Comfort Women

[TerryMathews]

A lot of what Dari is saying is rightfully being called out on nonsense, but his general theory on war is something I agree with. We can pretend that they are rules to it, but they're consistently broken as the situation befits, and that will never change.

From the above, I'd dispute that pretending to negotiate while secretly launching a surprise attack is always a bad thing. If Churchill and Roosevelt could have negotiated with Hitler and in doing so had weakened part of the defences that the soldiers faced on D-Day, I'd be all for it.

Using captured soldiers as labour (not sure why the word slave is included as it's not going to be voluntary either way) can be inhumane, but if you're locked in a life and death struggle and your own soldiers are busy enough doing battle to dig trenches and build basic fortifications, are you always going to opt to leave POWs sitting in their pens?

If you're defending territory in the winter and food is scarce to non-existent, do you keep feeding everyone, or do you execute some or all of your POWs and feed your own men for as long as possible?

I can even see the intentional bombing of civilian homes, hospitals, schools and so forth being justifiable if it brings a war to a close sooner. It all depends how dire things are.

In 220 years we have never made war in the manner you are suggesting. Vietnam came close to your last point, but we at least made the pretense of destroying VC staging areas.

I mean there's nothing to debate here. Some people have morals and some don't. You and I will never agree on this.

 

[yllus]

In 220 years we have never made war in the manner you are suggesting. Vietnam came close to your last point, but we at least made the pretense of destroying VC staging areas.

I mean there's nothing to debate here. Some people have morals and some don't. You and I will never agree on this.

I don't know or particularly care what "we" (Americans, I presume) have done, though you are incredibly unlikely to be correct in your claim in any case. It's actually rather hilarious that you're trying to make out like the U.S. has an unblemished record of wartime conduct. Either way I was speaking as to humanity as a whole when engaged in warfare.

There is plenty of debate to be had here. You're welcome to take your leave and not take part in it, though, but the fact is the debate is already in progress.

 

[Dari]

My Aunt and most of her family where interned in a Japanese concentration camp for 4 years, she lost her mother to the inhuman conditions they where placed in, kindly fuck off

What the fuck is this? Your sob story is supposed to make me hold back? I know people I've met who did not make it back. There, are we equal now???

 

[CallMeJoe]

It's amusing that Dari so carefully distinguishes between the Imperial Japanese military and the Imperial Japanese civilian government when the head of that civilian government, the Prime Minister of Imperial Japan, was Army Minister General Hideki Tojo...

...and Home Minister...

...and Foreign Minister...

...and Minister of Commerce and Industry...

 

[TerryMathews]

I don't know or particularly care what "we" (Americans, I presume) have done, though you are incredibly unlikely to be correct in your claim in any case. It's actually rather hilarious that you're trying to make out like the U.S. has an unblemished record of wartime conduct. Either way I was speaking as to humanity as a whole when engaged in warfare.

There is plenty of debate to be had here. You're welcome to take your leave and not take part in it, though, but the fact is the debate is already in progress.

Your free to prove me wrong, however we didn't even treat the Indians in the manner you are suggesting and that is regarded by many to be our darkest moment.

Seriously? Execute prisoners so you don't have to feed them? That might actually be more morally reprehensible than what the Nazis did.

 

[Infohawk]

A lot of what Dari is saying is rightfully being called out on nonsense, but his general theory on war is something I agree with. We can pretend that they are rules to it, but they're consistently broken as the situation befits, and that will never change.

Are you sure? His general theory (to the extent he has one that is coherent) is that might makes right and that it's victims fault when there are atrocities.

Regarding life or death situations, this explains total war but not things like raping babies or even raping women. Those are precisely the kinds of things that we label atrocities and want people to remember so that they are not repeated.

 

[Dari]

Are you sure? His general theory (to the extent he has one that is coherent) is that might makes right and that it's victims fault when there are atrocities.

Regarding life or death situations, this explains total war but not things like raping babies or even raping women. Those are precisely the kinds of things that we label atrocities and want people to remember so that they are not repeated.

