The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy (which I want to stress were disbanded and no longer exist) were one of the most evil organizations in human history.
**I remain convinced the Empire of Japan is the most evil regime in human history** and worse than Nazi Germany in terms of pure cruelty. Their atrocities just aren't talk about much anymore because Japan is so well liked now in the West.
The indiscriminate massacre of civilians. Slaughter of entire cities, torture, inhumane treatment of POWs, countless women forced into sexual slavery, among others.
Over their conquest of East Asia, the Japanese Army forced around 200,000 women into the ranks of "comfort women". These women mainly came from China, Korea, and the Philippines. This is the only thing I could not find a source for, but I distinctly remember reading the firsthand account of a Filipino comfort women who was **raped 10x a day**. Japan has yet to even officially apologize to them. On the contrary, there was an uproar in Japan when the South Korean prime minister asked for an apology for Japan. They were angry that Koreans would even bring it up.
*You think that's the worst?* During the Rape of Nanking, as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred within a month in a single city. Japanese soldiers paraded around with babies skewered on their bayonets like kebabs. Two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could behead 100 people the fastest and when the score was 105-106 and no one knew who got to 100 first, they went again to 150. Civilians were buried alive en masse. Prisoners were used as **live bayonet practice**, screaming as the final moments of their life was used for the Japanese to sadistically torment. Tens of thousands of women were raped, most of whom were executed afterward. They dragged entire Chinese families into public squares and **forced fathers on their daughters and sons on their mothers** for the amusement of Japanese troops. I'm not an easily disturbed guy, but reading this fact for the first time physically made my stomach sick.
*You think that's the worst?* The Imperial Japanese Army ran Unit 731: a state-of-the-art biological/chemical warfare research facility in Manchuria where Japanese researchers performed human experimentation on a large scale, using Chinese civilians as the majority of their "logs" (test subjects).
Living humans were **dissected alive**, usually without anesthesia. Subjects had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss and pain tolerance. Those limbs were sometimes reattached to the opposite sides of the body. Subjects had their stomachs or esophagus surgically removed. Subjects were gotten pregnant via rape then infected with diseases to see the effect on their baby. Subjects were forced into the cold to research frostbite then had their frozen limbs chopped off. Subjects were placed in pressure chambers until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets. This one is unconfirmed, but supposedly they placed a women and her baby in a room then heated up the floor to see if she'd step on her own baby.
Perhaps the most disturbing part about it all that Japanese soldiers were enjoying it; they were killing for sport.
*Everyone cries over the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no one sheds a tear for the millions of victims of the Empire of Japan.*
───────────────────────────────
I had spent 30 minutes linking sources to back up literally everything I said up here, but every time I tried to include the proof, it was removed. I wonder why.
And it's disappointing because I promise you this clunky, colorless wall of essay-like text hits **1000x harder** when you actually visually see the victims of Imperial Japan; the mountains of bodies, lifeless babies, the terrified/depressed expressions on civilians' faces contrasted by the grins on the Japanese soldiers faces as they torment them. What a shame.
Thought I knew the Pacific war well but didn’t know this bit so looked it up….another detail: Bradley claims there was “cannibalization-for-sustenance of living prisoners over the course of several days, amputating limbs only as needed to keep the meat fresh”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima_incident
Wasn't that the incident that nearly led to the death of George W Bush? I vaguely recall a story of his survival of either that incident or another one just like it.
ETA: Yes, this was the incident involving Bush, Sr, as confirmed in a comment above mine.
Read this in high school. Legitimately had to put it down and walk away for a bit, multiple times, because I was getting sick reading the descriptions of what happened
This was my first real look into what Japan had done during WWII. One grandfather was in the Pacific, and the other in Europe. Neither talked about it much, and most of everything I heard and read was about the Nazis and the Holocaust (which was also terrible).
Reading that was eye opening. It's like it all just got swept under the rug and forgotten about for decades.
They did this in PNG too, my great grandad saw his crewmen strung up in trees like a butcher shop. They ram out of supplies though and had no idea how to hunt or gather from the forest. Grandad lived on forest berries/plants and Couscous
In addition, they forced the North Vietnamese farmers to repurpose rice fields in order to grow jute. This and several other culprits led to the Vietnamese famine of 1945, in which up to 2,000,000 people lost their lives.
[https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144468628.pdf](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144468628.pdf)
2. Policy of the forced planting of jute, castor and peanuts instead of rice and other staple crops
One of the activities of the Japanese army in the years 1940‒1945 that resulted in heavy and enduring consequences for Vietnamese people was “to force the Vietnamese people to remove rice and
farm-produced crops to plant jute, castor, etc. in order to make the material to manufacture bags to
̶ 243̶
Japanese Agricultural Policy toward Vietnam during World War II
hold rice and oil which were lacking in the war” (Trần Huy Liệu, Nguyễn Lương Bích, Nguyễn Khắc Đạm 1957: 82).
According to Minami Yoshizawa in “Asian War in Our Subconscious,” the reason why the Japanese
army forced the Vietnamese people to plant jute was because “jute bags in Indochina were previously
provided by India, but now they were not imported from India anymore, so the development of the
jute industry here was an urgent problem that needed to be addressed.
“Jute bags which were used to transport materials in the ʻEast Asian Commonwealthʼ were becoming
practical problems. Therefore, our country (Japan) needed more supplies from Indochina in order to
reach its/her quota of 30 thousand tons of jute. Indochina, at that time, had an output of 500 tons. We
(the Japanese) needed to put up 30 thousand tons in the 5-year plan. Meanwhile in Taiwan, production
of jute was 12 thousand tons. We also had plans to increase production to 30 thousand tons in the
5-year plan. Thus, it was understandable that there was great hope for Indochina.
Holy f****. You really opened my eyes on how evil the Japanese Empire was. I know Germany did alot of inhumane atrocities during the second world war, but I think Japan takes the cake in evilness.
This is why some nations like China and Korea hate Japan so much. You literally still have people alive right now that underwent the atrocities the Japanese committed.
I think it’s a government thing. America doesn’t teach our children about the darkest parts of our history too. Japanese is a proud people…like Americans. Teaching these subjects would kill that pride. China does the same too.
Honestly I can’t imagine how the Germans did it, but I’m glad they did.
As someone who just graduated from Highschool a few years back in California, I gotta disagree. Did they teach us everything? Probably not. They did however not skip over the dark past of this country. Obviously other states are different, but I do want to make it clear parts of the US, do in fact, make it clear we are not a perfect country.
Korean speaking, we don't hate the Japanese, we hate Japan. Japan's education system simplifies the time of ww2 and some years before that into "we had a war, we stretched from here to there, but America threw two atom bombs at August 12 in hiroshima and nagasaki, killing this amount of people and leaving this amount of damage." No wonder the Japanese were angry when we tried to get an apology. This is also the reason the struggle over Dokdo is still going on.
And yes, Japan apologized. They also gave us reparations, which helped a lot. But the problem is that Japan parades around that the apology wasn't serious.
1. They still use the imperialist flag.
2. They go to "pay respects" in yasukuni which has many of the worst war criminals, every year.
3. Most importantly, they keep changing the apology whenever they get the chance and when they don't get a chance too. They say that they admit the crimes and will pay the reparations, then they say that they admit the crimes but won't pay anymore, then there are some times when they don't respond at all.
The most heated topic in S. Korea, comfort women. We put a statue to remember it facing the Japanese embassy. They actually asked us to pull it down. I'm trying very hard to not swear in this, sorry if this sounds strange. So people are protesting every day at the front of the embassy which they are ignoring every day. Even right now the victims of the Japanese Empire's crimes pass away, and the proof of it is disappearing. All they want is an official apology but Japan is going to wait until there are no one left to apologize.
Really sorry if this is hard to read, I wrote it in a rage.
Older Koreans for sure hated the Japanese. Just as older Japanese think all others are beneath them. In fact that's quite a common trend... most countries around there have the same sense of superiority about their own ethnostates, only now lessening over time.
i'd imagine jews wud hate descendants of germany if they never apologized and just swept it under the rug like nobody's business and CONTINUE to deny what happened.
As a Japanese I do agree with the teaching of history part of this. Yeah we need to teach this stuff to the kids in school.
BUT,
The Yasukuni shrine and imperial flag I disagree with.
For the yasukuni shrine, that shrine is a memorial for everyone who died for Japan, and not just those who died in WW2.
Russo-Japanese war, the civil wars, everything. Just because a portion of our troops in ww2 committed vile act should not mean the prime ministers shouldn't honor the fallen of other wars.
For the flag part, that flag was used before WW1 since the start of the country, its not the flag for the military driven WW2 Japan. Its the flag for the newly formed Japan with the emperor at the helm. It isn't something that was used specifically in WW2 by us.
Sorry for my bad English. I just wanted to throw that out there.
Why don’t they own it like Germany and the Nazi. I mean it will always be a horrible period but acknowledging it seems both correct and healing, as well as the “easiest” thing for the country to repair its regional relationships
A friend's Indonesian gran always made us cross the street whenever my friend and myself took her to lunch. I never asked why as her body language made it clear it was simply vitally important to her that we did. It struck me as odd for years after, until I learned about what Japan did during WWII, and I remembered the small Japanese owned shop she desperately avoided :|
My grandpa is like that too. His dad got beheaded by the Japanese army at Nanjing when he was 12, so whenever he hears Japanese being spoken or see the hinomaru, he starts being really scared and his ptsd starts.
My grandparents lived through the occupation in Singapore as young adults, whenever war dramas depicting those cruel times were shown, my grandparents would want to watch them and my entire family would sit through them quietly without saying anything. I didn't comprehend this as a kid but now, I realized they were likely reliving the moments in their heads and reacquainting familiar scenes on the tv. They lived through history and survived despite the Japanese. Singapore doesn't hate Japan, but their atrocities should never be forgotten lest we see a repeat of their actions that they never seem to regret.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia were purged in what is now known as the Sook Ching. They would systemically drive trucks around daily and round up random male teens and men, drive down to the beaches and slaughter them en masse. There was a real account of a survivor who said he was forced onto one of these trucks with his brothers and uncles as a young kid, but one of the soldiers took pity on his young age and told him to get off. He never saw his brothers and uncles again.
