Sacked Japan air force head defends WWII actions

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese general who was fired as head of the air force for suggesting Japan deserves credit, not blame, for its World War II actions stood by his claim Monday.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Toshio Tamogami was dismissed a month ago for writing an essay that said Asia benefited from imperial Japan's activities before and during the war.

Tamogami defended that position Monday, saying Japan has been unjustly subjected to what he called "the history of the victor."

He said he decided to write the essay because he believes Japan has been wrongly blamed for being an aggressor in World War II, and that it cannot have a healthy relationship with its neighbors or assume a more active role on the global stage until that view of history is corrected.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jLtFaLHESsRqq71NWWWZyW9FXnMgD94PPS600

[Botany]

1. Does this guy know Bill Kristol?

WMDs in S.E. Asia

[Bigmack]

2. And the US brought freedom...

to Vietnam, too. :sarcasm:

Denial is not unique to the US.

[MilesColtrane]

3. "he believes Japan has been wrongly blamed for being an aggressor in World War II"

I guess those Kates and Zeroes were dropping cherry blossoms and gumdrops at Pearl Harbor.

[rexcat]

5. More like a "preemptive attack"...

similar to our involvement in Iraq!

[Titonwan]

4. He is correct.

Our aggression started many years earlier, with the blockade of Admiral Perry and the Genocide of Teddy Roosevelt. America has been an Imperial Tyrant for many years. Time for that shit to cease.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AlphaCentauri]

13. oops!! critical thinking is on the verge of extinction

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/education/16cnd-history.html?ref=education

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-09-17-history-test_N.htm

[TankLV]

27. Yes - and you're a prime example of the IDIOTS who are pushing this "poor innocent Japan" crap...

[AlphaCentauri]

43. ok, Thanks

[Javaman]

12. wow, if you only knew your history.

so the Russo-Japanese war had no effect upon Roosevelt, huh?

you're a tool.

hope you enjoy your stay it will be very short.

[Wednesdays]

17. The genocide of Teddy Roosevelt?

Please enlighten me...I'm in the dark about that one. :shrug:

[AlphaCentauri]

6. remember the winners alway write the history books n/t

[caraher]

8. Pearl Harbor did happen for a reason

Japan didn't just randomly decide to attack the US one morning - we were choking them to death with an oil embargo. But that was in response to their ongoing aggression in China. (WWII began in neither 1941 nor 1939 if you go beyond a Western perspective.) And one can always ask larger questions about America's role in Asia and the Pacific at the time...

But my main point is that, while Peal Harbor was not unprovoked, portraying Japan as victim is just as dishonest as doing the same for Nazi Germany (whose path to aggression was paved with the arguably unfair aftermath of WWI, but which is scarcely excused by it!).

[sofa king]

19. Yep.

More specifically, by September of 1941

"The American freeze order caused shock and consternation in Tokyo. Cut off from vital supplies of oil and other raw materials, Japan had barely enough resources for two years of war. The Japanese navy estimated that it had enough oil for only eighteen months of operations under war conditions. The Japanese were left with two alternatives: they could seek a settlement with the United States which would lead to the lifting of the embargo, or they could continue the "southern advance" by seizing Malaya and the Dutch East Indies." --Ronald Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, p. 75.

The important thing to note in that paragraph is that Japan at the time was already busy fighting a huge war of naked aggression against China, and one had been going on in earnest since 1937. The American oil embargo was designed to stop that war, or force Japan to start a new one with the United States if they chose to continue it.

Since Japan was a two party state at the time, and those two parties were the Army and the Navy, it is unsurprising that Japan chose to continue along the path of aggression which it had already chosen four years before (or longer if one includes the annexation of Manchuria in 1931). Washington knew it, too, and was busily reinforcing the Philippines through the summer and fall of 1941. Japan's only curveball in the whole thing was its choice of Pearl Harbor as an early primary target.

