The grave injustice of COMMEMORATING victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki whilst forgetting

[snagglepuss]

about the atrocities committed by the Japanese.

I first posted this back in 2009. The discussion that was sparked was at times brutal but was and remains incredibly enlightening. DU historians like The Magistrate were in fine form. One of the most jaw-dropping posts was by Statisical who wrote

It (nuclear weapons) was the fastest way to stop the Imperial Army, an Army that had exterminated 30 million civilians and was doing so at the rate of 500,000 per month.

An invasion likely would have worked but it would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides AND more importantly would have taken time, 3-4 months. Are 2 million Chinese civilians worth less than 200,000 Japanese civilians?

Another route would be continung the blockade. That would have killed 300-500 thousands Japanese civilians with little risk to Americans however blockades are slow and unpredictable. It could have taken 6-12 month or longer before the Empire collapsed. Is 6 million Chinese civilians worth less than 200,000 Japanese civilians?

There was no method to ending the war that wouldn't result in more civilians deaths. Pretending doesn't make it so.

As I said then. My thoughts are with the FORGOTTEN victims of the Japanese - the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Burmese, Vietnamese and Malay. I post this in their memory.

When I was younger I heard about the horrors the Germans inflicted, the post-war horrors inflicted by Stalin and the untold suffering of civilian casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It wasn't until some 15 years ago that I found out about the Japanese war crimes, their magnitude and their utter brutality.

I was shocked and angry that this story hadn't been told. I feel as angry now as I did then that collective memory is so selective. Why is it that some people's victimization is remembered and commemorated whilst the unimaginable suffering and victimization of many millions are largely forgotten.

What also galls me beyond belief is that the Japanese to this day refuse to fully acknowledge their guilt. They refuse to have their history taught in schools. Not all Japanese however are so quick however to gloss over their crimes. As you can read below a former mayor of Nagasaki "felt ashamed of the annual peace declarations he issued during his sixteen year term as mayor of Nagasaki "because they failed to include the point of view of Japan as an aggressor in the war.""

According to historian Chalmers Johnson "It may be pointless to try to establish which WWII aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimized. The Germans killed 6 million Jews and 20 million Soviet citizens; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos,Malays,Vietnamese ,Cambodians Indonesians, and Burmese at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese."

http://www.answers.com/topic/japanese-war-crimes


So for anyone who like myself is unaware of the magnitude of Japanese atrocities and the horrific brutality of their crimes during the period of Imperial expansion, the links below give some small sense of it.


GERM WARFARE EXPERIMENTS ON WOMEN,CHILDREN AND MEN"

it was the human experiments that distinguished Pingfan. Once, in an operation aimed at extracting plague-infected organs, which Kamada still finds it difficult to talk about, Kamada took a scalpel with no anesthetic, to a Chinese prisoner, or "log," as the Japanese euphemistically called their victims. "I inserted the scalpel directly from the log's neck and opened the chest," he told an Japanese interviewer, at the time anonymously. "At first there was a terrible scream, but the voice soon fell silent..

snip

"Today, a bizarre stone memorial that Kitano erected in honor of his experimental rats still stand in a disused rat cellar in China. It was more courtesy than he showed the victims of his experiments, who were
euphemistically referred to as "monkeys" in published scientific papers. The Shenyang medical school still has hundreds of slides of human brain cross sections, some of which were used in papers published by Sendai University with open references to the use of "fresh human brains."

Prof. Keiichi Tsuneishi, a Japanese historian of science, pieced together much of the Unit 731 story from scientific papers published by doctors, many of whom later agreed to speak to him. "They have no sense of remorse at all," he says. Instead, the doctors complained of wasting the best years of their lives on medical research that could not be continued after the war."

http://www.geocities.com/wallstreet/floor/9597/confessi...




RAPE OF NANKING

"Numerous atrocities were committed en route to Nanjing, but they could not compare with the epic carnage and destruction the Japanese unleashed on the defenseless city after Chinese forces abandoned it to the enemy."

snip


"Women were killed in indiscriminate acts of terror and execution, but the large majority died after extended and excruciating gang-rape...One eyewitness, Li Ke-hen, reported: "There are so many bodies on the street, victims of group rape and murder. They were all stripped naked, their breasts cut off, leaving a terrible dark brown hole; some of them were bayoneted in the abdomen, with their intestines spilling out alongside them; some had a roll of paper or a piece of wood stuffed in their vaginas" (quoted in Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 195).

... Many young women were simply tied to beds as permanent fixtures accessible to any and all comers. When they became too weepy or too diseased to arouse desire, they were disposed of. In alleys and parks lay the corpses of women who had been dishonored even after death by mutilation and stuffing." (Yin and Young, The Rape of Nanking, p. 195.)

