Tojo Yujo, the granddaughter of Japan’s wartime prime minister, Gen. Tojo Hideki, said she would submit a resolution condemning the United States for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki if she wins a parliamentary seat this month:
“Many people, including Kyuma, believe that the atomic bombs stopped Japan’s ‘aggression,’ but Japan did not fight a war of aggression,” said Tojo, who claimed the war was fought to liberate the “nonwhite” colonies in Asia from the “whites.”
“If there was one mistake, however, it was the fact that we lost. And if my grandfather is to blame, it’s not because he started the war but because we lost,” Tojo said, adding she wants the Japanese people to regain the pride they had before the wartime defeat.
All this comes as the Japanese Defense Minister, Kyuma Fumio, resigns after stating what might seem perfectly reasonable anywhere else but Japan, namely, that the atomic bombings of Japan “couldn’t have been helped.”
39 Comments
One wonders if the Korean National Assembly would consider a resolution praising the United States for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. Probably not, since the robust Korean Resistance was bound to have liberated Korea without the Yankee distraction.
And don’t forget, those atomic bombs killed many a Korean.
She will lose, the same way the Japanese lost World War II, because they started a war under the delusion that the Japanese were unique and had a right to enslave others and that their enslavement was liberation — so it seemed.
Some Japanese seem to have a problem with history or learning from it.
(This whole business is taking a Badukian twist and that gives me a shudder.)
The “nonwhites” didn’t live in colonies before Japan invaded them. What a stupid cunt.
She may be a stupid cunt, but which colonies are you saying didn’t exist before Japan invaded - the Phillippines, French Indochina, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies, bits and pieces of China and various Pacific Islands?
The role played by Japanese military commanders surrendering to local nationalist movements throughout Asia at the end of WW2 has been much overlooked by many histories.
Unfortunately Korea failed to make the most of its opportunity before occupying/liberating forces arrived. And after.
Nuclear weapons are terrible things, only the stupid cunts with them deserve to have them exploded on them, IMHO. Japan did not, but a few nations do now.
Stupid cunts.
Many Japanese probably secretly agrees with her. But many probably would disagree with her being outspoken like that, which ruins the harmonious feelings with the non-Japanese.
Posts 1 and 2 are just projections. It really is getting tiresome sometimes.
#5, Chosun.
Do you think things will go well if the Germans said something similar but replaced colonists with communists?
FUCK Japan.
It’s not some Japanese. It’s most Japanese who think like her.
They aren’t told that they should intermarry with other races at school. They’re not under criminal charges when they start praising their Rising Sun era shit.
She’ll probably win her election, and I’ll bet she’s a LDP member.
I bet $100 that her children and grandchildren think exactly like her.
I don’t care how many Koreans died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
It was the best 2 bombs ever dropped anywhere on earth.
Fantatical, nonsensical, suicide no matter what the outcome resistance in Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc. That earned the Japanese the 2 atomic bombs.
They were asking for it.
You can glorify US citizens at the time all you want, but they weren’t willing to go thru 1 million military casualties against Japan. There were no white people to be freed. I bet you most people in the US would have preferred a cease fire peace treaty WITHOUT total Japanese surrender.
Watch Letters from Iwo Jima. Good movie on its own. But, how can you deny from history and even fictional films that Japan didn’t encourage suicide from both troops and civilians?
They had their mind set. I’m gonna take you with me to hell.
Who wants that?
They should have shown the white flag after one bomb.
They were really asking for 2nd one.
Who says the US was not willing to go through one million military casualties? Until the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Army and Marine Corps were gearing up for exactly that.
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. Trading 200,000 Japanese casualties for 1,000,000 Americans sounds like a bargain to me.
Korea was freed accidentally. US citizens at the time. Do you think they would have agreed to sacrifice 1 million US troops to make Korea independent from Japan.
Chuckles.
This Tojo woman is already in a deep abyss of ignorance and delusion. Somebody should at least tell her to stop digging.
I’m not sure what this even means, particularly the sentence fragment you’ve made your second sentence. Do you believe I have proposed that the United States was fighting Japan solely in order to liberate Korea? That’s nothing I’ve suggested. America fought Japan because of Pearl Harbor. The liberation of Korea most certainly was an afterthought in the war effort, as is Korea itself in the context of world politics.
This place is the center of your universe, and mine, but it’s certainly not the center of the universe.
No; why should they have agreed to sacrifice even 1?
Until I read the link about Kyuma Fumio resigning, I had assumed those remarks were part of his already-planned resignation speech. However, it seems he was forced to resign (offered up as a sacrifice on the altar of public opinion) for those exact remarks.