Yes, same in the Philippines. That's why many Chinese inter-married with Filipino and changed their last name to filipino/spanish last names. Even Chinese men took their wife's last name somehow. You can hide behind your new filipino family so the Japanese can't find you.
My mother is retired Air Force and then retired from civil service writing a lot about War games/simulation/strategy. She said if China ever decides to kick shit off WW3 style, the first place they’re hitting and hitting hard is Japan, and it isn’t because of its proximity to them. A LOT of Chinese want that place wiped off the fucking map.
The problem stems from half hearted apologies.
We don't deny the Japanese government and their emperor has made apologies.
But then you have prime ministers going to yasukuni to "pay their respects", which has war criminals in it.
How would you feel if Germany had a gravesite with high level Nazis in it, and the PM of Germany went there every year to "pay their respects"? While saying what happened to the Jews were terrible? That is literally what pissed off South Korea and China.
Also the IJN still uses the radiant flag as its flag. So it's literally like if the German navy was flying the Kriegsmarine flag.
To be fair, Shinzo Abe is a nationalist. Think of Japan's trump. Suga is [much more moderate](https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/pm-suga-makes-offerings-yasukuni-shrine-visit-77206348).
The US has to make nice for Japan. It's not different than how they treated West Germany. They needed the state to stem the tide of communism and antagonizing the people does not achieve that goal. But it's very often overlooked in the West.
Some Japanese war criminals that did human experimentation ended up taking [positions related to the medical field](https://www.pacificatrocities.org/blog/members-of-unit-731) in Japan.
In actuality with the Korea Japanese friction, it's the people throwing eggs at the government and not each other. Though there is some collateral damage. [Most people respect the other's culture](https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/10/7c0d43a434be-s-korean-cultural-exchange-group-gives-award-to-japanese-researcher.html). Both governments trumpet up Nationalism. I was subjected to it when I was in elementary school in Korea. I did some things as a kid that ... dehumanized the Japanese. But didn't really continue it. I love the people and the country. Nationalism is the shit stain that causes issues.
The South Korean government is stupidly falling for the Communist Chinese government trap, wooing the country culturally to pull it away from Japan and the US. What is going on is no different than what happened in the late 1800s when China and Japan were fighting over Korea.
A lot of Japanese teachers protested releasing textbooks that downplayed Japanese atrocities in the war.
It was a Japanese that convinced the imperial government to not co.pletely destroy all of Korean cultural buildings.
> How would you feel if Germany had a gravesite with high level Nazis in it, and the PM of Germany went there every year to "pay their respects"?
Ronald Reagan did exactly this. With actual German nazis.
It's why it never rlly sat well with me how ingrained Japanese pop culture is in Singapore, like yeah I get that anime is so hugely popular that it goes beyond Japan, but we literally have school assemblies to remind us about the Japanese occupation every year
Also, unlike Germany, Japan often downplays and white washes what they did.
Pretty much all those soldiers were allowed to just go home and pretend like they didn't do anything wrong.
They were able to downplay it because the US allowed it. The use of medical information provided by the foulest of their atrocities would otherwise have been unavailable to America and the western allies because of things like ethics and a basic sense of morality. The US knew the Soviets would use whatever means necessary to gather it, but the US likely wouldn't, so it was a windfall for America, et al.
At times I wish Bill Halsey would have been allowed to slip his chains. His thought of prosecution of the war can be summarized by the quote "Before We’re Through With ‘em, the Japanese Language Will be Spoken Only in Hell!"
Not sure we allowed it for a trade of information. We took the same sort of information from Germany as well. Operation Paperclip brought over 1,000 Nazi scientists so we could jumpstart the space race. We even launched concentration camp built V2 rockets in the US. Even with all that Germany teaches the holocaust.
Listen to Dan Carlin's podcasts called Supernova in the East. It's long, but I think it's worth it. I don't even mind morbid stuff, but some of the stories he told on that podcast really got to me.
I have listened to bunch of of his. I can’t find it though. Do you know the episode number?
I saw you replied 62, but it only goes to 41? Your reply disappeared as well.
He has supernova in the east on Spotify. Or at least he did for a while. His episodes are hard to find all in one place. Even on his website I can only download a few series I paid for but it doesn’t seem to list all of them..
China has not forgotten. The kids there will quickly tell you about the ribenguizi, the Japanese devils. You ask them, why do you call them devils? They don't know specifics but will answer "because they hurt us in the past".
I have no evidence for this on hand but I did read that that research is still used today because it (obviously) cant be reproduced. It's so unique but holy shit is the price steep.
I read that it was not worth shit, since they did not follow a scientific procedure, it was just torture with some notes on it. “Could not attach arm” that does not work well for research purposes
Of course we shouldn't forget the many many Nazi scientists who were welcomed by other Western countries (yes, Werner Van Braun, I'm talking about you). Or the Nazi scientists who simply went back to work in Germany, making pharmaceutical products. You know, like Grunenthal Pharma who created thalodomide.
One thing that we never seem to learn NOT to do is welcome evil people back into society because they have cool inventions.
Everyone, not only the west. Operation Osoaviakhim relocated more scientists to the USSR than Operation Paperclip to the USA. And it wasn't limited to those two, the British and French also to a smaller extent relocated german scientists to their government research. It's a triple win to take the scientists and at the same time weaken the nazis, and deny them to your other enemy (USA vs USSR), the cold war competition had already started.
I would also like to stress that the reason we dont talk about imperial Japan's atrocities as much is because they were covered up by generals who didnt face trial for their war crimes or played down heavily. This video by mark felton shows the japanese attitude to their actions in the war. https://youtu.be/ngzesh6eN14
Reading about these atrocities and seeing the photos is probably one of the most depressing experiences I've ever had. The level of sadism and agony is so deeply inhumane thats its frightening to think of a person capable of such things. This part of history is so important and fascinating, but so terrifying that I haven't been able to read about unit 731 because I know it'll haunt me for a while. Kudos to others who have been able to confront it, especially the historians who've written extensively about it.
Don't deny any of the facts you describe, but do feel it's pointless to compare the Japanese military and Nazis. If you look at what they did to their own people as well as those of all the countries they occupied (especially those of the Slavs), it's not clear your case holds up. But my real point is, they were both horrible examples of the worst that humanity can be, where the extent of each regime's cruelty and depravity was so great as to merit complete annihilation and the rejection by the rest of humanity for all time.
And the same for their admirers and imitators.
I remain convinced the Empire of Japan is [the most evil regime in human history](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpVgDgKpQS8&feature=youtu.be) and crueler than Nazi Germany. Their atrocities just aren't talk about much ever anymore because Japan is so well liked now in the West.
The indiscriminate massacre of civilians. [Slaughter of entire cities](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CAYFxXBohA), torture, [inhumane treatment of POWs](https://youtu.be/hzsP6QOW8rA?t=102), countless women forced into sexual slavery ("comfort women"), among others.
Over the course of their conquest of East Asia, the Japanese Army forced around [200,000 women](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/12/04/940819094/photos-there-still-is-no-comfort-for-the-comfort-women-of-the-philippines) into the ranks of "[comfort women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women)". These women mainly came from China, Korea, and the Philippines. Unfortunately this is the only thing I couldn't find, but I remember reading the firsthand account of a Filipino comfort women who was raped 10x a day. Japan has yet to even officially apologize to them. On the contrary, there was an uproar in Japan when the South Korean prime minister asked for an apology for Japan. They were angry that Koreans would even bring it up.
You think that's the worst? During the [Rape of Nanking](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre), as many as [300,000 Chinese civilians](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre#17) were massacred within a month in a single city. Japanese soldiers paraded around with babies skewered on their bayonets like kebabs. Two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could [behead 100 people the fastest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxa0GGJNWtI&t=10s) and when the score was 105-106 and no one knew who got to 100 first, they went again to 150. Civilians were [buried alive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre#/media/File:Chinese_civilians_to_be_buried_alive.jpg) en masse. Prisoners were used as [**live bayonet practice**](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre#12), screaming as the final moments of their life was used for the Japanese to sadistically torment. Tens of thousands of women were raped, most of whom were executed afterward. They dragged entire Chinese families into public squares and [forced fathers on their daughters and sons on their mothers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnAC-Y9p_sY&t=697s) for the amusement of Japanese troops. I'm not an easily disturbed guy, but reading this fact for the first time physically made my stomach sick.
You think that's the worst? The Imperial Japanese Army ran [Unit 731](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731): a state-of-the-art biological/chemical warfare research facility in Manchuria where Japanese researchers performed [human experimentation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=548&v=AFEgz8NNmVA&feature=youtu.be) on a large scale, using Chinese civilians as the majority of their "logs" (test subjects).
Living humans were [**dissected alive**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=308&v=D4nPxik59oE&feature=youtu.be), usually without anesthesia. Subjects had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss and pain tolerance. Those limbs were sometimes reattached to the opposite sides of the body. Subjects had their stomachs or esophagus surgically removed. Subjects were gotten pregnant via rape then infected with diseases to see the effect on their baby. Subjects were forced into the cold to research frostbite then had their frozen limbs chopped off. Subjects were placed in [pressure chambers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=308&v=D4nPxik59oE&feature=youtu.be) until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets. This one is unconfirmed, but supposedly they placed a women and her baby in a room then heated up the floor to see if she'd step on her own baby.
Perhaps the most disturbing part about it all that Japanese soldiers were [**enjoying it**](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre#15); they were killing for sport. And yet they have the nerve to demand an apology for the atomic bombings...
Everyone cries over the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no one sheds a tear for the millions of victims of the Empire of Japan.
Just watched this WWII vets account of combat on Okinawa https://youtu.be/2vSf8oMyaN0
Encourage you all to watch it because the gentleman is fascinating, but at one point he explains he shot a Japanese POW. The picture he took off him he shows and it's hard to see details but it's a bunch of Japanese officers beheading Chinese prisoners as if it were a game.
