Japan - True feelings?

[Paul22118]

I think the tradegy in Japan is horrendous as many have said on these pages. May I share a comment with you made by another (which I happen not to agree with but understand)
He is a Scot who was captured by the Japanese in WWII and badly starved and tortured. He survived but has always hated them for what they did to him as a man. In reespect to recent natural events he said "I was captured by the Japs in the war and was beaten, starved and tortured. They hit me hard and broke my legs and punched me so hard my stomach has never recovered. At my lowest darkest days I used to think where are you Lord when I need you most. Now I know".
Tragic is it not?

[sandyRoe]

I still think that the nuclear bombs dropped on the innocent civilian in two Japanese cities must have gone some way to balance the outrages that a few Japanese soldiers committed against their prisoners.

[jd_1984]

*disaster and
* an individual
Keyboard keeps sticking

[Sqad]

It is a true disaster and in my opinion nothing to do with retribution form high......or wherever and they have my deepest sympathy

I agree with carlton, the atrocities dished out by the Japanese in WW2 were indeed horrendous, subhuman and people who perpetrated these cimes and suffered from them are still alive.
In my opinion the Japanese are an arrogant race and would if the situation became apparent, would revert to their 1940-45 atrocious acts.

[carlton23]

YES

[Bobbisox]

isn't this why hatred reverberates around our lives?
we have to move on, it is now third and fourth generational
we may not forget past atrocities such as Hiroshima and the Holocause, but we can learn from them

[carlton23]

I remember when I was a child, my uncle coming home from a POW camp and I didn`t recognise him any more, he died shortly afterwards.

[Bobbisox]

tragic, carlton

[DTCwordfan]

sandy roe's answer is just plain unbelievable....

We were at war, plain and simple. McArthur's planning had estimated that to take Japan would have involved an 'army region' of somewhere over a million personnel, and with the exposure to a huge number of death and casualties.

This action, though horrific, was fully justified and saved countless allied lives and I would say Japanese lives too. Given our more recent history of occupation (Vietnam on), I would postulate whether we could have even taken and 'controlled' Japan.

And to those who try and link God's retribution to what has happened, may I remind them that the Bible was a brilliant document to explain the unexplainable back then - and written by humans. Our understanding of the Earth and its mechanism, in all its forms, has somewhat moved on from the "World is Flat and ruled by God" fundamentalist era. And, yes, how do the Fundamentalists explain New Zealand's earthquake. Too much sinning by sheep-shagging?

[sandyRoe]

The Hiroshima bomb would have shown the Japanese authorities that the war was over. The one dropped on Nagasaki couldn't be considered anything else but a war crime.

[modeller]

sandy // I still think that the nuclear bombs dropped on the innocent civilian in two Japanese cities must have gone some way to balance the outrages that a few Japanese soldiers committed against their prisoners.//
sandy .Your answers are yet again unbelievable .
The Japs committed their atrocities for 20 years on their Asian neighbours and on our prisoners for 6 years all before the the last week when the A Bomb was dropped.
What is more after the first bomb was dropped they were given the chance to surrender but refused . That is why the second one was dropped.
sandy // I still think that the nuclear bombs dropped on the innocent civilian in two Japanese cities must have gone some way to balance the outrages that a few Japanese soldiers committed against their prisoners.//
Those innocent civilians as you call them backed their government for those 20 odd years and they gleefully attended public torture and bayonetting of prisoners.
sandy // a few Japanese soldiers //
What do you call small ? Thousands of Jap soldiers were involved on the Burma railway alone. It is a part of their culture .To surrender is dishonourable . They despise all prisoners as they believe everyone should fight to the death and if they don't , they deserve to be tortured to death .

[carlton23]

To put this tread to bed: What does it say on the Cenotaph in Whitehall....LEST WE FORGET.

[nonomaybe]

Sandyroe, following the bomb drop on Hiroshima, the Japanese were invited to surrender, unconditionally - they declined.
After the bomb drop on Nagasaki, the Japanese accepted the renewed invitation to surrender .
As mentioned in a earlier post the Nuclear devices were used as an alternative to an invasion which might have led to massive loss of life, on both sides, remember the Japanese had a million strong army in Japan and had the mind set of no surrender until............

[joko]

wishing an entire country to be wiped off the face of the earth, because a few of the people (who are now probably long dead) tortured him and happened to live there 70-odd years ago, makes him no better than the torturers.

claiming that the japanese somehow deserve what has happened makes it very hard to feel any sympathy whatsoever for the old fool.

