Japan Pays Korea Reparations For "Comfort Women"

[Donward]

Part of the issue from an American perspective is just how foreign of a culture Japan (and Korea, China, etc) were and still are to most Americans.

 

A significant percentage of Americans were not too removed culturally from Germany, Poland, Italy, etc in the 1940s. Many of the GIs fighting grew up with Jewish kids. Or else they shared similar sounding last names with many of the German war criminals. And these crimes were committed in Europe of all place, the heart of Western civilization. 70 years later, you don't even have to be a student of history to recognize German names like Klaus Barbie, Josef Mengele or Reinhard Heydrich let alone the top Nazi leadership who were featured in the Nuremberg Trials.

 

Other than Tojo, Emperor Hirohito and Admiral Yamamoto, I'm not entirely confident that most Americans in the 1940s (or today) could really even identify Japanese war criminals given how foreign sounding their names were and how. It's much the same problem that Americans today have in identifying Islamic fundamentalists/terrorists who all seem to go by the same Muhammed/Achmed handle.

 

Even at the time, the trials of Japanese war criminals didn't really catch the attention of the United States compared to the trials of the Nazis. As such, it shouldn't be surprising that a reclusive and inward looking Japanese society was able to sweep things under the rug.

[Sturgeon]

Nanking was a crime on the Nationalist controlled territory, that doesn't change anything to the individual civilians that were affected directly. Those people still reside in the lands that were razed by Imperial Japan. Just because a bunch of high ranking officials fled to Taiwan doesn't mean the scars arent there anymore. 

 

Oh, I agree completely, I think Soukou was making a political statement that a lot of people were taking as a moral one.

The guy sounds to me like he agrees with everyone else here, more or less, but is examining the political realities of the two states and that's gotten a lot of folks confused, also Tied.

[Tied]

Oh, I agree completely, I think Soukou was making a political statement that a lot of people were taking as a moral one.

The guy sounds to me like he agrees with everyone else here, more or less, but is examining the political realities of the two states and that's gotten a lot of folks confused, also Tied.

 

ya because the "bu-bu-bu-but other nations did warcrimes too" arguement isnt a staple of revisionist

 

 

What about the Americans and native Americans? The Turks and the Armenians, The Soviet Union and the Ukrainians, The Germans and the Jews, the British and Malaysia, Boer War, Kenya, etc, the Belgiums and the Congo? Bottom line is that is an awful lot of unbelievable god awful stuff that has happened. To single out Japan is totally unfair.

Not to mention the old "its not techically genocide" line, i wonder where i have heard that before 

 

This picture was an apology to the Jews. The Japanese did not do what the Nazis did. 5-6 million Jews massacred simply because of being Jewish is a whole different league of evilness. That is genocide.

Imperial Japan conducted massacres where the majority were of fighting capable men. It's bad, it's terrible, but it was part of the process of establishing control. Imperial Japan was a colonial power. Koreans, Taiwanese, Chinese, were all fitted in the Imperial Japanese machine. The Jews? Automatic death every single man, woman, child, elderly, because of their Jewsih blood. The Germans did much worse than the Japanese. That's why the Germans had to apologize as they did. People think that just because both countries were of the axis that Japan should apologize at equal level which is a gross simplification.

 

and then he implies that it was a much, much lesser number

 

 

The issue is taken what Japan did in the past and to continue pressing it on Japan today. PRC continues to trumpet 300,000 massacre at Nanking. If the Japanese apologize, CCP says it's not sincere because they disagree with 300,000 massacred at Nanking. If historians do real sincere and honest historical research and conclude that about 50,000 were massacred and express apology and remorse and compensation with that in mind, the CCP declines it citing their 300,000 figures. It's a total loss. 

 

 

[Waffentrager]

I'll go as far as to agree the numbered massacred in Nanking (Just this one) had been inflated by post-war China a bit more than usual, but in the end that doesn't change much of any points of the brutality. 

[SuperComrade]

Well, whether it's "only" 50,000 or 300,000, that's still an excrementally huge amount of people we're talking about

[SoukouDragon]

Well, whether it's "only" 50,000 or 300,000, that's still an excrementally huge amount of people we're talking about

Yes it's a big number.

My main point is that if both sides don't have a shared consensus on the events then it's not possible for an exchange of apology and forgiveness to occur. I'm speaking from the perspective resolving the issue. Japan says PRC inflates the numbers. PRC says Japan whitewashes. They need to at least establish a consensus that is somewhat near each other. The max number of deaths which includes all kinds of civilian killings in addition to typical massacre style killing is a range of 100,000 to 200,000 killed. The difference is quite substantial with PRC's numbers and the PRC won't budge even slightly to enable the passing of apology and forgiveness. That's why discussion on the number of deaths is important. It's to establish common ground for both sides.

[Priory_of_Sion]

I've already posted on how many have reported that Stalin's USSR killed 30 odd million people even though it is more likely about 10 million iirc. So I don't want anyone to be hypocritical about people trying to find correct casualty figures.