IHT: 'No massacre in Nanking,' Japanese lawmakers say
About 100 Japanese governing party lawmakers denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication on Tuesday, contesting Chinese claims that Japanese soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of people after seizing the Chinese city in 1937. The members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party said there was no evidence to prove mass killings by Japanese soldiers in the captured Nationalist capital, then known as Nanking. They accused Beijing of using the alleged incident as a "political advertisement." Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group created to study World War II historical issues and education, said documents from the Japanese government's archives indicated that about 20,000 people were killed - about one-tenth of the more commonly cited figure of 150,000 to 200,000 - in the 1937 attack...more...

You see? There was no massacre.

And even if there was, there were only 20'000 deaths, so it's not really a massacre anyway.
I mean, something like 500'000 is a massacre... this gig was more of a slaughter...

Mulboyne wrote:

IHT: 'No massacre in Nanking,' Japanese lawmakers say
About 100 Japanese governing party lawmakers denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication on Tuesday, contesting Chinese claims that Japanese soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of people after seizing the Chinese city in 1937. The members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party said there was no evidence to prove mass killings by Japanese soldiers in the captured Nationalist capital, then known as Nanking. They accused Beijing of using the alleged incident as a "political advertisement." Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group created to study World War II historical issues and education, said documents from the Japanese government's archives indicated that about 20,000 people were killed - about one-tenth of the more commonly cited figure of 150,000 to 200,000 - in the 1937 attack...more...

Why is there such a resurgence of stories regarding revisionists in the J-government? It was always known that Japanese conservatives seek to deny or impugn evidence of the atrocities that their own government committed in WWII. I suppose this is linked to the US Congress's resolution on the issue?

Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group, said members could not let "lies and deceit be spread around the world" on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the city's fall. He was referring to a number of coming movies about Nanjing, including one based on Iris Chang's best-selling book, The Rape of Nanking. "We cannot overlook a propaganda film that portrays the Japanese as a brutal race," Mr. Nakayama said. "We cannot allow that for the sake of Japanese honour."

From here

kamome wrote:Why is there such a resurgence of stories regarding revisionists in the J-government? It was always known that Japanese conservatives seek to deny or impugn evidence of the atrocities that their own government committed in WWII. I suppose this is linked to the US Congress's resolution on the issue?

I think you're spot on there Bird. I believe it offers the chance in the rebuff of the comfort kitties question to throw in inconsistancies of the Nanking incidents, so they can disavow that also at the same time.

Might as well tidey up all the old messes at one time!

[quote="amdg"]They just don’]
Surely you aren't surprised at this reaction. It is only natural that your compatriots would prefer not to remember how a few Japanese bombers destroyed the entire Royal Ozzie Air Force while it was still sitting in its hangars.



But let us now pause and commemorate the sacrifices of those who were killed or wounded, and those who bravely abandoned their posts and ran away in the face of persistent Japanese air attacks that continued for many long weeks and months after it became obvious that Darwin had no military importance whatsoever and the attacks were merely a diversionary tactic.

gboothe wrote:Incidentally, the Japanese ships with support troops and equipment in route to the south (Port Moresby) for the invasion of the Australia, were destroyed when information on the ship movements was obtained in the Philippines by Dick Sakakida (a Nisei CIC spy in the Imperial Staff in Manila) and funnelled to the US Command through the PI underground.

I didn't know that. Very cool indeed!

amdg wrote:I didn't know that. Very cool indeed!

You might want to google Richard M. Sakakida (now deceased). I worked with Dick way back when. Here is what they read into the congressional record about him!

I love their sources of information -Japanese newspapers of the time and offical documents that were not burned at the end of the war.

Using such reliable sources I can affirm to you that the Japanese won the Battle of Midway sinking two American carriers while only losing one of their own. This was followed up two years later by a major victory for the Japanese at the Battle of the Philippines Sea in which he American fleet was destroyed.

dimwit wrote:I love their sources of information -Japanese newspapers of the time and offical documents that were not burned at the end of the war.

Using such reliable sources I can affirm to you that the Japanese won the Battle of Midway sinking two American carriers while only losing one of their own. This was followed up two years later by a major victory for the Japanese at the Battle of the Philippines Sea in which he American fleet was destroyed.

