They committed some of the most unspeakable atrocities during WWII including live dissections on US airmen at Fukuoka:

[url]http://www2.gol.com/users/winjerd/Page05.htm[/url]

Then there's the rape of Nanking:

[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_223000/223038.stm[/url]

"Between December 1937 and March 1938 one of the worst massacres in modern times took place. Japanese troops captured the Chinese city of Nanking and embarked on a campaign of murder, rape and looting.

"Based on estimates made by historians and charity organisations in the city at the time, between 250,000 and 300,000 people were killed, many of them women and children. The number of women raped was said by Westerners who were there to be 20,000, and there were widespread accounts of civilians being hacked to death. "

The girls who were repeatedly gang-raped were aged from 7 all the way to their 70's.

Theirs is a nation of denial and a culture steeped in arrogance and prejudice.

They sure did.  It was never acknowledged either.  At least the Nanking Massacre wasn't.  

The US got some payback, PRC didn't.  Not yet...

Don't forget to add the Hell Ships to the list.  US POWs had to resort to unspeakable acts towards each other to survive.

Read Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides.

You will NEVER forget what monsters they were during WWII.

I asked my nephew, a HS senior, what he learned about Imperial Japan in WWII.

The sum total of the discussion/course material was a debate about whether or not we "should" have used atomic weapons on them.

[:X*][:X*][:X*][:X*][:X*][:X*]
[puke]  [puke]  [puke]  [puke]  [puke]  [puke]  

Dont forget the Biological weapons the Japanese tested on the chinese!!! to use against us and we let off some of their Officers for war crimes just so we could have some of their weapons data. Grrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!

I like Japan, its history and culture, but THEY DID REALLY HORRIBLE SHIT THATS NOTHING LESS THEN TRUE TERRORISM.


libosaki

I say we go over there an Skronk all them kinky little brown eyed sluts that I see on the Internet an send um' home to Hubby with there eyelids glued shut....

You won't have to go get them soon. The Japanese birthrate is so low, and dropping, that in our lifetime the "outsiders" living in Japan will outnumber the arrogant little pukes we know now. Given more time they will just disappear.

Good riddance I say. Sick culture.

Not this shit again.

After my Uncle Steve got back from Iwo, he said to never trust them NO MATTER WHAT!

What's your problem now?

Imbrog|io autopost hit the wrong thread.

My mother was in her 70's at Pearl visiting the monument to the Arizona. There were some japanese there, making fun of the attack...she turned to them and said....Nagasaki!

I can't believe... Tojo and his gang of murders were worste beyond my worst immagination!!!

And differently from Germans, that apologized for the Nazists atrocities, Japanese govt. NEVER apologized neither with Americans nor with asiatic (Korea included) population victims of Imperial brutalities...

I don't want to go so far, but maybe Truman had serious reasons to drop A bombs on Japan.
More than to show to Russians that a new terrible mass destruction weapon was available for the Allies...

I want to add something about Japanese behaviour. And I am talking about dominant class, not people in general.

I belong to a Buddhist sect whose leaders, Josei Toda and his Master, were imprisoned during the war because they REFUSED to worship Shintoists gods, since Shinto was the Imperial official religion.
The Master died in the prison in the winter of 1944, Josei Toda survived and managed to respaw a Buddhist movement that now is widespreaded in more than 128 nations, Italy and Israel included.

Toda was always against the Hiroshima-Nagasaki A bombing. Hearing this peaceful man saying that anyone that use nuclear weapons should be executed was impressive.

But it was also impressive the request, and the strong term of condamnation, for the Japanese govt., past and present, because they never apologized for the atrocities perpetrated by Japanese military in the occupied territories. Many times those grimful episodes were reported in the international press organ of the movement, as well as the appeal to the Japanese govt. to apologize.

My movement is regarded by dominant class in Japan as a menace. A person that during a job interview declares to worship Nichiren buddhism probably will find hard to get the job.

And this because the teaching of this buddhist says that you should respect yourself first. This, in a society were multinational companies are seen like Samurai families, is dishonorable to keep in count more your self respect than the respect you own to the company you belong to. Free thinking is seen as a menace.

