The Japanese were a whole lot worse that the Germans. What the Japanese did would have horrified Mengele.
The murdered at least 20 million in this program; the actual numbers are likely much higher.
> Yup, the Japanese were about as bad as...and maybe even a bit worse than...the Germans during the 1930s/1940s. <
My father was a WW2 veteran. He served on convey patrol in the North Atlantic, guarding against the U-Boats. I never heard him same anything bad against Germans.
But he hated the Japanese. For that reason I never bought a Japanese car while he was alive. He would have disowned me. I suspect Pearl Harbor made the difference.
[Yup,the Japanese were about as bad as...and maybe even a bit worse than...the Germans during the 1930s/1940s. They focused on the people of East Asia,Southeast Asia and,IIRC,allied POWs as well.]
That difference is why numerous postwar Asian leaders had prior experience working for the Japanese occupation authorities in responsible positions. The major names are Korea’s Park Chung-hee, Taiwan’s Lee Teng-hui, Indonesia’s Sukarno and Suharto, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Burma’s Aung San and Ne Win.
The Japanese attitude towards the conquered was fairly simple. Brutal collective reprisals were mounted against populations in regions that were perceived as harboring guerrillas or enemy troops. For instance, after the Doolittle mission that inflicted 50 dead in Tokyo, Chinese sources claim Japanese forces killed 250K people in areas of China where Doolittle’s men ditched their aircraft and were spirited out of China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid#Zhejiang-Jiangxi_campaign
But those who went about their lives as before, prior to Japanese rule, were left alone. Exemplary atrocities were mounted against trouble spots to discourage flare-ups in guerrilla attacks, but areas that complied were spared.
That’s a very different policy from Germany’s, which killed or tried to work to death every Jew it came across. Germany’s long-term plan was to rid the world of people who could not pass for German, and many that did pass for German.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
Japan wanted to rule the world whereas Germany wanted to kill it. Japan sought obedient subjects. Germany sought a world unpopulated by subhuman races - for Germans, the taint was in the blood. That’s the principal reason Germany’s actions are reviled to an extent Japan’s are not.
The numbers don’t lie.
1% of all Allied prisoners held in German captivity died as a result of their captivity.
36% of all Allied prisoners died as a result of being captives of the Japanese.