Perhaps the most intriguing piece of knowledge I’ve learned related to the topic of World War II was presented in one of our online supplemental readings, hidden among the seemingly endless debate regarding if the United States should or shouldn’t have used the atomic bomb.
In a small section titled “Who Were the Victims,” author Bryan McNulty quotes Ohio University Professor of History Donald Jordan, who says, “Until quite recently, there has been very little in the national school system and national textbooks in Japan about the Japanese as aggressors, but a lot of information about what happened in the dropping of the atomic bombs. There is a younger generation that knows very little about the Rape of Nanjing or the ‘comfort women’ issue, in which thousands of women in occupied countries were forced to become sex slaves for Japanese troops.”
I’ve always had an interest in the topic of censorship, and so the fact that Japanese history has enforced the idea in so many citizen’s minds that the Japanese are the victims and America is the enemy is fascinating. It is amazing that the Japanese managed to rewrite history so that Japanese troops didn’t kill 300,000 men, women, and children by hand in the Rape of Nanjing and the Japanese military didn’t systematically abuse and kill prisoners of war and slave laborers from Korea, China, and Southeast Asia, but the United States conducted acts of unparalleled cruelness when they dropped two atomic bombs.
But the Japanese aren’t the only ones who claim they are the true victims. Because of the Rape of Nanjing and other horrors the Japanese forced upon other parts of Asia, both China and Korea believe they are the victims and the Japanese are the enemies. To this day, my grandparents won’t buy Japanese products because of what the Japanese did to their homeland of China.
So it appears as if everyone is playing the victim card. Or are they? It seems as if the one exception to that is Germany. Unlike the Japanese, the Germans admit to the crimes committed in their history and instead of covering the gruesome truth up, study their true past to ensure it will never happen again.
So who is the real victim? Is it Japan? China? Germany? Or someone else?
I think that your topic is really thought provoking. In a way, none of the fighting nations were completely without fault in WWII. Each nation made very questionable choices that ended hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of lives that would have otherwise been spared. If France were not so bent on revenge at the Treaty of Versailles, if the Japanese hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor, if America hadn't made and dropped those atom bombs. There are many regrettable things about WWII, that leaves all of the nations involved with blood on their hands. The only real victims were the people that were caught in the crossfire of the conflicting beliefs and egos of the nations that led to WWII.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point about how everyone isn't completely blameless from the WWII victim-or-not issue and how the civilians are mainly the innocent ones in the war, but I'd have to disagree on your point of the countries making "very questionable choices". What makes them questionable? Each country's leaders were only trying to do what's best for their nation despite the ulterior motives behind their plan of actions.
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