Wow.
Japan’s revisionism and self-delusion about history as an apparent tilt to the right is very, very scary. If they truly view themselves as a “victim” of WWII and continue along that path, East Asia and the rest of world is just a crazy Japanese Prime Minister and flimsy excuse away from WWIII, seriously.
Abe is pretty far to the right, but not quite far enough to declare war on his neighbors. We may not be so lucky with his successor if Japan continues along this very, very dangerous path.
Remember how Germany viewed itself as a victim of WWI war reparations and thus sought revenge on the rest of Europe for its crushing debt and depression ?
Japan is headed down that same path of willfully ignoring lessons from the past and feeding on anger and hate. If they go down this path for a few more years, all they will need is the modern-day Japanese equivalent of Hitler (and Abe isn’t it) and a flimsy excuse to invade and kill their neighbors (yet again).
Dokdo is the flimsy excuse. A crazy Prime Minister is all that’s left.
Sperwer–I was just thinking of Taiwan (after it kicked the Dutch out) and Korea.
The other “nonwhites” were simply slaughtered to “liberate” them from the “whites.”
Michael, I’m confusing. What were the Dutch doing to get kicked out of Taiwan?
Can you please clarify your statement before this thread degenerates and all possibility of ensuring correct comprehension of historical events is lost, leaving future generations to try in vain to understand what happened.
Aloha, neastud!
“I’m confusing”–nice touch.
Actually WJK the U.S. had to fight against Koreans in WWII, not for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Sa-ik
I bet the good citizens of Nanjing were cheering after the Japanese “liberated” them.
Also, who was Japan trying to liberate my countrymen from when the Japanese Navy drew up their plans for invading Australia? And why were the native peoples of Papua and Timor siding with the Australians if the japanese were acting with such benevolence? Or any other country they “liberated” or attempted to for that matter.
http://www.anzacday.org.au/his.....rview.html
I aree with that.
#10 was not written as a response to #9.
#17. I think Kim Ku’s assasination plots against Japanese generals and the emperor of Japan can be counted as anti-Japanese activity as well has Kim Jwa Jin and other Korean assaults against Japanese forces, surely including a very sizable communist branch among them.
If there were Koreans fighting for Japan, there were also Koreans fighting against Japan.
There were French who enlisted in the German army and there were French who were sabotaging the German Army, and fighting against the Germans.
Surely, the Germans would have fallen eventually by the efforts of the French Resistance, right?
Were all Ukranians for the Germans or all for the Russians?
Regarding World War 1, didn’t Germany find out after surrendering that the terms of surrendering were more than what they thought it would be?
Miguk Namja
I thought you were mentioning earthquake as the reason why the Japanese were so unrestly evil and aggressive toward their neighbors.
And yeah, you should be scary. We are addicted to rocks. Don’t show me “rocks”, or I will press the button and Seoul would be in fire.
Joke aside, what Kyuma said is not that wrong, as long as a civilian would have said that, but a minister of the ruling party, mentioning during a lectrure in Nagasaki, before the victims of Nagasaki, short before the coming elections?
Crazy!
And I am rather afraid of the ignorance of you about what the A-bomb dropping was, and, in general about your poor understanding of the history of post war Japan.
No offense intended, but as I said before, it seems a long list of books is waiting for you.
BTW I really don’t think a few off-kilter coments from the granddaughter of the Japanese prime minister of the day need reflect on all the Japanese. Having her family roots and dignity entwined in the question of why WW2 started might explain her hardline stance. But who cares, really? The Japanese of today are not the Japanese of the 1940s and 50s.
Certainly I don’t see the point in coments like WJK’s: FUCK Japan. That doesn’t help anyone. If the Japanese had the same attitude as you do there would be war tomorrow. Thankfully the majority of them are more fair-minded than that.
My grandfather fought against the Japanese in Papua (to this day he won’t speak of it) but he has nevertheless happily presided over one of his grandsons marrying a Japanese woman. I’m also reminded of an interview with another Australian vet who survived a Japanese POW camp but saw his mates die. When asked if he had forgiven the Japanese he paused for a long time and said, “It’s taken me fifty years, but I have.”
And then you have wjk who may or may not have even met a Japanese person, yet who is happy to label the entire island nation monstrous. WW2 is three generations gone, and history is not excuse enough to hate someone. Time to move on.
in much the same way, I speculate, that Kim Jwa Jin is taught in all Korean schools, whereas Hong Sa Ik is omitted,
Japan probably tailors its own history education about war time from 1941 to 1945.
