"Japan Unsure About Unbroken" Topic

Angelina Jolie's new movie "Unbroken" has not been released in Japan yet, but it has already struck a nerve in a country still fighting over its wartime past.

And the buzz on social networks and in online chatter is decidedly negative over the film that depicts a U.S. Olympic runner who endures torture at a World War II prisoner-of-war camp.

Some people are calling for a boycott of the movie, although there is no release date in Japan yet. It hits theaters in the U.S. on Dec. 25…

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And we should care about what japan thinks why?

What was that they were doing to the prisoners? Extreme yoga?

I am quite sure that Japan was very gentle and nice to all they held power over -??????????????????????? Same with the Nazis and Communists -????????????
regards
Russ Dunaway

My grandfather was captured when his gunboat was sunk off Corregador and held until wars' end. He refused to eat rice or having anything to do with anything Made In Japan till his death (this included taking a bat to his new TV when he saw where it was made). He told me he was not only worked hard, fed little, and constantly beaten and degraded, but tortured to get information about his flotilla out of him years after his capture just to corroborate the "history" they already had on file and to take their frustrations out when cities were bombed. He even screamed at me for watching Star Trek because of Mr. Sulu.

I'd say that much of what the movie may depict might be a bit more factual than they are willing to own up to. Just ask Bush Sr. about his fellow aviators shot down near Chichi Jima…

Like … sometimes you don't want to admit some things. Of course the War Crimes committed by Japan makes anything the US or UK, etc. have ever done tiny … The Japanese still have not come to grips with their past …

Lands sakes alive. What we did at Guantanamo --- I had stuff that bordered on that done to me at Parris Island in 1967.
regards
Russ Dunaway

Old Glory- I see that not only the Japanese can deny reality.

"I see that not only the Japanese can deny reality."

No, it's more about

My gaming group still calls an unannounced attack a Jap job.
They should carry the shame a few more generations still.

Japan got a free pass because of the cold war. Now they don't want to face up to the war shame. Now most of the worst are dead or too old. We missed any chance for justice, to get an advantage during the cold war, Same with the old as guys who formed the West German army. The USA will always have to live with that.

And we should care about what japan thinks why?

We need to care about what Japan thinks.

Japan is an important ally & a fellow democracy. I think efforts must be made to firmly ,not stridently, impress the truth as to Japan's dark deeds on Japanese society. It does them no good to sweep these under the rug.

The 'Comfort Women', Nanking Massacre, Burma Railway, experiments with bio weapons etc must be presented as historical facts until the Japanese acknowledge this aspect of their past.

My dad robbed a liquor store, I'm guilty.
My dad and his brothers robbed a bank. I and my uncles children are guilty.
My family are related to law breakers, I'm guilty.

So collective guilt is actionable, based on what people I am associated to by means of birth?

My dad robbed a liquor store, I'm guilty.

Nobody is saying today's Japan is guilty. They are saying Japan is refusing to admit that their father robbed that liquor store. Today's Japan is saying "We were invited. Sake was served. Check with China."

America admits that our country once held blacks as slaves. Germany admits that a while ago, their fathers tried to exterminate every Jew, Roma, Homosexual and Socialist in Europe during a massive cluster of a global war. But Japan will not admit to the fact that their fathers did some incredibly terrible things to Americans, Koreans, Chinese, Australians, English, Dutch…

Lets see my Dutch relatives in the 1620s would stop in the West Indies for a year then move to New Amsterdam. If they followed the British practice of buying a sugar plantation for a year and then selling it and getting out before the disease season that means they were slave owners.

Does that mean I am guilty by being related? Does the fact that I had 10 relatives fight for the North in the Civil War resolve my sins. Should I come out and say my relatives are guilty of crimes against humanity even though I am not sure what they did for a year in the West Indies?

When does the sin end? How many generations must pay for the crimes of the fathers?

When does the sin end? How many generations must pay for the crimes of the fathers?

Well, I think the biological sons and daughters of war criminals should at least acknowledge that daddy massacred Allies POWs and raped Korean sex slaves. The first generation is alive and they aren't paying for anything, because their national narrative of the war is an outright lie and they become indignant when their daddy's victims ask for recognition of the truth. Their history books operate under a unique set of facts that are not found elsewhere in the world.

I agree with Rebel.

As it is with people, an apology is good for the soul of a nation.

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"Nonetheless, there has been in recent years a movement among some conservative organizations, like Moteki's, to strike a more positive tone about Japan's role and conduct in WWII."

There is the very real and troubling problem. It's no longer just not teaching Japanese students about WWII, or claiming that comfort women were professional sex workers, or insisting that atrocities like Nanking and Bataan were grossly exaggerated, or even those who deny Japan's culpability in any crimes. The notion of putting a positive spin on Japan in WWII is despicable and outrageous

Friend of mine used to say: Two was not enough! He meant that two atomic bombs were not enough to drop on Japan. I figured this guy has a right to gripe. His family was taken prisoner in the Phillipines at the beginning of the war, and his father was sent to a separate camp. He, age 8, and his sisters and mother lived for four years in a camp starving and being beaten. Meanwhile, his father was beaten, tortured and eventually died when the Americans sank the ship he was on near the end of the war. The ship was an unmarked "slave ship" full of POWs being sent back to Japan to be worked to death.
The Japs were undeniably nasty and vicious to prisoners. Anyone who reads any history knows that, and they should not be let off the hook trying to rewrite the facts 70 years later because a movie offends them.

