Japanese public feels they were the victims in ww2,feel no remorse or shame

[SUPERX-M1]

over what transpired in ww2. They invaded countries, raped, tortured, killed prisoners,slavery, forced sex slaves... And now, they feel no shame over the past,and have no interest in the past. We, the Japanese, were the victims, we suffered, the past is past , move on. They rewrite history , very little is written about Japanese ww2 actions and responsibility for the war and how troops and leaders behaved. The Germans, apparently recognize what was done in the past by Germany. I have heard that there are neo- Nazi in Germany and anti-semitism is increasing,however.

A woman's son was dating an asian and I commented that Asian women, as a whole, seemed very nice. She said, that was then, this is now. The culture is different now. They are very materialistic and self centered.Amer-Asians are now immersed in American culture, and behave as badly as any other American does.


The Japanese surrendered not because of the atomic bomb ( There was nothing left to bomb) but because the Russians were coming and very close. They had planned to negotiate until they had very favorable terms, only then would they surrender.
The above is my take on what I have read. Correct me or inform me as you will.

Edit: Just read on Quora that the Japanese Navy in 1943, issued direct order to kill all survivors of ships. Most subs and surface ships had been doing just that. Aircrew and ship survivors were shot, machine gunned, tortured, beheaded, killed with hammers... Naturally, there were no survivors to tell tales. Estimated 20000 Brits and Aussies were murdered in this way. Only one naval captain was prosecuted. The Japanese-such an ancient and civilized race. The Germans were quite murderous to races they were not partial to. The Japanese were murderous to all non-Japanese.

Met a crazy red head once;She had a thing for japanese men from Japan. Each to his or her own. I have known a few Americans of Japanese descent; Very nice people , as almost all would be.WW2, was a long time ago. Current populations cannot be blamed for the past. And, I do not.

[Roadkingtrax]

Germans were put through denazification. How long reprogramming a country works, I dont know.

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Germans were put through denazification. How long reprogramming a country works, I dont know.

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[togor]

WEST Germans were. In the east, not so.

The communists saw no upside in educating the populace about the liberal pillars of democracy, individual liberty, individual rights. Swap one state apparatus out for another.

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The bomb got the Soviets moving, which got the Emperor moving. Even without the bombs being dropped, it's astonishing that the Japanese thought there was some advantage in holding out against unconditional surrender. Their navy was shattered, their economy in ruins. Yes their army was willing to die, but there was no answer against American firepower. And this, before the A-bomb.

[blackhawknj]

In East Germany they blamed the Third Reich on fascism and militarism and of course Socialism eradicated those evils in the East while the West adhered to them.
In Iran at present something like 70% of the population has been born since the ouster of the Shah, trying to use him as the bogeyman, the source of their misfortune, so many ask, who was he ? They didn't experience him, all they know is what they see around them.
Don't know if they ever had a "stab in the back" legend in Japan and as in all dictatorships the Japanese people were incredibly misinformed by their government about the war. When it was announced that Hirohito would address his people in the "Jewel Voice Broadcast" they were stunned by it, and of course they knew nothing about the Potsdam Declaration.
And the populations who live under dictators and tyrants usually claim they were victims too. The sudden collapse of the Ceaucescu regime in the Romanian Revolution of 1989, people say it was so easy to bring him down, why didn't they do something sooner ?

[togor]

Warsaw pact governments fell when it was clear the Soviets wouldn't prop them up.

[bruce]

Little Boy and the Fat Man were the one and only reason the Japanese got off their backside and down on their knees to surrender. True, we only had one spare A-bomb, but truth is, there were not a lot of decent targets left... except of course good ole Tokyo. Plop that third little bit of snap crackle and pop on top of the imperial palace and the sun would have set on the empire of the sun. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

[Major Tom]

I do not feel any remorse or sorry for the Japs then or now! They got less than they deserved in 1945. Previous fire bombing killed as many if not more than the 2 A-bombs. Tokyo should have been the first target for the A-bomb. Letting Hirohito off the hang mans noose was a mistake.

[JB White]

The Japanese people are victims of government orchestrated revisionist history. They were lied to throughout the war. To maintain face they were lied to after the war. No small wonder they feel as they do today.
Pearl Harbor. Sometimes there are more Japanese tourists than Americans it seems. You can bet they don't leave there with the same impressions as we do.