SNIP

... The Japanese drew sadistic pleasure in forcing Chinese men to commit incest -- fathers to rape their own daughters, brothers their sisters, sons their mothers ... those who refused were killed on the spot." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, p. 95.)

SNIP

"Atrocious tortures were also inflicted on the captive men. "The Japanese not only disemboweled, decapitated, and dismembered victims but performed more excruciating varieties of torture. Throughout the city they nailed prisoners to wooden boards and ran over them with tanks, crucified them to trees and electrical posts, carved long strips of flesh from them, and used them for bayonet practice. At least one hundred men reportedly had their eyes gouged out and their noses and ears hacked off before being set on fire. Another group of two hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians were stripped naked, tied to columns and doors of a school, and then stabbed by zhuizi -- special needles with handles on them -- in hundreds of points along their bodies, including their mouths, throats, and eyes. ... The Japanese subjected large crowds of victims to mass incineration. In Hsiakwan a Japanese soldier bound Chinese captives together, ten at a time, and pushed them into a pit, where they were sprayed with gasoline and ignited." (Chang, The Rape of Nanking, pp. 87-88.)


http://www.gendercide.org/case_nanking.html



JAPAN'S REFUSAL TO ACKNOWLEDGE ITS WAR GUILT AND ATROCITIES

"One of the leaders of an influential and growing movement to deny Japan's war crimes and prevent Japanese children learning about Japan's war guilt and atrocities is Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka of the Education Department at Tokyo University. Fujioka chooses to ignore overwhelming evidence and claims that the Nanjing Massacre did not occur. He is harshly critical of Saburo Ienaga and anyone who believes that Japanese schoolchildren deserve to be told the truth about Japanese war crimes. "It's masochistic", said Professor Fujioka in 1997. "No other country in the world subjects its schoolchildren to such terrible history education. (They) are volunteering to show that Japanese people are ruthless".

According to Fujioka, Japanese troops were no more brutal than those of the United States. He claims that the American occupation forces brainwashed the postwar Japanese into believing that they had committed terrible crimes.

Fujioka is not a fringe radical. His distortions of history have wide support in Japan, not only from ultra-nationalist thugs and militarists but also from a new breed of better educated neo-Imperialists, including at least sixty-two parliamentary members of the ruling Liberal democratic Party (LDP), many academics, writers, journalists, businessmen, and sports figures. His books denying Japan's war guilt and countless atrocities are best sellers in Japan.

SNIP

In 1997 a former mayor of Nagasaki, Hitoshi Motoshima, told the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun ... that he felt ashamed of the annual peace declarations he issued during his sixteen year term as mayor of Nagasaki ..."The first thing to do is to apologise to China and others who were victims of Japan's aggression. Hiroshima and Nagasaki should pardon the atomic bombing and lead the world in reconciliation".
Following an unfortunate pattern of intimidation in Japan, Hitoshi Motoshima was attacked and seriously injured by a Japanese nationalist for speaking the truth about Japan's war guilt and war crimes."

http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforaustralia/JapWarC...















http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6249698

[grasswire]

1. you are brave to post this, snaggle

....and I honor your pain and compassion for human suffering.

Because our government called off the war crimes trials and punishments because the U.S. needed Japan as a future trading partner, Americans and Japanese both were not informed of the full horror of the war.

There is plenty of sorrow on all sides, isn't there? Plenty of regret and remembrance and sorrow.

I write this as someone whose uncle was a POW in the Philippines for three years.. He was on Corregidor. Captured. Injured in the attack. Leg gangrenous, sawed off by an army surgeon in a cave. Tortured by memories all his life. He told us: "Never forget."

[snagglepuss]

3. Rather convenient that the Left has played into the hands of the TPTB

I understand the horror of nuclear weapons but the Japanese were the aggressors and slaughtered countless millions. What the nuclear bombs really did what obliterate the real victims.

[Violet_Crumble]

12. The civilians killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren't real victims??

Really? I was under the impression that they were every bit as much victims as any other civilian casualty in WWII, and I'll commemorate the bombings and mourn their loss regardless of a few folk who think they don't deserve to be mourned...

[snagglepuss]

20. What BS. Where do I say they don't deserve to be mourned?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. but, but...none of that ever happened, we are told

or it matters not.

The war crimes tribunal at Tokyo were really minor compared to the IMT in Nuremberg... some of it was willful, some of it was the Russian bear breathing down our necks.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

8. No one says that

Though some seem to think that their atrocities justify our atrocities.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. At this point, given the history of the war, quite posislby the ONLY just war

in recent memory, and that was quite accidental... what I take huge exception is the fact that people do not understand context.

