Day of infamy - Nanjing Massacre 65th anniversary

[Urban Ranger]

65 years ago, on December 13th, the animal-like IJA began systematically murdering and raping the people of the city of Nanjing on a large scale. In 6 weeks, at least 300,000 were killed.

Damn the Japanese right wing and their revisionist history. It is especially ironic when they wipe for those killed by the atomic bombs.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The comparison to animals is inappropriate, though.

I've yet to hear of any animal (other than humans) that wantonly vicious.

John Rabe, rest in peace.

[aaglo]

Humans are evil by nature. If we would start looking, we could find something-awful-done-by-humans for every day of the year.

[Urban Ranger]

John Rabe, Good Man of Nanjing

[lightblue]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
The comparison to animals is inappropriate, though.

I've yet to hear of any animal (other than humans) that wantonly vicious.

Slightly OT, but chimps do it too. Must be something about our line...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Chimps at least have a basis for their hatred of monkeys.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Chimps at least have a basis for their hatred of monkeys.

[Nanjing Massacre Anniversery Racist Remark Mode]

Why, because they look like Japanese?

[/Nanjing Massacre Anniversery Racist Remark Mode]

[Chris 62]

The suffering of China at Japan's hands is still not well known, and as time passes, it will only further fade.

Remember the people of Nanking, who were murdered simply because they wern't Japanese, and remember that racism is as vile as it's evil.

[Sikander]

I spent 7 years in Asia as a child. My parents were missionaries, and we lived on Okinawa where my dad worked at a Christian radio station that broadcast in English, Japanese and Chinese. The war was less than 20 years in the past when we arrived, and the scars were still visible on Okinawa, the Phillipines, Taiwan, and pretty much everywhere we went in East Asia and the Pacific. One of my father's colleagues spent the war in a concentration camp with her family in the Phillipines. She was a little girl at that time. I had my first nightmares after heaing her tell her stories. Her family was kept in terrible conditions, and they were lucky that only two of the children died from malnutrition / disease.

The Okinawans also had plenty of horror stories from the war. They were used as human shields by the IJA even though they were considered Japanese citizens. One hundred thousand perished in a very short time between the ruthlessness of the Japanese and the firepower of the Americans. I heard similar stories of murder and disdain for the safety of civilians in the Phillipines and in Hong Kong as well. I wish more Japanese were open to hearing the truth about that war and the behavior of their own troops. They were not only guilty of starting the series of wars, but of abominable crimes done just for the hell of it in many instances. While I have a great deal of love and respect for Japanese people in general (I grew up with an Okinawan nanny and was completely bilingual until I went to school) they still need to do some work on this. Putting their hands over their ears and humming loudly doesn't cut it.

[TheStinger]

The Japs would have come to terms with the past if the US hadn't let the emporer get away with being a war criminal.

They didn't have to go through what the Germans did in terms of the guilt thing.

(of course they got nuked so that may have been considered punishment enough)

[Guardian]

Best anti-nuke protest I ever saw had a picture from a school that was about 500 yards from where the bomb went off in Hiroshima.

At the time they dropped the bomb, there were kids out playing in front of the building, and all that was left of them where the little bright "shadows" burned into the concrete. (The initial heatwave from the blast hadn't scorched the concrete quite as bad in those spots where there had been objects or bodies in the way. Hence the "shadows" where bright instead of dark.)

There was a little shadow there that appeared to be making a jumping movement. It was reaching out with both arms, and just beyond reach of those little hands, there was another small "shadow", which was all round...

He was just about to catch a ball...

[chequita guevara]

We probably should have remade Japanese society while we were at it. They're still horribly racist. At least they aren't militarists anymore (for the most part--fascism is still trendy there).

[Chris 62]

Can't push to much Che.

Look at the modern world, any hint of trying to force change brings a million foes.

[chequita guevara]

In 1945, things were different. Everyone but the US was in a shambles, the 3rd World was mostly colonial, so it had no voice. Japan was in no position to resist, and even the USSR needed a few years before the Cold War started.

Problem with my plan is, we were still horrible racists at the time as well.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
In 1945, things were different. Everyone but the US was in a shambles, the 3rd World was mostly colonial, so it had no voice. Japan was in no position to resist, and even the USSR needed a few years before the Cold War started.

Problem with my plan is, we were still horrible racists at the time as well.

in american history in highschool we read articles from the ww2 era, and one had the line "the japanese would make lousy fighter pilots, they're all nearsighted"

that was before pearl harbor, obviously.

but yea. rascism ran high. still fairly high in a lot of the world. we've come a long way though, i guess, well, some of us.