Japanese Broadcast Official: We Didn’t Commit War Crimes

[Siege]

Precisely, and that's the part I don't trust the Japanese to do.

[Thanas]

Heck, when you finance a two hour movie centered on the heroic sacrifice of the crew of the Yamato against hopeless odds you kinda not seem to get the point.

[K. A. Pital]

Problem is - even though the winning powers made sure Japan learned war is bad, they didn't really care for other things that were directly connected to the war - the racist perceptions about the "Yamato race" and "Yamato spirit" of mindless blind self-sacrifice in the name of a living god that were supposed to stress Japanese superiority as a nation. That part never got the attention it deserved, allowing it to survive in the shadows until the memories of the war were so far that it seemed a good time to pull this out of the closet again.

Part of it has to do with the West's acceptance of this type of cultural poison - after all, the West had its own history of decades of racist doctrines, deeply connected with history, religion, "respect for the nation" and other things. Yukio Mishima, the infamous suicider, was a major hit among Western humanitarians (even though he was the author of stuff like My Friend Hitler) - no coincidence, I think. A bit of the aristocratic, a bit of the uncanny "Asian exotic", where Western political correctness that is a result of historical guilt is just swept away and replaced with candid, frank statements, darkly ironic as they were...

People don't understand that Japan's culture hasn't really been transformed fundamentally, aside from perhaps the very modern generation.

[Replicant]

The US dropped nuclear boulders on civilians and had the Russians steal half of my country and hand it over to a chinese-bred lunatic (seriously, Kim Ill-sung could barely speak any Korean when he was crowned king by Stalin).

And then you left the japanese Emperor and his rotten family alone. The people who held all the responsibility were allowed to remain untouched, including the asshole that ordered the rape of Nanjing. Which is one of the reasons the Japanese never quite internalized their guilt over their atrocities before and during WW2.

Hope you are happy now.

Did you want the United States to immediately go toe to toe with the Soviet Union right after the war ended? I am pretty sure that when the Soviet Union claimed NK and set up their puppet regime the United States had already returned massive numbers of troops back home from Europe. A direct US vs USSR confrontation in Korea could have quickly included a massive steamrolling of reduced US and Allied forces in Western Europe.

Oh and yes the nukes were a horrible and disgusting thing to do to Japan. I guess the far more humane choice would have been an invasion that may have killed 10 times as many, or even better a blockade that would have starved 50 times as may as the Japanese military instantly claimed a lions share of the food on the island and let the majority of the civilian population starve to death.

Is slowly starving to death with your wife and children more humane than nuclear fire? Of course not, its an ogres choice so it comes down to raw numbers and as horrible as it is one has to admit that nuclear bombs killed less people than the alternative.

As a side question - How much of the US actions in Japan (or lack of action in regards to trials and such) had to do with how quickly things went to shit in Europe after the war there ended. Thus making the US want to set up a stable government as fast as possible a priority to keep the Soviets out of the Japanese home islands.

[Broomstick]

Yes, do keep in mind that the US was, at the same time as it was overseeing surrendered Japan, also propping up Western Europe. Ask those old enough to remember in Europe about food shortages, rationing, and "hunger winter". I'm not going to argue all of Europe would have starved without the US but American food and goods sure did a lot to help the recovery there. While that aid was supposedly "loans" as far as I can recall only two nations have ever repaid that debt (Finland and the UK, if you were wondering). The US had more than just Japan on its mind, as did the Soviets, and I can't really fault them for attempting to stabilize the post-war situation after six years of global war (and more than that, in some locations) and between 50 and 85 million people dead. Were deals cut and compromises made? Yes. What was the alternative? More war and fighting? How may more people do you think should have been butchered and maimed in pursuit of a perfect solution?

It's one thing to speculate "would the the outcome have been different/better if the Emperor has been tried and hung?", it's another to say a lack of summary execution is a bad thing. I also find it disturbing when someone suggest that the entire Imperial family should have been executed for the crime(s) of the patriarch. Really? Down to infants, perhaps? The current Emperor was TWELVE when the war ended, are you seriously suggesting he was as culpable as an adult and should have been tried and executed for war crimes at that age? Can we please get past those sorts of revenge notions? Didn't guilt by association/ethnicity lead to a lot of dead people in that war?

One of the many hellish things about war is that you will NEVER get justice for all the death and suffering. If you want peace at some point you have to stop killing even if the scales aren't balanced.

[Thanas]

Yes, do keep in mind that the US was, at the same time as it was overseeing surrendered Japan, also propping up Western Europe. Ask those old enough to remember in Europe about food shortages, rationing, and "hunger winter". I'm not going to argue all of Europe would have starved without the US but American food and goods sure did a lot to help the recovery there.

Do you have actual figures?

[LaCroix]

Actually, in the three years 1948-51 the "Marshall plan" gave away $12.4 billion (about 5% of the 1948 American GDP of $270 billion), which means they were using about 1.5% of the annual GDP.