Reading what I read today about the past, I can understand. What I cannot understand is why there isn't from UN a demand to force Japan to apologize, and the countries that are complaining the most for this arrogant behaviour are only asian countries instead of the civil western world...

How do you feel about the atrocities perpetrated by the Israelis against the Palestinians in the "occupied" territories ??

(I support Sharon-not Israel.)

Japan started a war in the most coward way, killing more than 2000 of americans in Pearl Harbour.
There where no requests of peace by Japanese govt. but only waves of kamikazes and fierce close combats, like in Tarawa, Okinawa, Saipan.
Finally they got A-bombed to end a war they started.

What I can say about Israel is that I feel without any shadow of guilt, in this last times, because Palestinians are eating what they cooked.

Why not talking about atrocities that Pals are committing agaisnt Israelis?
Or against the same Palestinians?

Please, we are talking about americans slaughtered in the most unhuman way. Respect them: stick to subject of this topic or open a new one.

You response did not address my question.

I don't intend to start  an Israeli-Pals struggle here. Don't insist. I will not answer on this topic.

Read the book "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang published by Basic Books div. of Persen's Books, LLC. It describes in detail some pretty atrocious acts. From page 127 3rd para "One of the worst scenes Wilson saw in Nanking--a scene he would remember for the rest of his life--was a massive gang rape of teenage girls in the street. A group of young women between the ages of 15 & 18 were lined up by teh Japanese and then raped in the dirt, one after another, by an entire regiment. Some hemorrhage and died, while others killed themselves shortly afterwards."

From Thomas Easton, Tokyo Bureau of The Sun, Published on Sunday, May 28, 1995 (C)1995 The Baltimore Sun:

"I could never again wear a white smock," says Dr. Toshio Tono, dressed in a white running jacket at his hospital and recalling events of 50 years ago. "It's because the prisoners thought that we were doctors, since they could see the white smocks, that they didn't struggle. They never dreamed they would be dissected."


From: Human Vivisection: The Intoxication of Limitless Power in Wartime by Charles G. Roland

"On the first date, a lung was removed from each of two POWs. While the first victim was still alive, Ishiyama removed the ligatures on the pulmonary arteries, and Komori 'scooped blood out of the chest cavity with a cup'. In the second series, operations were done on the stomach, heart, and liver of two victims. Ishiyama at one point returned to the first prisoner in this group, still alive, opened his chest, incised the heart, sutured it, then had two associates do the same to demonstrate that a puncture of the heart is not always fatal.

On the third date in May only one flyer was operated on. The purported object of the surgery was to reach the trigeminal nerve 'from the top of the brain'. This flyer died from haemorrhage and brain damage. A professional colleague of Ishiyama, observing, did not exude confidence in Ishiyama's competence: 'I was asked by Dr. Ishiyama as to what was the quickest way to locate the "Trigeminus" nerve. My answer was that it was impossible to locate the "Trigeminus" nerve because they had opened the skull at the wrong place.' The final three American flyers all had surgery on 3 June. One man had his stomach removed, another was exsanguinated and infused with sea water, while the third had several operations affecting gall bladder, liver and heart. Yakumaru Katsuya, Chief of the National Defence Guard, went with Sato to see an operation on a POW. They arrived in the autopsy room while the surgeons performed a liver operation.

I thought the POW must have had a liver ailment but as the operation progressed I noticed the surgeons removed the liver so I thought this to be a funny operation. I saw the surgeon tie the liver vein. At this point I left the room and went home because I felt sick... afterthe liver was removed Komori turned his head and said to me, 'this is a removal of the liver and we are going to see how long the man would live without his liver.' "


Now...Imagine if captured US troops were  similarly dissected alive by the Afghans or Iraqis.

Because we live in an age of information, contemporary world opinion would not be as charitable.

I'm sure sorry to disrupt the Hatem Parade here, but I have to throw in. The Japanese are still in public denial about WWII, both their many atrocities and the fact of it at all... it's a topic of great shame for them, and the Japanese don't admit to things like this easily. They should. Their treatment of WWII in school textbooks is a joke. So they do have a ways to go. But I don't understand exactly what you guys are all bent about, right here and right now, like they shot your dog.

They didn't exactly get away with it scott-free, guys.

