Why didn't the Japanese develop a deep-seated hatred against Americans

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by Strasser, May 18, 2015.

  1. Strasser

    Strasser Banned

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  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Well, first of all let me outright blow away the very title of this article. There were few to no "innocent civilians" in the cities targeted. Hiroshima was a major Army Headwuarters (it was one of 3 regional headquarters responsible for the defense of the nation), as well as one of the 2 largest supply and logistical depots in Japan.

    Nagasaki was probably the major Naval base in Japan. Everything from submarines to Battleship Musashi were built there. And it was the largest submarine base on the island, and the vast majority of civilians worked or supported this base.

    Now as to why there was no hatred, this is for many reasons.

    For one, under Bushido you have a clear recognition that the winner is the combatant that is supperior to that of the looser. And by beating Japan, we showed that our culture and nation were superior.

    Also as was said, we did not treat Japan like a captive nation. We treated the Emperor honorably and respectfully, we only dismantled the Taisei Yokusankai (think "Japanese Fascist Party"), and left the rule and administration largely to themselves, setting up SCAP as more or less an overseer and not as a warlord. We even gave them limited military capabilities, showing that we felt we had earned their trust.

    Japan is a very strange culture, and hard to explain to those who have never experienced it. But once they realized that the things their own government told them were lies (The Yankees were going to kill everybody, or castrate the men and make sex slaves of the women, eat the babies, etc) and that our own soldiers largely behaved like an occupation force and not a conquering army stripping their country bare, their anger was instead directed largely at their own leadership, not at the US.

    Interesting side note, when I was on Okinawa (1988-1990) we had full run of the island, we could go anywhere we wanted. But the Japanese servicemembers stationed there were confined to their bases. Even 40 years later, the people of that island still had a deep hatred for the Japanese military, and the atrocities they committed upon the people of that island. Most of the civilians killed in that battle were not even killed in battle at all, but purposefully by the Japanese military, who felt it was better that they be killed "honorably" then to surrender to the Americans.

    In their mind, the Okinawan civilians should have acted as the "good Japanese" of Saipan, and committed mass suicide. But when they did not, they actually started to systematically kill and civilians they could find.
     
  3. Korozif

    Korozif Banned

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    Well, that was their big mistake then... Okinawan aren't ethnically Japanese. They favor more, genically, their polynesian heritage than their chinese/mongolian one.
    They didn't even speak the same dialect and the US forces used that to spot Japanese soldier trying to pass themselves as civilians.

    The Japanese made a great movie in 1971 called: Gekido no showashi: Okinawa kessen
    You see the battle from the Japanese point of view.
     
  4. Strasser

    Strasser Banned

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    My father and an uncle went into Japan immediately after the surrender; a lot of this is similar to their experiences there, especially the bolded. Not there that weren't die hards around, there were, but the locals were more than happy to identify them to the MPs and intel people.
     
  5. US Conservative

    US Conservative Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    IIRC to identify Japanese they were asked to say words any Okinawan could say clearly, but the Japanese couldn't.
     
  6. Korozif

    Korozif Banned

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    Yep, different dialect. Even on mainland japan some dialect are a problem. For example, many Japanese consider those speaking with the Yokohama-ben dialect slow or retarded because of their use of saa.... as a kind of verbal coma and other stuff like that..
     
  7. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There are some who say that most Japanese aren't true Japanese but the northern Japanese (some say southern Japan ???) are the true Japanese. They are taller and have caucasian features.

    The Ainu or so called "Jomon," the original proto-Caucasian inhabitants of Japan and Siberia.
     
  8. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    it's kinda like why did the south not hate the north when we won the war, cause we did not kick them while they were down once the war was over...

    .
     
  9. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    I think they were just grateful that we didn't kill many more of them when they probably expected us to.
     
  10. BEG

    BEG New Member

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    You have to see this in the context of the cold war.

    same as Germans, they had to kiss US asses because they wanted not to become Russian provinces.
     
  11. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    In Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle (a history of the last few weeks of the battle for Berlin) there were a lot of first person interviews of Berliners and it was surprising that at that point of war, when they knew they had lost, almost everyone wanted to surrender to the American and British armies. After years of brutal warfare, suddenly the Anglo American forces started to look pretty good compared to the Russian hordes on their way from the east.
     
  12. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Actually, it is closer to Chinese. The predominant Okinawan culture, language, and writing came from China through Taiwan. They were tributaries of China for centuries before Japan forced a kind of dual tributary relationship alongside the Chinese in the turmoil of the end of the Ming Dynasty. And by the end of the Quing Dynasty the Japanese had completely supplanted the Chinese over control of Okinawa.

    They dismantled the Ryuku Kingdom and outlawed the use of the Okinawan written and spoken languages, so both are almost dead today.
     
  13. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    There's that, but the Germans absolutely brutalized the Russians on their way in.
     
  14. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Actually, the partitioning was already set up before the war was even over. The UK, France, US, and USSR had partitioned up Germany into seperate occupation zones before Germany actually surrendered. Zones of Occupation were set up both for the nation, and in the capitol of Berlin. That is why once the Soviets started to block off their zone (East Germany and East Berlin) the rest of the allies consolidated their zones into what later was known West Germany and West Berlin.

    Because the lions share of the work against Japan was entirely by the US, the UK only sent minimal advisors and administrators and did not claim any control once Japan fell.
     
  15. Herkdriver

    Herkdriver New Member

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    Mushroom is our Far East expert. My Dad served in the European theater and most of what I've read historically about WW2 has been on the Atlantic side of the war. What little I do know is Imperialist Japan maintained a warped perversion of the Bushido code and used it to justify genocide and suicide (seppuku/harakiri).

