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NEWS: Article on Anime Dealing with War


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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 9902
Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC
PostPosted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 11:27 am Reply with quote
The Ramblin' Wreck wrote:
What about the Ruso-Japanese War of 1905?

Nichiro Sensou Monogatari
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Mohawk52



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
PostPosted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 3:13 pm Reply with quote
Dan42 wrote:
Vekou wrote:
Japan was not the victim, and America was not overly aggressive or brutal or terrible. They started it, and we ended it.

I just looooove the irony of this post. "Oh, the atomic bombings were not that bad, they had it coming." That is exactly like the Japanese nationalists who minimize and justify the evils done by their country by whatever excuse is convenient. One atrocity does not justify another. I guess bigotry is the only true universal value shared among all people of Earth. Depressing.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were an atrocity but a necessary atrocity to try to end the war. Japanese military atrocities were completely unnecessary and only exacerbated their already atrocious invading behavior. Just remember only the Japanese and the Germans were offensive. The rest of the world were either oppressed, or defensive including the US.
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ScreBlueAardvark



Joined: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 12:49 am Reply with quote
During World War II, the Japanese killed approximately six million Chinese in total by various means. The Japanese Imperial Army, in the December 1937 Rape of Nanking, killed between 260,000 to 350,000 civilians and committed an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 cases of rape.

Japan attacked the United States because the U.S. had cut off oil sales to Japan. The U.S. cut off oil sales to Japan because of the atrocities committeded by the Japanese in the 30s, including ones published in Japanese newspapers.

Unit 731, based in Harbin, Manchuria, conducted Nazi-esqe torture of prisoners and researched bioweapons - including bubonic plague, anthrax, cholera, and typhoid fever. By the end of the War, the Japanese had enough chemical and biological weapons stockpiled to wipe out the population of the United States; fortunately Japan never figured out how to be successful with the balloon bombs they used to attack the United States.

Just a few days ago, the governments of China and South Korea released statements condemning Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's act on August 15, of paying tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine which whitewashes Japan's history of militarism and honors 15 class-A war criminals.

Do not compare the American citizens' actions against American natives to Japan's actions in WWII (however, it might be accurate to compare the treatment of American natives to the Japanese persecution of the Ainu of northern Honshu and Hokkaido). The policies of the Japanese Imperialist government were as equally evil as the Nazis and the Soviets. Do not whitewash the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army by using the “moral equivalency” argument.

Getting back to the original topic of this tread: Geneon is releasing Zipang. The article about “Zipang” in the August 2006 Newtype claims “history buffs are all but guaranteed to adore Zipang” because of the possibility that Japan might win World War II in an alternate history. There's been lots of movies about the Nazis being evil, so I think it's time to see Japan be honest about its history and produce a war drama about why it was really good the Japanese lost WWII.

Idea For further reading I recommend:
The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang
Modern Japan, by Mikiso Hane

If you're still not convinced, contact the embassies of South Korea and China and see what they think of Japanese war crimes.
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ironwarrior



Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 151
Location: Under Clare's armor, Lewisburg, WV
PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:58 am Reply with quote
ScreBlueAardvark wrote:
During World War II, the Japanese killed approximately six million Chinese in total by various means. The Japanese Imperial Army, in the December 1937 Rape of Nanking, killed between 260,000 to 350,000 civilians and committed an estimated 20,000 to 80,000 cases of rape.


My mom and I were talking about this. We're both history buffs, but she is a geneologist as well and has our Jewish history/family line documented back to 968 at present.

We were drawing parallels between the Hitler's ethnic cleansing of the Jews and Japan's ethnic cleansing of the Chinese (NOTE: both are considered acts of ethnocentrism NOT racism). What led to our discussion was the Mel Gibson fiasco, where the media turned rabid about his anti-Semetic comments and the alleged outrage by the Jewish community. We found it rather typical and pathetic that the media hyped the Holocaust, yet failed to mention other similar atrocities. Currently, it's politically expediant to conveniently forget Japan's history. Also, they failed to mention the brutality of the American Civil War (I live in a Civil War town). As a Jew married to a Muslim (both are Semetic), I was not outraged by Gibson, but by the media's imbalance.

Yes, the Holocaust was horrible; yes, I lost relatives during it; yes, my grandfather faught in WWII and spent some time in a concentration camp, but DAMN! Let's have a balanced, holistic look at that era and focus on all nations--it was war and during war, rape, death, and destruction has been man's providence since the beginning of man.

