Why Were The Japanese So Cruel To Their Prisoners In World War Two?

[Songbirdy]

I know that in a war situation no side is blameless. But how the Japanese, who seem such a calm, respectful people, were capable of such appalling actions seems incomprehensible.

[woofgang]

As I understand it, before the the War, the Japanese people were quite isolated from the rest of the world and had a radically different belief set....as simple as that.

[EDDIE51]

Because they considered any race apart from Japanese to be subhuman,or simply animals. So they treated them as such.

[woofgang]

website here but a nasty picture http://www.pacificwar.org.au/JapWarCrimes/Explaining_JapWarCrimes.html

[tonyav]

The Japanese did not believe in surrender so POW's captured or surrendered were treated the way they were because the Japanese had total disrespect for them ( The Japanese were expected to commit hari kari instead of surrendering ).

[vetuste_ennemi]

(See my answer has, in part, been anticipated.

My comment in full:

Just naturally[i more cruel (a theory I've seen proposed one of AB's long-term moderators)?

Or a different understanding of what constitutes martial dignity and honour?
If your Bushido ethic tells you that it is your duty to fight for your emperor god and [i]never] surrender, then you will despise soldiers who surrender in thousands with hardly a fight (e.g. Singapore).

[douglas9401]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harakiri_(disambiguation)

[ToraToraTora]

tonyav, bang on, and exactly why the 2 A-bombs were necessary.

[tonyav]

TTT, yep without the A bombs they would have just carried on.

[vetuste_ennemi]

The received wisdom, yes, and the one I grew up with, Tony.

A different point of view is expressed in Grayling's "Among the Dead Cities" which I read a few years ago. It also covers the controversial bombing of the other "dead cities" in Germany.

I'm not competent to assess Grayling's arguments,myself.

[tonyav]

I'll have to have a Google, vetuse.

It also covers the controversial bombing of the other "dead cities" in Germany.

Mmmmm, didn't the Germans try and make some of our cities dead with their blitz campaign though.

[RobNorth]

Like the Germans, who probably easily outdid them for cruelty during WW2, the Japanese love order and discipline and look up to authority, which makes them a pushover for brainwashing. We, on the other hand, are the polar opposite and don't take kindly to any of these things so it is difficult for us to understand.
Foreigners, even our cousins in Canada and the USA, are amazed and impressed at how tough we are on our Politicians and even our Royalty.

[KARL]

Yes, for sure "We" are the best, no question at all. "We" have never treated anyone with less than full respect. "We" have never used brute force against easy targets to subjugate those who never had a hope of standing up to "Us". "We" have never even used so much as underhand ways (smile on the face, nasty plan in the head) to get our way even though it was clear to "Us" that this was self-serving greed. And even if "We" ever have then that is all in the past (like a year or five ago) and "We" are now definitely the best (as "We" always were anyway) and pure as the driven snow.

[Spicerack]

I sort of agreed with them when I was very young and knew everything.
Why should a man kill 5, 10, 20, human beings and then when he feels his own life in danger go, 'Whoa, don't want to play this anymore'.
Also the Geneva Convention, which they didn't recognise, was written by the upper classes for the upper classes. You could work/starve the poor old enlisted men to death. But the officer class, no work, extra rations and a free concert just to rub it in.
Tsk, twas ever thus.

[Jahulaye]

“But how the Japanese, who seem such a calm, respectful people, were capable of such appalling actions seems incomprehensible.”

REALLY?

You equate a populations character by a minority during a war?

Have you looked at other nations treatment of pow’s?

Our “back yard” might me a good place to start, Guantanamo bay, water boarding, white noise and isolation psychological torture springs to mind.

[Jahulaye]

“Also the Geneva Convention, which they didn't recognise”

Do you really think that any nations armies recognise or adhere to the Geneva convention on initial capture of pow’s?

They don’t unless under the media spotlight.

[Jahulaye]

Let us not be uneducated or naive and the user “Karl” above me and me has it spot on on what goes on around the world.

[bainbrig]

Thanks jahulaye for pointing out that few of the combatants fought a 'clean' war, and that all the participants could claim to have been civilised and cultured rather than cruel in their histories.

This doesn't excuse the Japanese (and their Korean thugs who largely manned the death-camps), or the British and Americans for their fire-bombing of Dresden and Hamburg, the Germans for their unspeakable acts against the Jewish people, or the Russian for their barbarism when they took Berlin.

The history of the twentieth century and its wars is not one of Good Guys versus Bad Guys; would that it were. But it's not. The 'civilised' West was culpable in many ways for the century, and its wars.

Weighing one set of evil against another set, however provoked, is not a good way for humanity to progress.

BB

[mikey4444]

Eddie has it right at 22:43. And like others, I think that the 2 A Bombs were necessary.

In my younger days in BT, when I was about 16, I worked with a man that had been a POW in Japan, and he always maintained that the A bombs saved his life, as the Japs were preparing to massacre him and thousands of others before the Yanks landed.

[bainbrig]

Mikey: Maybe ONE A bomb was 'necessary'. But two? The Japanese were apparently on the verge of surrendering after Hiroshima. Nagasaki was more PR for the Russian market. And does it all justify the 500,000 Japanese who died in the US fire-bombing of Japan in the months before August?

[mikey4444]

Bainbrig...there is no evidence that Japan was going to surrender, and the fire bombing was all their own fault....they were the aggressors, not the Allies.

By using the bombs, it is estimated that many more thousands of lives were saved, Jap as well as Allied.

Study the history of Japanese expansionism, and start by examining what they did in Manchuria.

The Japs acted like animals.

Try to get a copy of this book if you can, all about the Burma railway :::

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/nov/27/featuresreviews.guardianreview6