I think there were about five major battles in each one where the American fleet was totally destroyed. Americans must have had a lot of fleets in those days.

gboothe wrote:I think there were about five major battles in each one where the American fleet was totally destroyed. Americans most have had a lot of fleets in those days.

Nothing compared to all the reports of decisive Nazi victories on the eastern front. Problem was that time passed these victories moved closer and closer to the heimat

Wasn't there a similar progression in the J-propaganda? Starting off at Hawaii and ending up in Okinawa...

gboothe wrote:You might want to google Richard M. Sakakida (now deceased). I worked with Dick way back when. Here is what they read into the congressional record about him!

Wow. I don't know what to say, other than that guy had balls of steel.

amdg wrote:Wow. I don't know what to say, other than that guy had balls of steel.

You might want to read his book. It is on Amazon and will not likely be the great novel of the century, but it is a amazing read if you are interested in that sort of a thing.

The J-warrant officer (who Taketampo would like) that was in charge of his interrogation, hung him up by his arms and burnt the shape of a Chrysanthemum on his johnson with cigarettes, so that he would "remember" that he was a Japanese.

The people who knew him had no knowledge of his story until Army Military Intelligence formed their Hall of Fame and Sakakida was later put in for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mulboyne wrote:

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Hey Melbourne,
You should distinguish between whether Japan try to deny so-called "Nankin Masscre" or not and whether Japan try to justify aggression itself against China.
The two issue is different ones each other.
Personally I deny so-called "Nankin Masscre",
but I never deny ex-Japan army's invasion against China.
Needless to say, apparently ex-J-army invaded China.
But so-called "Nanjin Masscre" didnt exist at all.

Well, then. If we are playing the numbers game perhaps the world should ignore the handful of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korea.

gboothe wrote:You might want to google Richard M. Sakakida (now deceased). I worked with Dick way back when. Here is what they read into the congressional record about him!

What an amazing read - that's crying out for a movie. There's very few in history, or even fiction, that could compare to Colonel Sakakida. RIP

chuckles should play former US Sergeant Provoo.

TFG wrote:Well, then. If we are playing the numbers game perhaps the world should ignore the handful of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korea.

there were no nationals kidnapped... in fact there is no proof. THe government did some research to prove what it wanted to prove thereby alleviating its own conscience...

The "so-called" abductees willingly left for a better life... they wanted to return to the good old days of civic repression, a military dictatorship, cult of personality/emperor worship...

Takechanpoo wrote:You should distinguish between whether Japan try to deny so-called "Nankin Masscre" or not and whether Japan try to justify aggression itself against China.

I have no problem distinguishing between the two issues. I do believe that the history of the Nanking Massacre is more complex than it is represented in the English language press (here's an interesting summary of the debate).

I also don't think the numbers issue is completely irrelevant. We seem to have settled on six million as the number of victims of the Nazi holocaust and deniers are rightly excoriated. We don't, though, have to deal with anyone claiming that true number was 12 million. Chinese sources do, however, claim that 300,000 died at Nanking and that number is almost certainly inflated by a similar factor or more.

What is the proper response to this claim? Here again is the statement in English from Nariaki Nakayama referring to an upcoming film which will likely suggest the higher totals:

"We cannot overlook a propaganda film that portrays the Japanese as a brutal race," Mr. Nakayama said. "We cannot allow that for the sake of Japanese honour."

And yet the Japanese army was brutal and did act without honour. Nanking may not have led to the deaths of 300,000 but it was an atrocity. The 100 lawmakers may have a genuine beef with Chinese hyperbole but the right response is not to portray Nanking as a typical military action conducted according to international norms. Much of the antagonism over Nanking and the comfort women issues arises because there is a school of thought in Japan which appears to say "our army wasn't capable of doing that; our laws didn't allow that to happen". It seems to me that the rest of the world might show more accommodation to Japan over numbers if it was more explicitly acknowledged that the Japanese army certainly was capable of atrocities and troops on the ground often treated prisoners and citizens of occupied countries inhumanely regardless of what a piece of paper in Tokyo might have ordered.

I've been to Nanjing and interviewed a survivor - woman in her late 70's. She has scars from being bayonetted and shot when she was just a girl of 6 or 7. The real atrocity with this event was that it occurred over a period of time - not just a singular 'massacre' , but ongoing for more than a year. Japanese military would round groups of civilians and use them for target practice, rape practice, kendo practice, bayonette practice and a variety of other inhumanities.