[blackhawknj]

Nobody has to feel shame or take responsibility for what they had no control over or happened before they were born. And history is more interesting the more accurately and objectively it is described and depicted. Those West African countries, yes they'll admit, the slave trade WAS a trade, their ancestors traded their captives, their trash and troublemakers for the goods they wanted and could not produce themselves. The French have acknowledged that 90% of Frenchmen had a "wait and see " attitude during the Occupation, active collaborators maybe 5%, active resistants maybe 5%-the French refer to "resistants of August 32", there was a lot of resume embellishing after the Liberation. There was widespread resistance to the Confederacy, resentment by poor whites of the "20 Negro" law-" a rich man's war and a poor man's fight". Don't know what the school curriculum is like in Japan, and I suspect for the older age groups the war years were a nightmare they tried to put behind them. In Germany Nazi regalia, uniforms, etc. became very rare very quickly-converted into civilian clothes and cleaning rags.
The LSTs that landed MacArthur's troops at Inchon were manned by Japanese crews. They had been sold to the Japanese as fishing vessels, the crews were told, if anyone asks, you are Koreans.

[JB White]

The LSTs that landed MacArthur's troops at Inchon were manned by Japanese crews. They had been sold to the Japanese as fishing vessels, the crews were told, if anyone asks, you are Koreans.

I had never heard that before! Definitely worth repeating. May I please ask where you came across that interesting tidbit?
Not doubting you at your word. Only for the sake of a reference when someone asks me, as "I read it on an internet forum" doesn't carry much weight amongst my crowd.
Absolutely no disrespect intended. Everything else you said I was already aware of. Thinking.... I wouldn't recall where I might have learned that before. So, if I threw you under the bus in that regard, you have my most humble apologies in advance.

[Vern Humphrey]

Little Boy and the Fat Man were the one and only reason the Japanese got off their backside and down on their knees to surrender. True, we only had one spare A-bomb, but truth is, there were not a lot of decent targets left... except of course good ole Tokyo. Plop that third little bit of snap crackle and pop on top of the imperial palace and the sun would have set on the empire of the sun. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

The problem was assassination was the basis of Japanese government -- a leader who talked surrender would be killed by the fanatics. It took the atomic bomb to break that strangle hold and make it possible to surrender.

[SUPERX-M1]

Added an edit to my orig post re atrocities.

[Mark in Ottawa]

When I visited the museum at Nagasaki, it was really all about how horrible the Americans were to have used the bomb. Every month on the anniverary of the day of the bombing they hold a religious memorial ceremony. We happened to be there that day and ended up chatting with some very charming Japanese students aged about 16. My sense was that they knew little or nothing about the actions of the Japanese military. Selective teaching of history and selective memory

[PaFrank]

We did bad stuff too. A neighbor of mine growing up was on a DD destroyer in the pacific. He said when there were survivors in the water they dropped a few shallow depth charges close by, hedgehogs too and that took care of them.

And all this shame for the past stuff is a load of crap. Thats what the demorats have been preaching, you know white guilt, reparations for past sins, all that crap.. Good for them, they shouldn't feel any shame.

[Vern Humphrey]

We did bad stuff too. A neighbor of mine growing up was on a DD destroyer in the pacific. He said when there were survivors in the water they dropped a few shallow depth charges close by, hedgehogs too and that took care of them.

And all this shame for the past stuff is a load of crap. Thats what the demorats have been preaching, you know white guilt, reparations for past sins, all that crap.. Good for them, they shouldn't feel any shame.

I recommend you read "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang.

[togor]

Mark Felton gives a nice in depth look at the machinations in the Japanese government from Hiroshima until the Missouri.


https://youtu.be/I34pxr23Nhw

[jmm03]

It was a similar situation at the "peace" museum in Hiroshima. All of the exhibits were slanted toward the American aggression and no responsibility on the Japanese side for anything. The park that is adjacent to the museum at ground zero was full of people playing games and picnicking, I would have thought it might have been a more somber place given the reason the memorial was there, I remember thinking it was odd at the time. I don't believe that we needed to invade Japan, we were well on the way to burning them back to the stone age and we probably could have starved them into submission, a cold observation I know, but the military faction was wanting to fight to the last man,and expending our guys by invading rather than cutting the island off just did not make sense, hence the bomb. Jim

[blackhawknj]

Pearl Harbor fixed the image of Japanese as a treacherous and dishonorable enemy, nothing in the subsequent conduct of that war did anything to dispel.
By way of contrast, during the Siege of Santiago in 1898 the collierMerrimackwas sent into the harbor in a failed attempt to block it. Admiral Cervera sent his Chief of Staff under a flag of truce to inform our side that the crew had been rescued and were being cared for. During the Naval Battle of Santiago on July 3, when the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya started to burn, Captain J. W. Philip of the USS Texas told his men "Don't cheer, boys, those poor devils are dying!"

