在日英人クリスと討論３

re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/15/2005 12:58 PM by Searl

In my opinion, soundenjapan is smart in Bingfeng's sense if he is trying to justify all the atrocities done by Japanese soldiers by his explanation, but he made it clear that he was not trying to do that.
In my interpretation, his ultimate point is different. He said, "Because you fail to see the war from that perspective, you need to portray the Japanese being crazy and sadistic on an imaginary basis, otherwise you cannot fill the void and the weakness of your theory of why the Japanese did it."
I am afraid that CCP is just trying to portray the Japanese as such and is trying to let people believe so.

If someone suppose that killing guerillas, who are soldiers in reality, is understandable and even justifiable and also suppose that soundenjapan is claiming that all Japanese soldiers killed were guerillas, then he might conclude therefore that soudenjapan is justifying the sino-japanese war,but soundenjapan is not claiming that.

I want to ask to both soundenjapan and Chris.

To soundenjapan
Though many doubt the accuracy of CCP account of the massacres, there were massacres during the war and many Japanese soldier committed war crimes during the fight against guerillas just as there were massacres at Vietnam, and though the irrational crazy things are easy to happen in the nasty situation like that, the war crimes like killing babies and raping are not justified in any sense.Do you agree to that?

To Chris,
Chris claims soundenjapan's theory also applies to the case of Nazi, but do you believe that Jews were guerillas in the same sense as civilian Chinese guerrillas at the battle fields?, did Tojo have a policy to annihilate all the Chinese?

re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/15/2005 7:10 PM by Chris

I will keep my answer brief because I don:t want to continue my involvement in this thread.. I don:t think it is precisely the same as the situation as the situation with the Jews. However it is very similar to the massacres of civilians in France and Eastern Europe and elsewhere when the Germans met resistance. It is also true that the Nazis did see the Jews as an enemy within, although there was more ideological superstructure. As I said above, the aspects of the Japanese atrocities that cannot be explained in Soudenjapan:s antiterrorist fight thesis might be explained by reference to factors such as a lack of effective control in parts of the army, extremist imperialist ideology among the officers, extreme racism among soldiers and commanders, and the brutalisation of soldiers in an incredibly brutal military. It wasn:t as centrally ordained as the Nazi holocaust but it was a appalling record of atrocities.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/17/2005 11:39 PM by soudenjapan
Searl, Chris,

>Soudenjapan:s antiterrorist fight thesis might be
>explained by reference to factors such as a lack of
> effective control in parts of the army, extremist
> imperialist ideology among the officers, extreme
>racism among soldiers and commanders, and the
>brutalisation of soldiers in an incredibly brutal
>military.

None of these factors necessarily cause atrocities. Chris does not explain why, for instance, "a lack of effective control in parts of the army" ends up an occurrence of an atrocity. Was the U.S. military in Vietnam experiencing "a lack of effective control in parts of the army"?

"[E]xtremist imperialist ideology among the officers" and atrocities? I don't see the linkage. Thaies, Indians, Malaysians do not talk about atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers with "extremist imperialist ideology."

On the other hand, my thesis explains not only the Japanese case but also many other cases of atrocity committed by military all over the world, ranging from Korean army in Vietnam to Russians in Chechen. Atrocity is probably an unavoidable consequence when civilians start fighting the occupation forces as guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents with support from others inside or outside of their countries. Anyone can easily see the pattern of linkage between miltary forces and atrocities.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/17/2005 11:46 PM by soudenjapan
Searl,

>suppose that soundenjapan is claiming that all
>Japanese soldiers killed were guerillas, then
>he might conclude therefore that soudenjapan is
>justifying the sino-japanese war,

No, not necessarily so. The war itself could be viewed unjustifiable. That's why I wrote that the policy issue was clearly separated in my view from the issues of military objectives the Japanese soldiers were pursuing.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/18/2005 8:15 AM by Searl

thanks , Chris and soundenjapan.

To Chris,( if you are still here) and
To soundenjapan )
let me ask both of you one more question.

Do you think the mechanism of how massacres happened by Japanese army at the time is the same as the one in France by German army or the one by Korean army at Vietnam?
Or
Do you think there is something special to Japanese army at the time to cause the massacres in China?



re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/19/2005 4:29 AM by soudenjapan

Searl,

>Do you think the mechanism of how massacres happened
>by Japanese army at the time is the same as the one
>in France by German army or the one by Korean army
>at Vietnam?

