Holocaust worst atrocity in European war, but Japanese atrocities bad and mostly ignored.

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Clash Of Evils

Submitted by Blain, Sep 12, 2007 00:19

Many people, including American military and political leaders at the time, focus most of their attention on the European war when discussing WWII, but the Asian and Pacific war had its own atrocities which were, in many ways, worse than what happened in Europe. Japanese treatment of Chinese civilians in the Rape of Nanking, long before Pearl Harbor, resulted in millions of deaths, tortures, and human experimentation with chemical and biological agents. Japanese treatment of allied prisoners makes German treatment of allied prisoners look downright humane, being marked by death marches, mass rapes, slave labor and mass starvation. The Japanese military culture had no respect for a soldier who would surrender, rather than fighting to the death, so prisoners of war might not only be killed but their bodies mutilated recreationally. Much of the ugliness carried out by the Japanese was intentionally swept under the rug after the fall of the Empire and the creation of the new regime under the MacArthur Constitution, to enable the alliance of Japan and the US against the Soviets in the Cold War. Unfortunately, this has enabled a massive denial about the Japanese contributions to the war in the Japanese education system to the point that Japanese children learn little more about the war than "In August 1946, for no apparent reason, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." They don't learn how near a thing it was that the Japanese people would have been totally destroyed due to the military leadership's insistence that they should fight to the last life rather than surrender. It sounds as though the issues brought up by this book on the European war are good ones, but they are neither unique nor new in their assertions. I might look into it.

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Comment	By	Date
This was formally before the start of WWII but part of the same story. Poles tend to forget to mention... [MORE]	vic	Sep 15, 2007 06:41
Poland did not invade Czechoslovakia. When Hitler invaded Czecholovakia Poland took back the small area of Teschen Czechoslovakia grabbed from... [MORE]	Stef	Oct 6, 2007 19:52
Vic fails to mention that Czechoslovakia invaded Poland in 1919 with 15,000 troops, some in non Czech uniforms. After Austro-Hungary... [MORE]	Stef	Oct 12, 2007 11:20
I borrow that heading from Stephen Jay Gould's gloss on the rise of mammals through the contingent annihilation of dinosaurs... [MORE]	Brian Johnson	Sep 12, 2007 08:01
I read his history of Europe, and there too he takes swipes at Zionism even though it had no connection... [MORE]	Read his books	Sep 12, 2007 01:18
Emotions are easily manipulated and one would be naïve to think that such an emotionally charged issue as the Holocaust... [MORE]	Stef	Oct 6, 2007 23:35
Many people, including American military and political leaders at the time, focus most of their attention on the European war...	Blain	Sep 12, 2007 00:19
1. Historian Norman Davies excludes origins, viz. "who started it," i.e. excludes from the explanation of later events the 1939... [MORE]	Don Phillipson	Sep 11, 2007 18:22
The involvement of the US and Great Britian against Germany was necessary for victory. If Great Britian had surrendered, all... [MORE]	charles	Sep 11, 2007 11:59
From the time my childhood in the USA, I've noticed a tendency to focus on Nazi war crimes to the... [MORE]	Aram	Sep 11, 2007 04:32
John's suggestion there was "no need to continue lend lease after 1944" is quaint. Unless the Soviet Union continued to... [MORE]	Norman Hanscombe	Sep 10, 2007 23:20
Hindsight is not always 20-20. The British and Americansconducted a very costly bombing campaign on German cities,costly both in men... [MORE]	Muggins	Sep 10, 2007 23:07
In "No Simple War," his treatment of the Holocaust is generally straightforward and unobjectionable. Yet he evidently still feels bruised... [MORE]	Omri Schwarz	Sep 10, 2007 22:10
He's a product of his times. Maybe he is an anti-Semite. or maybe he feels stung by the Zionist need... [MORE]	ds	Sep 12, 2007 12:42
I wish a less subjective reviewer had written this piece. Mr. Kirsch frets throughout that Davies' alleged lack of objectivity... [MORE]	jeepgypsy	Sep 10, 2007 15:05
Keep in mind, as even Churchill noted after the war, that the USSR did the bulk of the fighting against... [MORE]	We were fortunate	Sep 10, 2007 09:39
Dear RTK -- don't try to pull the age thing on Tom. It's like arguing that you only can understand... [MORE]	John	Sep 10, 2007 00:26
Granted John, it's not impossible to understand things you have no experience of, but that being said, comprehending the international... [MORE]	Avi	Sep 10, 2007 11:37
I have always been amused by people who buy our wartime propaganda that we were fighting for freedom and democracy... [MORE]	tom	Sep 5, 2007 03:43
My guess is that "tom" who so smugly wrote "snicker, snicker" is under the age of 70, and knows only... [MORE]	rtk	Sep 5, 2007 21:59

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