Posted on 05/14/2013 6:16:40 AM PDT by SandRat
An outspoken nationalist mayor said the Japanese military's forced prostitution of Asian women before and during World War II was necessary to "maintain discipline" in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers who risked their lives in battle.
The comments made Monday are already raising ire in neighboring countries that bore the brunt of Japan's wartime aggression and have long complained that Japan has failed to fully atone for wartime atrocities.
(Excerpt) Read more at azstarnet.com ...
So . . . these e—vil “financial interests” who “caused” World War II . . . they wouldn’t happen to be “Jewish bankers,” would they?
In the case of the Japanese, I don't think it's got anything to do with political correctness. The Japanese felt they weren't doing anything new. They were using medieval rules of war because that's the only way you can control huge swathes of territory in a short period of time without losing too many men. China is a shining example of how medieval rules of engagement prevailed over the centuries. Since its start as a small kingdom on the banks of the Yellow River, the Chinese (and every other) empire has expanded the usual way, by punishing those who resist and rewarding those who comply, in ways that are considered verboten, mainly by the established powers.
The reason we bowed to Japanese sensitivities had nothing to do with political correctness and everything to with the possibility that they might turn communist. We portrayed the Japanese as subhuman via wartime propaganda, and interned hundreds of thousands of dual-national Japanese at home, so political correctness was the least of our problems. Meanwhile, flesh-and-blood German American saboteurs were arrested, but only a handful of German Americans were interned.
Ultimately, the Japanese support these politicians because the Japanese see China as the empire that succeeded because it started a little earlier, and European colonies in the Western hemisphere as pretty substantial examples of what can be achieved with medieval rules of conduct. Ultimately, they're not wholly convinced by what they consider foreign hypocrisy about empire-building, which they think runs along the lines of "I've got mine, so screw you".
Ethnic prejudice will always be with us. The mayor whose controversial statements are the subject of this article comes from Japan's subhuman class, the burakumin. FDR, along with the majority of Americans of his time, undoubtedly saw the Japanese he interned as subhuman. The difference with the Germans is that they attempted to kill every last one of the people they considered subhuman, along with everyone they thought might have just a smidgen of subhuman blood. The Japanese never tried to exterminate the Chinese. They targeted hostile regions with chem and bio-weapons, but these were populations they would have attacked with conventional weapons, anyway.
It’s a financial group, not an ethnic or religious group.
You know there are Dutch people who actually will abuse other Dutch people, Americans who will abuse other Americans, etc. Money can be the tie that binds people together into all sorts of wickedness, even to the point of them hurting not only those of their own ethnic or religious persuasion, but even family, neighbors and friends.
The works of Antony Sutton are a good place to get some information on Anglo-American industrial and financial records of involvement will Nazi Germany both before and during the war.
When researching for the pieces of conspiracy theories that are not disinformation - or entertainment - but are actual historical fact, it’s vital to focus only on what is documented facts. There is definitely a ton of completely false information out there which is used to obfuscate the truth of various facts. Once people see a few false statements in a given tract, they tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater and extrapolate that every statement in the tract is false, including those few that were true, damning evidence. The next time they see another tract with the same true damning evidence - they then dismiss that whole tract as well, because they think the “story” they first read was a falsehood - it’s very difficult to switch to believing something is true if you’ve believed it’s false - and preposterous - for a great deal of time.
That being said, those darn facts do have a way of upsetting our view of history !
I know I’ve found some just a very few simple facts that really turned many ideas that I held close to my heart on their head. I read about WWII battles as a very young boy and was very passionate about that phase of American history. I can’t help but feel grateful devotion to Americans who are combat veterans. I guess that’s why some of these simple facts bother me so much. Of course, feeling lied to is ok for a minute, but then I figure it’s time to get to the truth, understand it piece by piece and then put these pieces out there for public consumption. If something I find is proven false, I admit it, immediately ! Why pretend that a lie is true ? It only continues to hurt instead of help. I think Mr. Sutton’s work does a good job of simply stating facts that he discovered in his research - and there quite a few assertions of his that I don’t feel I can take as 100% reliable simply because I have not verified his citations. The documents he cites that are easily verifiable, of course, I tend to grant that those are verifiable as I try to come to conclusions of my own.
Just to scrape the tip of the disinformation iceberg...
do you have a solid knowledge of who FDR was and what he was all about ? That is, his business relationships over his whole career, not just his Presidential career, as well as his family background.
The perception of FDR that has been fed to Americans is a fantasy whitewash.
FDR didn't like the Japanese, that's true. Nor did he like the Germans. He was a Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt didn't like the Japanese or the Germans either (Teddy was screaming against "the Hun" practically the moment World War I began).
Both Roosevelts were interventionists with regard to both the economy and foreign policy, yet because he was a Republican Teddy is considered a "jingo" and a super-patriot, while FDR is considered a traitor and an "internationalist."
You make a good point about Japan merely doing what the West had done for generations. However, most of those Western nations eventually came to abjure their former behavior. Japan's behavior during World War II--not its going to war, but its behavior during the war--is unjustifiable. However, I recognize the fact that during this "ethical evolution" some countries were frozen out of the colonial adventure while the nations that came to be "enlightened" nevertheless kept all the colonies they had won by similar means. I recognize the hypocrisy, but this doesn't justify the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March.
I hope you understand that I am not anti-Japanese (there was a time when I advocated rearming Japan myself). I also support them against China (a nation entering on the same rapacious path but which will never be called on it due to its nominal "Communist" status making it immune to liberal judgment). I just recognize that there are always unforeseen consequences. A reawakened Japanese militarism combined with historical revisionism is not a consequence anyone wants.
Antony Sutton was a great researcher. I have one of his books. However, Antony Sutton didn't believe in standard conspiracy theories and actually criticized them.
From 1977 to 1981 I was a member of the John Birch Society. I started out as gung-ho as you can imagine but I came to see some very ugly things about them. My experience has turned me off on conspiracy theories--especially those theories that blame "communism" on "banksters" and which advocate nationalization of the financial sector. I hope you will understand, even if you don't share, my concerns. I appreciate that you are not an anti-Semite.
Not really true. Sure, invading armies kill those who resist, but 1) resisting is different from rebelling, and 2) a lot of those "populations" included women and children.
To say, the Japanese weren't as bad as the Nazis in WWII isn't really saying much. Just about anybody was better than the Nazis. What does that have to do with Japanese conduct in the war? It's not like they were fighting Nazis.
The Nazis can say they were sorry, but the "sorry" doesn't really cut it when you've systematically wiped out tens of millions out people way outside of even medieval rules of conflict.
That's a pretty off-the-wall comment as well. Where were the Nazis who said "sorry" and who here made reference to them? Maybe you've got personal reasons for going where you went, but it doesn't change the Japanese record in the war.
Japanese troops were issued male enhancement devices, think suction, because some of the troops didn’t “measure” up.
And you wonder how the Chinese might have a little bit of “resentment” towards Japan? Thanks for the reminder ‘Gator...
we could hope but I hear in Japan, this is common thinking because schools do not teach accurately about Japanese wartime atrocities.
Joe Biden has done much worse ~ he’s definitely hard to imagine ~ too real if you ask me.
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