Japanese Broadcast Official: We Didn’t Commit War Crimes

[stormthebeaches]

The quote you used refered to the age, and it was contradicted by the rape of a 3-year old which seems to be way below the arbitarily announced "limits" of 8 or 14 that were presented. I'm not sure how you can say the source argued the opposite of what he claimed.

The rape of a three year old is not contradictory with the arbitarily announced limits because it is a single case. Which means that statistically speaking it is an outlier.

Are you dense, crazy or simply borderline psychotic and sociopathic as not to understand that reducing Germany to an agricultural state was bound to kill of perhaps over a third of its population, since it was never self-sufficient, and "agriculture" alone could not provide even for the people inside the country, much less for exports! That's like deindustrializing modern Japan - once you do that, most of its population will horribly die. The market works that way.

As I have said multiple times now, the original Morgenthau plan was not implemented. What was implemented was a heavily watered down version that called for German industry to be reduced, but not completely abolished.

Decartelization - the initial Potsdam ideas - were already probably affected by the Morgenthau, since the drafts were developed during the entirety of 1944. But they weren't going as far as what was later "cleared" during Quebec and in 1946.

Saying that the initial Potsdam ideas were "probably" affected by the Morgenthau plan is hardly proof of anything. I find it very hard to believe that the other allied powers were not interested in seeing German industrial power reduced (we know that the Soviet Union was) so to say that German deindustrialization was an exclusively American idea is something I find hard to believe.

They even left a special paragraph about "peaceful domestic industries" to avoid referring to a completely agricultural Germany which would be nonsense. Contrast this with this:

Within a short period, if possible not longer than 6 months after the cessation of hostilities, all industrial plants and equipment not destroyed by military action shall either be completely dismantled and removed from the area or completely destroyed.

So it is clearly progressing from milder to harsher terms, and it's America's plan which is the harsher one. The Potsdam agreement centered on demilitarization and deindustrialization as a side objective. This is just deindustrialization for the sake of crushing Germany.

Okay, firstly I would like a link to the quote so I can see when it was said and in what context it was said in. Since all German industry was not destroyed in six months I suspect it was from a more extreme draft of the Morgenthau plan and was not carried out.

[Simon_Jester]

While I have played at least a small role in the process, I can't help but step back and be surprised at how a thread about Japanese war crime denialists has evolved into a thread on what rotten sons of bitches the US was for not trying and executing Hirohito,* and for not shipping humanitarian aid to postwar Germany.*

Plus the rape side-argument, which... honestly I'd be just as happy not to go there, given that the whole thing seems to have started as a giant tu-quoque.

Things look pretty derailed.

*I sense a contradiction between these two; it's hard to imagine the same nation doing both.

---

Looking at Japan, I'm actually curious, did anyone seriously try to 'de-industrialize' Japan? They weren't a first-rate industrial power to begin with, but was surviving equipment shipped anywhere? When did the US start its policy of encouraging and subsidizing Japanese civilian industry, or at least tolerating it?

[Grumman]

Plus the rape side-argument, which... honestly I'd be just as happy not to go there, given that the whole thing seems to have started as a giant tu-quoque.

In fact, the tu-quoque started before the very first post:

Last week, the new NHK chairman Katsuto Momii provoked outrage both at home and abroad when he said all of the countries involved in World War II maintained “comfort women” — a euphemism for the system of forced prostitution employed by the Japanese military during the war years.

[Simon_Jester]

I was talking about the one confined to this thread, but yeah, that too.

I mean, military-run or at least supervised brothels were a thing in other countries than just Japan, but that doesn't translate to those countries kidnapping masses of women to serve in the brothels and shipping them off to foreign countries as concubines against their will.

[K. A. Pital]

Wait. Rapes - I understand. Military brothels in every other nation? I thought that was a Nazi and Japanese thing, sorry. Other nations were complicit in allowing rear troops to rape - frankly, a lot more than they should have, probably fearing to punish their own soldiers too much - but not in setting up brothels with concubines made from captured civilians.

[Simon_Jester]

So far as I know you speak the truth. Let me explain.

