The Imperial Japanese army was horrifyingly cruel in World War two.
(Bodies of a massacre by the Imperial Army in WW2)
Whenever the Imperial Army conquered a country, certain groups of Japanese individuals, usually young immature men, would come and bring terror to the towns and farms they occupied. Entire families were bayoneted, raped, and killed en masse. It is estimated that over 10 million people were murdered in massacres across Asia by individuals of the Imperial Army.
In the Philippines, IJA soldiers entered in a hotel full of refuges and bayoneted infants of mothers pleading mercy and raped women seeking refuge. At least 20 individual soldiers raped a young girl before slicing her breasts off after which an Imperial soldier placed her mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman while the other soldiers laughed. The Soldiers then doused the young girl and two other women who were raped to death in gasoline and set them all on fire.
And this hotel was full of mainly German refugees, who were considered friends of the Japanese empire.
Life for POWS was horrible under IJA rule. There have been many well-documented reports of Imperial soldiers dining on their enemies. Supplies were running low throughout the Pacific Theatre, so the Imperial began selecting prisoners at work camps to consume. In some cases, soldiers cut flesh from still living prisoners . Hunger makes people go mad, no matter what race or ethnicity.
Of course, history is not black and white. There were a lot of good Japanese soldiers who helped Chinese civilians run away from immoral individuals who were killing or kidnapping people. Other good Japanese soldiers tried to help ease the “comfort women” who were basically young girls who were told they were going to be conscripted to make army uniforms before being betrayed and sent to the front to be raped by certain individuals of the imperial army.
The reason the IJA was so cruel was not because they were ethnically Japanese (I know a lot of Japanese people and generally they’re a very nice and polite group of people) but because of the government spreading nationalistic racial superiority propaganda everywhere making soldiers think they were entitled to war crimes. That’s why nationalistic propaganda is so evil. It leads men to becoming animals and to treat other people with the most unorthodox ways ever.
Here is a excellent animation of a Japanese soldiers in WW2 who saw war crimes against humanity committed by the IJA.
This answer isn’t really about saying what one single country has done the worst, but I do want to share below on the cruelty of humankind that many people don’t know about.
Graphic content below but I want to make this known because so many people around the world have heard of Hitler, Nazis, concentration camps but they have not heard of the Asian holocaust that took place around the same period. In western schools, history classes do not teach people about this part of the world.
This is regarding what the Japanese did during their occupation of Korea and the war crimes they committed to the surrounding Asian countries, including some Pacific Islands they invaded: Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, East Timor, New Guinea, Indonesia, Guam, Nauru, Wake Island, Attu and Kiska Islands, and Kiribati.
They even had some prisoners of war from the west such as America, any forces against them at the time etc.
Hundreds of thousands of women from my country in Korea were forcefully abducted (called comfort women) during the Japanese occupation in WWII. They endured torture beyond imagination if they did not sexually submit to these vile men and were forced to have sex with 60–100 men every single day. Their innards rotted because of the STD’s and they were destroyed, unable to have children even after they were rescued. They have still not been compensated for the war crimes that they endured and majority have died.
Pregnant mothers were cut open and rape victims were sodomized with bamboo sticks and bayonets until they died in agony.
On top of this they literally tore the unborn from women’s wombs and speared them alive with bayonets in front of them. They’d crush the infant’s skull against concrete floors. They would actually do this for fun.
They tied sons and daughters up and tore them apart, spearing them and forced their own parents to watch.
They raped and pillaged women of all ages, even toddlers to old women in the most vile, disgusting way imaginable. They would often disembowel them while in the process, leaving them to die in agony.
They conducted unspeakable evil torture and experiments on LIVE prisoners from these countries even children and infants in UNIT 731. Torture methods such as dissecting pregnant women without any anesthesia, centrifuging and killing people in pressurized chambers, and slowly burning and freezing people alive. They artificially created what is similar to the ‘bubonic plague’ to see the effects on the prisoners. They were forced into X-rays until they perished and hung people by their thumbs or tongues etc. These torture tactics were deliberately planned to see death happen SLOWLY, not fast as the scientists wanted to observe the resilience of the human body.
Unbelievably Inhumane Japanese Torture Methods Used During World War II
Bodies of slayed, raped, mutilated women in China.
