Posted by Benjamin on: 08.01.2007 /
In the news this week was the passage of House Resolution 121 (a non binding resolution) by the U.S. House of Representatives. The resolution describes the issue it is addresses thusly
the `comfort women’ system of forced military prostitution by the Government of Japan, considered unprecedented in its cruelty and magnitude, included gang rape, forced abortions, humiliation, and sexual violence resulting in mutilation, death, or eventual suicide in one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century;
And it accuses unnamed public officials in Japan of trying to deny the reality or magnitude of the “comfort women system”. It calls on the government of Japan to publicly, officially, and unequivocally acknowledge the crimes Japan committed with regards to this system.
Putting aside the question of the horror of forced prostitution and the crimes Japan committed during World War II, I find myself completely stymied by the audacity and arrogance of the resolution. Where has the U.S. publicly, unequivocally, and officially acknowledged it’s crimes during WWII? No, not the internment of Japanese Americans, which has been officially apologized for. How about the murder of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians by way of firebombing their cities and the dropping of two nuclear (note how I resisted mockingly writing “nucular” (or didn’t)) weapons?
Am I missing something? Is our government,
demanding another foreign nation to apologize for war crimes committed 60 years ago?
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Comment by: Rachel
1 08/1/07 9:43 AM | Comment Link |In the immortal words of the late, great Chris Farley, “Well la-te-freakin’-da!” The self-righteousness of this proclamation is nauseating. Is the US government still completely blind to the horrors we perpetrated against the Japanese people?
Benjamin, I’m glad you brought up the fire-bombing of Japanese cities. While Hiroshima and Nagasaki were indeed terrible (more on that topic next week), I think that the fire-bombing of Tokyo was even more savage and inhumane. An estimated 100,000 civilians died, not killed instantly by a bomb but burned alive in a hellish conflagration that engulfed the city and left no escape. General Curtis LeMay, who ordered the attacks, later said, “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.”
Comment by: benjamin ady
2 08/1/07 1:58 PM | Comment Link |Rachel,
thankyou. I found more on wikipedia:
Precise figures are not available, but the firebombing and atomic bombing campaign against Japan, directed by LeMay between March 1945 and the Japanese surrender in August 1945, may have killed more than one million Japanese civilians. Official estimates from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey put the figures at 330,000 people killed, 476,000 injured, 8.5 million people made homeless and 2.5 million buildings destroyed. Nearly half the built-up areas of sixty-four cities were destroyed, including much of Japan’s war industry.
LeMay referred to his nighttime incendiary attacks as “fire jobs.” The Japanese nicknamed him “Demon LeMay”. In violation of the rules of war shot-down B-29 aircrews were frequently tortured and executed when captured by both Japanese civilians and military. Also, the remaining Allied prisoners of war in Japan who had survived imprisonment to that time were frequently subjected to additional reprisals and torture after an air raid. LeMay was quite aware of both the brutality of his actions and the Japanese opinion of him — he once remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes, especially in view of Japanese executions of uniformed American flight crews during the 1942 Doolittle raid. However, he argued that it was his duty to carry out the attacks in order to end the war as quickly as possible, sparing further loss of life.
Presidents Roosevelt and Truman justified these tactics by referring to an estimate that one million American troops would be killed if Japan had to be invaded. Additionally, the Japanese had intentionally decentralized 90% of their war-related production into small subcontractor workshops in civilian districts, making remaining Japanese war industry largely immune to conventional precision bombing with high-explosives.[1]
Comment by: David H
3 08/1/07 5:52 PM | Comment Link |Yes, there is a degree of hypocrisy in the resolution, but that is politics. The issue of the US conduct during WWII seems quite a different matter, though. I’m not sure it is possible or even prudent to conduct a humane war. Is there a nice way to kill your enemy?
The US fire-bombing of Japan and Germany was brutal, but it was largely in keeping with the nature of that war. In the six weeks after the fall of Nanking to the Japanese in 1937, the Japanese army executed an estimated 300,000 soldiers and civilians using conventional means. Japanese officers held contests to see who could behead more people in a specific period of time. Some officers bragged that they had killed hundreds of captives in a single day using just a sword. World War II was brutal in many ways, but that is the nature of war.
However, my point isn’t that such things are OK. Just that it is very difficult to argue for nice wars. Since war is inherently brutal it should always be argued against. But even more important, in my mind, is the position Christians should take on such things. We should oppose the beginning of wars, because once they start there is no telling what will happen. And, realistically, there is no such thing as a just war when innocents and unintended targets can’t help but be hit.
I’m not sure there is any way to stop countries from fighting over the things countries fight over. And inevitably the victors will earn the right to decry the evils done by those who lost. But the Christian position should not be to campaign for fairness in the conflict or even a lack of hypocrisy after, rather it should be to stand against the conflict altogether.
Comment by: benjamin ady
4 08/1/07 6:17 PM | Comment Link |David,
Okay, I’ll bite.
So are you saying that Christians should have argued against U.S. involvement in world war II?
Comment by: David H
5 08/1/07 7:09 PM | Comment Link |I am not saying Christians should have argued against US involvement in WWII. They should have stood against the silence and greed that helped lead to WWII. Had they done that and the war still occurred, they might have been on firmer ground with their involvement.
The main problem with WWII being a just war is that little was done to prevent it leading up to the war. Hitler received a great deal of support from politicians, industrialists and other influential people in the UK and US. FDR was very concerned that he couldn’t challenge the political power of US Nazi supporters, thus the US remained politically isolated as events began to unfold in Europe. Likewise, many Christians in Germany backed Hitler for largely selfish reasons. Had the Christian churches stood against him during his march to power there might have been a far different outcome. Finally, US industry helped create the Nazi war machine. With a wink and a nod from the US, companies in the US sold tons of weapons and the material to make weapons to a country that wasn’t technically permitted to even have an army until such support was cut off in the mid-1930s by the Neutrality Act. However, the treaty that cut off that support is now largely seen as something that helped lead to the war because the facist war machines were already built and it served only to prevent US support for countries being attacked, like Ethiopia.
On the Pacific front, the Japanese war machine was created largely via trade with the US. Had the US and UK challenged Japan during the invasion of Korea and China in the mid-1930s, there might not have been a need for the fire-bombing of Tokyo or dropping nuclear bombs almost a decade later. But all western governments took a hands-off position on that conflict.
Had all responsible authorities and the Christians in the US and Europe done everything possible to prevent Hitler’s rise to power, there might not have been a need for WWII. But in fact, almost everyone who could have helped prevent that war remained silent or abetted the coming conflict.
In the end, WWII may be one of the few times in the history of the world when war had to be waged. As a confirmed pacifist, I’m still not sure that would have allowed for my involvement as a combatant. But we will never know what might have happened had Christians in the US and Germany united in opposition to the things that led up to the war.
Comment by: benjamin ady
6 08/1/07 7:42 PM | Comment Link |david
so it seems that “Love your enemies” is a good deal more complicated than merely “don’t bomb them”.
sounds related to what Joe calls “sustainability”.
I continue to learn so much through this blog. Thankyou!
Comment by: Elaine
7 08/3/07 9:35 PM | Comment Link |Thank you David for providing historical context for what has happened in the past and is happening today.
I so appreciate that you are a journalist. A free press is so critical to our country and the world. After listening to Bill Moyers this evening and how the press has been co-opted by the networks, etc. It is frightening to hear real journalist may be in jeopordy - replaced by “pundits” instead of real reporting. Thank you.