    They had no qualms about killing, either themselves or what they perceived as inferior beings. After the U.S. defeated them, I believe they looked upon them as the equivalent to "God" killers and completely acquiesced to Western democracy. Their "God" had been defeated.
     
  16. Korozif

    Korozif Banned

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    One of the teaching they received from birth was that life was heavy, but death in the service of the emperor was as light as a feather. They valued death over living, kind of like Isis and Al Qaeda these day...
     
  17. Hoosier8

    Hoosier8 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Interesting thread.
     
  18. Korozif

    Korozif Banned

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    Just a small nitpick if you please... But they still issue stamp for Ryuku these days, so some are trying to keep it alive. I'm a philatelist and I have quite a collection of those even if they're not worth much, they're quite pretty. I collect worldwide from 1840 to 1965.
     
  19. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    I myself would not say that it was "warped" at all to be honest, it was actually pretty much like it had been during the Feudal Era prior to the Meiji Restoration. It is simply a completely foreign concept to Westerners, so much that it is nearly incomprehensible.

    Here is an example. In the code of Chivalry during the European Feudal era, the knighs of a fallen nobleman would expect to be taken captive then ransomed back to their families. And if there was nobody to assume the mantle of the nobleman they then became "free agents" and often took service with another lord.

    In Japan, the elaborate makeup and hair styles of the Samuri was because of their battle practices. Samurai almost never surrendered, but instead fought to the death (unlike common foot soldiers who could surrender without loss of honor once a battle was lost). And after falling on a battlefield, the victorious lord would have his soldiers sever and collect up all the heads of the fallen Samurai so he could view them. The makeup and grooming was so if they fell in battle their head would look good when presented to the victor.

    [​IMG]

    Medieval and ancient Japanese artwork is full of such depictions, the victorious lord inspecting the heads of his fallen enemies. But it was done in a manner that was respectful to the fallen, not as a form of gloating.

    That is a kind of mindset that is completely foreign to most others.

    And if for some reason their lord died and they lived on, they became Ronin, basically stateless drifters who lived outside the law. Some were able to take on service to other lords, but most did not, the Japanese considering that most survived past their masters through cowardace, or that they are essentially cursed by the fate of the last lord.

    As I said, Bushido is really a strange thing for most Westerners to try and comprehend, because it is totally outside their normal frame of reference. And also remember, Shinto is also the only major world religion that has absolutely no prohibition against suicide. Honor is everything, and fallen honor can be regained by suicide after failure. Even to this day suicide rates for teens spike when college acceptance letters are passed out. Failure to get into the college desired often drives teens to suicide even in the 21st century because they feel they have shamed their families.

    And to be technical, it is still "Imperialist Japan", it is still an Empire that is led by an Emperor. Emperor Akihito, 125th of his line, stretching back unbroken since the rise of Emperor Jimmu in 660 BCE. No other Empire in history can claim anything even close to that long of a dynasty.
     
  20. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    True, but as the generations pass that has less and less of a hold. Immigration from Mainland Japan has diluted the "Native Okinawan" influence, as well as mass media bringing them more into "mainstream Japanese culture", instead of being seperated as it had been for hundreds of years.
     
  21. Korozif

    Korozif Banned

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    Bringing back the head of a samurai that he had himself killed was also the only way for a commoner to become himself a samurai as it demonstrated his worth to his shogun.
     
  22. Strasser

    Strasser Banned

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    They also brutalized Poles and Ukrainians, with the result that after the defeat at Stalingrad and the launch of the Kursk counter-offensives the Germans found themselves having to deal with over a hundred thousand partisans in their rear; don't recall the stats off-hand but the locomotives, rail cars, bridges and the like blown up behind them numbered in the thousands. They learned nothing at all from Crete and other places where they did the same thing .
     
  23. BEG

    BEG New Member

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    The US has offered both Japanese and Germans, economical progress, by giving huge credits, so this countries do not fall to Stalin.

    Vietnam did not get anything nor Afghanistan or Iraq.

    Afghanistan for example have today fewer people acces to clean drinking water then under the Taliban.
     
  24. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    Probably because the Americans treated the Japanese relatively well during the occupation. Remember, the Americans feared the expansion of Soviet Communism, and wanted the nations of Japan and West Germany to be as economically strong as possible. The Americans also left the Japanese society and government relatively intact.
     
  25. Strasser

    Strasser Banned

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    I would say it's because the nature of American culture would never have stood for the kind butchery orders from its commanders that characterizes most of the rest of the planet in dealing with defeated enemies, particularly civilians. Such a thing would have to come as direct orders from the chain of command, and in many cases wouldn't have been obeyed by the average soldier in those days. Yes, some would do that , and some did, but it wouldn't have been tolerated for long; butchering civilians is something many troops would have frowned on, no matter how much they hated Japanese soldiers, they wouldn't have been amenable to butchering women and children and the elderly on any scale, much less 'officially'. There were such incidents, of course, no denying it, but it was nowhere near as widespread as one finds in most other cultures. Some will point to Lt. Calley and a few others, but it was also American troops who put a stop to Calley's operation, and other such 'activities' as well throughout every war since. It was simple going way beyond the pale in those days.

    It wasn't any sort of 'strategic plot', it simply wouldn't have been popular or tolerated by the average grunt.

    That kind of sociopathic behavior on a large scale is of course much more possible today, after decades of runaway academic sociology has desensitized American school children to anything resembling common decency and morals of even the most basic kind, though, many of whom are now parents and grandparents similarly desensitized for the most part. Not only the 'new Left' types but also the 'New Right' both enthusiastically promote this sort of atavistic regression, though it's far more prevalent among the 'neo-liberal' mentality then the libertoon mentality; not to say the libertoons aren't jealous and anxious to catch up to their fellow travelers, they just aren't quite there yet.
     

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