(May 14, 2013 at 1:55 pm)ideologue08 Wrote: Well they were atom bombed as you said, so that was punishment enough in my opinion. If you include all the earthquakes and tsunamis as well, they took a beating.
Hi there
The above (in bold) is fair enough.
But what I dislike is that - Japanese children do not learn of their nations death camps, the medical and military experiments carried out on humans, the millions of murders, massacres and atrocities they committed against civilians and POWs, the rapes, the beheadings, the slavery (including sex slavery) etc etc - all in the name of Imperial Japan.
Their schools books do not always feature these things, or feature them accurately.
http://spice.stanford.edu/docs/134
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Mark-Selden/3173
Worse, their Government to this day insists they violated no forms of international law.
German children learn all about the Nazis and the holocaust. Other nations (American, Britain) teach their children about crimes they have committed - colonialism, slavery etc. Catholic schools study the crusades and all the bloodshed which went along with those.
So, why do the Japanese get to simply wash their hands?
If humanity is to avoid mistakes, surely we must learn from the mistakes? Which includes acknowledging them and talking about them.
I understand that they got a bit of retribution with atom bombs - but that was not intended as "punishment", but that was simply to save the lives of Allied troops by avoiding the need to physically invade the Japanese home islands. (I am sure the chance for American to test out its new shiny atom bombs - as well as send a public message to the Soviets - had some influence too).
Teaching their kids about Japan in WW2 would not be "punishment" either, this would be part of "reconciliation" (which is a good thing).
