What was it like to live in Japan right after WWII?
- Thread starter fsu1jreed
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They earned every bit of the suffering they endured after the war. They murdered, raped and tortured millions before and during the war.
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The glow and radiation caused lots of the residents to squint their eyes. This squinting still holds true to this day.
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No complaint about us ending the war, but most of those civilians had nothing to do with those atrocities.
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There is enough evidence out there that we never had to nuke them to end the war.
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Tell me about it. My dad would have been on the invasion force. He would never have lived. I wouldn't be here.
Like I said, I've no issue with bombing them. I'm just saying that it doesn't mean all those killed were murderers and torturers.
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It doesn't, but there was plenty of blind eye syndrome. U.S. POWs in Japan were used as slave labor and literally worked to death. Ending the war by any means necessary was vital to saving potentially 1 million American lives.
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Interesting article that presents one side of the story. The brutality of the Japanese during the Sino-Japanese war and WWII is well documented.
The Japanese struck terror into the hearts of all of Asia from WWI onward. For this reason the occupation was well measured. MacArthur had no intention of further punishing the Japanese after the war.
The Japanese people came to respect MacArthur during the occupation because they were treated humanely, something they never did when they occupied other nations. Under MacArthur, US military were supposed to stay away from Japanese women, although they didn't. Despite the stories of rape by American servicemen, there was also an element of Japanese women being forced into prostitution by their own families.
MacArthur's first order of business was feeding the Japanese.
By the time I went to live there in the early 60's, Japan was considered to be in the "reconstruction phase".
For the most part, the Japanese welcomed American occupation. They were treated much more humanely than they expected, more humanely than they had ever treated anyone else, and the US prevented dividing Japan as Germany had been divided.
Ambassador Reischauer had been born in Japan, had a Japanese wife, and was loved and admired by the Japanese people. Prior to his becoming the ambassador, he was an advisor to the US government on Japan.
To this day I have many Japanese friends, some that were small children during WWII. There is great embarrassment regarding their nation's behavior during the time of WW!-WWII, and they do not talk about it. Instead, they pride themselves on their accomplishments since that time.
It was hard for many of the older people to see the younger generations turn to the West, but that has nearly come full circle. Younger generations are respecting some of the older traditions and blending them with modern tradition.
Most Japanese in their 60's-70's will tell you that the combination of MacArthur and later Reischauer were good things for the country.
The Japanese struck terror into the hearts of all of Asia from WWI onward. For this reason the occupation was well measured. MacArthur had no intention of further punishing the Japanese after the war.
The Japanese people came to respect MacArthur during the occupation because they were treated humanely, something they never did when they occupied other nations. Under MacArthur, US military were supposed to stay away from Japanese women, although they didn't. Despite the stories of rape by American servicemen, there was also an element of Japanese women being forced into prostitution by their own families.
MacArthur's first order of business was feeding the Japanese.
By the time I went to live there in the early 60's, Japan was considered to be in the "reconstruction phase".
For the most part, the Japanese welcomed American occupation. They were treated much more humanely than they expected, more humanely than they had ever treated anyone else, and the US prevented dividing Japan as Germany had been divided.
Ambassador Reischauer had been born in Japan, had a Japanese wife, and was loved and admired by the Japanese people. Prior to his becoming the ambassador, he was an advisor to the US government on Japan.
To this day I have many Japanese friends, some that were small children during WWII. There is great embarrassment regarding their nation's behavior during the time of WW!-WWII, and they do not talk about it. Instead, they pride themselves on their accomplishments since that time.
It was hard for many of the older people to see the younger generations turn to the West, but that has nearly come full circle. Younger generations are respecting some of the older traditions and blending them with modern tradition.
Most Japanese in their 60's-70's will tell you that the combination of MacArthur and later Reischauer were good things for the country.
GREAT post Beth.
Consistent estimates from several military historians put the number of expected US casualties at north of 100,000.
Plus the suffering of the Japanese people would have been prolonged, because the Japanese military elites would have overlaid their insistence on no surrender on their civilians as well.
Those who feel badly for the dead from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Should read about the kinds of torture the Japanese have historically inflicted on the Chinese - from the rape of Nanking to the punishment inflicted on the entire territory where the pilots from Doolittle's raiders landed and were helped by Chinese peasants and farmers.
When the other guy starts it - you get to finish it - on your terms.
Consistent estimates from several military historians put the number of expected US casualties at north of 100,000.
Plus the suffering of the Japanese people would have been prolonged, because the Japanese military elites would have overlaid their insistence on no surrender on their civilians as well.
