Posted on 08/15/2018 7:01:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia.
From Homo erectus to the present day - more than a million years of history in just one year of lessons. That is how, at the age of 14, I first learned of Japan's relations with the outside world.
For three hours a week - 105 hours over the year - we edged towards the 20th Century.
It's hardly surprising that some classes, in some schools, never get there, and are told by teachers to finish the book in their spare time.
When I returned recently to my old school, Sacred Heart in Tokyo, teachers told me they often have to start hurrying, near the end of the year, to make sure they have time for World War II.
[SNIP]
When we did finally get there, it turned out only 19 of the book's 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945.
There was one page on what is known as the Mukden incident, when Japanese soldiers blew up a railway in Manchuria in China in 1931.
There was one page on other events leading up to the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 - including one line, in a footnote, about the massacre that took place when Japanese forces invaded Nanjing - the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanjing.
There was another sentence on the Koreans and the Chinese who were brought to Japan as miners during the war, and one line, again in a footnote, on "comfort women" - a prostitution corps created by the Imperial Army
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
One of reason of the brutality of military was that the empire of Japan military failed to upgraded their equipments like Britain, Germany and France did. The modernisation proposal split the leadership
, led to a coup detat, due to the budget and shortage of industrial resources.
In the case of American black slavery it was White Christians who died by the thousands in the process of getting them freed. Guilt is being drilled more into white American kids, including mine whose ancestors never owned a slave, as German kids have had to endure over the war and the Holocaust. I'm sick of it too.
One thing I've used to put things in perspective when a black friend or colleague starts to kvetch in my direction is point out that some of my ancestry is Native American (Cherokee and Delaware), and that they're not the only ones with a reason to bitch about white people, AND ESPECIALLY DEMOCRATS (Trail of Tears, anyone?).
Bottom line is, if everybody quit bitching about things in the past which can't be changed (my ancestry is also Scottish and Irish ... am I supposed to march on London, or something?) and got on with being decent now we'd all be a lot better off. That doesn't mean we forget, just that we learn from the past and move on.
Interesting!
Do yo have a source/book you can direct me to?
“...if everybody quit bitching about things in the past which can’t be changed...and got on with being decent now we’d all be a lot better off.”
I believe we as a country were actually heading that direction.
Until Obama...
“Its a bit remarkable the US has been able to build a military coalition willing to defend Japan from China”
/
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Eisenhower government forced Japan to accept the coalition proposal. It was extremely unpopular, sparked left leaning anti-war mass protests. PM Kishi (he used to be class A War criminal suspect) took the great risk to sign the Japan-America security treaty and resigned. Pro-China socialist party would have won the election, if its leader hadn’t been assassinated by a far-right activist.
The reason the countries around Japan hate them has to do with what happened before WWII. Start with Japan's involvement in Korea and the murder of Queen Min.
The Annexation of Okinawa.
Americans think that it started with Pearl Harbor. Or maybe with the invasion of Manchuria if they have really read some history.
It began 50 years before that.
That is certainly a part of the problem but the bigger issue is with their superiority complex. It prevents them from admitting wrongdoing. I think it stems from the whole "Emperor is a descendent from God" thing.
Most people aren't aware that Tojo, along with more than 1,000 other Japanese WWII war criminals, are honored in the Yasukuni Shrine, in Tokyo. This shrine memorializes Japanese who died in service to the Emperor. No true remorse for their murderous actions in WWII. They were just serving a descendent of God, after all.
IIRC,, there are still active strains of cholera in parts of China today that were created by Unit 731.
When my kid was in the 4th grade back in the 90’s his school had a Japanese language program. The Japanese teacher was in her mid 20’s and told the class one day that it was bad for the US to have bombed Hiroshima.
My son chimed in “You shouldn’t have bombed us first”. Teacher dropped the discussion and switched topics.
Wow. I need to read more about it.
Regarding neighbors.....
I lived in Manila, Makati actually, and my office was on the top floor of a 12 story building on Ayala Avenue.
On a floor below, the Japanes company Mitsubishi had an office. The boss was a well dressed man in a blue suit and a red tie. He was responsible for Mitsubishi Raparations on behalf of the Japanese government.
If he was waiting for the elevator, he rode alone. No one would ride with him. If he got on an eelvator, those already there would scrunch up against the wall to avoid being close.
It was 21 years since the war ended but it was fresh on the minds of the Filipinos.
RE: Start with Japan’s involvement in Korea and the murder of Queen Min.
That aside, In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the relationship between the United States and Japan was marked by increasing tension and corresponding attempts to use diplomacy to reduce the threat of conflict.
Each side had territory and interests in Asia that they were concerned the other might threaten.
U.S. treatment of Japanese immigrants, and competition for economic and commercial opportunities in China also heightened tensions. At the same time, each country’s territorial claims in the Pacific formed the basis for several agreements between the two nations, as each government sought to protect its own strategic and economic interests.