[Romulox]

20. WHY, pray tell, was the US enforcing an oil embargo on poor li'l Japan? nt

[Bonobo]

23. Japan dared to hope they could lead Asia to defend itself against the West.

US and all the other imperialistic Western powers had a clear history of involvement in East Asia. A policy of unfair trade practices, enforced drug trade and bullying. Japan modernized so soon after there figurative gates were blown open by US military/whaling mission because they did not want to be a victim of Western Imperialism like China. After they beat the Russians in 1905, they were well on the path that would ultimately lead to war, yes, but make no mistake, t was as much a defensive response to Western Imperialism as anything else.
The oil embargo was being forced upon Japan because the US wanted to provoke a war. It is how the US always starts its wars. By creating a causa bella. Or didn't you notice?

[Romulox]

24. LOL. You left out the little matter of genocide on the Asian mainland.

Which began 10 years before the embargo...

You know, Holocaust denial would (quite rightly!) get one banned from these boards. You are something of an apologist for Japanese WII aggression and genocide, aren't you? :hi:

[Bonobo]

25. I deny nothing of the kind.

Are you linking Nanking to the oil embargo? That's the first time I ever heard that theory...

:crazy:

[TankLV]

26. That's EXACTLY why there was an embargo, Sherlock!

You know NOTHING about history - that's been proven...

The embargo was EXACTLY the result of the ATROCITIES Japan was heaping on China...

Next your going to tell us all that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery...and was just about "States Rights"...

[AlphaCentauri]

33. The Mexican War was also about slavery n/t

[Romulox]

30. Describing Japan's GENOCIDAL aggression in Asia as "self-defense" is tantamount to Holocaust denial.

[anonymous171]

32. Fighting imperialism with imperialism!

[Anarcho-Socialist]

9. I don't think Imperial Japan's infamous "comfort women" would agree n/t

[Libertas1776]

10. ...

Yeah and those American and Filipino POW's were just taking a stroll through Bataan. :sarcasm:

[Javaman]

11. so okay, by this morons reasoning, it was perfectly okay for Japan

to bomb Pearl Harbor and many many other locations because we cut off our oil to them.

It appears as if our current moron* in chief uses the same argument.

yet another version of the Japanese "nazi's" that long for the "good old days".

So by him making this comment, does that mean he also thinks that the atrocities committed in China, southeast asia, prisoner of war camps, were also honorable?

And this guy is one of the many reasons why we put such heavy post war restrictions on Japan.

[JonQ]

14. I think they were characterized as the aggressor

in a large part because they were the effin aggressors.

They talked about helping asia work together to throw out the western imperialists and setting up a "coprosperity sphere", but in reality they were only interested in setting up their own empire that was as biased in favor of japan as any other colonial venture was for the western powers.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

15. No, of course Japan wasn't an aggressor

I heard that whole Nanking incident was really just a frolicking picnic.

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. Yes, It was real smart taking on the US! Until recently, for some reason, I had assumed

Pearl Harbour was somewhere near Singapore, whch would still have been totally insane, but when I read it was in Hawaii, I really fell about laughing!

One of their generals or admirals who had visited the US had apparently tried to tell the militarists it would be insane to attack a US base. But you know militarists... SHOCK AND AWE, man!

[caraher]

21. By 1941 they had two options

Option A: rein in their military expansionism

Option B: gamble that they can take what they want and the West will decide it's not worth fighting over

They chose B. And it's actually not hard to see why. They were essentially undefeated in battle, and the Army was ascendant in their government. The generals were not broadly-educated and tended to have a very racist view of America and the Europeans. They genuinely thought the West were weak-willed and would not have the stomach for a long fight.

By contrast, many of the admirals, especially Yamamoto, had studied in the US. They had an appreciation of its industrial potential most Army men lacked, and realized that in the long run they could never hope to compete with a mobilized US. This realization pushed their war planning even further in the direction of high-risk, high-reward strategies. Yamamoto famously said he would run wild for 6 months, and he was off by perhaps 3 days (before Midway Japan pretty much had their way in the Pacific).

[Joe Chi Minh]

35. I think you contradicted yourself, saying that it's not hard to see why.

And then giving reasons why it was mad. Adducing the lack of education of their generals contributes to explaining it but in no way justifying it as even half sensible.

