Japan's war crimes, and why they deserved to be nuked.

[Aborted]

Laha massacre
---
At intervals for a fortnight after the surrender, IJN personnel chose more than 300 Australian and Dutch prisoners of war at random and summarily executed them, at or near Laha airfield.
---


Bangka Island massacre
---
82 Injured nurses and soldiers from a sunken ship lined up on the beach of Bangka Island and machinegunned dead.


Parit Sulong
---
The first large massacre of 161 Australian troops by Japanese forces occurred at Parit Sulong on the west coast of Malaya on 22 January 1942. Wounded survivors from the battle of Muar who could not travel on foot were left at Parit Sulong when the remnants of the greatly outnumbered force of Australians and Indians escaped from the Japanese who surrounded them. The Japanese soldiers delighted in kicking and hitting the prisoners with rifle butts. They forced them into an overcrowded shed and denied them food, water and medical attention. At sunset, those able to walk were roped or wired together and were led away. The Japanese collected petrol from the Allied vehicles which had been left stranded, shot and bayoneted their prisoners, threw petrol upon them and ignited it.
---


Palawan Massacre
---
During World War II, in order to prevent the rescue of prisoners of war by the advancing Allies, on 14 December 1944, units of the Japanese Fourteenth Area Army (under the command of General Tomoyuki Yamashita) brought the POWs back to their camp and when an air raid warning was called the remaining 150 prisoners of war at Puerto Princesa dove into three covered trenches for refuge which were then set on fire using barrels of gasoline. Prisoners who tried to escape the flames were shot down by machine gun fire. Others attempted to escape by climbing over a cliff that ran along one side of the trenches, but were later hunted down and killed. Only 11 men escaped the slaughter while 139 were killed.
---


SS Tjisalak massacre perpetrated by Japanese submarine I-8
---
Freighter torpedoed by Japanese forces, with many survivors. Once in the water, the 105 survivors were collected by the Japanese, who placed them on I-8 '​s deck and ordered Captain Hen into the conning tower to confer with the Japanese commander, Tatsunosuke Ariizumi. The Japanese then tied the survivors together in pairs and walked them aft around the conning tower, where they were attacked with various weapons. After the Japanese had killed all but about twenty of the prisoners, they tied the remainder to a long rope, pushed them overboard, and then submerged, killing off the rest.
---


Wake Island massacre
---
Fearing an imminent invasion, the Japanese Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara ordered the execution of the 98 captured American civilian workers who had initially been kept to perform forced labor. The 98 were taken to the northern end of the island, blindfolded and executed with a machine gun. One of the prisoners (whose name has never been discovered) escaped the massacre, apparently returning to the site to carve the message 98 US PW 5-10-43 on a large coral rock near where the victims had been hastily buried in a mass grave. The unknown American was recaptured, and Sakaibara personally beheaded him with a katana.
---


Tinta Massacre
---
Merizo, Guam, also known as Tinta, was the location of a massacre of civilians by Japanese troops on July 15, 1944, six days before the island was liberated, in World War II. Thirty men and women from the village of Merizo were gathered; sixteen were killed and the others were left for dead.
---


Bataan Death March
---
The Bataan Death March , which began on April 9, 1942, was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 Filipino and American prisoners of war after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. All told, approximately 2,500–10,000 Filipino and 100–650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach their destination at Camp O'Donnell. The reported death tolls vary, especially amongst Filipino POWs, because historians cannot determine how many prisoners blended in with the civilian population and escaped. The march went from Mariveles, Bataan, to San Fernando, Pampanga. From San Fernando, survivors were loaded to a box train and were brought to Camp O'Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.


The 60 mi (97 km) march was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the Japanese Army. It was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.


The Japanese were unprepared for the number of prisoners they were responsible for, and there was no organized plan for handling them. Prisoners were stripped of their weapons and valuables, and told to march to Balanga, the capital of Bataan. Many were beaten, bayoneted, and mistreated. The first major atrocity occurred when between 350 and 400 Filipino officers and NCOs were summarily executed after they had surrendered.


The Japanese failed to supply the prisoners with food or water until they had reached Balanga. Many prisoners died along the way from heat or exhaustion. Prisoners were given no food for the first three days, and were only allowed to drink water from filthy water buffalo wallows on the side of the road. Furthermore, Japanese troops would frequently beat and bayonet prisoners who began to fall behind, or were unable to walk. Once the surviving prisoners arrived in Balanga, the overcrowded conditions and poor hygiene caused dysentery and other diseases to rapidly spread. The Japanese failed to provide the prisoners with medical care, leaving U.S. medical personnel to tend to the sick and wounded (with few or no supplies).


