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nika_812 июля 2023 г.Читать далееAt the start of the war the Japanese had been dismissed as ‘inferior’ warriors, but in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the swift Japanese victories in Southeast Asia that perception had changed to one of grudging acceptance that they were a tougher adversary than had first been believed — but they were still not credited as being ‘civilized’. The logic was simple — and perverse: the Japanese were now thought to be formidable opponents precisely because they were prepared to fight in ways that no civilized soldier would be willing to.
1341- nika_812 июля 2023 г.
The atrocities committed by the Japanese during the war are common knowledge, but these atrocities committed by the Americans have received a great deal less publicity. During research for this project it became clear that many US marines had witnessed or participated in mutilation of the Japanese dead, but few wanted to talk about it openly.
1375 - nika_812 июля 2023 г.
In addition, the Geneva Convention was also utterly at odds with the whole atmosphere of brutality in which the Imperial Army itself functioned. As the survivors of Sandakan testify, the guards would often brutalize each other. As for the Taiwanese guards, at the bottom of the racial and hierarchical chain in the camp, they were so abused that on at least one occasion a Taiwanese guard at Sandakan committed suicide sooner than endure mistreatment any longer.
132K - nika_825 июля 2023 г.Читать далее
It was not until the 1960s that institutional racism began to be tackled in Britain and the USA — and some say it still exists today. And the situational ethic is alive and flourishing in international affairs. Slobodan Milosovic is charged as a war criminal — but only after he invades Kosovo and the West believes he must be stopped, not when he commits crimes during the war in Bosnia; Saddam Hussein is decreed to be an international war criminal — but only after he invades Kuwait and threatens the West’s oil supply, not when he presides over a conflict rich in war crimes against Iran.
1248 - nika_813 июля 2023 г.Читать далее
The controversy over the decision to use nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has overshadowed Le May’s earlier devastating conventional bombing campaign against Japan. As a result, one astounding fact has not seeped into the public consciousness — five months before the atomic bombs were dropped, on the night of 10 March 1945, the Americans fire-bombed Tokyo and killed around 100,000 in the biggest fire storm in history. More people died in a few hours than in either of the later attacks with atomic bombs.
1238 - nika_810 июля 2023 г.
Both on land and at sea the Japanese demonstrated from the first that they were prepared to die sooner than surrender. As already seen, one reason for this devotion to duty is clear — the Imperial Military Service Code instructed members of the armed forces not to ‘bring shame’ on themselves and their families by becoming prisoners of war.
1253 - nika_810 июля 2023 г.Читать далее
However, the context in which the crime was committed does offer an additional clue as to why it occurred. These Japanese soldiers had been fighting in arduous jungle conditions for many months and may have already had to eat human flesh in order to survive — they would almost certainly know that their starving comrades elsewhere had resorted to the crime. Now, even in the presence of basic supplies like rice, they chose to eat the flesh of their enemy in the knowledge that cannibalism was an accepted mode of behaviour within the group.
1248 - nika_83 июля 2023 г.
In the first three months of the war the Japanese had, much to their own surprise, captured more than 100,000 Allied prisoners. They now faced a profound dilemma — just how should they treat their captives?
1278 - nika_83 июля 2023 г.
But the biggest disaster for the Allies occurred two months into the war when the Japanese, having advanced down the Malayan peninsula, reached the British garrison at Singapore.
1241 - nika_830 июня 2023 г.
Thus it is simply not accurate, as some Japanese apologists claim, that the rapes encouraged in this institutionalized way by senior soldiers within each squad were the actions of men going against firm orders that preached the contrary. From the moment they entered training the recruits learnt first to fear the more senior members of the squad and then to imitate them.
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