Letters from Iwo Jima

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Doggie
Too bad any movie that portrayed them as they really were would be worse than the most graphic slasher film imaginable.

Wow, such stereotyping. No Japanese soldier ever did anything nice for anyone, is that what you are saying? All Japanese soldiers were incarnations of pure evil?

I thought sentiments like yours went out of fashion after the war, but I see that some people are stuck in ww2-era propaganda and stereotyping.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund


Wow, such stereotyping. No Japanese soldier ever did anything nice for anyone, is that what you are saying? All Japanese soldiers were incarnations of pure evil?

I thought sentiments like yours went out of fashion after the war, but I see that some people are stuck in ww2-era propaganda and stereotyping.

Nanking Massacre was only one of the many atrocities inflicted on the innocent by the hand of the Japanese soldier.

Propaganda and stereotyping

Unit 731
lethal human experimentation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

The Changde chemical weapon attack
Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changde_ch ... pon_attack


Vietnamese Famine of 1945
2 million people starved to death
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_Famine_of_1945

Japanese military's use of forced labor
around 100,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs died as a direct result of the Burma Railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Railway

[Titanwarrior89]

I just read your "Swell guys" link. I see what you mean. The worst animal in the world is the human animal.

ORIGINAL: Doggie

Yep, the poor Japanese were such swell guys

Too bad any movie that portrayed them as they really were would be worse than the most graphic slasher film imaginable.

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Sarge
Nanking Massacre..blah blah

Guilt is always individual, never collective. That is why we dont think of all Germans as concentration camp guards, all Americans as My Lai-murderers or all Japanese as Nanking massacrers. Im sure you understand this if you sit and think about it for a while.

What I objected to was the complete idiocy of doggies comment. Believe it or not, there were japanese soldiers who never committed a warcrime, beheaded a prisoner of war, raped a chinese woman or shot a child.

What I object to is the knee-jerk stereotype that all japanese were evil and all americans were good. Reality is more complex than that. There were good japanese, and there were evil americans too. Despite how much you want to pretend it isnt so.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

Guilt is always individual, never collective. That is why we dont think of all Germans as concentration camp guards, all Americans as My Lai-murderers or all Japanese as Nanking massacrers. Im sure you understand this if you sit and think about it for a while.

Your missing the point, the moral breakdown of a military force is what Doggie was pointing out .
(I assume )
You can hardly make the assumption from the rouge My Lai incident and imply it to the Holocaust and Nanking .

Two where attempts to exterminate a race one was a rouge incident in the field .



ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

What I object to is the knee-jerk stereotype that all japanese were evil and all americans were good

Your replies are based on emotion with zero historical insight of Japanese doctrine of WWII.

[Dixie]

No-one here is denying that the general Japanese attitude was based on horrific treatment of PoWs and enemy civilians, we all know how they treated others. But you cannot say that every Japanese solider was a murdering rapist and that none of them were like the central character in Letters from Iwo Jima. I do realise that generally the Japanese were not pleasant to be around during the war, however there are more than a few accounts of Japanese guards sneaking food and medicine to POWs.

As Panzerjaeger Hortlund has said there were elements in all militaries during the war which did not conform to the stereotypes which have come about after the war. There was not a single army amongst the major forces which does not have some incident that they would rather not publicise. Shooting POWs, whilst not necessarily common in the US forces still took place.

PS: Letters was IMO a much better film, maybe because it is what is expected from a war film? I didn't really get into Flags.

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Sarge
Your missing the point, the moral breakdown of a military force is what Doggie was pointing out .
(I assume )
You can hardly make the assumption from the rouge My Lai incident and imply it to the Holocaust and Nanking .

Two where attempts to exterminate a race one was a rouge incident in the field .

Lets not go into the "who was worse", discussions like that never ends well. For that matter, once you have passed a certain threshold, you are too far into "bad guy"-land that it doesnt matter if someone was even worse. Lets just focus on the important lesson to be learned. Guilt is always individual, never collective.