I will be brutally honest, if the Germans, they were developing it, got the bomb in oh. 1943 and the strategic bomber in 1944... we would be talking New York.

If the Japanese got it, we would be talking a number of Western Targets, including Los Angeles.

If the Russians got it, Berlin is the obvious target, If we got it oh a year earlier, Berlin is the obvious target.

Yes, it was that kind of a war...

And the fact is that for multiple reasons the IMT in Tokyo, the Japanese Trials, were relatively small compared to Nuremberg, and part of it, was MacArthur understanding that you could not put the Emperor on the docket. Our demands that he go away... were forgotten like on the second day after the end of the war... if not as soon as the ink dried.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

13. the context of this issue is that Japan was militarily defeated at that time (Summer 45)

The Japanese only surrendered when their one condition was met, when we FINALLY accepted their 1 condition, and the Chrysanthemum Throne stands in testament to the wisdom of that decision, as the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world to this very day... too bad we didn't accept it earlier.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. No it was not, why the high command was very divided

read on this very little known piece of history, the night before the official message to the people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_Incident

And there were divisions. The vote in the high command was 3:3 broken by the Emperor.

So no, they did not fully think they were defeated. That is a nice myth we like to tell ourselves sixty years on.

In reality, if the strategic bombing campaign was increased, the war could have come to a natural end by 1946 at the earliest, mid 1946. Some planners feared the land campaign, and the Russians. The one million casualties was an actual estimate for just the invasion of Honshu. It was based on what happened at Okinawa, for example.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

19. there is no denying that Japan was militarily defeated at that time

all of our military leaders at that time also recognized that fact, they would have been fools not to. And that there were divisions on wether to continue fighting is not unknown, and they would have if they were not granted their one condition.

Fortunately, they were, and history has shown it to be a wise decision.

And I am not just against the nuclear bombings of a defeated nation, but also the massive civilian fire-bombings as well.

Not to mention the horror we caused in Vietnam, I am against it ALL.

[snagglepuss]

21. The point is that we covered up their atrocities. Atrocities the world has never

forced the Japanese to acknowledge. Why? Because fascism is less threatening to the TPTB than commununism.

[gollygee]

4. The Japanese did some horrible things in WWII it's true

However I do think it's reasonable for the Japanese alive today to reflect upon the tragedy of the bombs landing in their country, even though their country committed horrible acts. It was a huge event and it seems obvious they'd commemorate that event regardless of what else happened in the war, and regardless of whether anyone feels it was justified or reasonable or not.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. The problem is that if you go talk

oh the rapes of koreans by the scores by Japanese occupation forces in camps created by the military, the Japanese population is mostly ignorant (by design) of it, or simply refuses to admit it happened.

I remember when the Rape of Nanking came out... the book was not allowed in Japan for a good while

[gollygee]

15. Yeah for the sake of balance

There should be more discussion of those events as well.

Well there should be more discussion in general. I can't remember how old I was before I learned about Nanking, but way way older than I should have been.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Well history should be taught not from the pov of the winner

but Nanking was really ignored for decades.

For the record, I expect US, the grand US, to hide things we did in Iraq as soon as convenient.

So it is up to us to keep that alive, as we really did a lousy job with Vietnam and the Central American wars... Iran Contra is but a generation removed and it is the what?

[quinnox]

5. Some stats of the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who died in both bombings

Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day. The Hiroshima prefecture health department estimated that, of the people who died on the day of the explosion, 60% died from flash or flame burns, 30% from falling debris and 10% from other causes. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness. In a US estimate of the total immediate and short term cause of death, 15–20% died from radiation sickness, 20–30% from burns, and 50–60% from other injuries, compounded by illness. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizeable garrison.

[leftstreet]

11. ...

[CBGLuthier]

6. Are you personally ready to be burnt to a cinder for the sins of the United States?

Because we are every damned bit as bad as any other damned country.

[snagglepuss]

23. How is your comment related to the OP?

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

7. There is enough blame to go around

[The Link]

14. I don't commemorate shit for them.

But I see a victim of Japanese atrocity every time I visit my mom.

[HardTimes99]

18. Technical Note: Most of Stalin's horrors were inflicted pre-war during the Holodomor

and other assorted mass murders. That pre-war record blemishes Stalin's reputation somewhat as the vanquisher of Hitler and the German Wehrmacht, imho.

Otherwise, an excellent post! Much appreciated and quite appropriate.

[MicaelS]

22. Excellent post, I'm glad you reposted this.

I linked to it in one of mine the other day. You did much better than I did.

Thank you.