That spending would be far from crippling, considering the fact that wartime spending had been much higher, and also the fact that all this 'money' was given away in form of products made in the US, paid by the US state, thus ramping up civilian production.

[Thanas]

That is up to three years removed from the hunger winters.

[LaCroix]

My bad... Actually, it seems the "hunger winter" happened in part due to american policy of restricting food imports into germany...
JCS 1067

[Thanas]

Yeah, I know it was the opposite of what Broomstick like to think it was but I wanted her to arrive at the same conclusion. The article is pretty telling:

On March 20, 1945, President Roosevelt was warned that the JCS 1067 was not workable: it would let the Germans "stew in their own juice". Roosevelt's response was "Let them have soup kitchens! Let their economy sink!" Asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, "Why not?"

That Roosevelt hated Germany to his core is a little known fact to the american populace today.


EDIT: Though of course this only applies to Germany, the netherlands and belgium for example did receive a lot of US aid.

[Broomstick]

Yes, do keep in mind that the US was, at the same time as it was overseeing surrendered Japan, also propping up Western Europe. Ask those old enough to remember in Europe about food shortages, rationing, and "hunger winter". I'm not going to argue all of Europe would have starved without the US but American food and goods sure did a lot to help the recovery there.

Do you have actual figures?

Nope, not off the top of my head. I really didn't want to totally derail this into a discussion of post-war aid, the point was that there was a lot going on beyond just "find and kill the war criminals".

As I said, I don't think that Western Europe would have outright starved without US aid, but I think the lack of aid would have slowed the recovery.

You can't do controlled experiments with history so at some point opinion starts to work into the matter. Sure, if the Americans hadn't done jack for Europe the Europeans would have looked for other solutions to their problems. Maybe that would have been stricter rationing, maybe more people would have been beholden to the Soviets, maybe they would have come up with something else. Maybe everyone would have been just colder and hungrier and mortality from related causes higher. It's also possible the US could have done considerably more, but giving aid was not universally supported in the US and there were some who were in favor of leaving Japan and Germany utterly devastated rather than rebuilding them at all. Nor was US aid entirely benevolent - one of the motivations was to allow Europe to recover enough to buy US stuff in quantity, thereby extracting some post-recovery wealth to the benefit of US business.

Something not often mentioned is that Canada, which was comparatively unscathed by the war, also operated aid programs post-war. Again, their contribution wasn't the only factor in post-war recovery but it certainly didn't hurt any nation that took advantage of it.

Reality is messy like that.

Actually, in the three years 1948-51 the "Marshall plan" gave away $12.4 billion (about 5% of the 1948 American GDP of $270 billion), which means they were using about 1.5% of the annual GDP.

That spending would be far from crippling, considering the fact that wartime spending had been much higher, and also the fact that all this 'money' was given away in form of products made in the US, paid by the US state, thus ramping up civilian production.

The Marshall Plan was 3 years past the end of the war and partly in response to what was, at the time, perceived as a sluggish or non-existent recovery. Just a nitpick – only a fraction of it was “given away”, most of it was loans. And yes, it was US food and goods, and it was done to increase US influence in Europe. I don't think any of that was secret at the time. Initially most of what was purchased with those funds was food and raw materials but by the end of the program more of it was goods and machinery.

My bad... Actually, it seems the "hunger winter" happened in part due to american policy of restricting food imports into germany...
JCS 1067

Yeah, I know it was the opposite of what Broomstick like to think it was but I wanted her to arrive at the same conclusion. The article is pretty telling:

On March 20, 1945, President Roosevelt was warned that the JCS 1067 was not workable: it would let the Germans "stew in their own juice". Roosevelt's response was "Let them have soup kitchens! Let their economy sink!" Asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, "Why not?"

That Roosevelt hated Germany to his core is a little known fact to the american populace today.

Not an uncommon sentiment back then, though. I know people from that era who still loathe Germany and Germans to this day and think there should have been punitive reparations for all the Axis powers that would have left them second-class human beings in perpetuity.

Then three years post-surrender we have the US, UK, and France conducting the Berlin airlift to keep Germans from starving and freezing. Yes, complicated, messy, back and forth, with the post-war period measure in years, not weeks.

EDIT: Though of course this only applies to Germany, the netherlands and belgium for example did receive a lot of US aid.

Yes, as an aggressor Germany was always a special case in Europe. Roosevelt might have been happy to see Germans starve but not so much the rest of Europe.

Back to Japan, though – I am somewhat surprised, given how the US and USSR divided several countries like Korea, Vietnam, and Germany, that Japan was not likewise divided in two between them.

[Tiriol]

Yes, do keep in mind that the US was, at the same time as it was overseeing surrendered Japan, also propping up Western Europe. Ask those old enough to remember in Europe about food shortages, rationing, and "hunger winter". I'm not going to argue all of Europe would have starved without the US but American food and goods sure did a lot to help the recovery there. While that aid was supposedly "loans" as far as I can recall only two nations have ever repaid that debt (Finland and the UK, if you were wondering). <snip>

I was under the impression that Marshal Plan was never meant to be paid back, if that's what you're referring to. At least Finland didn't have the option of accepting any US aid without the Soviets making a ruckus, we had to take an actual loan to keep our nation in some health (during the war Germany supplied much of Finland's foodstuff and other equipment, so once those supplies were cut off, we were in a bit of a problem).