I believe that the mechanism itself is quite simple.

The major components are:

1. The occupation force
2. Local insurgents, terrorists, guerrilla fighters pretending to be civilians, and thier supporters


The variables are:

1. The size of the local population and insurgents
2. The size of the occupation force
3. How determined both sides are to break the will of their opponents
4. The quality of logistical support from within and outside
5. The duration of the war




re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/20/2005 7:50 PM by Kuri
6. The ideological viewpoints of the occupations force's officers and men
7. The brutalisation of the common soldiery of the occupation force.
9. The outlook of the occupation force, whether they regard their victims as similar to them or fundamentally different. Racist wars are always more brutal.
8. The decision making and moral fibre of individual commanders on the ground
9. The military discipline of the occupation force.
10. The military culture of the occupying force (is there any proper concept of improper conduct towards citizens among the occupying force.)

etc. etc. etc. I could go on. There are also， of course, variables to do with the conduct of the opposing force.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/20/2005 11:19 PM by soudenjapan
Kuri,

>etc. etc. etc. I could go on.

Why don't you go on and finish your thinking. Then we can try to examine mine and yours.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/21/2005 1:39 PM by Searl
To sounden Japan
Thanks, your arugement seems to me very persuasive.

To Kuri
I am interested in your argument too.
Do you think Japanese army at the time acted on racism?
If so, on what ground?


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/21/2005 7:54 PM by Kuri
I believe racism must have been a factor. It would not have been possible to have done the disgusting things that were done without some degree of denigration in the minds of the soldiers of their victims. (see above for what was done)

Here is Herbert Bix， author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, a Pulitzer prize winning English language account of the Showa period, on this subject:

http://hnn.us/articles/5121.html

In the context of a very balanced and wide ranging piece he says:

"During fighting near the foreign concessions, Japanese forces started killing Chinese prisoners of war on the spot. Three-months later, after they had completely encircled and isolated Nanjing, Chinese resistance crumbled and the capital of Nationalist China fell. Frustrated and exhausted Japanese army units, their discipline frayed by fierce fighting, went on a rampage. The news of killing, pillage, arson, and rape was widely reported and spread quickly throughout the world....

...
re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/21/2005 7:55 PM by Kuri
"....Virulent racism, which causes the occupier to denigrate the native people, treat them as sub-human, and demean their national culture seems to be a constant in situations that produce war crimes. Racism heightens the foreign invaders' level of frustration, hatred and rage while he struggles to determine who the enemy is, and to destroy all forms of resistance. The physical and emotional exhaustion of occupiers confronting indigenous resistance increases their likelihood of committing atrocities. So too does low troop morale caused in part by assignments that require them to trample on the rights of the subjugated people in a colonial war of repression. "


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/21/2005 11:26 PM by Searl
To Kuri
Thanks, Kuri, your analysis is very sharp,
let me ask you this question.
Supposing that the racism in Japanese army at the battle play an important role as you said,,
isn't it possible to argue that it was the result of the hard battles against guerillas?
Do you have any ground to claim that the racism was "built in" Japanese army at the time in general?

To soudenJapan
Do you have counter arguments against Kuri's points he listed?


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/22/2005 4:46 PM by Kuri
The first thing that needs to be pointed out that I am not arguing for a simplistic thesis that racism among the soldiery was both necessary and sufficient to explain the atrocities in China. I have argued all along in this thread against such simplistic analysis in the shape of SoudenJapan's attempt to attribute it all to anti terrorist fighting. I am however saying it was one of the factors and a necessary factor.

For example, see James L. McClain, A Modern History of Japan, page 449 "On the outskirts of Harbin the Japanese Army statiooned its nefarious Unit 721. Camoufalged by the innocuous cover name of Epidemic Prevention and Potable Water Supply Unit, the bacteriological warfare research group conducted experiments on living humain beings, injecting them with bubonic and pneumonic plage, typhoid, syphilis and other communicable diseases in order to develop more lethal strains and more efficient means of transmitting them. 'If we didn't have a feeling of racial superiority, we didn't have a feeling of racial superiority, we couldn't have done it,' confided one unit member, as he admitted dissecting terrified still-conscious subjects to extract plague bacteria from internal organs. By the time the war ended, several thousand Chinese had perished in the research program, although no Japanese government has ever officially acknowledged its existence."