Those who feel badly for the dead from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Should read about the kinds of torture the Japanese have historically inflicted on the Chinese - from the rape of Nanking to the punishment inflicted on the entire territory where the pilots from Doolittle's raiders landed and were helped by Chinese peasants and farmers.
When the other guy starts it - you get to finish it - on your terms.
I am a WWII buff. My Dad flew B-25's out of China and India. His brother flew B-29's that bombed Japan. The Japaneese were brutal, sadistic, and fanatical. The atocities they committed in the name of the Empire were to numerous to count.
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Your estimate should have three more zeroes after it. The casualty estimates for Operation Downfall, or X Day, were estimated to be 1 million plus on the US side, dependent upon Japanese civilian involvement.
The Japanese fought a very brutal style of warfare and their leadership was fanatical, militaristic and barbaric. The only way to combat barbarism is through strength. The Pollyanas of the world claim Fat Man and Little Boy weren't necessary but dealing with the Japanese leadership of that era called for such measures. Dropping those weapons actually prevented more deaths than they caused.
I was in Hiroshima last year. The memorial is a somber experience, but the city itself has been rebuilt and is really cool. Tons of beautiful women.
This, and wasn't "The Greatest Generation" supposed to be better than that? And maybe you guys should have read the second post that was from an American who was the grandson of a US medic that talked about violent assault of young girls, see below:
Unfortunately, he made it clear that witnessing the behavior of some American soldiers was also a source of disgust and shame that made him question his patriotism. He said prostitution was widespread, that women were sometimes propositioned in broad daylight, even in front of their families, for cigarettes or pocket change. He said that rape was an open secret, and if anybody doubted it, they should be required to medically treat the women and young girls that were violently assaulted. He said that some soldiers were so casually brutal with civilians that, if their officers cared, they had to be kept away civilians from entirely.
Just goes to show that for all our talk about being better than those people, when in reality given the right circumstances......we really ain't.
No actually they didn't. Stalin just basically did a "piling on" so he could grab some of the disputed out islands after the handwriting was on the wall.
The facts are that shortly after the forced surrender, the Japanese people were starving, and it was not uncommon for a woman to trade the one thing she could for food. It happened all over the world. The Soviet army's rape of hundreds of thousands of German women has to be a record setter, but the Japanese soldiers who treated the Korean "comfort women" so brutally had no right to be so affronted if their starving women back home traded sex for food or cigarettes.
War is hell. Truly.
I've always been of the opinion that you don't fight a war unless you absolutely are forced into it, but at that point, you fight to win, and win as quickly as possible. After you have won, treat them humanely. This puts me at odds with both political parties. Half the wars we get involved in shouldn't involve us, but for the few that do, we're too afraid to fight to truly win. I felt that Japan forced our hand in that war and we had no choice but to enter. We fought to win and end the war as quickly as possible which we did. At that point, the administration's goals were to treat Japan fairly. I think it's telling that Japan is now one of our staunchest allies. We must have done something right there.
Care to post it again? JK. Maybe yours was a little more vile or used some kind of derogatory slang name and was it in the LR or TC. They are much more touchy in the TC and even more touchy in the Club Level than in the LR.
In any case we could all use some diversity training and it would probably go something like this:
Link for Diversity training class video
I laugh every time I watch that clip from rescue me. I guess I need more sensitivity.
Shoot, we'd killed as many people in our conventional bombing of Tokyo as in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And still the Japanese hadn't given up.
I don't believe the "they were about to surrender" crowd - there's simply no way to say what would or would not have happened had we not dropped the bomb.
I don't believe the "they were about to surrender" crowd - there's simply no way to say what would or would not have happened had we not dropped the bomb.
You can believe that dropping the bombs were necessary and the right decision, AND that what the people of Japan went through (as well as dozens if not hundreds of atrocities other communities went through all over the world) was a hell of horrors that nobody should have to live through and is a blight on human history.
I don't think conviction in the former requires a lack of appreciation for the latter.
I don't think conviction in the former requires a lack of appreciation for the latter.
I mostly agree with that, except I'm not willing to go as far as calling it a blight on human history. It was just war. Almost certainly the last war that will be fought that directly involves civilians on a large scale.
I don't judge blights on history by body count. Certainly the Nazi treatment of Jews and others in the 30s and 40s qualifies. However, I'd also consider the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII a blight on history, even though nobody died and it was an understandable course of action at the time. I think we should have much more regret about that than dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.
It was a difficult time with difficult decisions to be made, no question.
OK we can disagree then. Stalin invaded Manchuria three months to the day after Germany surrendered, exactly as promised at Yalta. We hurried the deployment of the bombs and dropped the second one on the same day as the invasion - not by coincidence - to preempt the Soviets, not the other way around as you suggest.