The vast majority of individual Japanese soldiers who committed all the many atrocities that they did are dead, most killed a half-century ago by American, Chinese, or British weaponry in the war. Their leaders were for the most part hung or shot, except for the ones that were allowed to prosper in the postwar necessities of the Cold War. And those guys will be going to hell soon enough.

Most Japanese cities were bombed flat and burned to the ground, and hundreds of thousands were killed by fire. An exceedingly horrible way to die. The atom bombs were just nuclear cherries on top.

They've been a docile, reliable ally since then, for almost six decades. And having lived over there, I can safely say that they are for the most part really nice folks.

Exhale, and move on. If you want atrocities to angst over, there are plenty of more fresh ones to get angry about, all around the world.

Regarding John Rabe and the Nanking Massacre:

From Kirkus Reviews , September 15, 1998

Diaries of a man who is justly called the Oskar Schindler of China. In December 1937, the Japanese army conquered and occupied the Chinese city of Nanking. What followed was, as Rabe notes, ``destruction barbaric beyond all comprehension.'' Japanese soldiers raped, tortured, and murdered indiscriminately, and in all, as many as 300,000 people were butchered. Rabe at this time was Nanking director of Siemens, the German industrial concern. He was also a member of the Nazi Party and an (apparently naive) admirer of Hitler. Easily able to leave the city, he chose to stay and by staying was able to blunt some of the effects of the Japanese onslaught. At first he simply opened his home to Chinese desperate for sanctuary: The number of refugees in his house and (not very large) yard eventually totaled 600. More significantly, he became head of an international committee that was able to create a safety zone in the city where it was hoped noncombatants would be afforded protection. Some 250,000 Chinese streamed into this zone, where, quite literally, the only thing standing between them and the depredations of the Japanese soldiers was the courage of Rabe and a handful of other Westerners. Rabe's diaries describe in detail the atrocities committed by the Japanese, but also how Rabe cajoled, flattered, and when necessary bullied the Japanese authorities into tolerating the safety zone. Like Schindler, Rabe was quite aware that his Nazi affiliation afforded him a degree of influence and protection. This does not, however, account for the heroism and steadfastness with which he saved thousands of lives. Rabe's dramaticand perhaps, to some, ambiguoustale shows how unremarkable people can sometimes do remarkable things, and how one evil can, sometimes, be used to fight another. (42 b&w photos, 2 maps) (First printing of 40,000) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The problem with that......... They somehow think that the US committed war crimes by dropping 2 A-bombs, even though they started that war. They don't admit that either, using some "economic war" excuse.

They act as if THEY were terribly wronged during WW-II. Everytime they catch us doing something stupid, or not PC, like surfacing a sub into a fishing ship. They demand we ADMIT our culpability and apologize, most of the time profusely.

On the other hand they attacked Pearl Harbor before they declared war. Killed thousansa of GI's on the Battan(sp) Death March. Killed members of Gen. Dolittles bomber crews that got captured. Used captured GI's as slaves, and labratory rats.

They enslaved, raped, and killed, hundreds of thousands of civilians throughout Asia.

But acording to them the US started the War, and committed war crimes during the War. I think that most people can understand that war is basically about killing, and tragic things get done by all sides.

But the holier than thou, we are victims of American agression is BS.

Education's hard to bear at times, but it's a lesson nonetheless.  The especially poignant exercises in discovery are made even more so when it concerns a major power with no appreciable conscience over actions of the past.

Germany has come to terms with the Holocaust, America has done so with slavery and civil rights...where is Japan?

I respect your opinion on this matter.  What we do and say here will not change the Japanese culture of denial and arrogance with regard to what may be construed as shameful actions of the past, albeit executed by a very small minority of the population.

What we do and say here, however, will educate people who may otherwise be unaware of these grossly negligent and barbaric actions.

if you think we are becoming a nation of sheeple look at japan circa WWII.

My father was stationed at New Guinea and New Britain. He received Bronze stars from Luzon, Corregidor, Leyte, and Manila, and a general Phillipines medal. He also received a purple heart from wounds at Manila. He saw men dig foxholes in the rocks at Manila. He was told to rake every building he saw with their mounted .50 as the Japanese plastered themselves into walls to hide. He also received the Pacific Theatre Victory medal. He, most likely, would have been part of the invasion force of Japan had we not nuked em.