Carcasses of babies and children piled up
Despite this, Japan still presently denies what has happened and even believes that it is a rumour. The young people as shown in this video are absolutely clueless on the whole tragedy, or are so far removed in cognitive dissonance and lack of care it is astounding. There is even a middle aged woman in the video who even says “Well I’m not sure if it’s a rumour or not…” which is an absolute lunacy and an embarrassment of the failure of the country in not properly educating their citizens of what truly happened. One young girl even says “Well, I wonder when they will ever get over it…” How are people supposed to get over it when there are still thousands of victims still alive who didn’t receive any form of compensation for what they have been through??!
Their government still warps their history books and deliberately tries to hide the evidence of what truly happened. There are active groups within Japan who refuse to accept what happened and truly believe that it is just a ‘rumour’ to make Japan look bad.
Below is a real life account by a South Korean comfort woman on the horrors she went through. It is heartbreaking to watch but quite educational. She sadly passed away early January of this year, fighting until her last breath but still never receiving any compensation or apology from the Japanese. They don’t even recognize that she went through this or who she is.
What Japan did wasn’t just an invasion or occupation, it was a literal carnage, hell on earth genocide. They didn’t have to go this far as majority of the Koreans and the people they invaded were helpless farmers, uneducated servants, and innocent people who were not trained in war at all. They did this because they did not see these people as human, and their goal wasn’t simply to occupy, but to desecrate the spirit from within. They knew when you destroy someone’s spirit from inside out, the enemy will bend the knee and yield to the point where they do not have the soul to fight back. On top of this, it was just pure, raw sadistic savagery because all of these helpless people surrendered and begged for mercy yet they were still tortured for absolutely no reason.
Presently Japan is one of the most wealthiest and prosperous Asian countries in the world yet they cannot even fully take responsibility for their own committed atrocities. It shows the savage barbarism that still resides in some of these people and makes one question just how this is even acceptable. Instead they choose to warp their own history books, flat out deny it existed and have refused to offer sincere, acceptable compensation/apology for the people who are still alive. They are waiting until every last victim is dead so they no longer have to worry about it. They are not truly ashamed of this past, they just see it as an eyesore they want to bury. Keep in mind Japan has very strong political parties that strives to ensure this shameful past does not reach the masses to retain their false honour. Still to this day, they praise their war criminals in shrines.
From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. This is more than the estimated Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe controversially claimed that “there was no evidence to prove” that the women had been coerced into sex.
“The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is engaged in an all-out effort to portray the historical record as a tissue of lies designed to discredit the nation,” wrote Mindy Kotler, director of Asia Policy Point, in 2014.
“Mr. Abe’s administration DENIES that imperial Japan ran a system of human trafficking and coerced prostitution, implying that comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes,” Kotler continued. “The official narrative in Japan is fast becoming detached from reality, as it seeks to cast the Japanese people — rather than the comfort women of the Asia-Pacific theater — as the victims of this story.”
Japan’s Textbooks Reflect Revised History
Japanese Broadcast Official: We Didn’t Commit War Crimes, the U.S. Just Made That Up
Why is it so hard for Japan to say sorry?
China criticises Japan after Shinzo Abe honours war criminals as martyrs
Letter threatening to hunt Koreans sent to South Korean embassy in Japan: media
The Harrowing Story Of Filipina Women Enslaved In Japan’s Wartime Rape Camps
Edit: Since I’m getting quite a lot of people who clearly don’t seem to understand and may not have read or researched in depth in this matter. They are saying that ‘Japan does not need to offer apology or compensation for what people of their past did etc’
It’s more complicated than that. Please read the links again. Even if they can’t take full responsibility for their past, they SHOULD take responsibility for the future by not warping textbooks and giving power to political parties who enforces the dangerous fallacy of denying any of this ever happened or triviliazing everything that has happened. They should make sure to teach the correct history not just for educational purposes but to ensure their citizens fully know and accept their own history and in hopes that it never happens again. This is also to help not silence the voices of the people who did suffer in the past and to not spit into their graves and ruin their legacy by spreading false lies.
Also the comfort women and people who were forcefully taken into labour camps as prisoners, many are still alive who didn’t actually get any compensation or even sheer RECOGNITION. They suffered their entire lives without anyone hearing what they have to say with nothing from Japan. This isn’t just about wanting Japan to go up to a stadium and saying ‘I am sorry’ and stepping down. Words are meaningless and worthless when not backed up by actions.
They are hypocrites by warping textbooks and also praising their own war criminals. Imagine what the world would say if Germany praises Nazis and gave strong political power that has the power to make Germans never even hearing of the Nazis or even contemplate if it was just a rumour or not. Think about how insane that would be.