Not many know how venomously many Western leaders wanted to see German people starve and die off and Germany reduced to a mere agrarian country so that their "militant" genes could never prosper again. From what I've read, the Cold War actually saved West Germany, since suddenly Western nations had a vested interest in a plausibly strong Germany keeping the Soviet forces in check in the middle of Europe. They did wreck German economic system, though, before that. Of course, that hatred felt towards Germans is easy to understand, all things considered, although still a very sad fact (writer J.R.R. Tolkien was very bemused by it, complaining about how blood-thirsty the Brits had suddenly turned and how they used German atrocities for justifying their own calls for similar atrocities against Germans).

[Thanas]

Yes, do keep in mind that the US was, at the same time as it was overseeing surrendered Japan, also propping up Western Europe. Ask those old enough to remember in Europe about food shortages, rationing, and "hunger winter". I'm not going to argue all of Europe would have starved without the US but American food and goods sure did a lot to help the recovery there.

Do you have actual figures?

Nope, not off the top of my head. I really didn't want to totally derail this into a discussion of post-war aid, the point was that there was a lot going on beyond just "find and kill the war criminals".

As I said, I don't think that Western Europe would have outright starved without US aid, but I think the lack of aid would have slowed the recovery.

OTOH it can be shown that US policies led to most of the starving in the first place, so I have a hard time seeing the US aid in these years as a positive, especially considering aid was illegal until 1946. The postwar recovery starting under Truman is a different animal. But the US did in fact cause most of the starvation in the first place.

My point is that your view of the US keeping Germany from starving is utterly wrong. The US caused a lot of the starvation in the first place and in fact prohibited aid. Heck, even surplus food of the troops was ordered to be destroyed rather than be given to Germans. This is in no way consistent with the picture you paint here of the US helping the starving masses.

In fact it was the Brits who were the first to help the civilians. Not the US. The US only helped after the starvation had already happened and had been overcome.

Not an uncommon sentiment back then, though. I know people from that era who still loathe Germany and Germans to this day and think there should have been punitive reparations for all the Axis powers that would have left them second-class human beings in perpetuity.

Roosevelt hated Germany way before Hitler, a result of an unhappy childhood in Germany were he got into trouble with police for not behaving.

Then three years post-surrender we have the US, UK, and France conducting the Berlin airlift to keep Germans from starving and freezing. Yes, complicated, messy, back and forth, with the post-war period measure in years, not weeks.

That was well after the hunger winter was over and applied to a fraction of one city, so not a point in the USA favor of overall helping Germany.

[Metahive]

Broomstick and Replicant, please quote where I either say "the West should have waged war against the USSR right after WW2" or "the entire imperial japanese family should have been executed". O wait, you can't because I never did.

I said that I blame western secret diplomacy at Yalta that invitited Russia to join the war in East Asia ultimately for the existence of the Kingdom of Kim. So far no one has even attempted to dispute this and instead I was offered rationalizations galore.
I said that I'm distraught that the imperial clan of Japan was not only given a general amnesty but also had their crimes covered up by the Allies, I would have prefered for Hirohito to stand trial at Tokyo.

Meanwhile, the USSR was perfectly capable of swamping Manchuria and/or Korea with troops whether the US wanted it to or not; that is simply a practical reality. I'd argue that the fact that Truman made an arrangement with the Soviets to ensure that such an invasion would take place simply acknowledged that reality. As a result, it ensured that the Soviets would actually contribute to the downfall of Japan rather than 'fighting to the last American' and then scooping up whatever spoils they wanted on the Asian mainland.

It was FDR who begged, cried and groveled for Stalin to join the fun in East Asia at Yalta, because FDR at that time was suffering from full-blown Woodrow Wilson syndrome, AKA "Let's make the world a happy place of smiles and sunshine forever because my idealism is unconquerable"...with the help of Dear Uncle Joe, the kind father of nations. Remember, the West was in some ways outrageously clueless about the Soviet Union. They thought the Moscow Trials were completely legit for example.

And also the USSR had no direct interest in East Asia. Inititally they even favored the Kuomintang over the communists until Mao gained the upper hand in the struggle by himself so saying that the USSR would have joined in anyways is a conclusion standing on some very shaky foundations.

Unless you have evidence that Japan was offering not only to surrender, but to give up its colonies and disarm?

Accepting any Japanese surrender prior to the ones they gave after the Russian invasion and the atomic bomb would have defeated the purpose of unconditional surrender. It would have been hard if not impossible to compel Japan to give up ANY part of Korea, or to give up the means to construct another large military and try again with the whole 'aggression' thing in another ten or fifteen years.