[togor]

My dad was in AAF pilot training for single seat aircraft when the war ended. Had there been an invasion of Japan (and there was no way we were going to let that regime rot on the Home Islands) he would have been flying close support missions. Not that he was unwilling to go, but he had no qualms about the bombs saving him a trip to Japan.

[blackhawknj]

The living advocates and devotees of air power ,the disciples of Giulio Douhet ( d. 1930) argued that
given enough resources they could defeat an enemy without committing ground troops except for occupation duties. In his 1908 novel The War in the Air H.G. Wells describes a Germain air fleet destroying the US Atlantic Fleet. Both sides refrained from gas warfare in WWII, to a large extent it is recognized that the Strategic Bombing Campaign weakened Germany not so much by destroying German industry as by diverting it, it took 8,000 rounds from the advanced German 88 to bring down a bomber, fighters in the Defense of the Reich were denied to the fronts, AA defense was very manpower intensive, even allowing that it was often old men and boys and POWs. The Bomb gave the air generals the weapon they always wanted and showed the Japanese that if they wanted to fight to the last man.....

[Ltdave]

It was a similar situation at the "peace" museum in Hiroshima. All of the exhibits were slanted toward the American aggression and no responsibility on the Japanese side for anything. The park that is adjacent to the museum at ground zero was full of people playing games and picnicking, I would have thought it might have been a more somber place given the reason the memorial was there, I remember thinking it was odd at the time. I don't believe that we needed to invade Japan, we were well on the way to burning them back to the stone age and we probably could have starved them into submission, a cold observation I know, but the military faction was wanting to fight to the last man,and expending our guys by invading rather than cutting the island off just did not make sense, hence the bomb. Jim


When I visited the museum at Nagasaki, it was really all about how horrible the Americans were to have used the bomb. Every month on the anniverary of the day of the bombing they hold a religious memorial ceremony. We happened to be there that day and ended up chatting with some very charming Japanese students aged about 16. My sense was that they knew little or nothing about the actions of the Japanese military. Selective teaching of history and selective memory

in Berlin at the ruins of The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, they have a display of what the church looked like prior to WWII, next to the current ruins (that have been stabilized and are open to the public). i was there in 2003 and i was looking at the display when some lady glared at my Air Force hat and told her daughter that, "this is what the church looked like before the Americans bombed it for no good reason". i looked at her and replied, "to begin with it was destroyed in a night raid by the British not the Americans and if Germany hadnt started WWII, the Americans wouldnt have had to get involved and end it."


The Japanese people are victims of government orchestrated revisionist history. They were lied to throughout the war. To maintain face they were lied to after the war. No small wonder they feel as they do today.
Pearl Harbor. Sometimes there are more Japanese tourists than Americans it seems. You can bet they don't leave there with the same impressions as we do.

ive seen that several times in my trips to the Arizona Memorial. my dad was INCENSED the first time we went there, because they all were very loud and boisterous and he kept going on about "theyre all bragging about what their relatives did in 1941" oh i dont know if ive EVER seen my dad so riled up. a neighbor of ours was there (Hawaii) for a reunion (in the mid-80s) of his unit (1st Marine Division) who fought on Guadalcanal and was wounded and sent home on Peleliu. they were having dinner and a bunch of japanese business men came in and started talking about how crappy American manufacturing was and how the Americans were setting themselves up for a fall, and on and on. Good ol' Pete turned to them at their table and he said, "what you say may all be true, but Americans still make the best atom bombs". the japanese got up and walked out of the restaurant in mid-meal...

[blackhawknj]

No doubt that German lady was born long after the War, didn't experience the Berlin Blockade, perhaps she voted Left, or was ex-DDR and only knew what she was taught in school. There is that famous picture of Berlin Kinder standing standing on rubble piles watching as a US transport brings their dinner in. Chinese scholars in this country have found exchange students from the PRC are totally ignorant about their country's history.
Look at how many Civil War battlefields have been built over ?

[tmark]

My coworker's father was in the army and a participant in the Bataan death march. He was forced to beat to death fallen comrades who collapsed over the head with a shovel during the march. He despised the Japanese till his dying day!