Regardless, I think a Japanese WWII alternative history anime would be interesting. I'm a big fan of Harry Turtledove, who is a former history professor that writes alternative history. I don't think the Japanese or any other nation needs to be apologetic for their actions since it was WAR, but all nations should be up front and open about their wartime atrocities to show just how degenerate mankind can be.
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pat_payne



Joined: 28 Jul 2006
Posts: 179
PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:39 am Reply with quote
Dan42 wrote:
Vekou wrote:
Japan was not the victim, and America was not overly aggressive or brutal or terrible. They started it, and we ended it.

I just looooove the irony of this post. "Oh, the atomic bombings were not that bad, they had it coming." That is exactly like the Japanese nationalists who minimize and justify the evils done by their country by whatever excuse is convenient. One atrocity does not justify another. I guess bigotry is the only true universal value shared among all people of Earth. Depressing.



Let me argue your post point by point, if I may. My apologies for the long post.

1. The atomic boming of Japan was an act that I would wish on no one in this world. Allow me to get that out of the way first. I shy from the assertion that the people of Hiroshima "deserved" being hit by an atom bomb, any more than Dresden "deserved" to be burned to cinders or Coventry "deserved" to be decimated. However, to somehow say that to argue that something was if not the "right" action at least the "least wrong" action is tantamount to minimizing it or blowing it off, is a false argument. I tend to agree, given all the context and the other choices, agree with what happened. That does not mean that I enjoy, condone, applaud, or otherwise take satisfaction in that it had to happen. I do not wake up every morning and say to myself "Gee, I'm glad that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed, and that at least nine countries have the capacity to make many more Hiroshimas and Nagasakis."

2. That being said, war, as Mao famously said, "is not a tea party." From April until August, 1945, the Allies were looking in the teeth of a massive dilemma. The battles for Okinawa and Iwo Jima and Saipan had been extraordinarily bloody even by Pacific War standards. Over 20,000 Japanese troops and just under 7,000 Americans died on Iwo Jima, for instance. On Saipan, the Japanese troops caused mass civillian suicides by planting stories that the Americans were going to rape every Japanese woman they could lay their hands on. On Okinawa, the remains of the Japanese surface fleet (including the Battleship Yamato) conducted what amounted to a failed Kamikaze mission with immense loss of life.
Faced with this, the United States had put together numerous plans for the endgame in the Pacific, the best known of them being Operation Downfall, which would have come in two phases: Olympic, the invasion of Kyuushu, followed by Coronet, the direct invasion of the Kantou plain surrounding Tokyo. The casualty estimates were staggering for this plan. Over 90 days for each operation, the casualties were estimated to have ranged anywhere between 100,000 and nearly 300,000 dead, with another 1,000,000 wounded. And that was only the American side. One particular study commissioned for Secretary of War Stimson claimed a ultimate death toll of up to 800,000 Americans and 10,000,000 Japanese.

In all theaters, total American casualties from World War Two (dead, wounded and missing) totalled just over 1 million, with 400,000 dead. Imperial Japanese military deaths for the same war totalled 2,566,000.

I will pause here to let the above numbers sink in.

Had we gone in on Downfall, there was a good chance that chemical weapons would have been used unrestrictedly by both sides, and that we would have dropped a great many more atomic bombs on Japan in an attempt to use them in a tactical role. It may well have ended up genocide by default, as everyone was being armed in preparation for the US invasion, including such desperate moves as arming women with bamboo spears. It would have been a bloodbath on both sides of an immensity that beggars the imagination.
There were also plans to blockade and starve out Japan until capitulation. These had their own pitfalls, including the fact that such a plan would have caused a mass famine in Japan (especially on Honshu, which could not grow enough food to support the island's own population) and the worries that the USSR would enter the war and overrun parts of Japan, setting up a North-South dichotomy as happened ultimately in Korea and Germany (early on, the Allies wanted the Soviets to join in the Pacific, but by 1944, Truman in particular was concerned that the Soviets would take political control of Asia as they were doing in Eastern Europe).
Weighing the other means, and finding them lacking, the Allies chose to deploy the A-bomb. I will not say that they wept as they did it, or that they used the cliche "the lesser of two evils," but did it hoping that that would be the quickest way to end the war with the minimum loss of human life, particularly (as cruel as it may sound) lives of American servicemen. Even then, it was still a (as Wellington remarked about Waterloo) "damn'd close-run thing." The militarists in Japan tried to launch a coup to continue fighting to the last drop of blood, and had they succeeded, we would have been back at Downfall. Fortunately, the Emperor Showa proved a cooler and more resolute head.