Tensions rose over Japanese actions in northeast China and immigration to the United States.
In 1905, the Japanese started to establish more formal control over South Manchuria by forcing China to give Japan ownership rights to the South Manchurian Railway. The Japanese used this opening to make further inroads into northeast China, causing the Teddy Roosevelt Administration concern that this violated the ideals of free enterprise and the preservation of China’s territorial integrity.
Simultaneously, leading Japanese officials expressed frustration with the treatment of Japanese immigrants in the United States. A U.S.-Japanese treaty signed in 1894 had guaranteed the Japanese the right to immigrate to the United States, and to enjoy the same rights in the country as U.S. citizens.
In 1906, however, the San Francisco Board of Education enacted a measure to send Japanese and Chinese children to segregated schools.
The Government of Japan was outraged by this policy, claiming that it violated the 1894 treaty. In a series of notes exchanged between late 1907 and early 1908, known collectively as the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the U.S. Government agreed to pressure the San Francisco authorities to withdraw the measure, and the Japanese Government promised to restrict the immigration of laborers to the United States.
Japan and the United States clashed again during the League of Nations negotiations in 1919.
The United States refused to accept the Japanese request for a racial equality clause or an admission of the equality of the nations.
In addition, the Versailles Treaty granted Japan control over valuable German concessions in Shandong, which led to an outcry in China.
This coupled with the growing fear of a militant Japan, contributed to the defeat of the League Covenant in the U.S. Senate. The persistent issues preventing accommodation continued to be racial equality (especially with regard to the treatment of Japanese immigrants in the United States) and differences in how to address expansion in Asia.
In spite of the many efforts to reach agreements on these points, by the early 1920s Japan and the United States were again at odds.
It went downhill from there when Japan invaded China and took over the Eastern Seaboard culminating in the notorious Rape of Nanjing where over 300,000 Chinese were massacred and thousands of women raped and forced into being comfort women.
The USA and Britain then joined to prevent oil from getting to Japan. That was the last straw... Next stop — Pearl Harbor.
Thanks for your comment, Mase. I was not aware that Tojo was among the honored dead of the war. Shameful.
The Japanese have great pride as a people. I watch the samurai Taiga Dramas every year and enjoy them. I wish America did films about its history and lionized its people of merit.
But I do agree with you that along with pride comes a certain feeling of racial superiority. I was in the Navy and stationed in Sasebo for 3 years. What a wonderful time.
But just before my wife and I married, her mother explained to her for the first time that her father was of Korean ancestry. And that a brief, but psychological blow to a person who considered herself pure Japanese.
We really take for granted America’s melting pot and relatively lack of inbred racism.
Your dad sounds a lot like mine. My dad served in the Army during WWII, Korean, and Vietnam. Absolutely hated Asians ( as we call them today). He forbid all of his kids from ever buying their cars.
I was about 8 when my Dad sent me in to the Hardware Store to get some Hack Saw Blades, I came out gave him the change and the blades (made in Japan), he sent me right back in with the change and told me to tell the man I wanted Made in the USA blades.
(Ol Dad was ticked and that did not happen very often)
Thanks for your input and review.
I’d like to revisit Japan before I pass but I’d likely be disappointed.
So much has changed since the 50s when I was an Army Brat over there...
The Japanese had learned a lot of “wrong lessons” from their campaigns in Manchuria and China, where local food supplies were fairly plentiful, and supply lines were short and easy to defend.
Extending their reach into the southwest Pacific and east central Asia meant an environment where local food wasn’t available (compared to China, they might as well have been in the desert), their supply lines were far too long to defend (especially with airpower), and they didn’t have nearly the amount of shipping capacity to do it anyway. And as was noted elsewhere, “non-martial” duties like logistics and supply were not highly regarded or prioritized in the Imperial Japanese Army.
Hence, the victorious armies that had run wild across East Asia in 1941-42 were starving to death in the jungles of Guadalcanal and Burma a year later.
I had my tooth knocked out when I was 12. Mom took me to a dentist, who was Japanese from Hawaii. Since I was 12, he could only put in a temporary tooth and as I grew it would fall out every few months. I guess my dad got tired of my mom taking me back all the time. So one day he said he would take me. When the dentist came out my dad stood up and said “a God damned gook! No wonder you can’t fix his tooth. I used to shoot you sons of bitches in the war!”
We left at that point and I never went back to him.
Go back to Japan. You will enjoy it. The people are friendly, efficient, and the sites to see are incredible.
A couple years back, I recommended my sister visit the hot springs town of Beppu, a ferry ride from the Osaka area. She had a great time.
As I read about the Nanking Massacre, I gained a greater appreciation of the evil and ruthlessness the Japanese brought to China and other nations of Asia.
The Japanese have never publicly atoned for their atrocities during World War II. A scholarly discussion of this is on Quora.
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