Thus, the only thing they did wrong was losing the war. To them, that’s what they think.
Hong Sa Ik? Noo goon dae? Probably a common response.
WJK
Come on! You are doing your own historical revisionism.
Just like the nuts Nanjing deniers.
After 1930`s, there was almost no resistance against the Japanese. I am not saying that the Koreans were happy, but appearantly, they accepted the Japanese rule as part of everyday life.
Again, I am not saying that they were happy with that.
But it is also true, that the Japanese faced more resistance in Taiwan (the famous “Musha incident” or “Wùshè Incident” in the 1930ies).
I agree that there is room for average Japanese to face their own history. But the problem is, that it is the same with the Koreans and the Chinese.
And on academic level, maybe far more so for the Koreans and Chinese.
Thus, the only thing they did wrong was losing the war. To them, that’s what they think.
Who’s them, wjk? All of them, most of them, or just a few? And how do you know? Or it is just something you’re assuming?
tomojiro,
Ye olde and very lame : “there’s a problem over there, so please ignore the elephant in the room” argument in an attempt to absolve yourself (Japan) of any responsibility:
“I agree that there is room for average Japanese to face their own history. But the problem is, that it is the same with the Koreans and the Chinese.
And on academic level, maybe far more so for the Koreans and Chinese.”
Also, ye olde and very lame implied phrasing strategy:
“After 1930`s, there was almost no resistance against the Japanese. I am not saying that the Koreans were happy, but appearantly, they accepted the Japanese rule as part of everyday life.
Again, I am not saying that they were happy with that.”
(what ARE you saying, exactly ?)
Finally, ye olde threatening, yet empty argument strategy:
“And I am rather afraid of the ignorance of you about what the A-bomb dropping was, and, in general about your poor understanding of the history of post war Japan.
No offense intended, but as I said before, it seems a long list of books is waiting for you.”
(and the books I’ve read are wrong because…and the books I should read are…)
So, in the end, after all of that writing, you’ve used three cheap and old tactics with zero facts in a poor attempt to support your view. Bravo !
You may fool your fellow right-wing Japanophiles with your empty statements, but you’ll have to do better than that here.
tomojiro’s not a bad dude.
hoju, assuming.
Oh, let I forget, ye olde “taken out of context and misquoted to boot” strategy:
I thought you were mentioning earthquake as the reason why the Japanese were so unrestly evil and aggressive toward their neighbors.
The Japanese reaction to the earthquake contributed greatly to Japanese aggression. Also, I never said Japanese were “evil”.
Putting words into someone’s mouth shows poor judgment.
Miguk:
I agree with you that some statements of Tomojiro’s are ambivalently phrased and may lead to the mistaken impression that he is trying to justify Japanese revisionism.
On the basis of his numerous previous posts in a variety of blogs where he unequivocally opposes his right-wing compatriots I can, however, assure you that he has clearly distanced himself from all attempts to whitewash Japan’s hideous past. He is merely a tad bit unlucky in his choice of words here - and this unfortunate constellation may easily give rise to misconceptions regarding his position on the issue under discussion.
“Tomojiro’s not a bad dude.” (WJK)
Yeah, that’s right.
What get’s me more than anything is the people claiming that this is evidence of Japan drifting to the right.
However if anything it’s just evidence of how little many people understand the situation.
Notice who’s making a stink about this comment. Not your so-called ‘right-wing’ Japanese newspapers (Sankei or Yomiuri), but your ‘left-wing’ Asahi’s. So does that mean that Asahi is now right-wing, and Saneki/Yomiuri are left? No not at all, it just means that Asahi will criticize any and every move of the current administration. Heck, they’re probably criticize any move of any administration, that’s what they do.
The opposition parties are also just using this as an opportunity to attempt to gain seats in the upcoming election; the leader of the main opposition party is the one calling for America to apologize for the bombings, not Abe or anyone else from his clan.
I don’t think there was any problem with what he says, and neither did anyone in the ruling party since Abe initially said he will stand by his defense minister, but the various other political parties wouldn’t shut up. If I was Japanese, this would only reaffirm for me that Abe and his party are the one’s to vote for, because it is the various opposition parties that have lost touch with reality. And those that are claiming Abe to be so far right, should take a look and actually see what is going on, not just what you want to see.
http://www.matisse.lettres.fre.....combat.htm
“When asked if he had forgiven the Japanese he paused for a long time and said, “It’s taken me fifty years, but I have.” ”
And average Japanese wouldn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Forgive them for what?