In June 2001, U.S. Congressional Representative Dana Rohrabacher described and tried to explain the horrors and brutality the prisoners experienced on the march:


They were beaten, and they were starved as they marched. Those who fell were bayoneted. Some of those who fell were beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their samurai swords from horseback. The Japanese culture at that time reflected the view that any warrior who surrendered had no honor; thus was not to be treated like a human being. Thus they were not committing crimes against human beings.The Japanese soldiers at that timefelt they were dealing with subhumans and animals.




Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives)
Trucks were known to drive over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue,[10] and "cleanup crews" put to death those too weak to continue. Marchers were harassed with random bayonet stabs and beatings.


From San Fernando, the prisoners were transported by rail to Capas. One hundred or more prisoners were stuffed into each of the trains' boxcars, which were unventilated and sweltering in the tropical heat. The trains had no sanitation facilities, and disease continued to take a heavy toll of the prisoners. After they reached Capas, they were forced to walk the final 9 miles to Camp O'Donnell.[5] Even after arriving at Camp O'Donnell, the survivors of the march continued to die at a rate of 30–50 per day, leading to thousands more dead. Most of the dead were buried in mass graves the Japanese dug out with bulldozers on the outside of the barbed wire surrounding the compound.
---




Sook Ching Plan - Translating to 'Purge through cleansing', was a plan by the Japanese Military to cleanse those seen as impure or hostile, and resulted in the deaths of up to 100,000 civilians in Singapore. Several of the known massacres are listed below:
---
Punggol Beach -The Punggol Beach Massacre saw about 300 to 400 Chinese shot on 28 February 1942 by the Hojo Kempei firing squad. The victims were some of the 1,000 Chinese men detained by the Japanese after a door-to-door search along Upper Serangoon Road. Several of these had tattoos, a sign that they might be triad members.


Changi Beach/Changi Spit Beach -
On 20 February 1942, 66 Chinese males were lined up along the edge of the sea and shot by the military police. The beach was the first of the killing sites of the Sook Ching. Victims were from the Bukit Timah/Stevens Road area.


Changi Road 8-mile section - Massacre site found at a plantation area (formerly Samba Ikat village) contained remains of 250 victims from the vicinity.


Hougang 8 ms - Six lorry loads of people were reported to have been massacred here.


Katong 7 ms - 20 trenches for burying the bodies of victims were dug here.


Beach opposite 27 Amber Road - Two lorry loads of people were said to have been massacred here. The site later became a car park.


Tanah Merah Beach/Tanah Merah Besar Beach - 242 victims from Jalan Besar were massacred here. The site later became part of the Changi airport runway.


Sime Road off Thomson Road - Massacre sites found near a golf course and villages in the vicinity.


Katong, East Coast Road - 732 victims from Telok Kurau School.


Siglap area - Massacre site near Bedok South Avenue/Bedok South Road (previously known as Jalan Puay Poon).


Blakang Mati Beach, off the Sentosa Golf Course -
Surrendered British gunners awaiting Japanese internment buried some 300 bullet-ridden corpses washed up on the shore of Sentosa. They were civilians who were transported from the docks at Tanjong Pagar to be killed at sea nearby.
---


Manila Massacre
---
The Manila massacre involved the killings of at least 100,000 Filipino civilians in the city of Manila, Philippines by the Japanese troops in the Battle of Manila during World War II. The Manila massacre was one of several major war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army, as judged by the postwar military tribunal. A Japanese order dated 13 Feb. 1945, read, "When Filipinos are to be killed, they must be gathered into one place and disposed of with the consideration that ammunition and manpower must not be used to excess. Because the disposal of dead bodies is a troublesome task, they should be gathered into houses which are scheduled to be burned or demolished. They should also be thrown into the river."
---


Nanking Massacre
---
The Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanking during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The massacre occurred during a six-week period starting from December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanking, which was then the Chinese capital . During this period, between 40,000 to over 300,000 Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. Widespread rape and looting also occurred. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimated in 1948 that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the incident.China's official estimate is more than 300,000 dead based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in 1947.