And what, if not a moral breakdown of a military force, would My Lai be characterized as? But like I said, lets leave that.

Your replies are based on emotion with zero historical insight of Japanese doctrine of WWII.

Rubbish. Now, Im not going to be childish enough to sit here and say that I know more about Japanese doctrine in ww2 than you, because I dont know what your knowledge level is. But let me say this. I was involved in the development of HoI2, and one of the things that fell on my desk was to do the doctrines for all the major nations...which meant that I spent several weeks researching the doctrinal development of all those nations...which includes Japan, incidentally. So I know quite alot about Japanese doctrine in 1931-1945.

And lets leave all that aside too, because even that is beside the point. What I objected to, and what I continue to object to is the absolutely idiotic idea that all Japanese soldiers were bad or evil.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

Rubbish. Now, Im not going to be childish enough to sit here and say that I know more about Japanese doctrine in ww2 than you, because I dont know what your knowledge level is. But let me say this. I was involved in the development of HoI2, and one of the things that fell on my desk was to do the doctrines for all the major nations...which meant that I spent several weeks researching the doctrinal development of all those nations...which includes Japan, incidentally. So I know quite alot about Japanese doctrine in 1931-1945.

Really ?

They you might remember a little nugget on Japans refusal to sign the Geneva Convention .
How about the chapter on the Empire openly denouncing of the Treaty of Versailles, and the Hague Conventions.

I take it that doctrinal development never made it to the game [>:]

[Dixie]

ORIGINAL: Sarge

How about the chapter on the Empire openly denouncing of the Treaty of Versailles....

That means nothing really. How about the chapter where the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty. Great Britain didn't believe it was fair either. There was only one nation who didn't think it was too harsh, and that was France who didn't think it went far enough. [8|]

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Dixie

That means nothing really. How about the chapter where the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty. Great Britain didn't believe it was fair either. There was only one nation who didn't think it was too harsh, and that was France who didn't think it went far enough. [8|]

Hardly ,
Out right discontent of the Geneva Convention along with Treaty of Versailles, and the Hague Conventions. All combined is a appropriate evidence of the training and doctrine that lead the average Japanese in the field.

The Hague Conventions are a direct attempt to instill human treatment of POW’s

How is US Senate refused to ratify the treaty and Empire refusal to impose consequences on his military force for any atrocity tactics employed in the field , ............. means nothing ?

[mikul82]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

ORIGINAL: Doggie
Too bad any movie that portrayed them as they really were would be worse than the most graphic slasher film imaginable.

Wow, such stereotyping. No Japanese soldier ever did anything nice for anyone, is that what you are saying? All Japanese soldiers were incarnations of pure evil?

I thought sentiments like yours went out of fashion after the war, but I see that some people are stuck in ww2-era propaganda and stereotyping.

All sides in WWII did horrible things to civilians on the opposing side- Deliberately firebombing civilians to death is somehow now seen as less awful than personally killing them face to face, however I don't really see the big distinction there. Slaughtering noncombatants is still slaughtering noncombatants, whether personally slitting their throats or dropping incendiary bombs on them from 30,000 feet in the air. The things the Soviets did when taking over German territory was just as awful as what went on at Nanking, although not on as large of a scale. I'm not trying to say anything negative about the western Allies in my above paragraph, only that the clear-cut idea of "Good guys and Bad Guys" in WWII was created AFTER someone had won.

One single platoon of Japanese on Iwo Jima probably hadn't been participants in Nanking anyway, especially not barely-adult draftees like the protagonist.

[Dixie]

ORIGINAL: Sarge

ORIGINAL: Dixie

That means nothing really. How about the chapter where the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty. Great Britain didn't believe it was fair either. There was only one nation who didn't think it was too harsh, and that was France who didn't think it went far enough. [8|]

Hardly ,
Out right discontent of the Geneva Convention along with Treaty of Versailles, and the Hague Conventions. All combined is a appropriate evidence of the training and doctrine that lead the average Japanese in the field.

