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mdiehl -> (4/25/2002 6:19:35 AM)
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"Shame I'm not saying what you keep accusing me of though. Oh, well, I doubt that'll bother you much."
Tohuku
Look. A defense is a defense even if you dress it up with plausible deniability. I'll backtrack a little and retract, with apologies, the word "mendacious." Clearly you are viewing this from a very different POV.
I'm honest about what I know about Japan. So my knowledge is limited. Tough luck buddy. I know enough to know that by Japanese contemprary standards much that happened was recognizably dishonorable. Perhaps that is why in the las 4 weeks of the war, Japanese prison guards in Japan suddenly became very nice to their Allied prisoners. Just speculation of course, but knowing that you are about to "reap the whirlwind" does tend to change one's behavior.
You attributing all forms of criticism to Jadaeo-Christian ethnocentrism sounds to me like you do not know any Juadaeo-Christians. It also sounds too me like you've borrowed some phrase from an elementary anthropology textbook and misapplied it. I'd know. I'm a PhD anthropologist and a pretty *fxxking* good one, and I know how to suspend disbelief. Better than you maybe, but who knows. And I know that writing off criticism of Japan's war record as "western bias" or some such synonym does not fall within the realm of suspension of disbelief or of cultural relatvism. You sound to me like some KKK apologist saying "slavery wasn't so bad..."
You keep returning to the notion of questioning events that are pretty well documented. And arguing about the definition of what is a "civilian" in the context of executions (even the relatively quick kind such as the folks at Wake Island were subjected to) seems to miss the point. They weren't at any point armed and they carried papers and identification from the construction company for whom they worked at the time of the Japanese occupation of Wake. It's a war crime straight up. Proper international conduct at the time required interment or repatriation. Not beheadings.
As to the rest. The mostr recent thing I'm reading on Nanking is Iris Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking." It's a peer-reviewed book by a credible press, and she cites her sources. There are photographs of the newspaper headlines. Samples of Japanese souvenir photographs and the like. Since I don't read Japanese it is admittedly possible that she made up whatever interpretation of the Kanji she wanted, but I suspect the peer reviewers would have noticed. Therein you can find all the proper references to the contemporary newspapers. The rape of Nanking is the best example because it is very well documented that the Army aided and abetted: the leaflet campaign, for example, that urged Chinese to return to their homes so that they could be rounded up and killed. Conservative estimates put the dead in Nanking at a absolute minimum of 100,000. Claims go as high as a half a million. This scale of genocide does not happen when a handful NCOs go on a drunken spree. It was organized and sanctinoed by the army.
The US military did not organize rapes by the US 1st division in Germany in WW1. That these occurred is reprehensible. The difference is that Japanese atrocities were organized by the Japanese army. The "Kwai River Bridge" treatment of POWs was an atrocity. I can't imagine that you will contend that it was just a bunch of local Japanese officers acting on their own who came up with the idea of using POWs for slave labor.
But all that is moot. With or without US crimes I'd still stand here and say that Japan owes China, the PI, and Korea an official, formal apology on behalf of all Japanese and the nation of Japan. It ought to be delivered by the PM and the Emperor.
And, by the way, as to the "killfile me" remark. I'm not letting you off that easy. Anytime you say in a public forum things that attempt to blunt, mute or mitigate criticism of Japanese war crimes I'm gonna jump on you. Because I can and will.
A stream of unanswered falsehoods can still erode the stoniest truths.
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