I may be simply misremembering something I'd read, this is not something I'm asserting with extraordinary confidence. But my impression is that most of the nations involved in the war at least made some attempt (in some places or times) to keep some kind of control over their soldiers' visits to prostitutes and brothels, not just by restricting the soldiers, but by trying to exercise some degree of authority over the brothels themselves- at least enough to close down any they didn't want their soldiers dealing with.

This would not surprise me, given that any military of the era would have concern for rates of venereal disease, if nothing else.

Now, that's not "military-run," the phrasing I used last night was poor, so if I might rewrite a little in an attempt to clarify:

The military exercising some degree of control and at least dealing with brothels was not particularly unusual. Many countries did that.

But that doesn't translate to other countries kidnapping masses of women to serve in the brothels, or to other countries shipping women off to be forced to serve as concubines/prostitutes for their military in foreign lands. Japan did those things, and yes the Germans did those things (which I had forgotten), but aside from that no one else did.

So in other words, yes this Japanese guy is full of it, because basically nobody did what he alleges. The reason we regard the "comfort women" as a particular atrocity is the scale on which women were kidnapped and forced to submit to sex with numerous Japanese soldiers over long periods of time.

[K. A. Pital]

Indeed, the "comfort women" thing is very much like the forced relocation of millions of captured civilians in Eastern Europe to work as slaves for Germany's industries. It is true that all nations used POW labour to accomplish industrial projects and German and Japanese POWs were often tasked with reconstruction duty in nations that suffered from Axis attacks (or, perhaps in a crazy twist, were sent to re-establish European colonial rule in East Asia, something which has no excuse); what is not true of other nations is the capture of tens of millions of civilians that are not "POWs" in any sense of the world and their subsequent direct enslavement.

I also wonder what will happen if the current China government transitions to a multi-party democracy at some point in the near future after their GDP per capita rises, like SK and Taiwan did, or a formally multi-party system with one-party rule achieved through elections, like in Singapore? Japan will no longer be able to just point across the straits and say "Look China's the bad guy because one party rule!". Just as their attempts to malign historic Korean patriots fighting against Japanese occupation in the early 1900s were and remain simply ridiculous.

[mr friendly guy]

Sadly with the hypocrisy of such people (re : those who are selective in human rights defense), most probably won't stop them. They will find something else to vilify China with. Recently (ie within the last week or so) the Phillipines tried comparing China to the Nazis and looking on the internet there are idiots who buy this, based on some very common characteristics a lot of countries share, ie territorial claims.

[Siege]

Speaking of 'comfort women'...

Japan will form a team to review the lead-up to a 1993 statement which acknowledged its wartime use of sex slaves, its top spokesman says.

Yoshihide Suga said the team would "re-examine and understand the background".

The acknowledgement that women were forced into sex slavery with Japanese military complicity was viewed as a landmark apology.

A former leader has said any move to review the apology, known as the Kono statement, would be "absurd".

Some 200,000 women in territories occupied by Japan during World War Two are estimated to have been forced to become sex slaves for troops.

Many of the women came from China and South Korea, but also from the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan.

The Kono statement - issued by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993 - acknowledged that women had been coerced, with the Japanese military involved in the establishment and management of the process.

This statement was based in part on evidence given by 16 Korean women.

It is unclear where this review of the material will lead. Any move to revise the statement is likely to be met by anger from Japan's neighbours.

I'll leave you all to figure out the motive here. Suffice it to say I'd bet the money in my pockets against the money in Shinzo Abe's pockets that the result of this 're-examination' won't amount to a heartfelt "yep, turns out we were still totally awful, sorry".

It's remarkable, every time you think they couldn't possibly be bigger assholes, they find a way to be bigger assholes. The current Japanese government is doing a great job making China seem like really nice, tolerant, respectful and totally-not-horrible-in-every-way people in comparison though, so that's at least one upside.

[Pelranius]

Almost makes you wonder if Abe is in the pay of the MSS. Riling up South Korea is doing serious damage to the Rebalance.

[K. A. Pital]

What the hell is Abe even doing? When SK is talking about sharing military intelligence with China, SK - a "key Japanese ally". Japan's revisionists have served their nation well.