You do know that Japan is the kind of nation that can't really sustain an advanced and imperialist society without resources from outside Japan, I presume? Japan as it is being full of unarable and unihibitable land and greatly lacking in natural resources, especially those needed for a modern army. They can't even feed all their people without importing food! With all of the surrounding nations being hostile towards Japan due to their atrocities, how much chance would they have had to rise again?
Also, what are your evidence that Japanese wouldn't have given up anything if there had been peace negotiations? Do not either use japanese wartime propaganda or orientalist stereotyping to support this, please! Once the bombs started falling on the mainland the Japanese knew the jig was up and the problem they concentrated on was how they could improve their hand at the peace negotiation table.

I think this has a lot to do with Japanese national psychology that the US can't be blamed for not understanding in advance. My impression is that most US leaders of the time figured that the Japanese saw the Imperial dynasty as godlike figures, such that killing or even deposing them would cause more disruption and resistance from occupied Japan than leaving them alone. Moreover, they were honestly unclear themselves as to how much responsibility for the war Hirohito actually held, since very few Westerners had anything like a clear understanding of Japan.

You know, that's the sort of contradiction that always gets me. On one hand you say that the Russian Rush and the atomic incineration were necessary to make the Japanese pliable to the point of even giving up their god-emperor and their conquests, on the other you say that the US feared increased resistance if they dared to touch the emperor so they completely exonarated him and his clan preemptively. Whatever the personal guilt of Hirohito was would have been the task of a warcrimes court to determine, but the US put the kibosh on that without any sort of prompting.
Have your cake or eat it I say!

All the Allied decisions made were made consistent with:
1) Ensuring that Japan's military surrendered as soon as possible, with as little further battle as possible, and especially without a full-scale invasion of Japan that would result in millions of casualties on both sides.

Then they should have negotiated as soon as the Japanese showed readiness to do so. If the negotiations fail, OK, proceed with something else. But they didn't even try.

2) Ensuring that in the postwar environment, Japan was unable to quickly rebuild its military power, and would operate under the control of an Allied occupation force that could preemptively squash any revanchist movements.

Lack of resources would have done the same job. Japan would have become a third-world country and I think many of the nations that Japan abused would have seen that as a fitting punishment.
A worse alternative than what actually happened? Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that there were viable alternative courses of action.

3) Actually bringing the USSR into the 'peace process' in the Far East, so that they could be held to some kind of agreements, rather than simply being left to do exactly as they pleased and get overambitious in ways that might result in a US-Soviet war over the Far East.

And again, the USSR had no overt ambitions in the Far East, since their top priority was to rebuild what had been devastated by the German Invasion and to take care of their own cordon sanitaire of eastern european nations. Once again, Stalin inititally favored the Kuomintang over the chinese communists!

[Broomstick]

I was under the impression that Marshal Plan was never meant to be paid back, if that's what you're referring to.

While some of the Marshall Plan was outright grants the majority of it was loans, meant to be paid back. The Wikipedia articles on it are a good start though, of course, they're not the whole story. The planning and negotiations were quite complex. In the end, $15 billion in aid went to Europe. That's $15 billion in late 1940's dollars, the modern equivalent adjusted for inflation would be around $150 billion. The Marshal Plan was also not the only aid plan from the US, and as I've already noted the US wasn't alone in giving aid to Europe in that time period.

For example, under the Marshall Plan Ireland received about $128 in loans (which were supposed to be repaid eventually) and $18 million as a grant (which did not require repayment)

At least Finland didn't have the option of accepting any US aid without the Soviets making a ruckus, we had to take an actual loan to keep our nation in some health (during the war Germany supplied much of Finland's foodstuff and other equipment, so once those supplies were cut off, we were in a bit of a problem).

Yes, Finland was in a tight spot. We've had prior threads where the Finnish situation was discussed. I gather that while Finland was happy to have the help they paid back loans quickly so they could tell the Soviets they weren't beholden to the US. It was quite a tightrope the Finns walked through the 20th Century.

Not many know how venomously many Western leaders wanted to see German people starve and die off and Germany reduced to a mere agrarian country so that their "militant" genes could never prosper again.

I think a lot of people pissed off by the death and destruction, but like I said, at some point you have to stop assigning guilt by association/ethnicity or you wind up with an endless cycle of war and destruction. Certainly the young children of Germany during the war had no say in what happened and didn't deserve to starve or freeze to death. The matter of adult guilt was messier, but unless advocate genocide (which I have no doubt some did) at some point you have to stop penalizing an entire nation and let them get on with their lives.

[Thanas]

Certainly the young children of Germany during the war had no say in what happened and didn't deserve to starve or freeze to death.

And yet that is exactly what the US policies accomplished. Infant immortality was double that of the rest of Europe.

[Broomstick]

OTOH it can be shown that US policies led to most of the starving in the first place, so I have a hard time seeing the US aid in these years as a positive, especially considering aid was illegal until 1946. The postwar recovery starting under Truman is a different animal. But the US did in fact cause most of the starvation in the first place.

