So I always heard about how brutal the imperial Japanese military was in WWII, knew about the special unit 731, Nanking massacre, how people in pretty much all SE Asia still hate Japan to this day.
The hate still living to this day I didn't understand, I mean yes the things I mentioned were unfathomably horrible and I knew war is was not pretty and atrocities happen in all wars but time has already passed and the people living now don't have anything to do with what happened. This I thought until I was watching a youtube documentary on the subject and started scrolling through the comments and reading testimonies.

****ing hell was I overwhelmed, the stories of what some people suffered really hit me. Like I said I heard all this bad stuff but reading testimonies really put these things in a more empathetic perspective. Comments like these:


"as a 12year old school boy, i had a teacher who had been a POW of the japanese, they had slit his cheek flesh on both sides of his lips, and forced sand into the two wounds, destroying the nerves which had allowed him to smile, i'll never forget that man"

"Many years after leaving the British Army I developed PTSD, whilst at Combat Stress, Surrey, I had the fortune to meet a wonderful old man from Clacton, himself a veteran, he was captured at Singapore and spent rest of war as a POW, one evening he opened up about his experiences for the first time, service men and women will do that sometimes, he had never spoken about his experiences before, he was one of the many who had helped build the Thai-Burma railway, he recollected one day that a very close friend of his had fallen down a ravine along with others, hearing their cries they went to help but were severely beaten, the cries of the wounded went in for rest of day and night pleading for help but the Japanese refused, so not only building the Railway of Death under beatings and torture but imagine listening to your best mate crying for help at the bottom of a ravine. The cries eventually died out, my poor old colleague then broke down in tears, sobbing uncontrollably, I held him in my arms. Fact: the majority of former POWs of Japan get extra money in pension for to compensate the diet they had to endure, many are left with dreadful stomach complaints from the diet of rice which was the staple food given. My friend Cyril told me that he’d “never eaten rice since the War”
As a final note, Cyril, forgave his captors, but it took him a very long time to do so. I guess no one will ever be able to explain how one human being can do this to another. My wifes grandfather on the other hand had fought in Burma, and once told her that “they should have dropped more (atomic) bombs on those b##tards” He NEVER forgave the Japanese for what they did, and he had witnessed."


At the same time I understand imperial Japanese soldiers and society in general was heavily indoctrinated to obey orders without hesitation, orders from superiors were understood to come from the emperor himself a living god and so were believed to be infallible. This well illustrated by the testimony:

"Not all Japanese Soldiers obeyed orders without question. One of my Enlisted Bosses in the Air Force had been stationed in Japan back in the later 50's. He was telling us a story about the landlord of the apartment he rented off base. He took the time to learn Japanese and got friendly with the gentleman and after a couple of years they go into the habit sitting down and talking over the local beer or a bottle of Jack Daniels (hard to get in Japan at the time except at an American Base). The older man told him about his service in the Japanese Army in 1942-45 when he turned 17 and got drafted. He told him that there had been lots of political indoctrination about obedience to the Emperor and his Officers. But when he got into the Army he couldn't believe how brutal they were treated. Every day everyone was given orders, constant and changing orders to obey. If you didn't rush to obey in a heartbeat you were hit with sticks by the NCO's or Officers, beaten by your peers, or put on punishment details (which he refused to talk about as it still gave him nightmares.) Everything was about Duty, Obedience, and Death. The first time he got into combat was during an attack on a Chinese position. A couple hundred of the Chinese Soldiers surrendered after several days of fighting and his group was ordered to bayonet them for surrendering as his Officers said they weren't really honorable soldiers. Many of his fellow soldiers had emotional problems after that event and several were executed in his unit for refusing further orders to execute prisoners. He learned to bottle up his emotions and survive. He eventually ended up on Okinawa in 1945, but was able to survive after his Officers and Senior Enlisted killed themselves as they were losing the fight. He hid out with other soldiers and surrendered to the Americans several weeks after the end of the war. He said that it was the worst experience of his life and he felt no honor in the stuff he was forced to do. Many Japanese are ashamed about the War and though Nationalists will push their BS War Propaganda just like the Confederate "Lost Cause" (The US started the war on the poor downtrodden Japanese People.) most Japanese really don't believe it and just don't t want to talk about it."

So yes this hit me and now I understand how people can still hate other people even though most people who lived then are already dead, like if my own grandfather or grandmother would have told me they endured this inhumane cruelty and see how they were affected by it, I can see how I could feel animosity. The brutality shown was something I would of thought happened only long time ago with the mongols. Also with this came the realization that, yes the atomic bombs were sadly the best option to obtain surrender.