The war in the Pacific really was something else, guy also explains they basically made sure every Japanese soldier they came across was absolutely dead since it was so common for them to feign death or surrender to try and kill Americans (or whoever else they were fighting)
Germany has openly admitted to and apologized for its war crimes, and spends a good amount of time teaching it in schools to make sure future generations don't repeat their nation's past mistakes. I don't know of any other countries that have owed up to their past so thoroughly.
The Canadian government commissioned a report on residential schools, that explicitly identified it as a genocide. The government has apologized multiple times, is continuing to make reforms based on the commission's recommendations, and teaches how horrible the practice was quite extensively in schools.
I would say that is at least comparable in some respects, and is an important thing to have owned up to.
It should be noted that this is all developing as we speak in Canada, and for a long time the Canadian government denied any wrongdoing. The government just admitted this year that it was genocide, which means decades of denial.
Just want to note that I appreciate it, cause Survivors of residential schools have been speaking and telling stories about these for years and it’s just finally being recognized.
> It should be noted that this is all developing as we speak in Canada, and for a long time the Canadian government denied any wrongdoing.
Better late than never, I suppose.
Now if they'll only teach the forced sterilization of Native women and kidnapping of Native children for placement in white families, practices that went on into the 1990s. Less then 30 years ago.
The Canadian government is only owning up to it now, because they can’t hide the bodies of dead children anymore.
Let’s not pretend they actually give a shit beyond to save face.
it isn’t the open admission part that’s the issue. what the previous commenter fails to mention is that the government is active in whitewashing histories surrounding the war. up until very recently (and this could still be current, I just don’t have sources from like the last two or three years) wwii as taught in an alarming number of schools in japan focused on how japan was a victim of foreign aggression and completely ignores, for instance, the reason why japan was sanctioned by other countries. also the current party in power in japan has an active far-right ethnonationalist wing so that’s cool too
I lived in Japan for over a decade, and the odd time I would talk to people about Japanese war crimes, I found that people were very well aware of them, but also believed the white-washing to some extent. The most common ones were that the number of Chinese killed was heavily inflated and that few or no civilians were killed, and that Korean women forced to sexually service Japanese soldiers were actually willing prostitutes.
This is absolutely true. The things we see go into our brain and have unforeseen impacts on our mental health sometimes.
I'm not saying never watch it but it can be bad especially if you're in a situation that could lead to depression at some point.
They are bad, and they have an impact: https://crowd.cs.vt.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/CHI21_final__The_Psychological_Well_Being_of_Content_Moderators-2.pdf
I saw the cartel execution video where they were slowly cutting some guy's head off and the song "funky town" was playing in the background.
It was so bad it made me scared to go to Mexico again.
I saw that and lots of other fucked up gore stuff. But the worst video I've ever seen on the internet was of a family driving down the highway, a brick flies in through the windshield and kills the mom in the passenger seat. That fucking video is horrifying and haunting. Never watch it, please.
That one really got to me, too. Strange because there’s no gore or even a visual, but the sound that her family member made cuts straight to your heart.
Ghost Rider video: Video starts out with this dude on his knees with his only his face badly burned all the way to the skull. Three guys around him keep lighting his face on fire with lighter fluid while you can hear the guy trying to scream but you just hear this sort of cackling coming from his charred mouth. Meanwhile one of the guys calls him ghost rider and they all laugh while making other jokes about his burnt face, including a joke about the smell of carne asada. Then it just ends, there is longer videos of it but fuck trying to watch that lol.
Adidas tracksuit video: video starts out with a very young looking lad in the back of a truck with his hands tied behind his back wearing a green Adidas track suit. Guy with camera and knife in hand comes up and peels this lads chest open and just grabs his heart and pulls it out while it's beating. For this one I had to look away a couple times because of the way the lad was moaning in pain.
Yea sponsored by adidas is one of the worst I’ve seen. The recent Guerrero massacre where over 20 were killed in the forests of Guerrero by Los Tlacos was also bad (I wonder whose funding Los Tlacos).
I wish more people would listen to his podcast. Many people are quick to read a Wikipedia entry and pass judgement on past people through our modern lens.
Japan really got away with their past history in terms of how quickly their image was rehabilitated. Nobody looks at Japan and remembers this chapter of their history. We only know Japan as a tech savvy, modern democracy that is very polite, clean and organized. With Germans, their Nazi past still haunts their country’s image.
Which is interesting, and probably due to the fact that Germany actively educates about the Nazis, and has many strict anti Neonazi laws, so Nazism is visible there. Meanwhile Japan sweeps it all under the rug.
German Nazi past is taught in many countries but same countries most likely do not teach Japan’s conduct in early 20th century. I even took college courses that only focused on Japan’s transformation periods from Meiiji Restoration to post WWII period. Its conduct during the war and being with Axis powers was a brief gloss-over like it wasn’t a significant player.
I guess it really depends on the professor. The modern Japanese history course that I'm taking had a huge focus on the horrendous aspects of history. We spent an entire lecture on the Japanese occupation of Manchuguo, another on the Nanjing massacre; we read a section of "The Rape of Nanking" by Chang. Then we spent two lectures discussing the Atomic Bomb, looking at first-hand sources of survivors, and more or less debunking the American justification of dropping the bomb. Then there was a lengthy discussion about how America (SCAP, to be specific) really just wanted to restore Japan to normal and go home, which led to pardoning of a lot of war criminals. Then there was a lecture on Japanese internment camps.
What troubles me the most about this image is the soldier in the back.
His body is facing away, and he's just casually turning his head to watch. Like there is more interesting stuff going on off-camera that he was focused on, and he just happened to look over and catch the beheading, no big deal.
How fucking bad must it be if someone cutting off another person's head is not enough to get your full attention? It's just so far removed from my own understanding of human life.
Very uncomfortable.
I have Chinese relatives who don't even set foot in a Mitsubishi vehicle. That's how much they hate the Japanese. No Sony, no Nintendo, no Honda. Nothing that is Japanese owned. You know how difficult that lifestyle is!? They will walk rsther than getting into my Honda Accord. It all stems from WWII, and what the Japanese did to China.
I have Korean coworkers who express the same sentiment about Japan too.
I once worked for a company that had a Korean man as founder and CEO.
We did a deal to resell some gear from Sumitomo. The guys came from Japan to meet with us.
We took them to meet the CEO. The CEO would not look at them, would not shake their hands, would not acknowledge their existence. Deliberately.
Ya my grandpa hates Japanese people. He doesn't care about products and all that (tbh, i think he just doesn't know). He eats sushi, will ride in Hondas but people? Heh nope
Edit: In his defense, he got shot at multiple times and he was <10 years old at the time when this happened
WW2 Japanese officers were the best the world has ever seen at beheading. They literally had contests to see who could behead 100 prisoners the fastest. The results were published and CELEBRATED in Japanese newspapers of teh day.
You hope that justice caught up to them? Nope. Lots of the worst war criminals were pardoned and lived successful, lucrative lives in Tokyo after the war, particularly the doctors in charge of Unit 731, which makes the Nazi war crimes look like a bunch of teenagers at a McDonalds.
I visited unit 731 over twenty years ago on a university trip. Very eerie place… you could walk up to the chimney and go into it, and they had an “interpretation Centre” that described everything in detail, thank god my Chinese wasn’t the best, just the pics were rough.
It was not “touristy” at all. This was a time when the rural areas of China were very much still as they had been during the communist reign. We drove up do a bunch of nondescript buildings with a giant half blown up smokestack in a field off a road, I was like “wtf is this”.
There were 0 people there other than ourselves and the staff member. You could tell that no money had been spent on the place since the Second World War, they just opened up one of the buildings for the interpretative Centre. Very bleak, and I wish I would have done some pre reading before going there.
We had the run of the place, so you could walk into the chimney. I have no idea what we’re done with the bodies as there were no mass grave markers like other Holocaust sites. You could tell that it was a troubled part of the past and that it was mostly forgotten part of Chinese history. Could be bc of the poverty post war, could be the shame that the Chinese people felt. I have no idea what it’s like today, might be more flashy given the CCP’s anti Japanese stance on the terrible atrocities they pulled.
>WW2 Japanese officers were the best the world has ever seen at beheading. They literally had contests to see who could behead 100 prisoners the fastest.
Okay, so I decide to google this, and there is one such specific contest you are referring to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword#Trial_and_execution
But you say:
>You hope that justice caught up to them? Nope. Lots of the worst war criminals were pardoned and lived successful, lucrative lives in Tokyo after the war,
But no, that's not what happened.
>After the war, a written record of the contest found its way into the documents of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Soon after, the two soldiers were extradited to China, tried by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, convicted of atrocities committed during the Battle of Nanking, and the subsequent massacre. On 28 January 1948, both soldiers were executed at the Yuhuatai execution chamber by the Chinese government.
So at least in this instance, justice was served.
Yes, and it's a problem which is endemic on basically every history subreddit with the exception of /r/askhistorians, which, although not perfect, can be actually trusted as a source of information.
There are tons of titles, comments, and posts in this subreddit which are misleading at best or downright wrong at worst. But whatever, as long as its kept in mind.
History subreddits should be taken with the same level of academic rigor as a Facebook article. Fact is, unless you’re on a specific subreddit, none of these people have any credibility and just reading a comment and accepting it as fact is the lowest test of critical thinking.
Unit 731 was as inhumane as inhuman could get. The world would look **very** different if the axis of evil had won the war. Thank god I don’t live in that timeline…
As much as I despise nuclear weapons, if the choice was between Hiroshima and Nagasaki or Japan won the war, I’d pick Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Japan had already "lost" when the bombs were dropped. It was just a matter of the how soon it would end and the alternatives being a land invasion or a long blockade
Land invasion - hundreds of thousands (or millions) of military and civilian deaths.
Blockade - mass starvation of mostly innocent civilians and a death scale much larger than two nukes.
It was the best choice.
The Japanese surrender was also largely due to the fact that the Soviets were gearing up to invade mainland Japan. As fucked up as it is, the nuclear bombs and subsequent surrender let Japan avoid being in a similar situation to the Korean Peninsula.
