What If Japan faced war crime trials?
- Thread starter Joseph Weaver
- Start date
Really, They seem to be the same, maybe much worst as they killed up to 1/5 to 1/4 of the population of the islands. If Aguinaldo marched to Manila and storms the American positions after they attacked the Filipino forces in Santa Mesa and successfully had Mckinley and co withdraw and recognize PI, I dont think the Philippines will go like the US.
Examples of US attrocities include killing all people above ten in Samar
PI doesnt even wanted independence immediately after the ww2, they wanted time to rebuild with US aid then independence like what Roosevelt promised if I remember correctly. the US abandoned PI, a war torn country that can be compared to Poland to the extent of damage
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I'm puzzled. How does 250,000 civilian dead out of a population of 6.6 million (1901) come out to 1/5-1/4 of the population killed off?
My impression is that Quezon and Osmeña were adamant about holding the U.S. to the 1946 independence timeline.
TBH three big factors
1). were are you standing and who you are talking to, if you are in China or SEAisa yep they know (not so much in Japan though ironically). Or if you had POWs coming home from those areas.
2). We often tend to use one horrific events as short hand for all of them if they all took place at roughly teh same time for roughly the same reasons,
3). Sheer numbness at the frankly large numbers of mass murders etc committed by the axis. And there always seems to be new one to learn about.
The issue is the axis pretty much just killed everywhere they went, either as direct goal or as a natural result of their policies. Take Indonesia (Dutch East Indies at the time), so OK they were conquered and occupied in 1942. Now the Indonesians were not targeted by Japanese racial ideology any more than any other SEAsian nation, so there was no extermination effort like you saw with German death camps, they were just there and they had resources the Japanese wanted so became part of their Japanese empire. But 3-4m died in about 4 years as a direct result of Japanese policies there
Agreed, though perhaps not on the "much worse" part. As a Filipino far too many people forget the US' own dark history in this country.
Arguably the biggest difference between the American and Japanese conquests is that the American one happened 40 years earlier - and thus fainter in historical memory.
Of course that is not to imply they are totally the same[1]; I suppose the Americans were better in that they did eventually grant us independence (if still with neo-colonial baggage - as a quid-pro-quo for "freedom" they passed a law that gave US corporations access to our natural resources for a couple of decades)
[1] But rather to say there were more similarities than differences
There are estimates that a million were killed, but even that doesn't reach 1/5.
Philippine population is about 7.8M in 1898 and 8M in 1900 the estimates of deaths are mainly ranging 200K to 2M in worst case. where did u get ur population, it seems that its too low
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It's not only the Filipinos that wanted independence. The U.S. saw that holding on to the Philippines for another 10 years would be waste of resources. Hence, this is why the Tydings-McDuffie Act was signed in 1934 to give transition for eventual independence by 1945. WWII delayed by another year.
Even though independent, the U.S. continued to house bases in the Philippines until 1992.
In practice, by the time the Tokyo War Crime Tribunals started Americans just wanted to get them over with as quickly as possible. Pretty much everyone involved in the process thought the Tribunals pretty much as a joke because there were so many issues in how they were organized.
Some info I got from Reddit regarding Masanobu Tsuji
One user said, Guomindang, said:
One user said, Guomindang, said:
ComradeCommissary said:
I suppose that trying and hanging him in Manila would have been merciful compared to whatever Chinese red guards likely did to him.
Still, it ought to have been us (and the Filipinos) who dished out the justice to him.
Still, it ought to have been us (and the Filipinos) who dished out the justice to him.
Tsuji struck a deal with the Chinese communists or the the Chinese communists made a deal with him that they will let him live as long as he would undermine U.S.-Japan relations in the post-war world. Communists and the followers of the Pan-Asian belief have something in common: wanting foreign influence out. So naturally, Tsuji would be a useful tool for Beijing. They did let him go in 1948 and once he returned to Japan, he ran for politics in 1952.
The Japanese even erected a statue for Tsuji which is just as controversial as Yasukuni Shrine.
I was referring to the reports of what may have happened to him in 1961-62, not in 1945-48.
But yes, his reception when he returned to Japan in 1948 was disgraceful - more than just "a bit stomach churning." It's a black mark on MacArthur's record that he didn't have him run to ground as soon as word got out that he was back.
That's one of those questions that will remain unsolved. Not much reference materials available nor has the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the PRC, and the CIA have a say on it.
Found some interesting reference material.
Someone brought up why Unit 731 was more horrible than Nazi experiments. The Front has a video of it:
Someone brought up why Unit 731 was more horrible than Nazi experiments. The Front has a video of it:
There's a similar thread regarding aged Nazi criminals especially the recent escapee that was captured.
Fleeing Nazi is going to be forced to face justice.
You see the comments that even trying a 96 year old would bring justice for the victims. The same would have happened if notorious war criminals like Masanobu Tsuji or Josef Mengele were given the fair trial and punishment.kham_coc
Banned
You do know the vast majority of these 90 year old being charged didn't flee?
They just weren't charged at the time, their primary crime seems to have been surviving until their numbers became manageable.
More about that at the time, after a while it was thought that keep going after them will have weakned the West German goverment so they simply stop looking after them, like in Italy they have kept all the documentation but never really pursued them unless they have committed some real horrible crime