CLIFFS
-imperial japan was unfathomably cruel
-i understand people like Cotton Hill

I could say I have been "black pilled", sad to think stuff like this probably still happened in more recent wars and even today fuark

Human beings are brutal apes, OP. Nothing new here.

This is one thing I wish I had never, ever read.

Imperial japs were cray

We should have nuked more of them.

after the war I think many of those involved would be in important government positions and were national heroes, one of them even became a billionaire

doc I was watching

Japanese soldiers who had to operate on poor supply lines practised cannibalism and used captives as walking larders. IIRC occasionally they would do so with the perceived 'weakest links' in their own unit.

None of this stuff is new BTW, pretty much if you don't want atrocities, don't go to war. A democracy that makes sure its commanders try to prevent war crimes will still have incidents of rape, murder and looting. A totalitarian regime that doesn't bother about such nicieties will end up with widespread civilian massacres bordering on genocide.

This. By far the worst scum the world has ever seen. History is endless stories of the brutality of humans rainbow washed with "reason" and "cause".

It's crazy. They basically got 'a free pass' in history bc the Nazis were just slightly more cruel than them.

Astonishes me.

this.

it seems to me imperial japan made nazi's look like elementary kids

There is a reason why most asian countries, given a chance would probably nuke Japan.

My granddad was in WW2 in the pacific and was on a boat sunk by the japanese. He swam to safety to another boat in their group.

Until the last day of his life he hated japanese with a passion and would cus out family members who got japanese cars, etc, lol.

Negged, cancelled and reported to the authorities for (a) suggesting there were atrocities committed against someone other than jewish people in WW2 and (b) for suggesting that atrocities against other races have been instigated by anyone other than white people.

yeah, always thought that type of hate was irrational and funny but now I can understand why

some people so traumatized after the war that seeing a japanese person would induce them to vomit

uhh lets not forget about the giant freezers the germans used to use to freeze solid hundreds of prisoners at a time and then tip them over so they would shatter into pieces.

also the masturbation machines.

come on man

No I don't see how Japan is any different to other countries or groups of people when unleashed with no repercussions. This is similar to gang violence on steroids - when you mix peer pressure, unaccountability and imbalance of power you see humans do dumb and depraved things that even they would not comprehend in peacetime.

I remember reading a great excerpt regarding what many of those Japanese officers felt decades after the war and many of them killed themselves or had a lot of remorse and disbelief over how they got sucked into that torture culture. It's similar to seeing yourself as a kid when picking on some other nerd - fun at the time but stupid as an adult.

Two typical examples of humans acting like absolute animals when accountability is removed:

-https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...c92_story.html
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_...atila_massacre

Just google mass attrocities / genocide and you'll get a never ending source of humans being human. Is it a coincidence that our closest living animal cousin the chimpanzee is a violent social animal?

So wait, let me get this straight. A man, who was a POW and had harsh brutality done against him ended up becoming a teacher and making something of himself. And here, in America, we have absolute worthless scum sit around being degenerates and demand reparations because their great great great great great great grandfather was a slave at one point. Got it.

I don't know if I'd have the guts to do terrible things to someone I didn't know. I did have a former currupt boss though who screwed me over and I would gladly sit by laughing if he was on the ground dying asking for help.

all this sick chit and much worse happened, are still happening and will continue to happen in the future

Wtf are you talking about dumbfuk?

No, not everybody is a cruel as **** mentally ill piece of chit.


There was absolutely no justification for Japanese and Korean (often forgotten about) cruelty inflicted on POWs and civilians during WW2

The ‘scientists’ at unit 732 weren’t in fear for their lives, while infecting little children with terrible illnesses and testing weapons including flame throwers, on them.


None whatsoever.

And just so you know, Stalin didn’t kill 5 million people because he was ‘in fear’ either. He did it because he was a megalomaniac.

true, the whole situation is just sad I am sure a lot of those who committed cruel acts were doing for their survival and suffered terribly for what they did. imagine being drafted and indoctrinated then you are ordered to practice your bayoneting on live POW's, if you refuse you are killed then add the peer pressure, all morality and humanness beaten out of these people.

Japanese have the highest autism rate in the whole world.

You can clearly see most Japanese people are autistic. That is why they do crazy chit like this. Look at their short height, small frame and low birth rates.

Their ww2 run defines the phrase weaponized autism.

There is a gore movie about unit 731, one of the most brutal movies I have ever seen. No one should ever watch it.

Slayer has a good song called unit 731 about this place too.

Movie = don’t watch
Song = worth a listen

WW2 is so fascinating. Unit 731 was probably the darkest part of the war and should get way more attention than the holocaust.

The twisted part about the experiments of unit 731 is that after the war the results were still studied simply because there would never (hopefully) be a situation in which these types of experiments could be performed again. Literal human torture that is studied and provided valuable medical research.