To this day, he will not, under any circumstance consider purchasing a Japanese car, television, radio etc.
You cannot get him to speak of what he saw, only that what he found and cleared from caves and saw on the beaches of many islands in the Phillipines and the Leyte Gulf caused him to have what we now know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I took a trip to Japan a few years back, he said "You better watch those people. You don't know how much they hate us"

Enough said I think

Ya they hate us so much that they embrace everything from the U.S.

Why don't you all get a group together, go to Japan and fight WW2 all over again?

Raven where are you with that dead horse anim icon?

 Bob [8D]

No one has a better reason to hate the Japanese then my family.  As Koreans we go back hundreds of years with them. But you have to realize that the winners write the history books and that there are idiots on all sides. The Japanese are nothing in comparison to what the Germans and Soviets did to their own people.  We are talking different magnitudes. We as Americans are just as guilty as the Japanese.  We took their research and turn a blind eye.  That makes us just as responsible.

We also used Von Braun's research to kick start our own space program. Does that make us as guilty as the Germans for shooting V2s at London? I think not.

To the victor go the spoils, whatever they may be.

Not the mention the fact that over 1,000,000 of them signed that BS petition begging Klinton to ban guns.

Who the hell do they think they are to petition for that crap here?

All those that signed the petition could go to the next atomic meet for all I care.

Edited to add:
On second thought, who the hell does anyone think they are to petition for that crap?

And the yearly anti-nuke protests at Peace Park in Hiroshima with less than subtle anti-American innuendo.

What arrogant hypocrites.

They embrace everything from the US?  While they may find parts of our culture "charming", as in American-style log cabin homes or dressing up in 50's regalia, they are quite insular.  The Marshall Plan did not include post-war Japan, but technical assistance programs had unintended consequences that we are, to this day, experiencing.

Have you ever tried to import a foreign-made medical device into Japan?  How many Ford GM or Chrysler dealers are there?

To paraphrase a paper from the Department of Economics at NC State:

Japan has adopted numerous policies that interfere with foreign trade (tariffs, import quotas, and restrictions on inward foreign direct investment)




That's not really the question here.  The issue is Japan's refusal to redress past issues while sanctimoniously denouncing violence to the point of petitioning our government to ban guns.

Why do you continue to have such strong allegiance to a nation that you only have superficial ties to?

No, we are not "just as guilty."
However, we are guilty of your charge.

With the help of Japan, we did win the cold war and stopping communism was the reason we let so many Japanese off the hook.
Someone much smarter than me will have to decide whether this was correct.

Perhaps it's because the Japanese have not been taught the magnitude of the attack and all of it's ramifications.

What?

By your reasoning, if a mass murderer working at the Quickie Mart sells me a pack of cigarettes, I'm just as guilty as he is.

Am I "just as guilty" when my neighbor next door murders someone?  Am I "just as guilty" as the catholic priests that molest children?

I'm not responsible for anyone, pal.  This is the kind of pseudo bleeding heart BS that has brought this country to where it is.  Go wring your hands over our collective guilt somewhere else.  "But we're all guilty!"

Read Atlas Shrugged and pull yourself out of the cesspool of brother love you're heading in to.

First of all, this is AR15 forum and I have no idea why you are starting anti Japanese post.  And discussing about something that is over (World War II) many years ago is inappropriate.  I have studied both Japanese and American text books.  I can say that Japanese text books and media are heavily censored by the government.  Mistakes they made during WWII were not included in the textbook until very recently.  Citizens there were not familiar with what was going on.  Should they appologize?  I think so, but who?  All the people who were responsible are mostly dead or killed.   Americans should appologize for A-bombs which killed mostly civilians (unlike Pearl Harbor which killed mostly servicemen), locking up Japanese Americans in concentration camps,  raping of Japanese womens and girls, and all other things done to them.   It was unfair for the Japanese to attack the Pearl Harbor.  But the outcome was no different.  War would've started whether or not Japanese attacked the Pearl Habor.  Japanese deciphered a coded message and knew Americans were preparing to go to war against them.  So they sent those kamikazes to attack the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor to weaken the forces.  As for them not buying products, you can't force people to buy American products.  Consumers are free to buy anything they want at price they want.  If you make inferior products then no one will buy them.  No one will buy products that do not meet the demands of the consumers.  No will buy products that don't fit the market.  Gas price is extremely high in Japan, and do you think they can afford to drive a V10 powered Viper?  Do you think you can drive through narrow streets of Japan in a Chevy Suburban?  Do you think you can find a parking space in Japan big enough for most American cars?  Would you drive left hand drive vehicle in country where everyone drives right hand drive vehicle?  Answer is "no" for all of the above.  Americans tend to have this "take it or leave it" attitude and this is working against them.  Americans need to make compromises, and continuously make improvements (Kaizen).