The Hague Conventions are a direct attempt to instill human treatment of POW’s

How is US Senate refused to ratify the treaty and Empire refusal to impose consequences on his military force for any atrocity tactics employed in the field , ............. means nothing ?

I'm not saying that the US decision has anything to do with Japanese actions, nor did I mean to imply any such thing. All I meant was that denouncing the Treaty of Versailles has nothing to do with Japanese actions in WW2 any more than British or US discomfort with the outcome. Discontent with the treaty means nothing, all three of the major powers had some feelings of discontent towards it, and none of them comitted the acts that Japan did.
Refusal to sign the Hague and Geneva conventions is another thing altogether, which I left well alone.

Or to put my intended arguement another way, how does Japan's denouncing the Treaty directly lead to warcrimes and attrocities. I don't see how it does, unlike the other two treaties mentioned.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Dixie

Or to put my intended arguement another way, how does Japan's denouncing the Treaty directly lead to warcrimes and attrocities. I don't see how it does, unlike the other two treaties mentioned.

So you don’t think there is a direct correlation between moral/ideology instilled at the basic individual training and tactics deployed in the field ?

[Dixie]

ORIGINAL: Sarge

ORIGINAL: Dixie

Or to put my intended arguement another way, how does Japan's denouncing the Treaty directly lead to warcrimes and attrocities. I don't see how it does, unlike the other two treaties mentioned.

So you don’t think there is a direct correlation between moral/ideology instilled at the basic individual training and tactics deployed in the field ?

That isn't what I'm trying to say....

Versailles had nothing to do with training, indoctrination or the conduct of warfare. Versailles was essentially about ending the Great War and the repatriations that Germany would have to pay.
I still fail to see how this has anything to do with atrocities, but feel free to prove a direct correlation between The Treaty of Versailles and Japan's later actions.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Dixie

I still fail to see how this has anything to do with atrocities, but feel free to prove a direct correlation between The Treaty of Versailles and Japan's later actions.

Dropping everything in my sentence (after comma ) and taking the Treaty out of context as the only evidence against a morally corrupt military force .

Well I guess you then have accomplished manufacturing a point . [&:]

ORIGINAL: Sarge

How about the chapter on the Empire openly denouncing of the Treaty of Versailles, and the Hague Conventions.

[Doggie]

ORIGINAL:

Wow, such stereotyping. No Japanese soldier ever did anything nice for anyone, is that what you are saying? All Japanese soldiers were incarnations of pure evil?

Yes. I would say that just about sums it up. A number of my uncles served in the pacific during world war II as well as other aquaintances. To a man, every one agreed that the Japanese were more sadistic and barbaric than any of them ever imagined. Every one had absolutely no regrets about killing japanese soldiers.

In contrast, those who served on occupation duty after the surrender described those same Japanese as polite and courteous, and G.I.s went out of their way to care for them.
That pretty much blows the pacifist conventional wisdom about American soldiers and marines being racist blood thirsty killers out of the water.

You can take all the slasher movies and horror stories about serial murderers combined and they do not even approach the level of barbarity exhibited by the Japanese on a routine basis. They literally tossed babies on bayonettes. They literally canibalized prisoners of war by slicing the meat of their legs while they were still alive so they could come back later and find the kidneys and liver still fresh. When the U.S. invaded the Phillipines, the Japanese herded PWs into air raid shelters, drenched them with gasoline, and burned them alive.

I thought sentiments like yours went out of fashion after the war, but I see that some people are stuck in ww2-era propaganda and stereotyping.

None of this is propaganda and stereotyping. It's documented fact. World war II era propaganda films were kind to the Japanese. Even the worst of them did not approach the horror that was reality. "Sentiments" like mine went out of fashion when the people who experienced Japanese hospitality first hand started dying off and revisionists began re-writing history.

While the nazis practiced barbarism on an organizational level, it was personal for the Japanese. Nazis did haul jews off to the crematoriams, but they did not strut around Paris decapitating civilians for sport, which the Japanese did in every single terrority they occupied. They confiscated the entire rice crop in Korea and left the populace to starve, except for the thousands of girls they shipped off to Japan to serve in brothels.

