canadian Air Force was involved, and Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans, yet I don't know a lot about this involvement.

[T@T]

I don't think any Canadians actually fought with the Americans in the Pacific, I know there were 3 battalions training for the American invasion but as far as I know they didn't do any fighting before the war ended.

However, there was roughly 2000 Canadians who fought in the South Pacific with Britain and I think over 500 died (about 300 died as Japanese POW's).

[CaptainCrunch]

Canadian's were involved in the defense of Hong Kong and they were over run by the Japanese and spent years in hell in Japanese labour projects.

Canadian's were also part of Force 136 which was a intelligence gathering and resistance training group that operated behind Japanese lines.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Canadian's were involved in the defense of Hong Kong and they were over run by the Japanese and spent years in hell in Japanese labour projects.

Canadian's were also part of Force 136 which was a intelligence gathering and resistance training group that operated behind Japanese lines.

I went to school with a kid who's father was part of force 136, he was a Chinese Brit, obviously he made it out alive but missing a hand that he told his son was from infection, I often wondered if that was really true.

[Imported_Aussie]

dropping the A-bomb was a "kill two birds with one stone" approach.
1. Force the Japanese to surrender without expense of allied (US and Australian) lives
2. Send a message to the Soviets

A lot of people underrate #2, but the Soviets had reached all the way to Berlin, meeting the Allies in the middle. They were also the growing power in the region and also as a communist state, were the next logical threat to the west, ideologically and militarily. Dropping the A-bomb on Japan said to the Soviets - we can do this to anybody, don't provoke us. The Japanese would not quit, and there was no alternative so swift as the A-bomb. The need to spare lives is part of it, the other part was to avoid prolonging the war whilst the Soviets postured in Eastern Europe and gained more power whilst the US was too distracted to reply. This is why the Cold War ensued after World War II, and a series of proxy wars sprung up, but never the clash of the two titans - the Pacific front was closed both quickly and forcefully in the demonstration of the capabilities of the US atomic program, which set the tone for the next 40-45 years.