So why do they need to apologise? Because unlike Germany what they are doing is absolutely deplorable and morally bankrupt by continuing to CONTRIBUTE to the legacy of the abomination Japan was in the past. You don’t see Germany do the same about the Nazis and for good reason. It means Japan hasn’t learned and is not truly remorseful. By Japan I am talking of the FACES of Japan which are the politicians who represent that country. The rest of the Japanese experience their trickle down effect so while it’s not saying it’s their fault, they end up indirectly contributing to supporting these vile politicians. So yes the people who represent JAPAN who hold the power of influence does need to sincerely apologise and stop contributing to what they are presently doing.
As I am getting tired of having to repeat the same information again and again, any comments that say things along the lines of ‘Japan does not need to apologise’ or those questioning or defending the existence of any of these crimes, their war criminals will be either ignored, deleted or blocked. It is extremely disrespectful to the victims and deplorable. The links are already here clear as day for reading and one can also do the research themselves. Also for anyone who brings up another atrocity and pitting them against each other, STOP. This post isn’t about pitting one atrocity against another, it is disgusting to even keep doing that and seriously lacks any insight into the original point of my post.
Otherwise thank you for reading and have a nice day.
TLDR: Japan did some truly horrific shit that many people including the present day Japanese citizens are unaware of. What they did is abysmal carnage from the Antichrist itself.
Also, piece of shit apologies that require uttering words and throwing money at victims isn’t a true apology when they are still in 2019 warping textbooks and none of their youths know anything about their crimes.
Why do you think Germany forces every citizen to learn about their nazi history and Japan doesn’t ? It is to deliberately ignore and not acknowledge their past due to their pride and selfishness. I’d equate this to even pathological narcissism and psychopathy due to how far they have gone in managing stomping this knowledge out of their own present day citizens.
Edit 2: As I am still getting very disrespectful, deranged comments on here pitting atrocities against each other, saying that I am spreading lies and others spewing ignorant hatred against Koreans, here’s my final message.
Instead of blaming others, look at what Japanese Nationals do. Stop diverting the attention away by blaming the mistakes of other countries yet not acknowledging the corruption of the Japanese government
Japan’s leaders are still stubbornly refusing to admit their war crimes
What Japanese history lessons leave out
Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia
The Germans in contrast have personally done everything possible to make people aware of their Nazi past. Japan doesn’t scratch the surface of what it means to have true honour while Germans go to great lengths to do humanitarian work and to allow their citizens to understand the FULL facts. This is what true compensation and remorse actually is, not the dogshit excuse of what Japan does by also denying people, correct history. End of.
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In 1941, Soviet archaeologists uncovered the tomb of Tamerlane, a descendent of Genghis Khan. Timur, or commonly known as Tamerlane, was one of the best military tacticians during the 14th century in Asia. He was also responsible for the death of around 17 million people. He lived for 68 years, building the biggest dynasty after Genghis Khan.
There were two inscriptions on the tomb. The first inscription is written on the tombstone, and says “When I Rise From the Dead, The World Shall Tremble”.
The second one is located inside the tomb, and says “Whosoever Disturbs My Tomb Will Unleash an Invader More Terrible than I’.
Stalin ordered the tomb opened. Soviets opened the tomb on June 20, 1941. The tomb was immediately filled with choking odor of camphor, resin, rose and frankincense.
Two days after the Soviets opened the Tomb, Hitler and Nazis invaded Russia.
*WARNING: Graphic images ahead*
This is Will Brown.
In 1919, Will had found work in a meat-packing plant in Omaha, Nebraska. Black laborers were heavily recruited by the area’s meatpacking industry, and Will was among many African-Americans that had fled endemic racism and violence in the southern United States.[1]
This is also Will Brown.
Image: The Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919
Will was accused of raping Agnes Loeback, a nineteen-year-old white woman. The assault took place near midnight on September 25, 1919, not far from her home.
Loeback and her companion Milton Hoffman were walking home after seeing a late movie. A man with a gun confronted the couple, allegedly stealing a watch, money, and jewelry. The gunman ordered Milton to stay back while he dragged Loeback into a nearby ravine.[2]
News of the crime swept through the city. The local newspaper The Omaha Bee quickly blamed a suspect; their headline proclaimed that a “Black Beast” had assaulted a white girl.”[3]
The opening paragraph did not mince words.
“The most daring attack on a white woman ever perpetrated in Omaha occurred one block south of Bancroft street near Scenic Avenue in Gibson last night.”[4]
Agnes’s brother, Joseph Loeback, led armed men in a search of the vicinity. Joined by his friend Frank Raum, Loeback accompanied police detectives while they scoured the streets for clues.