[anotheoldgit]

It must be said that even to date, the Japanese have never apologised for the atrocious acts they committed.

[DTCwordfan]

Wilkipedia perhaps best sums up the current position. I suspect that whatever they do or dont do there will be unhappy folk. It's quite long....

The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in regard to war crimes are separate. Therefore, while maintaining that Japan violated no international law or treaties, Japanese governments have officially recognised the suffering which the Japanese military caused, and numerous apologies have been issued by the Japanese government. For example, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, in August 1995, stated that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology". Also, on September 29, 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka stated: "[t]he Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself."[91]

However, the official apologies are widely viewed as inadequate or only a symbolic exchange by many of the survivors of such crimes or the families of dead victims. On October 2006, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed an apology for the damage caused by its colonial rule and aggression, more than 80 Japanese lawmakers from his ruling party LDP paid visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Many people aggrieved by Japanese war crimes also maintain that no apology has been issued for particular acts or that the Japanese government has merely expressed "regret" or "remorse".[92] On 2 March 2007, the issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coer

[DTCwordfan]

part 2

Some in Japan have asserted that what is being demanded is that the Japanese Prime Minister or the Emperor perform dogeza, in which an individual kneels and bows his head to the ground—a high form of apology in East Asian societies that Japan appears unwilling to do.[97] Some point to an act by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who knelt at a monument to the Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1970, as an example of a powerful and effective act of apology and reconciliation similar to dogeza, although not everyone agrees.[98]

Citing Brandt's action as an example, John Borneman, associate professor of anthropology at Cornell,[99] states that, "an apology represents a non-material or purely symbolic exchange whereby the wrongdoer voluntarily lowers his own status as a person." Borneman further states that once this type of apology is given, the injured party must forgive and seek reconciliation, or else the apology won't have any effect. The injured party may reject the apology for several reasons, one of which is to prevent reconciliation, because, "By keeping the memory of the wound alive, refusals prevent an affirmation of mutual humanity by instrumentalizing the power embedded in the status of a permanent victim."[100]

Therefore, some argue that a nation's reluctance to accept the conciliatory gestures that Japan has made may be because that nation doesn't think that Japan has "lowered" itself enough to provide a sincere apology. On the other hand, others state their belief that that particular nation is choosing to reject reconciliation in pursuit of permanent "victimhood" status as a way to try to assert power over Japan.[101]

On 13 September 2010, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada met in Tokyo with six former American POWs of the Japanese and apologized for their treatment during World War II. Said Okada, "You have all been through hardship

[NOX]

and it's taken us 300 years to apologise about the slave trade ( and then only half heartedly)- so what's your point with apologies? Each man has to take his own guilt around with him in his head, and an innocent child killed by a dreadful natural disaster is nothing whatsoever to do with that.

[joko]

this country has committed many many atrocities - and i personally feel no guilt for them - quite simply because i didnt do them - i was not even alive when most of them occurred...and i would certainly not accept some sort of punishment for them

i am a human being first an foremost, only secondly am i british...

i fail to see what a half arsed apology would change...

if i had suffered at the hands of some people from another country, their government saying 'sorry' would not help me in the least...

[Paul22118]

Thank you all for making this a very interesting thread as a result of a conversation I had with a friend who was tortured in the second world war by the Japanese. I would agree with much that has been said, although I assure Joko that my elderly friend is no old fool! He fought bravely to give aus all what we enjoy today and sadly was treated as sub human by his Japanese captors, he lives with his injuries still today and his dreams are of a torment I shudder to imagine. DT I endorse your well made points and as I initially said, I do not agree with my friend's hatred but I do understand it. Perhaps the bombs should have drawn a line under all the issues including the hope that brains of the captured could rest more easily and sleep at night.
I am sure there are many, although not so many these days, men who suffered unimaginably and also feel this way. May they everntually, alongside those who perished this week, rest in peace.

[joko]

whilst i understand he suffered and those emotions have obviously never left him and he undoubtedly fought bravely - the fact that he now is wishing untold horrors upon millions of INNOCENT people, just because of his bad past, when he of all people should know how horrendous pain and suffering is, and claiming it as some sort of divine retribution and revenge - makes him a fool in my book - and a rotten one at that...

like i said hard to feel sympathy for someone so bitter and cruel