My point is that your view of the US keeping Germany from starving is utterly wrong.

Please go back and re-read what I said. Most of my comments use the term "Western Europe", which encompasses more than just Germany. As noted by yourself aid was sent to other countries more promptly than Germany. Perhaps the term "hunger-winter" in Europe is restricted to the German experience, here in the US I've heard it used to refer to the years immediately after the German surrender in several places besides Germany. A LOT of people in Europe were hungry post-war even if they weren't technically starving.

Then three years post-surrender we have the US, UK, and France conducting the Berlin airlift to keep Germans from starving and freezing. Yes, complicated, messy, back and forth, with the post-war period measure in years, not weeks.

That was well after the hunger winter was over and applied to a fraction of one city, so not a point in the USA favor of overall helping Germany.

Nor was it just the US engaging in the effort.

So, when did we officially pass from official "post war" to "Cold War"? As I said, the post-war recovery didn't take place in a few weeks, it took years. The division of Germany was a direct effect of WWII, and the blockade of Berlin was a result of the division.

[Thanas]

OTOH it can be shown that US policies led to most of the starving in the first place, so I have a hard time seeing the US aid in these years as a positive, especially considering aid was illegal until 1946. The postwar recovery starting under Truman is a different animal. But the US did in fact cause most of the starvation in the first place.

My point is that your view of the US keeping Germany from starving is utterly wrong.

Please go back and re-read what I said. Most of my comments use the term "Western Europe", which encompasses more than just Germany. As noted by yourself aid was sent to other countries more promptly than Germany. Perhaps the term "hunger-winter" in Europe is restricted to the German experience, here in the US I've heard it used to refer to the years immediately after the German surrender in several places besides Germany. A LOT of people in Europe were hungry post-war even if they weren't technically starving.

You still don't get it. It was not a question of sending aid more promptly. It was the deliberate withholding of all aid from Germany as well as the prohibition of trade. It was a deliberate policy of starving Germany to teach the Germans a lesson. The US engaged in a vindictive plan to starve Germany. That is the point. The US had no interest in feeding Germany, they wanted them to starve.

[Broomstick]

Certainly the young children of Germany during the war had no say in what happened and didn't deserve to starve or freeze to death.

And yet that is exactly what the US policies accomplished. Infant immortality was double that of the rest of Europe.

Which might be why after a few yeas of watching children starve the US decided to lift restrictions and give Germany more aid. Yes, we get it, Germany suffered horribly after surrender. Yes, bad things were done. At the time a lot of people wanted Germany, and Germans, to suffer and those people weren't restricted to the US. France wanted Germany reduced to nothing more than an agricultural producer with no industry to speak of. Given that Roosevelt was dead when Germany finally surrendered I'm not sure you can lay all the blame on him. Truman was in charge at that point. Sure, Roosevelt still had an effect but Truman was the one dealing with post-war Europe and bears considerably responsibility for what did and did not occur.

In addition to the deplorable conditions in Germany itself you had ethnic Germans expelled from various other places post-war; despite the devastation in Germany reparations were given to the UK, France, and the Soviets; and the US and USSR rather famously plundered German scientists for their own ends. I do think it was wrong that the International Red Cross was not permitted to render aid to German POW's until 1946. I suppose we could also discuss all the raping that went on as well, which was wrong, but it did occur. I don't any army was free of that stain although I've always heard the Soviets did the lion's share of raping German women when invading.

On the upside, Germany has done an excellent job of addressing their part in the shitfest that was WWII, admit they were the aggressors, admit that terrible things were done in their name, and have attempted to make changes in their society to minimize the chances of this all happening again. Very few people seriously think Germany is going to tool up and conduct another blitzkrieg. Japan, however, portrays itself solely as a victim, refuses to consider the viewpoints of others, refuses to admit they acted as an aggressor, and refuses to admit to their war crimes. Not that I expect any nation to admit to every sin, but acknowledging major ones like, say, the Rape of Nanking or the "comfort women" or the human experimentation would go a long way towards mollifying the lingering anger towards them.

[Thanas]

Which might be why after a few yeas of watching children starve the US decided to lift restrictions and give Germany more aid. Yes, we get it, Germany suffered horribly after surrender. Yes, bad things were done. At the time a lot of people wanted Germany, and Germans, to suffer and those people weren't restricted to the US. France wanted Germany reduced to nothing more than an agricultural producer with no industry to speak of.

Actually, that was the US again. The Morgenthau Plan originated after all with Morgenthau, not with DeGaulle.

Given that Roosevelt was dead when Germany finally surrendered I'm not sure you can lay all the blame on him. Truman was in charge at that point. Sure, Roosevelt still had an effect but Truman was the one dealing with post-war Europe and bears considerably responsibility for what did and did not occur.

Because the plans for dealing with Germany were drawn up and ordered under Roosevelt. Truman to his credit changed them after pressure of Churchill.