[PainRack]

Wait. Rapes - I understand. Military brothels in every other nation? I thought that was a Nazi and Japanese thing, sorry. Other nations were complicit in allowing rear troops to rape - frankly, a lot more than they should have, probably fearing to punish their own soldiers too much - but not in setting up brothels with concubines made from captured civilians.

I have no idea about Russia, but the Allies did sanction brothels to service their soldiers in most fronts of the war.

You need to recall that in the revisionist Japanese eyes, comfort women were not enslaved to be the whores of soldiers. They were volunteers(from japan) and for those from other countries, 'recruited'.

[K. A. Pital]

You need to recall that in the revisionist Japanese eyes, comfort women were not enslaved to be the whores of soldiers. They were volunteers(from japan) and for those from other countries, 'recruited'.

Okay. Now I see.

[Thanas]

Wait. Rapes - I understand. Military brothels in every other nation? I thought that was a Nazi and Japanese thing, sorry. Other nations were complicit in allowing rear troops to rape - frankly, a lot more than they should have, probably fearing to punish their own soldiers too much - but not in setting up brothels with concubines made from captured civilians.

I have no idea about Russia, but the Allies did sanction brothels to service their soldiers in most fronts of the war.

Mostly to prevent rapes after the experience in France.

[Civil War Man]

Wait. Rapes - I understand. Military brothels in every other nation? I thought that was a Nazi and Japanese thing, sorry. Other nations were complicit in allowing rear troops to rape - frankly, a lot more than they should have, probably fearing to punish their own soldiers too much - but not in setting up brothels with concubines made from captured civilians.

I have no idea about Russia, but the Allies did sanction brothels to service their soldiers in most fronts of the war.

Mostly to prevent rapes after the experience in France.

A large part is also that sanctioned brothels allowed the military to regulate the practice in some way, including measures to prevent VD outbreaks.

They were even doing it during the American Civil War.

Source

Resigning himself to the fact that prostitutes would ply their trade and soldiers would engage them, he reasoned that the women might as well sell sex safely, and so out of sheer desperation, Spalding and the Union Army created in Nashville’s the country’s first system of legalized prostitution.

Spalding’s proposal was simple: Each prostitute would register herself, obtaining for $5 a license entitling her to work as she pleased. A doctor approved by the Army would be charged with examining prostitutes each week, a service for which each woman would pay a 50 cent fee. Women found to have venereal diseases would be sent to a hospital established (in the home of the former Catholic bishop) for the treatment of such ailments, paid for in part by the weekly fees. Engaging in prostitution without a license, or failing to appear for scheduled examinations, would result in arrest and a jail term of 30 days.

The prospect of participating in the sex trade without fear of arrest or prosecution was instantly attractive to most of Nashville’s prostitutes, and by early 1864 some 352 women were on record as being licensed, and another hundred had been successfully treated for syphilis and other conditions hazardous to their industry. In the summer of 1864, one doctor at the hospital remarked on a “marked improvement” in the licensed prostitutes’ physical and mental health, noting that at the beginning of the initiative the women had been characterized by use of crude language and little care for personal hygiene, but were soon virtual models of “cleanliness and propriety.”

A New York Times reporter visiting Nashville was equally impressed, noting that the expenses of the program from September 1863 to June totaled just over $6,000, with income from the taxes on “lewd women” reached $5,900. Writing several years after war’s end, the Pacific Medical Journal argued that legalized prostitution not only helped rid Rosecrans’ army of venereal disease, it also had a positive impact on other armies (a similar system of prostitution licensing was enacted in Memphis in 1864):

The result claimed for the experiment was that in Gen. Sherman’s army of 100,000 men or more, but one or two cases were known to exist, while in Rosecrans’ army of 50,000 men, there had been nearly 1500 cases.

Once fearful of the law (particularly the military law, given the treatment they’d received), Nashville prostitutes took to the system with almost as much enthusiasm as those operating it. One doctor wrote that they felt grateful to no longer have to turn to “quacks and charlatans” for expensive and ineffective treatments, and eagerly showed potential customers their licenses to prove that they were disease-free.