A realistic remake of Midway would include downed allied airmen being fished out of the ocean after the battle of coral sea, castrated and disemboweled one by one during their "interogation" then tied to metal scrap and tossed overboard while they were still gasping in agony.

They were stinking savages, and that's why Dutch, Australians, British, and American soldiers seldom took prisoners, and allied airmen happily strafed the miserable bastards in their lifeboats after sinking their ships. And they had every bit of it coming to them.

Maybe you should find someone who survived internment is a Japanese slave labor camp and ask them what they think about the poor Japanese.

[8|]

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Doggie
Yes. I would say that just about sums it up. A number of my uncles served in the pacific during world war II as well as other aquaintances. To a man, every one agreed that the Japanese were more sadistic and barbaric than any of them ever imagined. Every one had absolutely no regrets about killing japanese soldiers.

Maybe that says more about your uncles and aquaintances though? Anyway, I find it rather peculiar to find a man who apparently has built his entire image of an ethnic group upon the (tall?) tales told to him by his relatives.

In contrast, those who served on occupation duty after the surrender described those same Japanese as polite and courteous, and G.I.s went out of their way to care for them.
That pretty much blows the pacifist conventional wisdom about American soldiers and marines being racist blood thirsty killers out of the water.

It does huh? So far your anecdotal "evidence" of the evil of the japanese consists of statements from your uncles and aquanitances, your anecdotal "evidence" of the good-heartedness and non-racist views by american soldiers and marines consists of...what? Statements grabbed out of thin air?

You can take all the slasher movies and horror stories about serial murderers combined and they do not even approach the level of barbarity exhibited by the Japanese on a routine basis. They literally tossed babies on bayonettes. They literally canibalized prisoners of war by slicing the meat of their legs while they were still alive so they could come back later and find the kidneys and liver still fresh. When the U.S. invaded the Phillipines, the Japanese herded PWs into air raid shelters, drenched them with gasoline, and burned them alive.

The problem is that you can take all those slasher movies and horror stories and they do not even approach the level of barbarity exibited by German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, British or US soldiers on a routine basis. The difference is that when the perpetrator of a henious crime is a German or a Japanese soldier, you take it as evidence of the perversity of an entire nation, you sit there and claim that they all were like that. But when a US soldier guns down a prisoner, or slaughters a civilian village, or rapes a young girl and then kills her you call that an individual act of lunacy.

None of this is propaganda and stereotyping. It's documented fact.

Actually, if you would care to open a dictionary some day, you would find that stereotypes are generalizations about a group of people, based on an image about what people in that group are like. That means that you are stereotyping (all japanese are stinking savages) based on documented fact (rape of Nanking).

If one would apply the same thinking pattern of the US, one would say that all American soldiers are rapists and murderers, because My Lai happened. Its a documented fact. However, when confronted with documented facts of US atrocities, you are very quick to leap to the defence of the US soldiers in general, trying to explain the crimes as individual acts of lunacy. But when confronted with evidence of Japanese atrocities, you use that as evidence to show that all japanese soldiers were stinking savages.

Whats funny (and when I say funny, I mean sad) is that this process seems to take place instanty and without reflection inside you.

World war II era propaganda films were kind to the Japanese. Even the worst of them did not approach the horror that was reality. "Sentiments" like mine went out of fashion when the people who experienced Japanese hospitality first hand started dying off and revisionists began re-writing history.

While the nazis practiced barbarism on an organizational level, it was personal for the Japanese. Nazis did haul jews off to the crematoriams, but they did not strut around Paris decapitating civilians for sport, which the Japanese did in every single terrority they occupied. They confiscated the entire rice crop in Korea and left the populace to starve, except for the thousands of girls they shipped off to Japan to serve in brothels.

A realistic remake of Midway would include downed allied airmen being fished out of the ocean after the battle of coral sea, castrated and disemboweled one by one during their "interogation" then tied to metal scrap and tossed overboard while they were still gasping in agony.