And I recently read Don Park’s blog where he mentions a Korean paper quoting a Japanese paper that claims that current Japan PM Shinzo Abe’s grandfather confessed just before he died, that he was a Korean - which would make Abe himself, a Korean. I just wonder how true that is.
This is great time for Japan to denounce America. Great timing for the US, that is.
This girl will help sell trillion dollars worth of US fighter jets at 100 billions per plane.
And, help American forces move out of Japan in preparation for upcoming China-Japan War. In that war, the US can solve all of her financial troubles in one fell swoop.
North Korea, acting under China’s order, will attack Japan after next summer’s Beijing Olympic.
The US has to pull out of Japan and Korea before that happens. The comment like this really helps.
Tojo’s daughter helping America! She is a pro-American at heart.
Chinese money is at work in Washington. The US congress should enact series of regislation aimed at Japan, further trashing the island nation and its people. This should eventually result in the US Forces pulling out of Japan.
That sets the stage for China-Japan War II.
Think about the benefit to the US. Two creditor nations going to war and cancelling the debt. They will take American goods instead.
Fantastic!
$2000 per month for all social security recipients. The baby boomer problem for the social security is solved by this war.
Don’t feel guilty. These two stupid monkeys want to fight each other to death. Don’t try to stop them. If you do, they will bite your hand.
Just let them be. Pull troops out of Japan.
I know that Baduk is an impeccable source and all that, but before you too readily buy into his views click on his name and notice how “well” his predictions for 2007 are doing.
Peninsula,
Thank you for checking into my website. As some has said, the night is still young.
2007 has still six months to go. World is a strange place; lots of things, unexpected things, can happen in six months.
Baduk,
I usually enjoy what you say and was just teasing here. Since the items you predict tend to have a whiff of the abyss, I often hope you’re wrong - maybe you do too?
This incident illustrates just how out of sync Japan is from the rest of the world when it comes to its refusal to acknowledge its role in World War II. As much as elderly Japanese statesmen may on occasion may make inane and even idiotic statements justifying or denying Japanese actions during the war, the liberal public is in some ways not much closer to reconciliation with the rest of the world.
Japanese public pacifism is based on its victimization by the atomic bombings and, in the end, on losing a major war. There is scant or no discussion of what really led to the bombings – atomic, fire bombing, or otherwise. There is just wailing and renting of garments over how much the Japanese innocent victims suffered.
Furthermore, there is absolutely no mention of how the Japanese, down to young school children, were planning suicide attacks, such as wearing explosives in backpacks and throwing themselves in front of tanks and other US vehicles. And if the relatively marginal Japanese Okinawans could be convinced to jump off cliffs in masses rather than face humiliation by the American barbarians, one may shudder to think what kinds of mass suicides on the main islands, not to mention deadly house-to-house fighting, would have taken place if America had taken Japan by conventional warfare.*
And contrary to some academics, there was no diplomatic solution available. It could only have entailed allowing the then current Japanese government to remain in place – something that would have been totally unacceptable to the Allies.
So as unspeakably horrible were the atomic bombings, Defense Minister Kyuma said what we all know to be true, but he was foolish enough to say it in public, and thereby be driven out of office by Japanese mass hypocrisy.
As the significance of this mass public reaction sinks into the minds of Koreans, Chinese and other Asian people, Japan will have once again has shot itself in the foot – but this time it has done so collectively, rather than being plausibly misrepresented by the confused statements of some elderly political crank
* A friend of mine whose grandmother was Japanese therefore is ¼ Japanese today wrote to me regarding Kyuma’s dismissal. It is as follows:
“I was born in February 1938 and lived in Japan from 1940 to 1953. Thus my first two years of school were in a primary school in a little fishing village in Japan near Atami ..i.e. possible a prime landing area for US forces. I vividly remember our school being taken over by soldiers (perhaps older home guard types) and how we trained, as 6 and 7 year olds to make bamboo spears and hide in the bushes so that we could then ambush the barbarian US soldiers. We were told that we should at least die fighting rather than being tortured by the US soldiers and then being eaten by them.
“Therefore, I fully agree with Fumio Kyuma comments and have always said that dropping the bombs was one of the best decisions made by Truman.
“Although the cultures are completely different, there may be some hope that the Muslim terrorists will someday change, too, just like the Japanese did and become anti-militant. Just a dream.”
Anyone read “Debt of Honor” by Tom Clancy? Interesting read that may have some relevance to this discussion or at least the effects of what’s currently going on in Japan.