As for the notion that the US might not have the will to fight back... well, that doesn't fly at all, imo. And comparing beating countries, even such as China, at that time, with taking on the US, is also a non-starter.

You also have to think of the long haul in a serious war. You've surely got their reasoning right, but reasoning all awry. In short, they should have reined in their military expansion. But, then, militarists are not known for their astuteness, are they?

[caraher]

36. I agree it was poor reasoning and ignorance

I don't think there's any contradiction in saying that it's easy to see why someone might have thought a terrible idea wasn't so bad, especially when there are good reasons they were blind to certain realities. I'm explaining, not justifying. And your exactly right - the smart move would have been to cut their losses. And as you say - militarists have their blind spots, particularly when they mix feelings of racial superiority with limited experience.

It's also worth remembering that in 1941 the US had the world's 18th-largest military, roughly the same size as Romania's. In a short war Japan easily could and did take on the US successfully. Taking on the existing US military was not especially daunting; taking on the military the US could build in short order was nothing short of suicidal. The men who led Japan to war gambled, whether out of ignorance or desperation, that it would not come to that. It was a very bad gamble!

[Joe Chi Minh]

38. Exactly. In the end, effectively, the "Mouse that Roared", as far as the US.

was concerned. A bit like us in the UK taking on Russia. 'Cep we don't have an empire any longer and are no longer geared to git one.

[ngant17]

18. Imperial Japan was part of the Axis w/Nazi Germany and fascist Italy

and that is hard to deny who were the aggressors in WWII.

Instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the atomic bombs should have been delivered directly on top of the head of the Japanese emperor in his Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

[caraher]

22. Actually, that sounds satisfying but would have been a disaster

In the end, it was only the ability to get the emperor on the radio to ask the military to lay down their arms that made an orderly surrender possible. In fact, even the morning of his broadcast there was a failed military coup intended to prevent the message from airing in order to carry on the struggle against the Allies.

It would have been much harder to occupy Japan if the emperor were killed rather than retained as a figurehead.

[Forkboy]

28. The destruction of Japan's homeland was a hell of a benefit for them.

:eyes:

[BreweryYardRat]

29. Ah, no.

Glad they fired him, but I'd have been happier to see him forced to look at pictures from the Nanking massacre until he snapped and killed himself in guilt. And if he's too much of an imperialist fuck to have any shame, throw his ass into prison.

[harun]

31. The question of who was the aggressor is the wrong question

The question of what country was run by oppressive fascist assh*les is the better one. And you can ask anyone in the Philippines (who had to live with their new over-lords the Japanese) who that was.

[Romulox]

34. If the Japanese aren't smart enough to quash their version of Holocaust Denial,

an ascendant China will make them wish they had.

(The Chinese are still a bit aggravated at the Japanese for what they did in WWII...)

[Joe Chi Minh]

39. Count on it.

[struggle4progress]

42. China expresses indignation over essay justifying Japan aggression (Xinhua: 1 Nov 08)

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-11-01 21:42

BEIJING - China on Saturday voiced strong indignation over an essay written by former Japanese air force chief Gen. Toshio Tamogami which denied the country's World War Two aggression in Asia.

"We are shocked by and express our strong indignation over the senior Japanese military officer's denial of Japan's aggression and overtly glorifying its history of invasion," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in response to a question ...

"We have taken notice of the attitude and measures taken by the Japanese government," Jiang said, and called on the two nations to work together to safeguard bilateral relations.

"The war of aggression launched by the Japanese militarists brought untold suffering to the Asian people including the Chinese people, which is an undeniable historic fact," she said, adding that having a correct understanding of, and properly dealing with that period of history, is the important political basis for the development of Sino-Japanese friendly and cooperative ties.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-11/01/content_7165128.htm

[Hanse]

37. He reminds me of people who apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I really don't see much of a difference.

[LostinVA]

41. OMFG

:popcorn:

[LostinVA]

40. Damn those troublemakers in Nanking!

They just caused themselves to be raped and murdered in the tens of thousands (and probably more).