Yeah, but who would want to watch that remake of Midway is my question. What do you think a realistic remake of Dresden would look like? Who would want to see it?

Actually, you probably should read up a bit on what exactly the nazis (I take it you mean the SS here) did to the jews in the concentration camps, in the extermination camps, in the countless massacres performed by the einzatsgruppen.

They were stinking savages, and that's why Dutch, Australians, British, and American soldiers seldom took prisoners, and allied airmen happily strafed the miserable bastards in their lifeboats after sinking their ships. And they had every bit of it coming to them.

Ah, not only were they evil savages, but they were stinking aswell huh? I dont know if you ever tried to pretend not to be a racist, but that pretty much closes the book on that question.

And your explanation for allies gunning down of prisoners and strafing of survivors in lifeboats...well, the japs brought it on themselves of cource...after all, they were not only savagels, but stinking savages.

I dont seem to recall reading about that paragraph in the Hague convention...the one where it says it is ok to gun down prisoners if they smell bad, or if they are of a certain ethnicity, but I guess lawschool failed me there huh.

Maybe you should find someone who survived internment is a Japanese slave labor camp and ask them what they think about the poor Japanese.

Yeah, maybe you should find someone who survived My Lai and ask them what they think about the US. What can we learn from interviewing them?

Or, maybe more interesting, you should find the relatives of private Joseph Dorcas Allen. He was wounded in a minefield, lost his leg. A japanese soldier saved his life by dressing his wound and giving him water. The stinking savage.

Like I said, guilt is always individual. That means we have to judge every single individual based on his actions. We cannot put guilt on a collective, and claim that they are all guilty without examining the actions or inactions of every single individual in that collective.

If we do, we might end up thinking that all US soldiers are rapists, butchering murderous thugs.

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Sarge
Really ?

They you might remember a little nugget on Japans refusal to sign the Geneva Convention .
How about the chapter on the Empire openly denouncing of the Treaty of Versailles, and the Hague Conventions.

I take it that doctrinal development never made it to the game [>:]

I dont know what you think "doctrine" means, but its less about the actions of an emperor or a government, and more about how the army tries to train its soldiers and what tactics they use on various levels.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

Maybe that says more about your uncles and aquaintances though? Anyway, I find it rather peculiar to find a man who apparently has built his entire image of an ethnic group upon the (tall?) tales told to him by his relatives.

Your right,

The USMC ,and USN veterans have it all wrong, glad to see that HOI set the record straight . [:D]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

. But let me say this. I was involved in the development of HoI2, and one of the things that fell on my desk was to do the doctrines for all the major nations...which meant that I spent several weeks researching the doctrinal development of all those nations...which includes Japan, incidentally. So I know quite alot about Japanese doctrine in 1931-1945.

Moron [8|]

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Sarge
Your right,

The USMC ,and USN veterans have it all wrong, glad to see that HOI set the record straight . [:D]

Lets try this mental excercise to see if we can make the point I am trying to make a bit clearer.

Suppose we had no knowledge whatsoever about ww2. We interviewed three persons to try to get an understanding of who the bad guys were and who the good guys were.

In example 1, we intervew
1) a German civilian, a Wilhelm Gustloff survivor
2) a Japanese civilian, a survivor of the Tokyo fire bombings
3) a Russian soldier, one who took part in the mass-rapes in 1945

In example 2, we interview
1) a German SS soldier from einzatsgruppe A
2) a US soldier, survivor of the Bataan death march
3) a British civilian, survivor of the blitz

Now, my question to you. Do you think that we would get the same understanding of who the bad guys and who the good guys were in ww2 in those two examples? This should demonstrate the danger of anecdotal evidence.

But...and I seem to be forced to return to this again... all of the above is beside the point. The point is that guilt is always individual, never collective. And blind, racist stereotyping is not really that productive.


And what, pray tell, did you object to when it comes to Japanese infantry doctrine 1931-1945?