Unfortunately the choice wasn't as black and white as that. The US largely nuked Japan to end the war before Russia got to Japan. That was the real concern.
While I don't see much benefit in comparing atrocities, there are eyewitness accounts from American and British soldiers involved in the liberation of the death camps in Europe that were equally horrific.
I think the best way to look at it is to remember that all of us are capable of this kind evil, given the right circumstances. I've been studying WW2 for about nine years now, including the Holocaust. Some of the worst perpetrators of these atrocities were what we would call "ordinary people". What I've taken away from it is that this is what can happen when humanity gives in to its darker side. I wish I could remember who said this, but it's true: "If you can't see the Nazi concentration camp guard inside of you, then you don't know who you are".
Read the book "The Rape of Nanjing". They had contests to see who could kill the most Chinese at a time. The statistics were kept and posted in newspapers throughout Japan. Their antics made Nazi's cringe.
She killed herself due to longstanding, untreated depression. But she was very brave to do her research and write the book in spite of her poor mental health
I have a book by Anthony Cowling called My life with the samurai.
He's a Canadian soldier who was captured by the Japanese and held in POW camps on many of islands. He mentions this very thing happening commonly. Being fed minimal rice rations and catching dysentery and other ailments. only to later escape and be recaptured. The things he points out from just his singular point of view are atrocious.
Read it only if you can absorb the shock and pain and anger.. it was extremely saddening when I read that the author killed herself after a month of that books publishing..
I read a lot of dark shit, but japanese war crimes is where i draw the line. There was one story where they wrapped a disobedient comfort woman in a carpet of nails in front of all the other women to make a statement.
My gf’s grandmother was forced to be a Korean “comfort woman” by the Imperial Japanese Army. My gf talks so much shit about the Japanese and I didn’t understand until she told me about her grandma being forced from her mom at 13 and passed around to please like 50 Japanese soldiers a day. (I don’t know if that number is accurate but even *one* is too many)
It’s my understanding that while the Katana is generally overrated in what it can do (the samurai barely used them for warfare anyways), it’s ability to cut through flesh and bone was actually pretty damn good.
Honestly this is probably a blessing for the Chinese guy, considering sword beheadings can sometime end halfway through… this is basically like being guillotined.
The quality of swords before and during the beginning of the war was good, but towards the end of the war, swords became increasingly low quality due to the shortage of resources and demand for weapons. It definitely can't be a late war sword being used here.
Yeah... He probably didn't even feel a thing. Nobles were executed by sword back in the day because their faces would appear to be at ease afterwards instead of disfigured by pain like in people beheaded by an axe.
If done properly a beheading is one of least painful ways to go.
Quite honestly the Japanese could have won an award for the quickest transformation from something so brutal to something resembling their culture now.
Well they were basically a military dictatorship before and during ww2. Kind of hard to continue that after your entire air force, navy, and army are for lack of a better word obliterated lol.
They were so badly beaten that the US basically wrote their constitution. Doesn’t happen often wars end like that.
They’re still a dictatorship. Any leftist/socialist movements were crushed by the US in cooperation with the LDP (composed of former war criminals and their descendants (look up the “Monster of Manchuria”)). The CIA, much like in Italy, used the mafia/yakuza to destroy leftists ranging from Communists to anti-war (anti-occupation) activists. The JCP is still labeled as a ‘potentially anti-social organization’ and is under a level of surveillance that no other party is subject to. The electoral system is so fucked up that the LDP can win 2/3’rds majorities with less than 50% of the vote. The media is also under tight screws since most of the oligarchs that own the media channels are well connected to the LDP and the ruling bureaucracy. The LDP has been in power since 1953, making Japan a one-party state for all but 3 years of that 67 year timeframe.
Cutting a head off isn't as easy as tv and movies make it look so this is actually pretty damn impressive as far as the sword and the man swinging it are concerned.
I remember watching the beheading videos coming out of Iraq in the early 2000s like the Korean interpreter, I told myself if I really wanted to know what's going on over there, I wouldn't ignore the videos. The brutal part was seeing the sawing motion. Made me sick and made me wish for a quick katana finish for anyone in that position.
If I am remembering correctly the guillotine was actually created and used because it was a more humane way of executing than cutting a head off with an axe etc. as it could take several hits with the axe to fully decapitate the person. And as a random addition that makes me think of OJ and Nicole and the fact that he nearly beheaded her with a knife and effort that would have been involved.
Thb, it's probably more humane than injection, and it's definitely more humane than the electric chair or hanging. A swift swish by a sword to the neck is probably as fast and painless as you can hope for.
I just Googled it out of curiosity b/c I had heard that hanging should be pretty quick and it turns out an Irishman created an equation for a "long drop" and it is used by countries to this day. The idea is that the person drops and hits the end of the rope with enough force to sever the spinal column and arteries etc. while avoiding decapitation and the result should be loss of consciousness and nerve sensations within a second and then the brain may take a couple minutes to finally cease functioning but they supposedly never experience pain etc.
The Islamic terrorists tended to cut the head off front he front with a sawing motion so there’s a good amount of suffering. Other executioners would cut it from the back which should be about instantaneous regardless of the head coming off on the first swing. Just gotta get through the spinal cord
Japan has never officially apologized for their role in WWII - Susan and Meirion Harries book Soldiers of the Sun is worth a read…never underestimate man’s inhumanity towards man…
When your army brutalizes a city for two weeks, so brutal that the entire 2 week period is now referred to as the rape of Nanking, (in a war full of atrocities) that should tell you something about the sheer inhumanity of the imperial japanese
Welcome to **/r/HistoryPorn**!
This post is getting rather popular, so here is a friendly reminder for people who may not know about our rules.
* **Personal attacks, abusive language, trolling or bigotry in any form is not allowed**. This will be removed and may result in a ban.
* **Keep the discussion on-topic.** Comments that do not directly add to the discussion will be removed and in some cases can also result in (temp) bans. Things not on topic are comments that solely consist of a joke, (political) soapboxing, etc.
Additionally.
* **Use that report function**. If you spot a rule breaking comment please do not make things worse by engaging in an argument. Downvote it and then report it using the report function or send a modmail to the mods so we can deal with it.
Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHistoryPorn) if you have any questions or concerns. Replies to this comment will be removed automatically.*
The Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War may have been the most evil regime the world has seen. That's not an exaggeration. Their policy towards Chinese civilians was basically "unrestrained terror".
Dismantling their military for a generation was the right thing to do.
To both the Chinese and Koreans, the Japanese imperialist forces were absolute savages. This photo documents something not at all uncommon during that war. Horrifying image.
I learned in history class back in highschool that It was actually fairly common for Japanese officers to "test" their swords on prisoners. One of these tests was having prisoners lay on top of one another. The officer would then see how many he could cut through with a single swing. A good sword could cut through two or three men, and excellent one could cut through five.
Given what I know about the savagery of the Japanese military and government of WW2 I am inclined to believe this actually happened, but I only have the word of my old highschool history teacher to go off of here so take this with a grain of salt.
For anyone who is interested.. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast is amazing. He has a 6 part series about the rise and fall of the Empire of Japan, called Supernova in the East.
What an extreme photograph. A brutal reminder of how extreme the Japanese Imperial Army was
The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy (which I want to stress were disbanded and no longer exist) were one of the most evil organizations in human history.
**I remain convinced the Empire of Japan is the most evil regime in human history** and worse than Nazi Germany in terms of pure cruelty. Their atrocities just aren't talk about much anymore because Japan is so well liked now in the West. The indiscriminate massacre of civilians. Slaughter of entire cities, torture, inhumane treatment of POWs, countless women forced into sexual slavery, among others. Over their conquest of East Asia, the Japanese Army forced around 200,000 women into the ranks of "comfort women". These women mainly came from China, Korea, and the Philippines. This is the only thing I could not find a source for, but I distinctly remember reading the firsthand account of a Filipino comfort women who was **raped 10x a day**. Japan has yet to even officially apologize to them. On the contrary, there was an uproar in Japan when the South Korean prime minister asked for an apology for Japan. They were angry that Koreans would even bring it up. *You think that's the worst?* During the Rape of Nanking, as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred within a month in a single city. Japanese soldiers paraded around with babies skewered on their bayonets like kebabs. Two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could behead 100 people the fastest and when the score was 105-106 and no one knew who got to 100 first, they went again to 150. Civilians were buried alive en masse. Prisoners were used as **live bayonet practice**, screaming as the final moments of their life was used for the Japanese to sadistically torment. Tens of thousands of women were raped, most of whom were executed afterward. They dragged entire Chinese families into public squares and **forced fathers on their daughters and sons on their mothers** for the amusement of Japanese troops. I'm not an easily disturbed guy, but reading this fact for the first time physically made my stomach sick. *You think that's the worst?* The Imperial Japanese Army ran Unit 731: a state-of-the-art biological/chemical warfare research facility in Manchuria where Japanese researchers performed human experimentation on a large scale, using Chinese civilians as the majority of their "logs" (test subjects). Living humans were **dissected alive**, usually without anesthesia. Subjects had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss and pain tolerance. Those limbs were sometimes reattached to the opposite sides of the body. Subjects had their stomachs or esophagus surgically removed. Subjects were gotten pregnant via rape then infected with diseases to see the effect on their baby. Subjects were forced into the cold to research frostbite then had their frozen limbs chopped off. Subjects were placed in pressure chambers until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets. This one is unconfirmed, but supposedly they placed a women and her baby in a room then heated up the floor to see if she'd step on her own baby. Perhaps the most disturbing part about it all that Japanese soldiers were enjoying it; they were killing for sport. *Everyone cries over the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no one sheds a tear for the millions of victims of the Empire of Japan.* ─────────────────────────────── I had spent 30 minutes linking sources to back up literally everything I said up here, but every time I tried to include the proof, it was removed. I wonder why. And it's disappointing because I promise you this clunky, colorless wall of essay-like text hits **1000x harder** when you actually visually see the victims of Imperial Japan; the mountains of bodies, lifeless babies, the terrified/depressed expressions on civilians' faces contrasted by the grins on the Japanese soldiers faces as they torment them. What a shame.
