There you go again. Defending the indefensible legacy of WW2 Japan.
There will always be people of my generation that will continue to entrall the future generation of the danger of Japan militarization.
Now the War museum depicting the actrocities won't go away.
Abe past visits to Yasukuni Shrine where Japan on purpose has kept the remains of Class A Wartime Criminals have provoked and angered many including your truly.
It just go to demonstrate that Japan is still harboring its ambition to conquer and enslave Asia. Are we wrong?
Rape of Nanking is often exaggerated. Degree of rape is difficult to assess. I'm sure it happened, along with pillage. It wasn't permitted from above command, but ground soldiers got too far with it. Surely a degree of racial superiority feeling was there. But i think this is defined as unique too much from observers today. What country didn't (and even today, so doesn't) view themselves as superior? Sure its a point to hold against Japanese. But this point is really kind of mute, people back then were racists across the board. What the Japanese certainly were not was what the Nazi's were. Japan had no policy of genocide. Sometimes Chinese react like how Jews react to the Nazis. Going that far is unreasonable and it fails to take into account the whole situation in entirety.
The main thing about Nanking is not the rape or pillaging, its the massacre that followed. But even this point is exaggerated. To start with, a few points before stating some number estimates. First off, after the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 and throughout the rest of Mao's term, there was no talk about the Nanking Massacre. Mao never acknowledge it. Funny that. If it really was such a national tragedy for China, why didn't Mao ever talk about it? It's really astonishing that someday I think an example of him talking about it will turn up. But I haven't seen it yet. Another point to considered are the estimates of the population in the city of Nanking before and after the 6 week long lock down of the city by Japanese forces. The city had a population of about 800,000 around September or so. The Japanese Army was advancing and so people started to flee. By the time it was December, it is estimated the city's population was about 250,000. So then came the lock down, and then afterwards, by around February, the population was still around 250,000. Last point is that people came back into the city after the end of the lockdown and that the Japanese implemented policy to not loot and not rape for the sake of restoring order in the city and they gave free medical check ups. And yes, later Wang Jingwei would join the Japanese side to administer the Japanese controlled parts of China.
So why say those two points? Because by the 1980s came around, then people started talking about the Nanking Massacre and making up fake causality numbers. The number 300,000 comes out. So its been said that 300,000 have been massacred. That's a lot of people to claim to have been innocently massacred on the spot. But then comes the 1990s, and the 2000s, and heated debates take place, and it becomes obvious that 300,000 innocent civilians massacred is just simply not possible. So then the propagandists change their interpretation of 300,000 to include fallen soldiers or collateral damage and so on. But if doing so, then that doesn't fall in the massacre now does it. Collateral damage is unfortunate but it is not the same as willful intent to massacre standing unarmed people after a battle. And soldiers are soldiers, they don't count in a massacre statistics. And even after that, 300,000 is still too high.
Now defeated soldiers could still count as part of massacred even they were captured or if they even surrendered. But in Nanking is was muddled. CKS gave the order to fight in Nanking to the bitter end. Afterall Nanking was the capital and CKS wanted the highest possible struggle. Soldiers were not allowed to retreat. CKS forces on the other side had orders to shoot anyone that tried to retreat from Nanking. So when the Japanese came in, it was all to obvious that the Chinese soldiers were defeated, but they did not hold up the white flag and come out with their hands up. Instead they put on civilian clothes and scattered into the city's population.
So the massacre that did take place was the hunting down of once formally soldiers that scattered into the city populations. Most likely because the Japanese didn't want to risk a sort of guerrilla warfare inside the city. I of course don't take blame on some Chinese that were thinking of doing that. They were fighting for their city. But that is the basis of the massacre that was to take place. Well I'm sure some of the Chinese boy soldiers were just terrified of everything and wanted to escape being part of the fight. So after the battle, and after the Chinese soldiers scattered into the population, during lock down, the Japanese Army rounded up men that looked able to fight and had evidence of having been a soldier such as imprints of rifle-use on their body and such. They got massacred. The total size of the Chinese defending army is debatable but was something like 100,000 men. So naturally most died fighting, some scattered into the population. Total massacred was probably something like 20,000-40,000, mostly fighting age men from an army that did not surrender and just scattered into the population.
Its a said story. It's appropriate to have a memorial for it. Its fine if there are any grudges towards Japan about it. But what is not fine are the lies and exaggerations made about it particularly by Chinese posters. Most of the time, they are just repeating hearsay and never take an objective view about their history. Yes it is a very emotional history, but if viewing it in the absence of an objective view, it'll never become possible to reconcile. I reckon a high school book could be more descriptive about the massacre if it wasn't politicized. If the book publishes wanted to include an estimate in degree of massacre, say they put in 50,000-100,000 massacred, then since its not the 300,000, then the Chinese government would protests. And western media that got used to the air waves of victor's glory in writing history gives the the claim of 300,000 a free hand.
As for the Japanese class A war crminals.. has any of you actually looked up who they were? Some I don't particularly mind the bad title such as Tojo or Doihara, but Shigenori Togo? What did he do to get slapped with "Class-A war criminal"? Surely Chaing Kai-shek and FDR were more qualified for "Class-A war criminal" than Togo.
Yasukuni Shrine, a place for the war dead. It's not anywhere else in Japanese society. It's not like Japanese people hold up portrait images of Tojo like how people do that with portraits of Stalin, or put Mao's face on every currency bill, or how fanboys wear swastikas at cheap demonstrations. So in some way, them being at Yasukuni is sort of over complained really. Although people like Tojo at Yasukuni could theoretically serve as a launch pad of greater acceptance and a more justifying sort narrative and propaganda but that risk exist in most countries in their own national forms. The Tokyo Tribunal was a victors write history court. The basis for "Class A War crime" was for being "instrumental for the complete fault by Japan in starting WW2". But now as what a proper look at history shows, the Chinese communist, Chinag Kai-shek, and FDR was just as much of a cause for the start of that war. But whatever on it, I really don't dwell on it, but points have to be made sometimes. In the end, out of the major world powers in the race to be top power of the world.. out of Great Britain, the US, Russia/Soviet, Nazi Germany, Commie China, Imperial Japan, France.. the US coming out on top isn't so bad.. all things considered. Winners write the history for the masses. If Imperial Japan had won, it would have its own BS narrative in central acceptance. So in the end, I sometimes don't like pushing too hard with my conclusions. But I find nothing wrong with Abe going to Yasukuni Shrine with all these things considered.