Now there are accusations that the Japanese raped babies? Man, this bullshit never ends. Pathetic. Also, I never said blame the victims. I said the victims should blame their leadership for failing them. The Instead of the Chinese, koreans, or whoever, blaming Japan is too easy. They need to look at what went wrong with their own defenses and learn to fix that. But the politicians got to them good. The politicians found a convenient scapegoat in Japan for what happened. No, it was not the leaders of those countries' failed response. It was Japan. It is no different when a crime is committed in this country. Blame the security forces for failing to protect you. Blaming the criminals will do nothing. Same thing for 9/11. Blaming bin Laden will do nothing. Blame the US Government for failing America.

 

[TerryMathews]

Now there are accusations that the Japanese raped babies? Man, this bullshit never ends. Pathetic. Also, I never said blame the victims. I said the victims should blame their leadership for failing them. The Instead of the Chinese, koreans, or whoever, blaming Japan is too easy. They need to look at what went wrong with their own defenses and learn to fix that. But the politicians got to them good. The politicians found a convenient scapegoat in Japan for what happened. No, it was not the leaders of those countries' failed response. It was Japan. It is no different when a crime is committed in this country. Blame the security forces for failing to protect you. Blaming the criminals will do nothing. Same thing for 9/11. Blaming bin Laden will do nothing. Blame the US Government for failing America.

I'm glad we finally see eye to eye: the WW2 Japanese government was criminal.

 

[yllus]

Are you sure? His general theory (to the extent he has one that is coherent) is that might makes right and that it's victims fault when there are atrocities.

Regarding life or death situations, this explains total war but not things like raping babies or even raping women. Those are precisely the kinds of things that we label atrocities and want people to remember so that they are not repeated.

I think that the idea that it's the government of a civilian population that is at fault is sort of interesting but ultimately incorrect. If you are the leader of France and Nazi Germany's superior numbers and arms have overrun you, is it your fault that thousands of your people have died and will continue to die in a unwinnable war? No, that's ridiculous - the aggressor is ultimately at fault for that.

But I do think the leaders of France could be blamed for having poor intelligence on what exactly was brewing in Germany, for having inferior troop numbers, training and equipment, for not having the right alliances in place that would make the Nazis blink, and so forth. The leaders of France did let their people down in some ways. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the ultimate burden of guilt fell upon them, though.

 

[Dari]

I think that the idea that it's the government of a civilian population that is at fault is sort of interesting but ultimately incorrect. If you are the leader of France and Nazi Germany's superior numbers and arms have overrun you, is it your fault that thousands of your people have died and will continue to die in a unwinnable war? No, that's ridiculous - the aggressor is ultimately at fault for that.

But I do think the leaders of France could be blamed for having poor intelligence on what exactly was brewing in Germany, for having inferior troop numbers, training and equipment, for not having the right alliances in place that would make the Nazis blink, and so forth. The leaders of France did let their people down in some ways. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the ultimate burden of guilt fell upon them, though.

You have two choices: fight or flee. Either decision you will own forever. There is no hiding behind that. If the government was less concerned about its own survival and more about it's people's then it would've sued for peace.

 

[CallMeJoe]

You have two choices: fight or flee. Either decision you will own forever. There is no hiding behind that. If the government was less concerned about its own survival and more about it's people's then it would've sued for peace.

Are you actually so disingenuous that you pretend Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany would have forgone the subjugation and brutalization of surrendered populations?

 

[Dari]

Are you actually so disingenuous that you pretend Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany would have forgone the subjugation and brutalization of surrendered populations?

Do you have proof that they did such a thing? Countries that bowed to Germany became allies, more or less, and their people were free to do as they please...except for those the Nazis wanted. In that instance, they asked the allied nation to hand over certain people. That does not sound like enslavement to me...

 

[HarryLui]

Dari, read first. Conclude later.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants and the elderly.[40] 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.[41] The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation[42] or by stabbing a bayonet, long stick of bamboo,[43] 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

On 19 December 1937, Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:

I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet ... People are hysterical ... Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.[44]

Still think the women/children were willing?

 

[TerryMathews]

Do you have proof that they did such a thing? Countries that bowed to Germany became allies, more or less, and their people were free to do as they please...except for those the Nazis wanted. In that instance, they asked the allied nation to hand over certain people. That does not sound like enslavement to me...

You know the Nazis made the Jews work before they implemented "The Final Solution" yes? In some cases, they had to build their own gas chambers.

Oh wait, I'm talking to Dari. There's probably no proof of the Holocaust in your history book either.

 

[Dari]

Dari, read first. Conclude later.






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre






Still think the women/children were willing?