This is the General Discussion forum to discuss general topics such as the Mideast conflict (Palestinian bashing??), the war in Afghanistan (Arab bashing??), and humor (Chinese bashing??).

Settle down and address the issues...no need to get all emotional and start tossing out the anti-Japanese rhetoric.




In your opinion...




Excuse me??  You obviously didn't read very well.   The Federal Government made reparations to families interned during WWII.




Wrong again.  In a closed market, you can't.  Try getting a US made medical device that has FDA, CE, ANSI/AAMI, EN, ISO, and UL approvals into Japan.




There again...that arrogant Japanese attitude leaking out.

OK, first things first, the forum is GENERAL discussion, look around, there's not an AR15 topic in sight.

Second, MISTAKES?!!?  MISTAKES!?!?

Read Ghost Soldiers, by Hampton Sides.  The majority of Japanes frontline soldiers in charge of the Bataan Death march and Cabanatuan camp in the Phil. were MONSTERS.  Forcing prisoners to march for hours in the blazing heat then forcing them to stand at attention by a gurgling stream, literally chopping the head off the first guy who succumbed and tried to drink; medical experimentation and systematic torture and dehydration; the intentional murdering of prisoners rather than turn them back over to their countrymen, sometimes with burining gasoline, malnutrition for the pleasure of seeing men starve, beatings,

THERE WERE NOT MISTAKES.  It was not "war," it was brutalization and murder on an epic scale.

Take your Goddamned euphamisms someplace else.
 


Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack against an "enemy" that Japan was NOT at war with, the likes of which the world did not see again until Sept 11, 2001.  It hit mostly sevicemen because THAT"S WHO occupies the ships the Japanese neede to eliminate in order to take over the "Greateer East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, were legitimate strategic targets, as were Berlin, Dresden, London, Coventry, and other population centers.

Absent the atomic bombs, estimates of American casualties which would occur in the invasion of the Japanese home islands were unacceptable to us, and they are UNACCEPTABLE TO ME.

Shove an apology to Japan for Hiroshima and Nagasaki up your ass.

BTW, NO kamikazes were used against Pearl Harbor, the tactic emerged later in the war.

"the war would have started anyway"= moral relativism of the highest degree, and if it were true, I doubt you'd admit is was "unfair" to conduct the attack.

Speaking of Nan king.
Recently a high ranking official from Japan ( probably an old dinosaur) Deny that anything happen at Nan king. There was much pressure from Taiwan and China for him to retract the statement. He is obviously wrong but NO one broke rank and apologies.

Those are pretty arrogant shit.

Odd point of view from someone who graduated from a war college.  The war would have started anyway.  The USA was hardly impartial.  "Unfair?"  That's ridiculous.  War is war.  It's not a friendly game.  They were playing to win, just like we were.  You're outraged because our known enemies(and thats what they were) didn't telephone your grandfather to let him know that they were going to kill our soldiers?  Thats simply naive.

This is amazingly funny.  Do you even understand what you just wrote?

Not odd at all, nor did I use the words except to quote HIM.

Graffiti said "It was unfair for the Japanese to attack the Pearl Harbor. But the outcome was no different. War would've started whether or not Japanese attacked the Pearl Habor. "

If he thought the war would start anyway, why would he say it was unfair to attack Pearl?  Maybe because he thinks it was an underhanded move?

Whether or not it was a WISE move, even if they had caught the carriers, is for anther discussion.

JAPAN itself tried to declare war BEFORE the attack, but the cable was delayed.  Evidence enough for me that even THEY thought it was unacceptable to attack without a declaration of war.