In addition to the deplorable conditions in Germany itself you had ethnic Germans expelled from various other places post-war; despite the devastation in Germany reparations were given to the UK, France, and the Soviets; and the US and USSR rather famously plundered German scientists for their own ends. I do think it was wrong that the International Red Cross was not permitted to render aid to German POW's until 1946. I suppose we could also discuss all the raping that went on as well, which was wrong, but it did occur. I don't any army was free of that stain although I've always heard the Soviets did the lion's share of raping German women when invading.

New studies actually show that the USmight have had the worst rape problem of all, especially in France were they raped at will.

[Broomstick]

Broomstick and Replicant, please quote where I either say "the West should have waged war against the USSR right after WW2" or "the entire imperial japanese family should have been executed". O wait, you can't because I never did.

How about this:

I said that I'm distraught that the imperial clan of Japan was not only given a general amnesty but also had their crimes covered up by the Allies, I would have prefered for Hirohito to stand trial at Tokyo.

"Imperial clan" and "Hirohito" are not interchangeable terms. I would have preferred Hirohito to stand trial as well, but I wouldn't argue for his entire family to stand trial because not all members had any say whatsover in what was going on. When you say "imperial clan" or "imperial family" it starts to sound like guilt by association or accident of blood, not actual guilt or actions.

I said that I blame western secret diplomacy at Yalta that invitited Russia to join the war in East Asia ultimately for the existence of the Kingdom of Kim. So far no one has even attempted to dispute this and instead I was offered rationalizations galore.

Yes, deals were cut. The major powers divided up what was left of the world after the dust settled. I'm sure the people doing it thought they were doing the right thing however much we disagree with it now, or may have a different definition of "good".

It was FDR who begged, cried and groveled for Stalin to join the fun in East Asia at Yalta, because FDR at that time was suffering from full-blown Woodrow Wilson syndrome, AKA "Let's make the world a happy place of smiles and sunshine forever because my idealism is unconquerable"...with the help of Dear Uncle Joe, the kind father of nations. Remember, the West was in some ways outrageously clueless about the Soviet Union.

I think the alliance between the US and USSR for the duration of WWII had more to do with a common enemy in the Nazis than any idealized notion of becoming friends.

You do know that Japan is the kind of nation that can't really sustain an advanced and imperialist society without resources from outside Japan, I presume? Japan as it is being full of unarable and unihibitable land and greatly lacking in natural resources, especially those needed for a modern army. They can't even feed all their people without importing food!

Neither has Britain been able to feed its own people without imports for quite some time, yet they had a world-girdling Empire, didn't they? There was precedent for an island nation to have a major empire.

Also, what are your evidence that Japanese wouldn't have given up anything if there had been peace negotiations?

The US supposedly offered terms several times prior to Roosevelt's death and the dropping of the bombs by Truman, yet rejected them. Well, yes, the two nations were at war, I suppose it's not surprising they couldn't agree easily.

You know, that's the sort of contradiction that always gets me. On one hand you say that the Russian Rush and the atomic incineration were necessary to make the Japanese pliable to the point of even giving up their god-emperor and their conquests, on the other you say that the US feared increased resistance if they dared to touch the emperor so they completely exonarated him and his clan preemptively.

Again, when you say things like what is bolded above, including not just Hirohito but "his clan" it starts to sound like you believe them all guilty down to the last woman and child. Do you have a problem just saying "Hirohito"? Or "the Emporer and involved adult relatives"?

[Broomstick]

You still don't get it. It was not a question of sending aid more promptly. It was the deliberate withholding of all aid from Germany as well as the prohibition of trade. It was a deliberate policy of starving Germany to teach the Germans a lesson. The US engaged in a vindictive plan to starve Germany. That is the point. The US had no interest in feeding Germany, they wanted them to starve.

Thanas, there is a difference in at least my mind between withholding all help and actively destroying someone. The Allies didn't want to destroy Germany so much as leave the Germans to their own devices. It's not like the Allies razed the buildings and fields and salted the earth. Seriously, WHY would the people Germany had spent six years rolling over and occupying want to help the Germans before helping their own? Why would the US want to help the aggressors in the war? You seem to be expecting a level of sainthood among the nations of the world that just doesn't exist.

When it became apparent that the Germans needed the help and there would be mass death if it weren't provided opinions changed but I don't see how anyone could expect an immediate outpouring of aid to Germany just after their surrender when so much of the rest of Europe was still fucked up because of Germany.

[Broomstick]

New studies actually show that the USmight have had the worst rape problem of all, especially in France were they raped at will.

OK, here we go again - I wasn't talking specifically about Germany, now you're bringing in France. Before, I was addressing the situation in Western Europe as a whole and you took that to mean Germany. You are usually better than this.

Also, if you have cites that the US was the "worst of all" please provide them as I would be interested in such factual information.

[Simon_Jester]

Which might be why after a few yeas of watching children starve the US decided to lift restrictions and give Germany more aid. Yes, we get it, Germany suffered horribly after surrender. Yes, bad things were done. At the time a lot of people wanted Germany, and Germans, to suffer and those people weren't restricted to the US. France wanted Germany reduced to nothing more than an agricultural producer with no industry to speak of.