Eyewitness accounts of Westerners and Chinese present at Nanking in the weeks after the fall of the city say that over the course of six weeks following the fall of Nanking, Japanese troops engaged in rape, murder, theft, arson, and other war crimes. Some of these accounts came from foreigners who opted to stay behind in order to protect Chinese civilians from harm, including the diaries of John Rabe and American Minnie Vautrin. Other accounts include first-person testimonies of Nanking Massacre survivors, eyewitness reports of journalists (both Western and Japanese), as well as the field diaries of military personnel. American missionary John Magee stayed behind to provide a 16 mm film documentary and first-hand photographs of the Nanking Massacre.


In 1937, the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun and its sister newspaper the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun covered a "contest" between two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai (向井敏明) and Tsuyoshi Noda, both from Island troops, the Japanese 16th Division, in which the two men were described as vying with one another to be the first to kill 100 people with a sword before the capture of Nanking. From Jurong to Tangshan , Toshiaki Mukai had killed 89 people while Tsuyoshi Noda had killed 78 people. The contest continued because neither of them had killed 100 people. When they got to Zijin Mountain, Tsuyoshi Noda had killed 105 people while Toshiaki Mukai killed 106 people. Both officers supposedly surpassed their goal during the heat of battle, making it impossible to determine which officer had actually won the contest. Therefore (according to the journalists Asami Kazuo and Suzuki Jiro, writing in the Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Shimbun of December 13), they decided to begin another contest, with the aim being 150 kills. The Nichi Nichi headline of the story of December 13 read "'Incredible Record' [in the Contest to] Behead 100 People—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings".


The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants and the elderly.A large portion of these rapes were systematized in a process where soldiers would search door-to-door for young girls, with many women taken captive and gang raped. The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation or by stabbing a bayonet, long stick of bamboo, or other objects into the vagina. Young children were not exempt from these atrocities, and were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them.


There are also accounts of Japanese troops forcing families to commit acts of incest. Sons were forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape daughters. One pregnant woman who was gang-raped by Japanese soldiers gave birth only a few hours later; although the baby appeared to be physically unharmed. Monks who had declared a life of celibacy were also forced to rape women.
---


Kalagong Massacre
---
On 7 July 1945, the Kalagong Massacre was committed against inhabitants of Kalagong, Burma, by members of the 3rd Battalion, 215th Regiment and the OC Moulmein Kempeitai of the Imperial Japanese Army. These units had been ordered by Major General Seiei Yamamoto, chief of staff of the 33rd Army, to sweep the area for guerrillas reportedly teamed with British paratroops.


The Japanese occupied the village and rounded up all the inhabitants for questioning. Women and children were raped and beaten but no information was forthcoming. The Kempeitai therefore ordered the entire village massacred. The inhabitants were taken in groups of five to ten persons to nearby wells, blindfolded, and bayoneted, and their bodies were dumped in the wells. An estimated 600 villagers died in the massacre.
---


Shinyo Maru Incident
---
The Shinyo Maru Incident occurred in the Philippines on September 7, 1944, in the Pacific theater of World War II. In an attack on a Japanese convoy by the American submarine USS Paddle, 687 Allied prisoners of war were massacred by the Japanese or killed when their ship, the SS Shinyo Maru was sunk. Only 82 Americans survived the ordeal and were later rescued.
---


Human Experimentation
---
Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. One of the most infamous was Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii. Unit 731 was established by order of Hirohito himself. Victims were subjected to experiments including but not limited to vivisection and amputations without anesthesia and testing of biological weapons. Anesthesia was not used because it was believed that anesthetics would adversely affect the results of the experiments.


To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.


Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. Prisoners also were repeatedly subject to rape by guards.


Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around and possibly more than 400,000 Chinese civilians. Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.


Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644 and Unit 100 among others) were involved in research, development, and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.


Weapons testing-
Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions. Flame throwers were tested on humans. Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, and explosive bombs.


Other experiments-
In other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; placed into high-pressure chambers until death; experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood; exposed to lethal doses of x-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline solution; and burned or buried alive.


The experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths. Furthermore, according to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000. According to other sources, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many as 400,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases ...", resulting from the use of biological warfare. Top officers of Unit 731 were not prosecuted for war crimes after the war, in exchange for turning over the results of their research to the Allies. They were also reportedly given responsible positions in Japan's pharmaceutical industry, medical schools and health ministry.


One case of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine out of 11 crew members survived the crash of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on May 5, 1945. (This plane was Lt. Marvin Watkins' crew of the 29th Bomb Group of the 6th Bomb Squadron.) The bomber's commander was separated from his crew and sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.
---


Use of Chemical Weapons
---
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were used only sporadically in 1937, but in early 1938 the Imperial Japanese Army began full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite and nausea gas (red), and from mid-1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communist Chinese troops.