Military expediency and "good" tactics are not the same as morality.

That's one of the things I DID learn at war college.

Graffiti,

American's should apologize for using the A-bomb???  What are you smoking?  Even the Japanese will admit they needed to be nuked to make them quit.  And even after TWO nukes, there were still generals who wanted to keep on till Japan was nothing but a memory.  The people of South East Asia aren't too broken up about nukes being dropped.  We'd been getting boofed by the Japanese for almost a decade and had had quite enough by then.

FNC80,

I'm glad you commented on that statement.  There are so many things wrong that no single person could tackle them all in one reply.

Guys, aren't you spending a lot of energy and hatred for an enemy that is no longer an enemy?  

Yes, I am Japanese.  Japanese American.  Do I think the war crimes committed were terrible?  Yes.  Should the guilty be punished?  Yes.  Should someone apologize?  Yes.  The people that did these crimes are probably either dead or sitting in some nursing home waiting for their Depends to be changed.

Some arrogant ass make some bad statements.  Wrong?  Yes!  Did Klinton speak for all of us?  I sure as hell hope not!

Half of my family is still in Japan, the other half here.  Of the ones here, half were interned during the war...even as Father's, brothers, sons and husbands fought for us.  My Uncle served in the 442'nd, my Father served in Korea.  The one's interned after release became engineers, small business owners, farmers...and yes even gardners.  All proud to be Americans.

Their children became doctors, engineers, company presidents, architects, soldiers, cops...all also proud to be Americans.

My family records in Japan were destroyed by fire bombing and some were killed by the atomic bombs.  Do my family members that still live in Japan hate America?  No.  Many visit every 5 years or so.  You can recognize them...they are the smiling couples with the camera happily clicking away at everything, with the little kids wearing Mickey Mouse ears in tow.

I served 4 years in our military, am a member of the American Legion, Sheriff reserve on call 24/7/365 as part of rescue Team.  I worked on many weapon systems and have/had clearances to Top Secret level.  Am I not to be trusted either because I'm Japanese?

Hopefully you guys can direct some of your time worrying about some of our "other allies", you know...where a majority of the 9/11 terrorists came from, or where most of the people interviewed were happy about 9/11?

How about our Southern neighbor, whose military takes shots at our border patrol, IN OUR OWN COUNTRY?

Or how about the morale values of a family whose son becomes part of the Taliban and Al Qaida plotting and training to kill us?

The Japanese people I know, here and from Japan are honorable, hard working and respectful.  I can't speak for all, I'm sure there are assholes.

The Japanese people I know that immigrated here quickly assimilated into the American culture.  Language (okay they talk a little funny), values, customs, etc.  They now consider themselves "American" and are contributing members of American society earning and spending money here.  

The war was a terrible time, for everyone, but it is in the past.  Japan is now an ally in our battle against terrorism.

I write this with utmost respect to our fallen soldiers and the ones who recieved such inhumane treatment.  It saddens me and it should not have happened, and I hope it never happens again.

God bless America!
POW/MIA/Veterans
You are not forgotten

Flame me if you want.

Kagemusha,

Try not to take it too personally.  With such an impassioned topic, things were bound to get pretty heated.  While there are bound to be people who want to hate and refuse to forgive, most people are probably more understanding that it appears.  

My main beef is one others have expressed; the well documented lack of acknowledgement by any officials that the Imperial Japanese Army perpetrated some pretty heinous shit during the war.  You have to admit it's sort of inexplicable.  

My other beef was the near gibberish that graff spouted as if facts.  It just kills me that with all of the information easily available, that someone can still puke up such a convoluted mess as posted above.

Kagemusha,

First, thank you for your service to our great country.

Second, my involvement in this thread is not as a Japan basher, nor have I made any generalities based on lineage.

I only posted when graff floated the ridiculous idea that we (as in us, as in you and me, Americans) should apologize for Hirishima and Nagasaki, and in the very same post spewed crap like "Mistakes" were made and BOTH sides are equally culpable for what went on.  That issimply not the case, and I corrected him.

The only animosity toward modern Japan is their refusal to acknowledge what went on and their revisionist history about an economic war with the US as the aggressor.