Japanese public feels they were the victims in ww2,feel no remorse or shame

[togor]

Mark Felton gives a nice in depth look at the machinations in the Japanese government from Hiroshima until the Missouri.

[jmm03]

It was a similar situation at the "peace" museum in Hiroshima. All of the exhibits were slanted toward the American aggression and no responsibility on the Japanese side for anything. The park that is adjacent to the museum at ground zero was full of people playing games and picnicking, I would have thought it might have been a more somber place given the reason the memorial was there, I remember thinking it was odd at the time. I don't believe that we needed to invade Japan, we were well on the way to burning them back to the stone age and we probably could have starved them into submission, a cold observation I know, but the military faction was wanting to fight to the last man,and expending our guys by invading rather than cutting the island off just did not make sense, hence the bomb. Jim

[blackhawknj]

Pearl Harbor fixed the image of Japanese as a treacherous and dishonorable enemy, nothing in the subsequent conduct of that war did anything to dispel.
By way of contrast, during the Siege of Santiago in 1898 the collierMerrimackwas sent into the harbor in a failed attempt to block it. Admiral Cervera sent his Chief of Staff under a flag of truce to inform our side that the crew had been rescued and were being cared for. During the Naval Battle of Santiago on July 3, when the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya started to burn, Captain J. W. Philip of the USS Texas told his men "Don't cheer, boys, those poor devils are dying!"

[togor]

My dad was in AAF pilot training for single seat aircraft when the war ended. Had there been an invasion of Japan (and there was no way we were going to let that regime rot on the Home Islands) he would have been flying close support missions. Not that he was unwilling to go, but he had no qualms about the bombs saving him a trip to Japan.

[blackhawknj]

The living advocates and devotees of air power ,the disciples of Giulio Douhet ( d. 1930) argued that
given enough resources they could defeat an enemy without committing ground troops except for occupation duties. In his 1908 novel The War in the Air H.G. Wells describes a Germain air fleet destroying the US Atlantic Fleet. Both sides refrained from gas warfare in WWII, to a large extent it is recognized that the Strategic Bombing Campaign weakened Germany not so much by destroying German industry as by diverting it, it took 8,000 rounds from the advanced German 88 to bring down a bomber, fighters in the Defense of the Reich were denied to the fronts, AA defense was very manpower intensive, even allowing that it was often old men and boys and POWs. The Bomb gave the air generals the weapon they always wanted and showed the Japanese that if they wanted to fight to the last man.....

[Ltdave]

It was a similar situation at the "peace" museum in Hiroshima. All of the exhibits were slanted toward the American aggression and no responsibility on the Japanese side for anything. The park that is adjacent to the museum at ground zero was full of people playing games and picnicking, I would have thought it might have been a more somber place given the reason the memorial was there, I remember thinking it was odd at the time. I don't believe that we needed to invade Japan, we were well on the way to burning them back to the stone age and we probably could have starved them into submission, a cold observation I know, but the military faction was wanting to fight to the last man,and expending our guys by invading rather than cutting the island off just did not make sense, hence the bomb. Jim

When I visited the museum at Nagasaki, it was really all about how horrible the Americans were to have used the bomb. Every month on the anniverary of the day of the bombing they hold a religious memorial ceremony. We happened to be there that day and ended up chatting with some very charming Japanese students aged about 16. My sense was that they knew little or nothing about the actions of the Japanese military. Selective teaching of history and selective memory

in Berlin at the ruins of The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, they have a display of what the church looked like prior to WWII, next to the current ruins (that have been stabilized and are open to the public). i was there in 2003 and i was looking at the display when some lady glared at my Air Force hat and told her daughter that, "this is what the church looked like before the Americans bombed it for no good reason". i looked at her and replied, "to begin with it was destroyed in a night raid by the British not the Americans and if Germany hadnt started WWII, the Americans wouldnt have had to get involved and end it."

The Japanese people are victims of government orchestrated revisionist history. They were lied to throughout the war. To maintain face they were lied to after the war. No small wonder they feel as they do today.
Pearl Harbor. Sometimes there are more Japanese tourists than Americans it seems. You can bet they don't leave there with the same impressions as we do.

ive seen that several times in my trips to the Arizona Memorial. my dad was INCENSED the first time we went there, because they all were very loud and boisterous and he kept going on about "theyre all bragging about what their relatives did in 1941" oh i dont know if ive EVER seen my dad so riled up. a neighbor of ours was there (Hawaii) for a reunion (in the mid-80s) of his unit (1st Marine Division) who fought on Guadalcanal and was wounded and sent home on Peleliu. they were having dinner and a bunch of japanese business men came in and started talking about how crappy American manufacturing was and how the Americans were setting themselves up for a fall, and on and on. Good ol' Pete turned to them at their table and he said, "what you say may all be true, but Americans still make the best atom bombs". the japanese got up and walked out of the restaurant in mid-meal...

[blackhawknj]

No doubt that German lady was born long after the War, didn't experience the Berlin Blockade, perhaps she voted Left, or was ex-DDR and only knew what she was taught in school. There is that famous picture of Berlin Kinder standing standing on rubble piles watching as a US transport brings their dinner in. Chinese scholars in this country have found exchange students from the PRC are totally ignorant about their country's history.
Look at how many Civil War battlefields have been built over ?

[tmark]

My coworker's father was in the army and a participant in the Bataan death march. He was forced to beat to death fallen comrades who collapsed over the head with a shovel during the march. He despised the Japanese till his dying day!