Actually, that was the US again. The Morgenthau Plan originated after all with Morgenthau, not with DeGaulle.

Broomstick did not say that the French originated this plan, only that they wanted it to be carried out, which is very obviously not the same thing.

In addition to the deplorable conditions in Germany itself you had ethnic Germans expelled from various other places post-war; despite the devastation in Germany reparations were given to the UK, France, and the Soviets; and the US and USSR rather famously plundered German scientists for their own ends. I do think it was wrong that the International Red Cross was not permitted to render aid to German POW's until 1946. I suppose we could also discuss all the raping that went on as well, which was wrong, but it did occur. I don't any army was free of that stain although I've always heard the Soviets did the lion's share of raping German women when invading.

New studies actually show that the USmight have had the worst rape problem of all, especially in France were they raped at will.

Interesting. Would any of these studies happen to be in English? Who is doing them?

Yes, as an aggressor Germany was always a special case in Europe. Roosevelt might have been happy to see Germans starve but not so much the rest of Europe.

Back to Japan, though – I am somewhat surprised, given how the US and USSR divided several countries like Korea, Vietnam, and Germany, that Japan was not likewise divided in two between them.

Vietnam was divided because a large fraction of the existing anti-colonial guerilla force were communists, so there had to be some kind of arrangement between communists and non-communists that would allow both to occupy land.

Germany was divided for more than one reason. One, all the European powers could reasonably claim a role in ensuring Germany did not rise to commit aggression again, so all had an interest. Two, the actual movements of the armies meant that armies from several different countries penetrated into Germany and did physically occupy various parts of its territory, and I suspect none of the countries involved was in a hurry to simply abandon all the land their soldiers had gained without some kind of compensation for the cost of gaining it. Three, Germany is a large chunk of land with a lot of economic potential, so no one would want to permanently give up all of it to a rival power bloc in the postwar world.

I said that I blame western secret diplomacy at Yalta that invitited Russia to join the war in East Asia ultimately for the existence of the Kingdom of Kim. So far no one has even attempted to dispute this and instead I was offered rationalizations galore.

I attempt to dispute it. My argument is that realistically we'd have Kimistan whether we wanted to or not, and whether the Soviets were invited into Korea or not. There was effectively zero chance of the Soviets NOT becoming expansionist in the Far East once their western frontier was secured by the creation of communist satellites in Eastern Europe.

I said that I'm distraught that the imperial clan of Japan was not only given a general amnesty but also had their crimes covered up by the Allies, I would have prefered for Hirohito to stand trial at Tokyo.

Ditto. My impression is that the US sincerely believed that trying and punishing Hirohito would have resulted in massive uprisings or a refusal to surrender on Japan's part, and saw the prospect of peace in the Pacific as worth letting him get away, while still holding some others responsible.

It was FDR who begged, cried and groveled for Stalin to join the fun in East Asia at Yalta, because FDR at that time was suffering from full-blown Woodrow Wilson syndrome, AKA "Let's make the world a happy place of smiles and sunshine forever because my idealism is unconquerable"...with the help of Dear Uncle Joe, the kind father of nations. Remember, the West was in some ways outrageously clueless about the Soviet Union. They thought the Moscow Trials were completely legit for example.

And also the USSR had no direct interest in East Asia. Inititally they even favored the Kuomintang over the communists until Mao gained the upper hand in the struggle by himself so saying that the USSR would have joined in anyways is a conclusion standing on some very shaky foundations.

Given the trends elsewhere in the world, or in places like Vietnam that were remote from the Soviet borders, it beggars my imagination that the USSR would not have become involved in a freshly decolonized territory literally on its frontier.

I don't think there was any way to stop communists from trying to infiltrate and take over Korea, except maybe letting Japan keep the place.

Unless you have evidence that Japan was offering not only to surrender, but to give up its colonies and disarm?

Accepting any Japanese surrender prior to the ones they gave after the Russian invasion and the atomic bomb would have defeated the purpose of unconditional surrender. It would have been hard if not impossible to compel Japan to give up ANY part of Korea, or to give up the means to construct another large military and try again with the whole 'aggression' thing in another ten or fifteen years.

You do know that Japan is the kind of nation that can't really sustain an advanced and imperialist society without resources from outside Japan, I presume? Japan as it is being full of unarable and unihibitable land and greatly lacking in natural resources, especially those needed for a modern army. They can't even feed all their people without importing food! With all of the surrounding nations being hostile towards Japan due to their atrocities, how much chance would they have had to rise again?
Also, what are your evidence that Japanese wouldn't have given up anything if there had been peace negotiations? Do not either use japanese wartime propaganda or orientalist stereotyping to support this, please! Once the bombs started falling on the mainland the Japanese knew the jig was up and the problem they concentrated on was how they could improve their hand at the peace negotiation table.

Yes, and their preferred strategy was to delay: to improve their hand by trying to outwait the Western Allies until the Allies would decide it was better to accept a conditional surrender (and keep the Japanese war machine semi-intact), than to wait longer and remain mobilized just to blockade Japan.

