started reading this last night.  i can't believe we didn't learn about this in school!  very interesting book so far.  i actually learned about this book from a guitar magazine!  i guess it's one of ozzy's favorite books, i'm just suprised that there havn't been movies and stuff made about this..i've always been taught the jews were the big losers of ww2.  i don't mean anything bad by that i'm just suprised how this has escaped the history books.

I'm familiar with the Rape of Nanking.

You're right, it is truly amazing how this has gone so under-reported.

The media in America is not real concerned about those particular victims of the war apparently.

Hmmm...I'll add that to my list.  So many books, so little time.

Read the book a few years ago on the way to my degree in history.  What is interesting is how the Japanese haven't dealt with their WW2 history as much or as well as their German counterparts.  They've just swept everything under the rug instead of confronting the fact that they committed some of the worst atrocities of the war.

Oh yeah, Nanking is another good example of why an armed populace is a good thing.  The army can't protect you when they aren't there... when the army guys are throwing their uniforms in the river and ripping civilian clothes OFF civilians who are standing there watching, so they can desert and blend back into the civilian populace, you know its going to be a really bad day for everyone.  Same thing happened in Vietnam in 75.  

pisses me off to hear some of the Japanese whine about being Nuked...apparently they have forgotten who started the war as well as what they did during the war.

The victims of the Japanese, in other words the Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Filipinos, New Guineans, Okinawans, etc, just didn't get a good lobbying group to represent them. Every once in a while a piece shows up in the news about this, but it's on page 22 instead of page one above the fold like the victims of the Nazis.

Yes...I read this one a few years ago.  Iris Chang did a wonderful job researching and writing this piece.

IMHO, the Japs made the Nazis look like gentlemen sometimes...

There was a really good special on The History Channel about it just last week. Like so many terrible things, it should never be forgotten.

On the show, they were interviewing younger Japanese people - because many of them had never even heard of what took place at Nanking.

Eric/Tyler

Here is a link to the video -

[url]http://store.aetv.com/html/catalog/vp01.jhtml?id=42526&browseCategoryId=[/url]

Wait 'till you hear about their biological warfare program, and the medical experiments they conducted on "inferior" people, (including P.O.W.'s). One reason you don't hear much about it is that US intelligence and the "scientific community" suppressed much of it, and made sure it never came out. No war crimes trials for them, oh no. They were granted immunity because WE wanted the research materials, and the cooperation of the perps in our own programs. Luckily for them, (the Japs), their victims weren't Jews, therefore not important. Their crimes made the Germans look like nice guys...Their inhumanity was second to none.

Liberty86...I agreed with your statement completely right up until you made that ignorant comment at the end...

"Luckily for them, (the Japs), their victims weren't Jews, therefore not important"

Since you seem to know so much about the Japanese Germ program and the amnesty our government gave them, then certainly you must be aware that the Germans had their own little germ warfare program...Their scientists too were granted amnesty by us and the other allies and guess who their victims were?  Thats right...JEWS...

While we are on the subject, its common knowledge that a vast majority of German scientists were granted amnesty after the war...not just those involved in germ programs...

Wehrner Von Braun and the rest of the rocket boys from Peenemunde come immediately to mind.

It is strange that the Japanese have not been made to come clean in a very public way like the  Germans.Perhaps its partly due to the fact that they're on an island nation in the far east and not (literally)surrounded and dependent on the nations they wronged.I've heard that Japanese school books are very sympathetic to the Imperial cause in WW2 and don't mention their own atrocities.

The Germans actually treated POW's from the west by the rules for the most part.Course they didn't extend the same courtesy to those from the east.

Seems to me that the only difference between the two antagonists is that the Japanese didn't have a mass production,industrialized plan for eliminating those thought undesirable.They were more murder at every oportunity.And they gave quarter to no man reguardless of ethnicity.

I read it explained that their ancient tradition if Bushido?(samuri warrior code)meant surrender was a discrace worse than death,thus all pows are sub human scum who discraced their race,family and ancestors.I think this is also why they were always spilling their guts or charging in suicidal "bonsai"frontal attacks rather than living to fight another day.A mentality that gave us no choice but to drop the bomb in their laps.

Byron2112...

IMO, The Bushido code is not to blame for the ferocity and brutality of the Pacific War.  Rather, it was the distortion and perversion of the Bushido Code by those at the highest levels of the Imperial Japanese Military "Dictatorship"

The military heirarchy created a propaganda machine that rivaled that of Joseph Geobels' and the Third Reich.  

Japanese boys were brainwashed and brutalized from birth and the military authorities viewed their own troops as being worth no more then a "penny"...I forgot what the official Japanese phrase for this concept was.

Anyway, I guess my point is that The Warrior Code - "Bushido" isn't necessarily evil, but there were those who abducted it and used it to serve their own purposes...world domination...

I think some how we got way off topic...hehe

There are plenty of things they don't teach in schools. Remember what Mark Twain said:



As for the Germ warfare and Nanking thing, since I grew up in China I'm pretty well aware of it (the Chinese government still won't let go of these things).

As for the under reporting, I kind of like the fact that it's not constantly rubbed in our faces like the Haulocaust. I would hate for it to be constantly rubbed in everyone's faces and have everyone keep thinking of Chinese people as victims. As for the lack of a good lobbying group, I'm not convinced that any lobbying group is good. I would like to think that our government serves common interests, and not those of special interests with common resources. Some people in the Chinese American community suggested that we should have a lobbying group or someone like Al Sharpton after the whole Wen Ho Lee incident, but thankfully no one took it seriously. For some reason, lobbying just seems an unChinese thing to do.

Here's one for "off topic"  In what year did Mark Twain desert the Confederate Army?  Which, most probably accounts for his name change too.

scipio,

I did read that life in the sevice of the emperor for the common foot soldier was brutal.I believe that most were peasant farmers who's only formal education was probably that distortion of Japanese honor and nationalism you talk about.

I guess in the end the Japanese propaganda machine far exceded the Germans ,in that the entire population down to the children was ready to do themselves in rather than surrender.

I'm in high school right now and last year (2001-2002) we spent a whole day + a homework assignment on Nanking. One day may not seem like much, but we spent much less time on most other topics. I guess there doing a better job educating people about it now.

There are hundreds of books and journal articles that discuss the events in detail.

For those who "didn't learn it in school", I encourage you to continue your education, independently.  So much moaning about an insufficiency in schools. . . a lack of media attention. . . a lack of hand feeding.

Get a library card and help yourself.

Nanking "incident" was only one of hundreds of such atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese military during WWII in China, Korea, Vietnam, Burma, etc.  

Many younger people in Japan today don't even know that they started WWII against US by bombing Pearl Harbor.  They only know about the atomic bomb being dropped on their country.  In reality dropping those 2 atomic bombs probibly saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives.  I heard that 2 atomic bombs killed about 200,000 people (from the blast and effect of radiation) but if we invaded the mainland the casuality among Japanese would have been minimum 1 million and maybe as high as 3 million.    

The point of what I was saying is that given the saturation of reporting other mass-victims of WWII have received, the Nanking episode HAS gone grossly under reported.

A hand full of people decide what we are taught, and what we are not. What is deemed important enough to resurrect for the last 50+ years, and what is not worthy of similar coverage. You're point about self education was well taken, but try not to be so fuckin' condescending.

If China wants payback, it definitely has the means to get it.
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Look, a little water is the only barrier.
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