According to Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito signed orders specifying the use of chemical weapons in China. For example, during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite the 1899 Hague Declaration IV, 2 - Declaration on the Use of Projectiles the Object of Which is the Diffusion of Asphyxiating or Deleterious Gases[91] and Article 23 (a) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land. A resolution adopted by the League of Nations on 14 May condemned the use of poison gas by Japan.


Another example is the Battle of Yichang in October 1941, during which the 19th Artillery Regiment helped the 13th Brigade of the IJA 11th Army by launching 1,000 yellow gas shells and 1,500 red gas shells at the Chinese forces. The area was crowded with Chinese civilians unable to evacuate. Some 3,000 Chinese soldiers were in the area and 1,600 were affected. The Japanese report stated that "the effect of gas seems considerable".


In 2004, Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka discovered in the Australian National Archives documents showing that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 on Kai Islands (Indonesia).
---


Torture of prisoners of war
---
An Australian POW, Sgt. Leonard Siffleet, captured in New Guinea, about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a guntō, 1943.
Japanese imperial forces employed widespread use of torture on prisoners, usually in an effort to gather military intelligence quickly.[95] Tortured prisoners were often later executed. A former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:


"The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the Yamato race [i.e., Japanese] was superior."
---


Cannibalism
---
Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel in many parts of Asia and the Pacific committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. In many cases this was inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel as a result of hunger. According to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers". This frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies. For example, an Indian POW, Havildar Changdi Ram, testified that: "[on November 12, 1944] the Kempeitai beheaded [an Allied] pilot. I saw this from behind a tree and watched some of the Japanese cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, buttocks and carry it off to their quarters ... They cut it [into] small pieces and fried it."


In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified in New Guinea and stated:


"... the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles [80 km] away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died."


Perhaps the most senior officer convicted of cannibalism was Lt Gen. Yoshio Tachibana, who with 11 other Japanese personnel was tried in August 1946 in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, during August 1944, on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands. The airmen were beheaded on Tachibana's orders. Because military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". Tachibana was sentenced to death, and hanged.


Forced labor
---
Australian and Dutch prisoners of war at Tarsau in Thailand, 1943.
The Japanese military's use of forced labor, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilised by the Kōa-in (Japanese Asia Development Board) for forced labour.[109] More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway.


The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.[111] About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.


According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor Hirohito personally ratified the decision to remove the constraints of international law (Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)) on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of 5 August 1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war". The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. Japan was not a signatory to the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention, although they ratified the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Sick And Wounded.


Comfort women
---


The terms "comfort women" (慰安婦 ianfu?) or "military comfort women" (従軍慰安婦 jūgun-ianfu?) are euphemisms for women in Japanese military brothels in occupied countries, who were often recruited by deception or abducted and forced into sexual slavery.


In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published material based on his research in archives at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial institutions such as the Kōain and "comfort stations". When Yoshimi's findings were published in the Japanese news media on 12 January 1993, they caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi, to acknowledge some of the facts that same day. On 17 January Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in South Korea. On 6 July and 4 August, the Japanese government issued two statements by which it recognised that "Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military of the day", "The Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women" and that the women were "recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion".


The controversy was re-ignited on 1 March 2007, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mentioned suggestions that a U.S. House of Representatives committee would call on the Japanese Government to "apologise for and acknowledge" the role of the Japanese Imperial military in wartime sex slavery. Abe denied that it applied to comfort stations. "There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it."[114] Abe's comments provoked negative reactions overseas. For example, a New York Times editorial on March 6 said:


These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army's involvement is documented in the government's own defense files. A senior Tokyo official more or less apologized for this horrific crime in 1993 ... Yesterday, he grudgingly acknowledged the 1993 quasi apology, but only as part of a pre-emptive declaration that his government would reject the call, now pending in the United States Congress, for an official apology. America isn't the only country interested in seeing Japan belatedly accept full responsibility. Korea, China, and the Philippines are also infuriated by years of Japanese equivocations over the issue.


The same day, veteran soldier Yasuji Kaneko admitted to The Washington Post that the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."


On 17 April 2007, Yoshimi and another historian, Hirofumi Hayashi, announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.


On May 12, 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Netherland government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.


In other cases, some victims from East Timor testified they were forced when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers.


A Dutch-Indonesian comfort woman, Jan Ruff-O'Hearn (now resident in Australia), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims and that it wanted to rewrite history. Ruff-O'Hearn said that she had been raped "day and night" for three months by Japanese soldiers when she was 19.