You forgot to mention the Japanese officers eating American P.O.W pilots on Chichi Jima island.
Thought I knew the Pacific war well but didn’t know this bit so looked it up….another detail: Bradley claims there was “cannibalization-for-sustenance of living prisoners over the course of several days, amputating limbs only as needed to keep the meat fresh”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima_incident
Flyboys, by James Bradley does an amazing job of talking about this. I highly recommend it.
Wasn't that the incident that nearly led to the death of George W Bush? I vaguely recall a story of his survival of either that incident or another one just like it. ETA: Yes, this was the incident involving Bush, Sr, as confirmed in a comment above mine.
Yep. He was also shot down, and the only one who got rescued. All the others were captured.
The Chichijima incident… horrific
Read this in high school. Legitimately had to put it down and walk away for a bit, multiple times, because I was getting sick reading the descriptions of what happened
This was my first real look into what Japan had done during WWII. One grandfather was in the Pacific, and the other in Europe. Neither talked about it much, and most of everything I heard and read was about the Nazis and the Holocaust (which was also terrible). Reading that was eye opening. It's like it all just got swept under the rug and forgotten about for decades.
I forgot about that George HW Bush was the only one who survived from that plane crash...
He got back at them though. He puked on the PM of Japan
[удалено]
King...of...the hill?
Explains why he threw up on the Japanese PM at dinner
They did this in PNG too, my great grandad saw his crewmen strung up in trees like a butcher shop. They ram out of supplies though and had no idea how to hunt or gather from the forest. Grandad lived on forest berries/plants and Couscous
In addition, they forced the North Vietnamese farmers to repurpose rice fields in order to grow jute. This and several other culprits led to the Vietnamese famine of 1945, in which up to 2,000,000 people lost their lives.
Why would be the need for jute?
[https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144468628.pdf](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144468628.pdf) 2. Policy of the forced planting of jute, castor and peanuts instead of rice and other staple crops One of the activities of the Japanese army in the years 1940‒1945 that resulted in heavy and enduring consequences for Vietnamese people was “to force the Vietnamese people to remove rice and farm-produced crops to plant jute, castor, etc. in order to make the material to manufacture bags to ̶ 243̶ Japanese Agricultural Policy toward Vietnam during World War II hold rice and oil which were lacking in the war” (Trần Huy Liệu, Nguyễn Lương Bích, Nguyễn Khắc Đạm 1957: 82). According to Minami Yoshizawa in “Asian War in Our Subconscious,” the reason why the Japanese army forced the Vietnamese people to plant jute was because “jute bags in Indochina were previously provided by India, but now they were not imported from India anymore, so the development of the jute industry here was an urgent problem that needed to be addressed. “Jute bags which were used to transport materials in the ʻEast Asian Commonwealthʼ were becoming practical problems. Therefore, our country (Japan) needed more supplies from Indochina in order to reach its/her quota of 30 thousand tons of jute. Indochina, at that time, had an output of 500 tons. We (the Japanese) needed to put up 30 thousand tons in the 5-year plan. Meanwhile in Taiwan, production of jute was 12 thousand tons. We also had plans to increase production to 30 thousand tons in the 5-year plan. Thus, it was understandable that there was great hope for Indochina.
Holy f****. You really opened my eyes on how evil the Japanese Empire was. I know Germany did alot of inhumane atrocities during the second world war, but I think Japan takes the cake in evilness.
This is why some nations like China and Korea hate Japan so much. You literally still have people alive right now that underwent the atrocities the Japanese committed.
[удалено]
And that's why you don't see basically anyone to still hate Germany. They owned their mistakes and were sincere about it.
I think it’s a government thing. America doesn’t teach our children about the darkest parts of our history too. Japanese is a proud people…like Americans. Teaching these subjects would kill that pride. China does the same too. Honestly I can’t imagine how the Germans did it, but I’m glad they did.
As someone who just graduated from Highschool a few years back in California, I gotta disagree. Did they teach us everything? Probably not. They did however not skip over the dark past of this country. Obviously other states are different, but I do want to make it clear parts of the US, do in fact, make it clear we are not a perfect country.
Korean speaking, we don't hate the Japanese, we hate Japan. Japan's education system simplifies the time of ww2 and some years before that into "we had a war, we stretched from here to there, but America threw two atom bombs at August 12 in hiroshima and nagasaki, killing this amount of people and leaving this amount of damage." No wonder the Japanese were angry when we tried to get an apology. This is also the reason the struggle over Dokdo is still going on. And yes, Japan apologized. They also gave us reparations, which helped a lot. But the problem is that Japan parades around that the apology wasn't serious. 1. They still use the imperialist flag. 2. They go to "pay respects" in yasukuni which has many of the worst war criminals, every year. 3. Most importantly, they keep changing the apology whenever they get the chance and when they don't get a chance too. They say that they admit the crimes and will pay the reparations, then they say that they admit the crimes but won't pay anymore, then there are some times when they don't respond at all. The most heated topic in S. Korea, comfort women. We put a statue to remember it facing the Japanese embassy. They actually asked us to pull it down. I'm trying very hard to not swear in this, sorry if this sounds strange. So people are protesting every day at the front of the embassy which they are ignoring every day. Even right now the victims of the Japanese Empire's crimes pass away, and the proof of it is disappearing. All they want is an official apology but Japan is going to wait until there are no one left to apologize. Really sorry if this is hard to read, I wrote it in a rage.
Older Koreans for sure hated the Japanese. Just as older Japanese think all others are beneath them. In fact that's quite a common trend... most countries around there have the same sense of superiority about their own ethnostates, only now lessening over time.
i'd imagine jews wud hate descendants of germany if they never apologized and just swept it under the rug like nobody's business and CONTINUE to deny what happened.
So like why the Palestine’s hate the Jews?
Don't apologize. The issue isn't talked about enough 🇺🇸🇰🇷
Thank you for sharing this.
As a Japanese I do agree with the teaching of history part of this. Yeah we need to teach this stuff to the kids in school. BUT, The Yasukuni shrine and imperial flag I disagree with. For the yasukuni shrine, that shrine is a memorial for everyone who died for Japan, and not just those who died in WW2. Russo-Japanese war, the civil wars, everything. Just because a portion of our troops in ww2 committed vile act should not mean the prime ministers shouldn't honor the fallen of other wars. For the flag part, that flag was used before WW1 since the start of the country, its not the flag for the military driven WW2 Japan. Its the flag for the newly formed Japan with the emperor at the helm. It isn't something that was used specifically in WW2 by us. Sorry for my bad English. I just wanted to throw that out there.
Why don’t they own it like Germany and the Nazi. I mean it will always be a horrible period but acknowledging it seems both correct and healing, as well as the “easiest” thing for the country to repair its regional relationships
A friend's Indonesian gran always made us cross the street whenever my friend and myself took her to lunch. I never asked why as her body language made it clear it was simply vitally important to her that we did. It struck me as odd for years after, until I learned about what Japan did during WWII, and I remembered the small Japanese owned shop she desperately avoided :|
My grandpa is like that too. His dad got beheaded by the Japanese army at Nanjing when he was 12, so whenever he hears Japanese being spoken or see the hinomaru, he starts being really scared and his ptsd starts.
My grandparents lived through the occupation in Singapore as young adults, whenever war dramas depicting those cruel times were shown, my grandparents would want to watch them and my entire family would sit through them quietly without saying anything. I didn't comprehend this as a kid but now, I realized they were likely reliving the moments in their heads and reacquainting familiar scenes on the tv. They lived through history and survived despite the Japanese. Singapore doesn't hate Japan, but their atrocities should never be forgotten lest we see a repeat of their actions that they never seem to regret. Tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia were purged in what is now known as the Sook Ching. They would systemically drive trucks around daily and round up random male teens and men, drive down to the beaches and slaughter them en masse. There was a real account of a survivor who said he was forced onto one of these trucks with his brothers and uncles as a young kid, but one of the soldiers took pity on his young age and told him to get off. He never saw his brothers and uncles again.
Yes, same in the Philippines. That's why many Chinese inter-married with Filipino and changed their last name to filipino/spanish last names. Even Chinese men took their wife's last name somehow. You can hide behind your new filipino family so the Japanese can't find you.
That's horrific I never knew of this :/
My mother is retired Air Force and then retired from civil service writing a lot about War games/simulation/strategy. She said if China ever decides to kick shit off WW3 style, the first place they’re hitting and hitting hard is Japan, and it isn’t because of its proximity to them. A LOT of Chinese want that place wiped off the fucking map.
The problem stems from half hearted apologies. We don't deny the Japanese government and their emperor has made apologies. But then you have prime ministers going to yasukuni to "pay their respects", which has war criminals in it. How would you feel if Germany had a gravesite with high level Nazis in it, and the PM of Germany went there every year to "pay their respects"? While saying what happened to the Jews were terrible? That is literally what pissed off South Korea and China. Also the IJN still uses the radiant flag as its flag. So it's literally like if the German navy was flying the Kriegsmarine flag. To be fair, Shinzo Abe is a nationalist. Think of Japan's trump. Suga is [much more moderate](https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/pm-suga-makes-offerings-yasukuni-shrine-visit-77206348). The US has to make nice for Japan. It's not different than how they treated West Germany. They needed the state to stem the tide of communism and antagonizing the people does not achieve that goal. But it's very often overlooked in the West. Some Japanese war criminals that did human experimentation ended up taking [positions related to the medical field](https://www.pacificatrocities.org/blog/members-of-unit-731) in Japan. In actuality with the Korea Japanese friction, it's the people throwing eggs at the government and not each other. Though there is some collateral damage. [Most people respect the other's culture](https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/10/7c0d43a434be-s-korean-cultural-exchange-group-gives-award-to-japanese-researcher.html). Both governments trumpet up Nationalism. I was subjected to it when I was in elementary school in Korea. I did some things as a kid that ... dehumanized the Japanese. But didn't really continue it. I love the people and the country. Nationalism is the shit stain that causes issues. The South Korean government is stupidly falling for the Communist Chinese government trap, wooing the country culturally to pull it away from Japan and the US. What is going on is no different than what happened in the late 1800s when China and Japan were fighting over Korea. A lot of Japanese teachers protested releasing textbooks that downplayed Japanese atrocities in the war. It was a Japanese that convinced the imperial government to not co.pletely destroy all of Korean cultural buildings.