The Allies had only two trump cards they could play to stop Japan from doing this. One was a superweapon that the Japanese would know could destroy them if they tried to play a waiting game. The other was an invading army that could do the same. Given that the superweapon might fail, it was not surprising that the Allies also made arrangements for the invading armies to arrive on the scene.

I think this has a lot to do with Japanese national psychology that the US can't be blamed for not understanding in advance. My impression is that most US leaders of the time figured that the Japanese saw the Imperial dynasty as godlike figures, such that killing or even deposing them would cause more disruption and resistance from occupied Japan than leaving them alone. Moreover, they were honestly unclear themselves as to how much responsibility for the war Hirohito actually held, since very few Westerners had anything like a clear understanding of Japan.

You know, that's the sort of contradiction that always gets me. On one hand you say that the Russian Rush and the atomic incineration were necessary to make the Japanese pliable to the point of even giving up their god-emperor and their conquests, on the other you say that the US feared increased resistance if they dared to touch the emperor so they completely exonarated him and his clan preemptively. Whatever the personal guilt of Hirohito was would have been the task of a warcrimes court to determine, but the US put the kibosh on that without any sort of prompting.

I think the US believed that the Japanese were fanatical maniacs, that it would take nuclear attacks and Russian invasions to bring them to the peace table, and that even then (the US believed) the Japanese people might continue to fight if their divine Emperor were threatened.

Was this totally correct? Probably not. Maybe much farther from the truth than anyone outside Japan at the time would have guessed.. Did the US have logical reasons to believe it, or fear that it might be true? I think so.

So no, there is not a contradiction, because the point is not "Y and Z are objectively true." The point is "the US at the time believed X, from which both Y and Z logically follow."

To you it might be obvious that once you're willing to commit mass destruction to force your fanatical enemy to the peace table, you might as well impose all the conditions you desire. To the US at the time which knew less about Japan and was mainly focused on just getting the damn war to end, the calculation may have looked different.
Have your cake or eat it I say!

All the Allied decisions made were made consistent with:
1) Ensuring that Japan's military surrendered as soon as possible, with as little further battle as possible, and especially without a full-scale invasion of Japan that would result in millions of casualties on both sides.

Then they should have negotiated as soon as the Japanese showed readiness to do so. If the negotiations fail, OK, proceed with something else. But they didn't even try.

That would have failed (2), because Japan would offer terms like "status quo ante bellum" a long time before it would offer terms that actually disarmed it.

2) Ensuring that in the postwar environment, Japan was unable to quickly rebuild its military power, and would operate under the control of an Allied occupation force that could preemptively squash any revanchist movements.

Lack of resources would have done the same job. Japan would have become a third-world country and I think many of the nations that Japan abused would have seen that as a fitting punishment.
A worse alternative than what actually happened? Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that there were viable alternative courses of action.

I suspect that blockading and embargoing Japan would have almost guaranteed that they'd wind up in the communist sphere. As it was, the Communists tried and failed in Japan... mainly because the nation was occupied by US troops and was being helped to rebuild by the US.

Either that, or they'd turn into an even larger version of North Korea- an insular state with horrible internal conditions, kept alive by the fact that no one wants to be the one to invade and subdue tens of millions of indoctrinated crazy starving people.

3) Actually bringing the USSR into the 'peace process' in the Far East, so that they could be held to some kind of agreements, rather than simply being left to do exactly as they pleased and get overambitious in ways that might result in a US-Soviet war over the Far East.

And again, the USSR had no overt ambitions in the Far East, since their top priority was to rebuild what had been devastated by the German Invasion and to take care of their own cordon sanitaire of eastern european nations. Once again, Stalin inititally favored the Kuomintang over the chinese communists!

This policy conspicuously began to reverse in the late 1940s and the 1950s, for reasons anyone could reasonably have foreseen. By January 1945 it was obvious that the Soviets would be able to secure and rebuild their European frontiers, because Germany was going to lose. What was going to happen when they did?

Especially if the Western Allies were tied down fighting a protracted war in the Pacific while the USSR remained neutral and free to build up further forces in Europe...

[Broomstick]

GRRRR - stepped away for a moment and the spouse hit "post".... a couple corrections.

New studies actually show that the USmight have had the worst rape problem of all, especially in France were they raped at will.

OK, here we go again - I wasn't talking specifically about Germany, now you're bringing in France. Before, I was addressing the situation in Western Europe as a whole and you took that to mean Germany. You are usually better than this.

Also, if you have cites that the US was the "worst of all" please provide them as I would be interested in such factual information.

I meant I WAS specifically talking about Germany, and Thanas brought in France, a different country.

The thing is, the Soviets never reached France so of course you'd have more rapes by US soldiers there than Soviets. Likewise, if you look at the rape stats for Poland I'd expect to see a lot more Soviet perpetrators than US ones, for the same reason - damn few Americans in Poland at that time.