If one wants to talk atrocity stories let's keep this in mind: There were many in America at the time who uttered the most atrocious, genocidal things about the Japanese, even in the higher corridors of the military and government. For instance, Adm. "Bull" Halsey said "By the time we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell." Others suggested that once Japan surrendered, that a massive campaign of firebombing be launched against every Japanese city.
Let's also keep in mind that none of that happened after the war. Halsey's statement, as well as others, were the products of people who were enraged at what they saw as a "stab in the back" by Japan. One forgets the rancor that Pearl Harbor raised in Americans. I'd even argue that it raised more anger than even 9/11, because with Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were in the process of going through the motions of negotiating with us when the attack happened.
Further, although it was later proven as a forgery, many Americans were appalled at the time at what they believed to be a plan for conquest by the Japanese laid out in the so-called "Tanaka Memorial".

There was no genocide against the Japanese after the war, in the way that the Imperial Japanese Army attempted against the Chinese, especially in Nanking. Our only offense in Japan along that score was ignorance in not believing that radiation had any effect, and dismissing the reports of radiation sickness as malingering. Even with the worst rhetorical excesses that our leaders committed during the war (and some of the undeniable and unspeakable acts committed by individual US soldiers), the Occupation did its level best to get Japan back on the road to joining the community of nations. Japanese traditions were not destroyed, Japanese people on the whole left unmolested.
A good mark of the almost lightning-fast change of heart comes from looking at the treatment of Japan and Germany in propaganda films during and after the war.
During the war, films like "My Japan" cast the Japanese as drone "sons of heaven" who slavishly followed their Emperor and who were well-nigh incorrigable. The Germans, on the other hand, in the "Why We Fight" series, were seen as good blokes under the spell of Hitler and his stooges. After the war, the two "Our Job In..." films flipped this on its head. "Our Job in Germany" cast the Germans as rotten to the core, through-and-through Nazis who would always be a threat to world peace. "Our Job in Japan," OTOH, portrayed the Japanese as a benign people who had the misfortune to have been taken for a ride by the militarist cliques.
3. Having a differing opinion from yours is not de jure bigotry. Saying that had the Japanese not attacked and launched the war, we wouldn't have had occasion to use atomic weapons on Japan, or criticising the Imperial Japanese Government for their atrocities is not, by itself, racism. I doubt you could scare up any Japanophobes on a forum like this, and to any who are here I ask: This forum is about Japanese animation, you do realize that, right? Don't you feel about as out of place as a cobra at a mongoose convention? Laughing
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HeeroTX



Joined: 15 Jul 2002
Posts: 2046
Location: Austin, TX
PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 1:45 pm Reply with quote
Aaron White wrote:
Oh, we know we did it; we forget that ONLY we have done it. We're lucky the Japanese have forgiven us to the extent that they have; would we ever forgive someone for wiping out any of our cities? I wouldn't.

It was war, such things happen in war as was pointed out. We had 'Pearl Harbor' on our side (which wasn't as massive, granted) and we forgave the Japanese. We had the 'Boston Massacre' in the Revolution and we forgave the British. Of course, there are still people in the south (who couldn't possibly have lived it) who hold a grudge against Gen. Sherman for the Civil War tactics. *shrug* that's how things are. You wanna see how some Japanese tactics went over all you need do is look at this:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/14/japan.koizumi.ap/index.html
Which was front page news for at least a week (before it happened) in Japan, more notable in their paper than most of what is going on in the Middle East. The Cockpit is an interesting WW2 anime, but it's not a "tactics" or "battles" type anime (I think they meant something more like the live action American movie "Midway" which I think is an excellent and fairly balanced depiction of that battle, dunno how 'historically accurate', but it's very good). The Cockpit is more about reflection and a measure of "moral posturing". I think the third OVA with the guys on the motorcycle is possibly the best, but it's still obviously intended as a commentary on the senselessness of war rather than a detached view of tacticals or even a biased view of how battles are fought.
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ironwarrior



Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 151
Location: Under Clare's armor, Lewisburg, WV
PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:09 pm Reply with quote
Pat, that was an excellent post! I knew some of what you wrote, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading the historical notes.

I spent a short time teaching social studies, and you would be surprised how uneducated teenagers are in America when it comes to recent history (I consider anything within the past 100 years recent).
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Gaomajiro



Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 6:44 pm Reply with quote
pat_payne wrote:
This forum is about Japanese animation, you do realize that, right? Don't you feel about as out of place as a cobra at a mongoose convention? :lol:


Pat...I really want to say thank you for your post, for both its informative nature and the way in which you laid out certain facts. I really respect the manner in which you've done this. It is really touching to see someone post with such dedication and understanding of these events.

Thank you once again.
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