They soon found a neighbor who identified a “suspicious negro” living in a house with another white woman. The “suspicious negro” was William Brown. Brown barricaded himself inside the home, but Loeback and his determined friends broke through. They found Will hiding under his bed.[5]
The police and their vigilante crew seized Brown and dragged him to Loeback’s house.
Loeback and Hoffman identified Brown as their assailant. Her description of him tallied with that of a mugger in the vicinity three weeks earlier. Agnes also identified the clothing, including a white felt hat that had been worn by a man seen in the Gibson neighborhood. Later, however, Agnes stated that her attacker was black, but “I can’t say whether he [Brown] is the man or not.”
Hoffman, arriving at the Loeback home, identified Brown “with not the least bit of doubt but what he is the Negro who” held him at gunpoint while he raped Agnes. By then a crowd of some 250 men and women had gathered around the house, shouting that Brown should be lynched.[6]
The crowd outside of Loeback’s house grew, and the mob began to shout for Brown to be lynched. Police managed to free Will and took him to the county courthouse, which they considered to be a safer location.[7]
They were wrong.
Over the next twenty-four hours, and incited by local newspaper articles, a howling swarm surrounded the courthouse, demanding that Brown be turned over for justice. Police took cover inside, dodging bullets from amateur snipers stationed across the street. Authorities were forced to herd prisoners to the relative safety of the roof.[8]
The crowd had slipped beyond reason and negotiation.
Rioting, looting, and burning shattered the rest of the city. Black men and women were beaten, robbed, and assaulted as the mob contagion swept through normally placid streets.
Not even the mayor and city commissioner were safe, as both were abused and nearly lynched themselves.[9]
City commissioner Harry B. Zimman tried to talk to the growing mob, only to be drowned out by shouts of “Lynch the damn Jew.” He suffered a few blows before being helped back inside by friends.
Mayor Ed Smith came out the east doors on Seventeenth Street to confront the mob, calling upon them to let the law take its course. His appeal was short-lived. He was hit with a baseball bat or other blunt object (a Leonard Weber later said he hit the mayor over the head with a gun) and a dozen other blows. “No, I will not give up the man,” Smith said. “I’m going to enforce the law even with my own life.”
The crowd took his words to heart, shouting “hang him” and “string him up.” With a noose around his neck, the mayor was dragged along Harney Street to the Sixteenth Street traffic signal tower. The rope was thrown over a bar and tightened around Smith’s neck when Russell Norgaard saved the mayor’s life by removing the rope.[10]
Image: Rioters surrounding the courthouse. https://history.nebraska.gov/sites/history.nebraska.gov/files/doc/publications/NH2010Lynching.pdf
The seething mass finally proved too much for the besieged police inside the courthouse.
Multiple accounts exist on exactly how Brown was turned over to the crowd. The sheriff, fearing for the lives of his deputies, claimed he “surrendered Brown” for fear that they would all be killed. Other accounts claimed black prisoners gave him to the rioters.[11]
Ladders were placed against the west side of the burning courthouse, and two men, one with a rope, the other carrying a shotgun, rushed up a ladder to the second floor. From there they performed an acrobatic climb to reach Brown and his defenders two floors up.
By now it was dark, and automobile headlights illuminated the window ledges and cornices for their ascent, while about thirty rioters groped their way through smoked-filled stairways to reach Brown.[12]
Brown’s executioners would not be denied their quarry. They tied a rope around his neck and dragged him to the side of the building.
What followed was as horrific a sight as onlookers had ever seen.
Brown was mercilessly beaten with fists, clubs, or any other weapon that rioters could grasp. He was then hung from a telegraph post so that the members of the crowd, many of them armed, could riddle his swaying body with dozens of bullets. A seized police car provided a ready-made toy, and they tied Brown’s hands to the back of the vehicle. His mutilated body was dragged through cheering streets.[13]
When the dragging was done, the mob then constructed a makeshift pyre. With more shouts of joy, the masses dumped Brown’s body on wooden pyre, igniting it with oil from the nearby signal lanterns used for street repairs.[14]
Even this was not enough. Brown’s corpse was tied to the back of a car for one more tour of the streets. The rest of the city had to see that justice had been done.
His body was later dumped in an unmarked grave outside of town.[15]
In light of this vicious crime against Will Brown, it is helpful to ask the obvious question: Who are the people that mutilated him? Who were the people roaring with approval while they did so?