Only one Japanese woman published her testimony. In 1971 a former comfort woman, forced to work for Japanese soldiers in Taiwan, published her memoirs under the pseudonym of Suzuko Shirota.


There are different theories on the breakdown of the comfort women's place of origin. While some Japanese sources claim that the majority of the women were from Japan, others, including Yoshimi, argue as many as 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, and some other countries such as the Philippines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Netherlands, and Australia were forced to engage in sexual activity.


On 26 June 2007, the U.S. House of representatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution asking that Japan "should acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its military's coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war".On 30 July 2007, the House of Representatives passed the resolution, while Shinzo Abe said this decision was "regrettable"

[FlexGod]

That is a lot ,but can America afford to lose trade with Japan? Question not a statement ; really i'm just wondering is their anything that japan has that we can't get anywhere else in the world?


Do you have a source so I can show it to my ROTC teachers and classmates.

(We have to openly speak about something and I was gonna talk about why we should have nuked North Korea but this is already nicely put together.)

[[MPGH]Doc]

That is a lot ,but can America afford to lose trade with Japan? Question not a statement ; really i'm just wondering is their anything that japan has that we can't get anywhere else in the world?


Do you have a source so I can show it to my ROTC teachers and classmates.

(We have to openly speak about something and I was gonna talk about why we should have nuked North Korea but this is already nicely put together.)

Japan only has luxury items for sale. They have no capitol resources to trade with anyone I'm pretty sure they aren't even close to a major buyer of resources either. Of course trade will be impacted (that would happen if any kind of lateral trade agreement were to end), but not in any severe way. Just no more Playstations.

[Jvk]

i just scrolled down to the comments

[Empire]

That is a lot ,but can America afford to lose trade with Japan? Question not a statement ; really i'm just wondering is their anything that japan has that we can't get anywhere else in the world?


Do you have a source so I can show it to my ROTC teachers and classmates.

(We have to openly speak about something and I was gonna talk about why we should have nuked North Korea but this is already nicely put together.)

Japan only has luxury items for sale. They have no capitol resources to trade with anyone I'm pretty sure they aren't even close to a major buyer of resources either. Of course trade will be impacted (that would happen if any kind of lateral trade agreement were to end), but not in any severe way. Just no more Playstations.

Guys, this is explaining the WWII bombing....

[[MPGH]Doc]

Guys, this is explaining the WWII bombing....

Was just replying to flex's question which seem to assume that trade would stop at present time.

[Empire]

Was just replying to flex's question which seem to assume that trade would stop at present time.

Ah, he didn't understand that it was WWII and thought we should currently nuke Japan though.

[Cloud_9]

Coulda sworn I seen that exact post somewhere else.....

Nowadays Japan is a strategic island that supplies/supports our Seventh Fleet. Not sure whether or not losing trade with Japan would set us back that far.

[Aborted]

Coulda sworn I seen that exact post somewhere else.....

Nowadays Japan is a strategic island that supplies/supports our Seventh Fleet. Not sure whether or not losing trade with Japan would set us back that far.

'deserved to be nuked'
'deserved'
'deserve' 'd'

[Empire]

'deserved to be nuked'
'deserved'
'deserve' 'd'

You'd think they'd read the comments at least. Well at least they read the article i guess?

[Auxilium]

Coulda sworn I seen that exact post somewhere else.....

Nowadays Japan is a strategic island that supplies/supports our Seventh Fleet. Not sure whether or not losing trade with Japan would set us back that far.

Japan was the United States' 4th largest goods export market in 2013.
U.S. goods exports to Japan in 2013 were $65.1 billion

Japan was the United States' 4th largest supplier of goods imports in 2013.
U.S. goods imports from Japan totaled $138.5 billion in 2013
The five largest import categories in 2013 were: Vehicles ($49.8 billion), Machinery ($30.5 billion), Electrical Machinery ($18.4 billion), Optic and Medical Instruments ($6.6 billion), and Aircraft ($3.8 billion).

You're retarded

[Auxilium]

OT: to think people still talk about this

[Empire]

OT: to think people still talk about this

Well you'd be surprised how many anti-american people bring up the japan bombing.

[SomethingCreative]

That is a LOT of massacres. Holy shit. I knew they did lots, but .. holy fuck. Has anyone added all the deaths together?

[Cloud_9]

You're retarded

The third sentence was aimed to be sarcastic. Sadly you didn't get it.