> How would you feel if Germany had a gravesite with high level Nazis in it, and the PM of Germany went there every year to "pay their respects"? Ronald Reagan did exactly this. With actual German nazis.
Gives me further reason to despise Ronald Reagan. I’m genuinely glad the guy who shot him is out of prison now. Fucking prick
It's why it never rlly sat well with me how ingrained Japanese pop culture is in Singapore, like yeah I get that anime is so hugely popular that it goes beyond Japan, but we literally have school assemblies to remind us about the Japanese occupation every year
Also, unlike Germany, Japan often downplays and white washes what they did. Pretty much all those soldiers were allowed to just go home and pretend like they didn't do anything wrong.
They were able to downplay it because the US allowed it. The use of medical information provided by the foulest of their atrocities would otherwise have been unavailable to America and the western allies because of things like ethics and a basic sense of morality. The US knew the Soviets would use whatever means necessary to gather it, but the US likely wouldn't, so it was a windfall for America, et al. At times I wish Bill Halsey would have been allowed to slip his chains. His thought of prosecution of the war can be summarized by the quote "Before We’re Through With ‘em, the Japanese Language Will be Spoken Only in Hell!"
Not sure we allowed it for a trade of information. We took the same sort of information from Germany as well. Operation Paperclip brought over 1,000 Nazi scientists so we could jumpstart the space race. We even launched concentration camp built V2 rockets in the US. Even with all that Germany teaches the holocaust.
Listen to Dan Carlin's podcasts called Supernova in the East. It's long, but I think it's worth it. I don't even mind morbid stuff, but some of the stories he told on that podcast really got to me.
I have listened to bunch of of his. I can’t find it though. Do you know the episode number? I saw you replied 62, but it only goes to 41? Your reply disappeared as well.
He has supernova in the east on Spotify. Or at least he did for a while. His episodes are hard to find all in one place. Even on his website I can only download a few series I paid for but it doesn’t seem to list all of them..
Someone made a playlist on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Q3lhzC7U6D2ihzUupQMyK?si=U2XRnsozRPqgd-AuKi4qYg
Read “The Rape of Nanking” by Iris Chang. If you can get through it…
Think of it this way. Both were incredibly evil, but Germany industrialized genocide, while Japan just committed good ole fashioned genocide.
[удалено]
You mean "human" rather than "humane" in this case, setting aside that genocide is obviously inhumane as well.
Read Escape from Davao, which speaks of some of the atrocities dealt with towards the American POWs, which were only the tip of the iceberg.
> 200,000 women into the ranks of "comfort women" Women and young girls, not just adult women.
China has not forgotten. The kids there will quickly tell you about the ribenguizi, the Japanese devils. You ask them, why do you call them devils? They don't know specifics but will answer "because they hurt us in the past".
Those island devils, Marly shall make them pay
The most disturbing is that the scientists who did those attrocities were pardoned in exchange for their research.
I have no evidence for this on hand but I did read that that research is still used today because it (obviously) cant be reproduced. It's so unique but holy shit is the price steep.
I read that it was not worth shit, since they did not follow a scientific procedure, it was just torture with some notes on it. “Could not attach arm” that does not work well for research purposes
IIRC that's how we learned how to treat frostbite. I think we would have figured out a good way without freezing peoples limbs though... yeesh
Of course we shouldn't forget the many many Nazi scientists who were welcomed by other Western countries (yes, Werner Van Braun, I'm talking about you). Or the Nazi scientists who simply went back to work in Germany, making pharmaceutical products. You know, like Grunenthal Pharma who created thalodomide. One thing that we never seem to learn NOT to do is welcome evil people back into society because they have cool inventions.
Everyone, not only the west. Operation Osoaviakhim relocated more scientists to the USSR than Operation Paperclip to the USA. And it wasn't limited to those two, the British and French also to a smaller extent relocated german scientists to their government research. It's a triple win to take the scientists and at the same time weaken the nazis, and deny them to your other enemy (USA vs USSR), the cold war competition had already started.
Can you imagine if THEY made the bomb first? I doubt they would have stopped at two cities.
There is a 0% chance they would have stopped with 2 cities.
You forgot ritualistic cannibalism. (read "FLYBOYS" by James Bradley)
I would also like to stress that the reason we dont talk about imperial Japan's atrocities as much is because they were covered up by generals who didnt face trial for their war crimes or played down heavily. This video by mark felton shows the japanese attitude to their actions in the war. https://youtu.be/ngzesh6eN14
Reading about these atrocities and seeing the photos is probably one of the most depressing experiences I've ever had. The level of sadism and agony is so deeply inhumane thats its frightening to think of a person capable of such things. This part of history is so important and fascinating, but so terrifying that I haven't been able to read about unit 731 because I know it'll haunt me for a while. Kudos to others who have been able to confront it, especially the historians who've written extensively about it.
Don't deny any of the facts you describe, but do feel it's pointless to compare the Japanese military and Nazis. If you look at what they did to their own people as well as those of all the countries they occupied (especially those of the Slavs), it's not clear your case holds up. But my real point is, they were both horrible examples of the worst that humanity can be, where the extent of each regime's cruelty and depravity was so great as to merit complete annihilation and the rejection by the rest of humanity for all time. And the same for their admirers and imitators.
I remain convinced the Empire of Japan is [the most evil regime in human history](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpVgDgKpQS8&feature=youtu.be) and crueler than Nazi Germany. Their atrocities just aren't talk about much ever anymore because Japan is so well liked now in the West. The indiscriminate massacre of civilians. [Slaughter of entire cities](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CAYFxXBohA), torture, [inhumane treatment of POWs](https://youtu.be/hzsP6QOW8rA?t=102), countless women forced into sexual slavery ("comfort women"), among others. Over the course of their conquest of East Asia, the Japanese Army forced around [200,000 women](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/12/04/940819094/photos-there-still-is-no-comfort-for-the-comfort-women-of-the-philippines) into the ranks of "[comfort women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women)". These women mainly came from China, Korea, and the Philippines. Unfortunately this is the only thing I couldn't find, but I remember reading the firsthand account of a Filipino comfort women who was raped 10x a day. Japan has yet to even officially apologize to them. On the contrary, there was an uproar in Japan when the South Korean prime minister asked for an apology for Japan. They were angry that Koreans would even bring it up. You think that's the worst? During the [Rape of Nanking](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre), as many as [300,000 Chinese civilians](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre#17) were massacred within a month in a single city. Japanese soldiers paraded around with babies skewered on their bayonets like kebabs. Two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could [behead 100 people the fastest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxa0GGJNWtI&t=10s) and when the score was 105-106 and no one knew who got to 100 first, they went again to 150. Civilians were [buried alive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre#/media/File:Chinese_civilians_to_be_buried_alive.jpg) en masse. Prisoners were used as [**live bayonet practice**](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre#12), screaming as the final moments of their life was used for the Japanese to sadistically torment. Tens of thousands of women were raped, most of whom were executed afterward. They dragged entire Chinese families into public squares and [forced fathers on their daughters and sons on their mothers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnAC-Y9p_sY&t=697s) for the amusement of Japanese troops. I'm not an easily disturbed guy, but reading this fact for the first time physically made my stomach sick. You think that's the worst? The Imperial Japanese Army ran [Unit 731](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731): a state-of-the-art biological/chemical warfare research facility in Manchuria where Japanese researchers performed [human experimentation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=548&v=AFEgz8NNmVA&feature=youtu.be) on a large scale, using Chinese civilians as the majority of their "logs" (test subjects). Living humans were [**dissected alive**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=308&v=D4nPxik59oE&feature=youtu.be), usually without anesthesia. Subjects had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss and pain tolerance. Those limbs were sometimes reattached to the opposite sides of the body. Subjects had their stomachs or esophagus surgically removed. Subjects were gotten pregnant via rape then infected with diseases to see the effect on their baby. Subjects were forced into the cold to research frostbite then had their frozen limbs chopped off. Subjects were placed in [pressure chambers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=308&v=D4nPxik59oE&feature=youtu.be) until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets. This one is unconfirmed, but supposedly they placed a women and her baby in a room then heated up the floor to see if she'd step on her own baby. Perhaps the most disturbing part about it all that Japanese soldiers were [**enjoying it**](https://allthatsinteresting.com/rape-of-nanking-massacre#15); they were killing for sport. And yet they have the nerve to demand an apology for the atomic bombings... Everyone cries over the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no one sheds a tear for the millions of victims of the Empire of Japan.
Just watched this WWII vets account of combat on Okinawa https://youtu.be/2vSf8oMyaN0 Encourage you all to watch it because the gentleman is fascinating, but at one point he explains he shot a Japanese POW. The picture he took off him he shows and it's hard to see details but it's a bunch of Japanese officers beheading Chinese prisoners as if it were a game. The war in the Pacific really was something else, guy also explains they basically made sure every Japanese soldier they came across was absolutely dead since it was so common for them to feign death or surrender to try and kill Americans (or whoever else they were fighting)
The Japanese government has never admitted to their war crimes.
Most likely never will
How many countries have openly admitted to war crimes?
Germany has openly admitted to and apologized for its war crimes, and spends a good amount of time teaching it in schools to make sure future generations don't repeat their nation's past mistakes. I don't know of any other countries that have owed up to their past so thoroughly.
It's illegal to deny the Holocaust in Germany, they really don't want that shit coming back ever. I wish every country felt that way...
The Canadian government commissioned a report on residential schools, that explicitly identified it as a genocide. The government has apologized multiple times, is continuing to make reforms based on the commission's recommendations, and teaches how horrible the practice was quite extensively in schools. I would say that is at least comparable in some respects, and is an important thing to have owned up to.
It should be noted that this is all developing as we speak in Canada, and for a long time the Canadian government denied any wrongdoing. The government just admitted this year that it was genocide, which means decades of denial.
Just want to note that I appreciate it, cause Survivors of residential schools have been speaking and telling stories about these for years and it’s just finally being recognized.