Look again at the photo above of Brown’s charred body.
Specifically, look closer at the people standing above him.
The expressions are not ones of horror or disgust. These men wanted to be there. They were enjoying themselves
Lynching in the United States was not just one more tool in the racist state’s bid for permanence. It also became something more horrific and mundane; the equivalent to a night out at the movies.
Multiple accounts of families attending lynchings described them as a “picnic-like atmosphere,” despite the horrors inflicted on its victims. Souvenirs from the victims’ bodies were highly prized and even fought over after the show was over.[16]
In 1904, after Luther Holbert allegedly killed a local white landowner, he and a black woman believed to be his wife were captured by a mob and taken to Doddsville, Mississippi, to be lynched before hundreds of white spectators.
Both victims were tied to a tree and forced to hold out their hands while members of the mob methodically chopped off their fingers and distributed them as souvenirs. Next, their ears were cut off. Mr. Holbert was then beaten so severely that his skull was fractured and one of his eyes was left hanging from its socket.
Members of the mob used a large corkscrew to bore holes into the victims’ bodies and pull out large chunks of “quivering flesh,” after which both victims were thrown onto a raging fire and burned. The white men, women, and children present watched the horrific murders while enjoying deviled eggs, lemonade, and whiskey in a picnic-like atmosphere.[17]
Image: New Podcast: Strange Fruit – Voices of a Lynching – Radio Diaries
Thirteen years later, in Memphis Tennessee, a mob kidnapped Ell Persons from a prison train. Persons was set to stand trial for rape and murder, but he would not live to see his day in court.[18]
The mob had announced the lynching time and location in advance, and thousands of people attended, backing up traffic for miles. Food and gum vendors sold their wares to the many spectators as Mr. Persons was doused with gasoline and set on fire. A ten-year-old black child was forced to sit next to the fire and watch him die.
When members of the crowd complained that Mr. Persons would die too quickly if burned, the fire was extinguished, and attendees fought over Mr. Person’s clothes and remnants of the rope to keep as mementos. Two men cut off his ears for souvenirs, after which the head of Mr. Person’s corpse was removed and thrown into a crowd in Memphis’s black commercial district.[19]
In the same year and in the same state, Lation Scott suffered a lynching after being accused of “criminal assault.”[20]
Thousands gathered near a vacant lot across the street from the downtown courthouse and children sat atop their parents’ shoulders to get a better view as Mr. Scott’s clothes and skin were ripped off with knives.
A mob tortured Lation Scott with a hot poker iron, gouging out his eyes, shoving the hot poker down his throat and pressing it all over his body before castrating him and burning him alive over a slow fire. Mr. Scott’s torturous killing lasted more than three hours.[21]
Markets existed for trophies culled from the victim’s bodies. Hearts, livers, bones, fingers, and toes were all available for a price, ready for display in your home. The grisly tokens could function as a testament to your willingness to protect your heritage, or as a simple memento from a memorable day.[22]
If actual pieces of flesh were too gruesome for a collector, postcards preserving the event were also widely available.[23]
Arrests of the smiling, gawking denizens in these photos were rare. Rarer still were actual prosecutions; legal authorities at the time were far more concerned with enshrining their power and maintaining a violent status quo.[24]
For me, the most frightening aspect of these nameless, ghostly mobs are their immediacy. This is not ancient history.
It is one hundred years ago, just outside of living memory.
Image: Modern Poetry ∫ The MOD Blog
Will Brown’s brutal execution was almost certainly a crime against an innocent man. During his brief incarceration in the besieged county jail, it was apparent that he was physically incapable of assaulting anyone.
A physical examination showed Brown was “too twisted by rheumatism to assault anyone.” An unidentified Omaha World-Herald reporter allegedly interviewed Brown in jail and “confirmed by his observation the man’s crippled condition.” His chronic rheumatism meant Brown would be unable to overpower Loeback and Hoffman, concluded Jim McKee, a Lincoln Journal writer.[25]
His innocence was not material to the masses outside demanding blood.
After ruminating on this story, I was inevitably pulled back to Will Brown’s final moments. I can only imagine his fear, as the searing flames and the deafening shouts crept closer to his cell. I can only imagine the crippling panic in his final moments as he was handed over to the jeering mob.
These events happened far too close to the present to take any comfort in soothing thoughts of a long-buried past.
Image: Headstone for William Brown. It was placed there by a donor one hundred years after he died.[26] His unmarked grave was finally marked for history. Potters Field Cemetery – William Brown