I am curious. In 1905 the Japanese were noted for their concern and actual kindness to Russian prisoners. What changed and made a nation go insane?

I hold individuals responsible for their individual actions. Not nations or groups. I also support truth as best as we can determine it. I don't hold any living Japanese citizen responsible for anything that happened in WWII other than a few very old men, the vast majority of were of no authority before and during the war.

My dad was in the US Army in WWII. He was injured in a training accident, spent a year in the hospital and was disabled for the rest of his life.

The Japanese did terrible things in WWII. They should not be forgotten. I don't care if the apologize or not. Today they are good allies and good citizens of the world. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

It's not about sins or guilt. It's about history, about truth and about facing the facts, no matter how ugly they are. It's about learning how societies slip into brutality against others when they allow fanatics to get a hold on power. It's about empathy towards the victims.

Japan in WWII was dominated by a brutal, racist and violent clique. There were victims of their violence everywhere. Her own soldiers were brutalized by their officers and NCOs; they were beaten, humiliated and transformed into murderous machines by their leaders. Denying -or ignoring- what was done to conquered Asian peoples and to Western POWs is not only a case of historical blindness, but also a diservice to all those Japanese young men that were tortured with the consent of their own leadership until they lost their moral compass and part of their humanity as well.

Understanding your past might be a painful experience, but it is also a catharsis. It gives you the chance of freeing yourself from myths and embrace truth.

Well said, basileus66! It's not about punishing the Japanese today for what they did in WWII, it's about the Japanese admitting what happened in WWII and the Japanese making sure that they don't let it happen again.

Cheers.

Dal.

Imagine the reaction if there were conservative German groups who wanted to "strike a more positive tone about Germany's role and conduct in WWII."

Yes, Basileus has got it right. It's about Fact, not manufacturing a fiction & calling it Japanese history.

Agreed.

doug redshirt has a good question. I can't help but wonder the same thing myself.

Most will agree that the end of the first war left Germany with the belief that they were betrayed and never lost. Come round two everyone agreed it had to be made overwhelmingly self evident to all Germans that they lost.

MacArthur, made the mistake of not pursuing war crimes trials against the Japanese in general. He was only concerned in eliminating any Japanese generals if they humiliatated him in battle personnaly. Otherwise it was a love in that let them ignore their own past, profit from the US' other wars in asia and save money having someone else pay for their own defense.

They spent all their free time and money re-writing and censoring their history books. Never dealt with their own issues.

Doug, I have talked about that to a friend a few times.
It only took Germany one election and six years to go from nation on the leading edge of Christianity and charity to despotic tie to the USSR in militarism and genocide.

Part of it is that the same militarism and cult of supremecy implanted itself in part due to the nature of possibly having been too succesful in 1905. Also, trying to compare themselves to a poverty stricken China wracked in the middle of a warlord with modern weapons period probably didn't help their ego in boosting the superiority cult. They had some forty to fifty years to develop themselves.

Strangely enough, even at the height of the fire raids in '45, the average public thought it had to get even worse before change could happen. The practices of docility, respect for authority and fear of reprisal are dangerous accomplices to dictatorships and atrocity.

Good point about MacArthur – public humiliations of the warrior class and a better administrative policy postwar could have gone far to reset Japanese public opinion.

"I am curious. In 1905 the Japanese were noted for their concern and actual kindness to Russian prisoners. What changed and made a nation go insane?"

The military embraced the code of Bushido which had been dismissed when Japan modernized in the 1860s. However, they stressed obedience and honor above everything else, (the 'soft' side of the samurai). It led to a fanatical soldier willing to fight to the death, but lacking humanity.

There were many war crimes trial after WWII in the PTO

Soon after the war, the Allied powers indicted 25 persons as Class-A war criminals, and 5,700 persons were indicted as Class-B or Class-C war criminals by Allied criminal trials. Of these, 984 were initially condemned to death, 920 were actually executed, 475 received life sentences, 2,944 received some prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were not sentenced or not brought to trial. These numbers included 178 ethnic Taiwanese and 148 ethnic Koreans.[136] The Class-A charges were all tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as "the Tokyo Trials". Other courts were formed in many different places in Asia and the Pacific

"I am curious. In 1905 the Japanese were noted for their concern and actual kindness to Russian prisoners. What changed and made a nation go insane?"

A deliberate policy of terror was implemented in China in 1937 by the high command of the Imperial Army, the so-called "Three All" policy – "Kill All, Loot All, Burn All". "Three All" ordered a wholesale massacre of all Chinese civilians who were overrun by the Japanese army, and it was carried out explicitly and literally. "Three All" licensed all manner of pillage, rape and torture, in fact demanded it of the troops. Chinese PWs were massacred as a matter of course. "Three All" was implemented in the 1937 campaign from Shanghai to Nanking, culminating in the infamous Rape of Nanking, which was no accident.

The purpose of "Three All" was to terrorize the Chinese into surrender. It didn't work, but it did send 90 million Chinese civilians into flight as refugees from the Japanese army. Think of that number. 90 million people, walking to western China with only the property they could carry. The suffering was unspeakable and millions died on the road.

In Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamini argues that "Three All" and other Japanese warmongering was the personal brain-child of Emperor Hirohito, making him one of the great psychopaths of the 20th century. Whatever the truth, "Three All" did much to brutalize the Japanese soldier, and licensed systematic abuse of enemy civilians and PWs for the rest of the war.

No humus up my butt --but I did have a couple boots go there several times.
Regards
Russ Dunaway

"reality" --what a funny way that word is often used and understood ??????
regards
Russ dunaway