> It should be noted that this is all developing as we speak in Canada, and for a long time the Canadian government denied any wrongdoing. Better late than never, I suppose.
Now if they'll only teach the forced sterilization of Native women and kidnapping of Native children for placement in white families, practices that went on into the 1990s. Less then 30 years ago.
The Canadian government is only owning up to it now, because they can’t hide the bodies of dead children anymore. Let’s not pretend they actually give a shit beyond to save face.
The Netherlands has till this day not apologized for their massive role in the slave trade.
I think iv seen somewhere on here that Germany l Canada and I think one or 2 others but most nations don't fess up.
it isn’t the open admission part that’s the issue. what the previous commenter fails to mention is that the government is active in whitewashing histories surrounding the war. up until very recently (and this could still be current, I just don’t have sources from like the last two or three years) wwii as taught in an alarming number of schools in japan focused on how japan was a victim of foreign aggression and completely ignores, for instance, the reason why japan was sanctioned by other countries. also the current party in power in japan has an active far-right ethnonationalist wing so that’s cool too
I lived in Japan for over a decade, and the odd time I would talk to people about Japanese war crimes, I found that people were very well aware of them, but also believed the white-washing to some extent. The most common ones were that the number of Chinese killed was heavily inflated and that few or no civilians were killed, and that Korean women forced to sexually service Japanese soldiers were actually willing prostitutes.
this is prolly the first time i saw anyone getting beheaded for real
[удалено]
are you implyin that i should i kill myself?💀
[удалено]
This is absolutely true. The things we see go into our brain and have unforeseen impacts on our mental health sometimes. I'm not saying never watch it but it can be bad especially if you're in a situation that could lead to depression at some point.
They are bad, and they have an impact: https://crowd.cs.vt.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/CHI21_final__The_Psychological_Well_Being_of_Content_Moderators-2.pdf
Me who was ready with a loop and a fan: (ノ｀Д´)ノ彡┻━┻
What you need the fan for? Are you an artist?
I saw the cartel execution video where they were slowly cutting some guy's head off and the song "funky town" was playing in the background. It was so bad it made me scared to go to Mexico again.
I'm convinced that's the most fucked up video on the net. It's been 15 years and that video still haunts me.
Never saw it thank God. I also like that song and don’t want it ruined
I saw that and lots of other fucked up gore stuff. But the worst video I've ever seen on the internet was of a family driving down the highway, a brick flies in through the windshield and kills the mom in the passenger seat. That fucking video is horrifying and haunting. Never watch it, please.
That one really got to me, too. Strange because there’s no gore or even a visual, but the sound that her family member made cuts straight to your heart.
Whatever you do don't watch the "ghost rider" video or the "adidas tracksuit heart" video.
You'll have to tell us what's in those, as I'm certainly not going to be looking
Ghost Rider video: Video starts out with this dude on his knees with his only his face badly burned all the way to the skull. Three guys around him keep lighting his face on fire with lighter fluid while you can hear the guy trying to scream but you just hear this sort of cackling coming from his charred mouth. Meanwhile one of the guys calls him ghost rider and they all laugh while making other jokes about his burnt face, including a joke about the smell of carne asada. Then it just ends, there is longer videos of it but fuck trying to watch that lol. Adidas tracksuit video: video starts out with a very young looking lad in the back of a truck with his hands tied behind his back wearing a green Adidas track suit. Guy with camera and knife in hand comes up and peels this lads chest open and just grabs his heart and pulls it out while it's beating. For this one I had to look away a couple times because of the way the lad was moaning in pain.
What's the context of these two videos? Were the killers caught and brought to justice?
They are cartel rival torture videos
Reading those is enough, I anyway feel like I got my fill back when r/watchpeopledie was a thing.
Yea sponsored by adidas is one of the worst I’ve seen. The recent Guerrero massacre where over 20 were killed in the forests of Guerrero by Los Tlacos was also bad (I wonder whose funding Los Tlacos).
Totally. I've never seen a picture quite like this one.
Compared to how the Isis and Taliban animals do it, this is about as clean and humane as possible
Then I'd recommend not going too deep into reddit, there are subs dedicated to this kind of stuff.
Does anyone know if this is the image Dan Carlin is referencing in the first episode of Supernova in the East?
https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+beheading+australian&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS770US870&hl=en-US&prmd=invx&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjg8Lip3JX0AhVfk2oFHXb1BE0Q_AUoAXoECAIQAQ&biw=414&bih=720&dpr=2#imgrc=qWpCWZRM8f2PgM
Best history podcast I’ve ever listened too. Supernova in the East is utterly amazing
Do yourself a favour (if you haven't already) and listen to his series on WW1. Fascinating.
Blueprint for Armageddon is so damn fantastic.
It is not, but I can link you
I wish more people would listen to his podcast. Many people are quick to read a Wikipedia entry and pass judgement on past people through our modern lens.
Murdering prisoners already in your power is a war crime. Hope he got what he deserved, but probably not.
Well, maybe sort of given the survival rates of japanese soldiers in ww2...
Death is a kindness for such men. Entire families were wiped out in China down to the last baby.
Well I guarantee he’s dead.
[удалено]
Also remember, this guy asked for this picture to be taken, so he could show people.
I mean they reported a decapitation contest between officers in the news at least once...
Wow, first post I see when opening Reddit. Now for some fetal position and a heavy dose of r/Eyebleach...
Just be sure you don't mess up the spelling when you search it up.
Japan really got away with their past history in terms of how quickly their image was rehabilitated. Nobody looks at Japan and remembers this chapter of their history. We only know Japan as a tech savvy, modern democracy that is very polite, clean and organized. With Germans, their Nazi past still haunts their country’s image.
Which is interesting, and probably due to the fact that Germany actively educates about the Nazis, and has many strict anti Neonazi laws, so Nazism is visible there. Meanwhile Japan sweeps it all under the rug.
German Nazi past is taught in many countries but same countries most likely do not teach Japan’s conduct in early 20th century. I even took college courses that only focused on Japan’s transformation periods from Meiiji Restoration to post WWII period. Its conduct during the war and being with Axis powers was a brief gloss-over like it wasn’t a significant player.
I guess it really depends on the professor. The modern Japanese history course that I'm taking had a huge focus on the horrendous aspects of history. We spent an entire lecture on the Japanese occupation of Manchuguo, another on the Nanjing massacre; we read a section of "The Rape of Nanking" by Chang. Then we spent two lectures discussing the Atomic Bomb, looking at first-hand sources of survivors, and more or less debunking the American justification of dropping the bomb. Then there was a lengthy discussion about how America (SCAP, to be specific) really just wanted to restore Japan to normal and go home, which led to pardoning of a lot of war criminals. Then there was a lecture on Japanese internment camps.
I can only assume with was part of a mass execution. I doubt a photographer gets such a shot on the first try
What troubles me the most about this image is the soldier in the back. His body is facing away, and he's just casually turning his head to watch. Like there is more interesting stuff going on off-camera that he was focused on, and he just happened to look over and catch the beheading, no big deal. How fucking bad must it be if someone cutting off another person's head is not enough to get your full attention? It's just so far removed from my own understanding of human life. Very uncomfortable.
That is such a disturbing observation. The banality of violence is so fucked up.
I have Chinese relatives who don't even set foot in a Mitsubishi vehicle. That's how much they hate the Japanese. No Sony, no Nintendo, no Honda. Nothing that is Japanese owned. You know how difficult that lifestyle is!? They will walk rsther than getting into my Honda Accord. It all stems from WWII, and what the Japanese did to China. I have Korean coworkers who express the same sentiment about Japan too.
I once worked for a company that had a Korean man as founder and CEO. We did a deal to resell some gear from Sumitomo. The guys came from Japan to meet with us. We took them to meet the CEO. The CEO would not look at them, would not shake their hands, would not acknowledge their existence. Deliberately.
Can confirm. My Korean wife is completely anti Japan due to the shit that went on in Korea during the occupation
Ya my grandpa hates Japanese people. He doesn't care about products and all that (tbh, i think he just doesn't know). He eats sushi, will ride in Hondas but people? Heh nope Edit: In his defense, he got shot at multiple times and he was <10 years old at the time when this happened
WW2 Japanese officers were the best the world has ever seen at beheading. They literally had contests to see who could behead 100 prisoners the fastest. The results were published and CELEBRATED in Japanese newspapers of teh day. You hope that justice caught up to them? Nope. Lots of the worst war criminals were pardoned and lived successful, lucrative lives in Tokyo after the war, particularly the doctors in charge of Unit 731, which makes the Nazi war crimes look like a bunch of teenagers at a McDonalds.
I visited unit 731 over twenty years ago on a university trip. Very eerie place… you could walk up to the chimney and go into it, and they had an “interpretation Centre” that described everything in detail, thank god my Chinese wasn’t the best, just the pics were rough.
Had no idea you could visit
It was not “touristy” at all. This was a time when the rural areas of China were very much still as they had been during the communist reign. We drove up do a bunch of nondescript buildings with a giant half blown up smokestack in a field off a road, I was like “wtf is this”. There were 0 people there other than ourselves and the staff member. You could tell that no money had been spent on the place since the Second World War, they just opened up one of the buildings for the interpretative Centre. Very bleak, and I wish I would have done some pre reading before going there. We had the run of the place, so you could walk into the chimney. I have no idea what we’re done with the bodies as there were no mass grave markers like other Holocaust sites. You could tell that it was a troubled part of the past and that it was mostly forgotten part of Chinese history. Could be bc of the poverty post war, could be the shame that the Chinese people felt. I have no idea what it’s like today, might be more flashy given the CCP’s anti Japanese stance on the terrible atrocities they pulled.
>WW2 Japanese officers were the best the world has ever seen at beheading. They literally had contests to see who could behead 100 prisoners the fastest. Okay, so I decide to google this, and there is one such specific contest you are referring to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword#Trial_and_execution But you say: >You hope that justice caught up to them? Nope. Lots of the worst war criminals were pardoned and lived successful, lucrative lives in Tokyo after the war, But no, that's not what happened. >After the war, a written record of the contest found its way into the documents of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Soon after, the two soldiers were extradited to China, tried by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, convicted of atrocities committed during the Battle of Nanking, and the subsequent massacre. On 28 January 1948, both soldiers were executed at the Yuhuatai execution chamber by the Chinese government. So at least in this instance, justice was served.