Raping babies? Sounds like a fantastic story to me. I don't believe it. Raping women? More believable. But I fail to see what this has to do with comfort women. Are they alleging that they were part of the group?

 

[Dari]

You know the Nazis made the Jews work before they implemented "The Final Solution" yes? In some cases, they had to build their own gas chambers.

Oh wait, I'm talking to Dari. There's probably no proof of the Holocaust in your history book either.

What does what you wrote have to do with what I wrote?

 

[HarryLui]

Raping babies? Sounds like a fantastic story to me. I don't believe it. Raping women? More believable. But I fail to see what this has to do with comfort women. Are they alleging that they were part of the group?

Are you reading what you want to read or are you reading the actual text?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

There is no mention of raping babies in the text. I searched, baby came up three times.

There are lots of mentions of children being rape.


But then, even first line of text of the url posted by you stated

The term "comfort women" was a euphemism used to describe women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.[1][2]

Also, according to this wiki page (link)

What you're failing to see is that Japanese military forced women to became sexual slaves. Maybe there is 0.0001% of women wanted that, but you don't recognized is that majority of women were being taken from their homes, from college, from work place, from the street to be "comfort women".

 

[TerryMathews]

What does what you wrote have to do with what I wrote?

You said the Germans didn't enslave anyone. Patently false.

 

[Dari]

You said the Germans didn't enslave anyone. Patently false.

You must have a difficult time understanding since this is not the first time you've misunderstood what I wrote. I said the Germans did not enslave the people of nations that submitted to their will without a fight. I said those nations became nominal allies. What they do, however, was request that certain people from those countries be brought under German command and control. The keyword being request...

 

[Dari]

Are you reading what you want to read or are you reading the actual text?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

There is no mention of raping babies in the text. I searched, baby came up three times.

There are lots of mentions of children being rape.


But then, even first line of text of the url posted by you stated






What you're failing to see is that Japanese military forced women to became sexual slaves. Maybe there is 0.0001% of women wanted that, but you don't recognized is that majority of women were being taken from their homes, from college, from work place, from the street to be "comfort women".

It's right there in the link you quoted:

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants

Also, comfort women was used in the Korean War. These were prostitutes, all of them.

 

[TerryMathews]

You must have a difficult time understanding since this is not the first time you've misunderstood what I wrote. I said the Germans did not enslave the people of nations that submitted to their will without a fight. I said those nations became nominal allies. What they do, however, was request that certain people from those countries be brought under German command and control. The keyword being request...

A request under the threat of a gun is not a request.

 

[Dari]

A request under the threat of a gun is not a request.

The guns have not been drawn since they are allies. But your play on semantics changes nothing.

 

[piasabird]

Well the USA bombed the cities of japan with a crude form of napalm. It was all out war with no rules. However, this was all because japan elected to invade other countries and torture and starve to death their prisoners and everything else they wanted to get away with. We should have learned our lesson and figured out there is no such thing as a kinder gentler war. The object of War is not to die for your country but to make some other bast... die for his country! If some country invades, they I feel we have the right to kill all their women and children down to the last man woman and boy.

 

[TerryMathews]

The guns have not been drawn since they are allies. But your play on semantics changes nothing.

Right. Because I'm sure the conversation was "you know, we've been thinking about this Jew situation and off you don't mind too much we'd like to take care of it for you."

I imagine it was "if you want to be allies, load your Jews on this box car. If not, we'll be invading Friday."

None of the German protectorates were allies in the traditional voluntary sense. Just like the USSR - it was voluntary until you wanted to leave.

 

[CallMeJoe]

Do you have proof that they did such a thing? Countries that bowed to Germany became allies, more or less, and their people were free to do as they please...except for those the Nazis wanted. In that instance, they asked the allied nation to hand over certain people. That does not sound like enslavement to me...

There's a great deal of wiggle room in your "more or less". A lot of citizens of these "allies, more or less" ended up in labor camps and death camps. I suppose they were all volunteers, like the "comfort women"?


Since it appears you can still read my posts, have you any response to my previous:

It's amusing that Dari so carefully distinguishes between the Imperial Japanese military and the Imperial Japanese civilian government when the head of that civilian government, the Prime Minister of Imperial Japan, was Army Minister General Hideki Tojo...
...and Home Minister...
...and Foreign Minister...
...and Minister of Commerce and Industry...