CosmicSex said:
Johnw1104 said:
I honestly think the reason the mainsteram in the west have so little memory of what Japan was doing while we remember the Nazis like they fell yesterday is simply due to the Nazi's victims being fellow white-faced westerners. Whether people realize it or not, we always give far more attention to the plight of fellow westerners than we do, say, those living in China under Japanese occupation. It doesn't speak well of us, but it's evident in how much news every attack on a western country gets compared to the brief sentence that scrolls along the bottom of the television mentioning bombings in Baghdad or elsewhere.
When one compares the two, there are more similarities between the Nazis and that particular Japanese regime than there are differences. When most people think of Japan now, though, they think of the wonderful country that rose from the aftermath. There does not appear to be anywhere near the guilt within the country or the reminders from without it that Germans to this day still face.
Personally, I don't think there should be any guilt felt; few (if any) who were directly responsible for the policies of the world's nations leading up to and through WWII have long since died. I certainly don't mind if Obama comments on how terrible nuclear bombs are and how wars of that scale leave you with zero good options, but we should be past demanding apologies from one another as it dredges up old hostilities that really ought to be left buried.
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I am pretty sure the number of Russians alone killed from the conflict with the Nazi's far outpaces what Japan did to anyone by a good number.
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I'm not speaking merely of a body count, but the manner in which they treated those they attacked and occupied, as well as engaging in the torture of captured soldiers and attempting to initiate plagues. They stood out in an already horrific global conflict as being uniquely horrific themselves.
As for the Russians, I must give Stalin as much credit for their deaths as I do Hitler. Far more died than was necessary solely for that man's vanity.