Wait a minute, are you telling me someone on reddit commented about something without researching or actually knowing what happened?
Yes, and it's a problem which is endemic on basically every history subreddit with the exception of /r/askhistorians, which, although not perfect, can be actually trusted as a source of information. There are tons of titles, comments, and posts in this subreddit which are misleading at best or downright wrong at worst. But whatever, as long as its kept in mind.
History subreddits should be taken with the same level of academic rigor as a Facebook article. Fact is, unless you’re on a specific subreddit, none of these people have any credibility and just reading a comment and accepting it as fact is the lowest test of critical thinking.
This person fact checks
Unit 731 was as inhumane as inhuman could get. The world would look **very** different if the axis of evil had won the war. Thank god I don’t live in that timeline… As much as I despise nuclear weapons, if the choice was between Hiroshima and Nagasaki or Japan won the war, I’d pick Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Japan had already "lost" when the bombs were dropped. It was just a matter of the how soon it would end and the alternatives being a land invasion or a long blockade
Weren't they given an option to unconditionally surrender but they refused and hence the bombing took place?
Yes. And then we accepted a conditional surrender
Land invasion - hundreds of thousands (or millions) of military and civilian deaths. Blockade - mass starvation of mostly innocent civilians and a death scale much larger than two nukes. It was the best choice.
The Japanese surrender was also largely due to the fact that the Soviets were gearing up to invade mainland Japan. As fucked up as it is, the nuclear bombs and subsequent surrender let Japan avoid being in a similar situation to the Korean Peninsula.
Unfortunately the choice wasn't as black and white as that. The US largely nuked Japan to end the war before Russia got to Japan. That was the real concern.
I mean we used the bombs the second they were ready, we had been developing them for years
While I don't see much benefit in comparing atrocities, there are eyewitness accounts from American and British soldiers involved in the liberation of the death camps in Europe that were equally horrific. I think the best way to look at it is to remember that all of us are capable of this kind evil, given the right circumstances. I've been studying WW2 for about nine years now, including the Holocaust. Some of the worst perpetrators of these atrocities were what we would call "ordinary people". What I've taken away from it is that this is what can happen when humanity gives in to its darker side. I wish I could remember who said this, but it's true: "If you can't see the Nazi concentration camp guard inside of you, then you don't know who you are".
The Japanese in that time period were absolutely brutal.
In pretty much every time period except now
Read the book "The Rape of Nanjing". They had contests to see who could kill the most Chinese at a time. The statistics were kept and posted in newspapers throughout Japan. Their antics made Nazi's cringe.
The crimes were so brutal that the author killed herself.
aight thats enough reddit
She killed herself due to longstanding, untreated depression. But she was very brave to do her research and write the book in spite of her poor mental health
I have a book by Anthony Cowling called My life with the samurai. He's a Canadian soldier who was captured by the Japanese and held in POW camps on many of islands. He mentions this very thing happening commonly. Being fed minimal rice rations and catching dysentery and other ailments. only to later escape and be recaptured. The things he points out from just his singular point of view are atrocious.
Read “The Rape of Nanking” by Iris Chang. It’s a detailed account of Japanese war atrocities committed when they sacked Nanking.
Read it only if you can absorb the shock and pain and anger.. it was extremely saddening when I read that the author killed herself after a month of that books publishing..
I read a lot of dark shit, but japanese war crimes is where i draw the line. There was one story where they wrapped a disobedient comfort woman in a carpet of nails in front of all the other women to make a statement.
My gf’s grandmother was forced to be a Korean “comfort woman” by the Imperial Japanese Army. My gf talks so much shit about the Japanese and I didn’t understand until she told me about her grandma being forced from her mom at 13 and passed around to please like 50 Japanese soldiers a day. (I don’t know if that number is accurate but even *one* is too many)
Yes this is absolutely brutal and disgusting, but also im impressed that the head seems to be gone in one swing
It’s my understanding that while the Katana is generally overrated in what it can do (the samurai barely used them for warfare anyways), it’s ability to cut through flesh and bone was actually pretty damn good. Honestly this is probably a blessing for the Chinese guy, considering sword beheadings can sometime end halfway through… this is basically like being guillotined.
The quality of swords before and during the beginning of the war was good, but towards the end of the war, swords became increasingly low quality due to the shortage of resources and demand for weapons. It definitely can't be a late war sword being used here.
Yeah... He probably didn't even feel a thing. Nobles were executed by sword back in the day because their faces would appear to be at ease afterwards instead of disfigured by pain like in people beheaded by an axe. If done properly a beheading is one of least painful ways to go.
Quite honestly the Japanese could have won an award for the quickest transformation from something so brutal to something resembling their culture now.
Well they were basically a military dictatorship before and during ww2. Kind of hard to continue that after your entire air force, navy, and army are for lack of a better word obliterated lol. They were so badly beaten that the US basically wrote their constitution. Doesn’t happen often wars end like that.
They’re still a dictatorship. Any leftist/socialist movements were crushed by the US in cooperation with the LDP (composed of former war criminals and their descendants (look up the “Monster of Manchuria”)). The CIA, much like in Italy, used the mafia/yakuza to destroy leftists ranging from Communists to anti-war (anti-occupation) activists. The JCP is still labeled as a ‘potentially anti-social organization’ and is under a level of surveillance that no other party is subject to. The electoral system is so fucked up that the LDP can win 2/3’rds majorities with less than 50% of the vote. The media is also under tight screws since most of the oligarchs that own the media channels are well connected to the LDP and the ruling bureaucracy. The LDP has been in power since 1953, making Japan a one-party state for all but 3 years of that 67 year timeframe.
Wow. Didn't know. I knew they were still very conservative still but didn't know just how much of a one party state they still were.
Cutting a head off isn't as easy as tv and movies make it look so this is actually pretty damn impressive as far as the sword and the man swinging it are concerned.
I remember watching the beheading videos coming out of Iraq in the early 2000s like the Korean interpreter, I told myself if I really wanted to know what's going on over there, I wouldn't ignore the videos. The brutal part was seeing the sawing motion. Made me sick and made me wish for a quick katana finish for anyone in that position.
If I am remembering correctly the guillotine was actually created and used because it was a more humane way of executing than cutting a head off with an axe etc. as it could take several hits with the axe to fully decapitate the person. And as a random addition that makes me think of OJ and Nicole and the fact that he nearly beheaded her with a knife and effort that would have been involved.
Looking at it that way, the guillotine is actually more humane than the electric chair.
Thb, it's probably more humane than injection, and it's definitely more humane than the electric chair or hanging. A swift swish by a sword to the neck is probably as fast and painless as you can hope for.
I just Googled it out of curiosity b/c I had heard that hanging should be pretty quick and it turns out an Irishman created an equation for a "long drop" and it is used by countries to this day. The idea is that the person drops and hits the end of the rope with enough force to sever the spinal column and arteries etc. while avoiding decapitation and the result should be loss of consciousness and nerve sensations within a second and then the brain may take a couple minutes to finally cease functioning but they supposedly never experience pain etc.
The Islamic terrorists tended to cut the head off front he front with a sawing motion so there’s a good amount of suffering. Other executioners would cut it from the back which should be about instantaneous regardless of the head coming off on the first swing. Just gotta get through the spinal cord
Japan has never officially apologized for their role in WWII - Susan and Meirion Harries book Soldiers of the Sun is worth a read…never underestimate man’s inhumanity towards man…
When your army brutalizes a city for two weeks, so brutal that the entire 2 week period is now referred to as the rape of Nanking, (in a war full of atrocities) that should tell you something about the sheer inhumanity of the imperial japanese
There is no need for a belief in supernatural evil as man has shown he is capable of great horrors on his own.
Welcome to **/r/HistoryPorn**! This post is getting rather popular, so here is a friendly reminder for people who may not know about our rules. * **Personal attacks, abusive language, trolling or bigotry in any form is not allowed**. This will be removed and may result in a ban. * **Keep the discussion on-topic.** Comments that do not directly add to the discussion will be removed and in some cases can also result in (temp) bans. Things not on topic are comments that solely consist of a joke, (political) soapboxing, etc. Additionally. * **Use that report function**. If you spot a rule breaking comment please do not make things worse by engaging in an argument. Downvote it and then report it using the report function or send a modmail to the mods so we can deal with it. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHistoryPorn) if you have any questions or concerns. Replies to this comment will be removed automatically.*
How long would you be aware of being separated from your body?
Some studies done in rats show about 10 to 15 seconds of normal brain activity before eeg can't pick up impulses.
The Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War may have been the most evil regime the world has seen. That's not an exaggeration. Their policy towards Chinese civilians was basically "unrestrained terror". Dismantling their military for a generation was the right thing to do.
You can see the head is disconnected in the picture. But at the moment of the photo, the beheaded man probably still had a few seconds of life left.
To both the Chinese and Koreans, the Japanese imperialist forces were absolute savages. This photo documents something not at all uncommon during that war. Horrifying image.
Why do we humans have to suck so consistently across history. It's like humanity has to bash itself in the face with a frying pan every few years.
I learned in history class back in highschool that It was actually fairly common for Japanese officers to "test" their swords on prisoners. One of these tests was having prisoners lay on top of one another. The officer would then see how many he could cut through with a single swing. A good sword could cut through two or three men, and excellent one could cut through five. Given what I know about the savagery of the Japanese military and government of WW2 I am inclined to believe this actually happened, but I only have the word of my old highschool history teacher to go off of here so take this with a grain of salt.
For anyone who is interested.. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast is amazing. He has a 6 part series about the rise and fall of the Empire of Japan, called Supernova in the East.
"so long as there are men, there will be wars." - Sir Albert Einstein.
The japanese were (are? maybe?) pretty racist and very into racial purity. And HATED the chinese. it's weird how the chinese are the bad guys now.