From a 2003 Canadian conference:
[SIZE="4"]Riben Guizi - Confessions of Imperial Army Soldiers from Japan's War Against China [/SIZE]

Director: Minoru Matsui, Producer: Ken'ichi Oguri, Japan. 2000. Winner of Special Documentary Film Award, 2001, Internationales Dokumentar film festival, Munchen

The Japanese military considered itself bound to the "divine" Emperor and was thus convinced of the uniqueness and supremacy of the Japanese race. Inspired by this conviction, it committed indescribable atrocities first in China and then throughout Southeast Asia. Across the region, Japanese soldiers were feared as "soldiers of the devil".

This film contains the admissions of a total of fourteen former soldiers of the imperial army. They are very different in terms of their background, education and profession. Their military ranks range from that of simple soldier to officer, from military doctor to military policeman. Today, half a century after the Second World War, the Japanese society has undoubtedly changed. However, it has yet to confront its own past, let alone investigate the war crimes it committed. Already two-thirds of the population belong to the post-war generation. The memories of the war will soon disappear from Japanese minds, and that before the issue of Japanese guilt has ever been properly settled.

"The victims of war often talk about their experiences, while the perpetrators remain silent. But it is from the words of the perpetrators in particular that we can gain important insight into human behavioural patterns in times of war. It is important at the present time to discover how normal people like our own grandfathers and fathers themselves became perpetrators and war criminals, and what they really did."

[SIZE="4"]"Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."[/SIZE]

"The Japanese military considered itself bound to the "divine" Emperor and was thus convinced of the uniqueness and supremacy of the Japanese race. Inspired by this conviction, it committed indescribable atrocities first in China and then throughout Southeast Asia. Across the region, Japanese soldiers were feared as "soldiers of the devil".

This is total b$ -- they were simply consumed by greed, power and mayhem. I grew up in East LA and would see gangbangers drink, shoot up then do basically the same shit. I saw them kick a small dog, then torture it merciless - ended hanging it on a chain link fence, still alive, then running around taking pot shots at it. Finally they ripped it off the fence, still breathing - minus a leg or two - then kicked it around on the ground like a soccer ball - it finally died. I called the police - then had serious second thoughts - if the police DID come - the gangbangers would know for sure it was me who called - and I would be 'on the fence next'. This is EXACTLY how the Jap military acted in the rural areas of China. Divine bullshit - it wasn't until they awoke 'the sleeping beast' that anyone had the balls (or weapons) to cap their flat asses.

Don't get me wrong - Mao was no saint - be he sure didn't pull this shit until way after the Japanese were gone -- then of course -- he learned well from them, too. Pograms all have the same attributes - whether it's the Crusades, Stalin, Mao, Hirohito, PolPot, etc --- megolomanics have no place in society except to reap havoc, despair and tragedy. Sadly it continues still.

It's not a matter of studying history - this is another b$ statement. History of these things have been well known for more than 4000 yrs. - it's a matter of a strong(er) force and leader having enough balls to cut this crap short.

Ex-J-army did atrocities not only in Nanjin but also all over China.
There was not masscre or holocaust but just atrocity in Nanjin.

Takechanpoo wrote:Ex-J-army did atrocities not only in Nanjin but also all over China.
There was not masscre or holocaust but just atrocity in Nanjin.

Japan deserved to be nuked and your fucking emperor should have been hanged.

Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group created to study World War II historical issues and education, said documents from the Japanese government's archives indicated that about 20,000 people were killed

It sort of reminds me in a converse way of how teenage boys lie about the number of girls they have laid. I suspect some of the same testosterone (or in the case of LDP members -viagra) is going on here.

DrP, good post and interesting points.
By the way, what happened after you called the police? Sounds frightening.

Ex-J-army killed non-combatant chinese all over china because chinese combatant pretended to be non-combatant to be guerrilla.
and plundered all over china because support goods didnt be sent(support system itself didnt exist).
and destructed chinese house all over china because J-army feared guerrilla hide into that.
and raped women.
needless to say, these atrocities were done in Nanjin.
but ex-J-army never had done massacre like Nazi's holocaust.
So we Japanese call not 南京大虐殺(in china 大屠殺) but 南京事件 about that.