The quote from the Unit 731 operative is referenced to Haruyo Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History pp 164-65

The key point here is that the operatives in Unit 731 were not battle frustrated front line soldiers.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/23/2005 10:44 AM by Searl
Kuri
Thanks, you made a really good point.
In the case of the Unit 731, it is not in context where soldiers will be killed unless they kill guerrilla fighters.
The context soudenjapan described does not seem to be sufficient enough to explain away how it happened.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/23/2005 12:40 PM by Kuri
Also, the tone of the report of this "killing game", reported by a Japanese newspaper in 1937, seems to require both widespread racist attitudes both in Japan and in the army.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050823/wl_asia_afp/japanchinawar_050823061809


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/24/2005 1:32 AM by soudenjapan
With or without racism and hate, they did it anyway. It was a war in which killing and sweeping were the business.

Three points:

(1) Atrocities occur when locals start fighting as guerrillas, insurgents, terrorists in civilian clothing, blending in local civilians and villagers, and when villages provide logistics and shelters to them, and when they use women and children as weapon, and when soldiers are unable to tell which ones are fighters and which ones are not.

That actually happened during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

(2) Wars get bloodier and crueller in accordance with the degree of determination on both sides to break the will of the opponent.

The level of determination were clearly very high on both sides. Cruel incidents occured accrodingly.

(3) The number of deaths and casualties are to be larger, depending on the numbers of local population and civilian fighters involved either in attacking or supporting attackers.

China had the largest population in the world.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/24/2005 5:37 AM by bingfeng
to me, soudenjapan's theory could be summerized in short:

killing is the business of soldiers (to imply that you should not blame japanese soldier because they were just doing their "business" in sino-japanese war of WWII)

am i right?


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/24/2005 11:45 AM by Searl
To kuri

You might be right in claiming that racism intensified the massacres, but I have a hesitation to insist that racism was widespred both in Japanese army and in Japan at the time.

Firstly, Japan proposed to the league of nations in 1919 that the equality of races should have been included in the article.


Secondly the report you mentioned could have been the tone as it was without racism.

To soudenjapan

How will you counterargure to the point Kuri has made:" the operatives in Unit 731 were not battle frustrated front line soldiers"


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/24/2005 6:19 PM by Kuri
I don't think so. If you reread the report, it was written as if it was a sports report. It was a JOKE about beheading hundreds of Chinese people. How can you make such a joke about the killing of humans without discounting their humanity through racism.

Perhaps the original link I sent wasn't full enough
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050823/wl_asia_afp/japanchinawar_050823074803
Here are the relevant quotes:

"In the runup to the notorious Nanjing massacre, a Japanese newspaper reported in 1937 with the tone of a sports story that two army lieutenants played a game on who would be the first to decapitate 100 Chinese soldiers.

The story was meant to boost morale in wartime Japan...The Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun, which later became the Mainichi Shimbun, ran the article with the headline, "Super record 100 cut down: Mukai at 106 vs Noda at 105. The two lieutenants go into a playoff." It was referring to lieutenants Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda, who were later
re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre


8/24/2005 6:19 PM by Kuri
... Tsuyoshi Noda, who were later executed by an Allied tribunal over the Nanjing massacre."
re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre


8/24/2005 6:28 PM by Kuri
Souden. I don't understand the significance of your claims. How would this characterisation not apply, for instance, to the Nazis on the Eastern Front:

"With or without racism and hate, they did it anyway. It was a war in which killing and sweeping were the business." The same goes for the rest of the post. It could apply to any disgusting war crime by pretty much any country. As to the final point, it is a classic piece of Souden sophistry, the deaths in China were done, by and large, at the point of the bayonet by individual Japanese soldiers. They were done in quite a small part of China and Nanjing had quite a small population. I think the fact that you can make such a weak argument reveals the nature of the motivation for your arguments: the obscuring of truth, the avoidance of reality and responsibility. If have asked you before in this thread how you sleep at night with such an appallingly selfish mindset, when you are talking about the suffering and death of millions of real people, who had to go through this nightmare only for people like you to play around with their suffering in your small mind.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/24/2005 9:43 PM by Searl
To bingfeng
I think we need to realize:
In a society at peace, killing is a crime.
In a battle field at war, killing soldiers is not a war crime.
Even in a battle field at war, killing civilians is a war crime.
(I simplified the matter for the sake of argument)

In my interpretation, the bottom line of the soundenjapan's claim is:
In a battle field at war, if soldiers disguise themeselves as civilians, killing true civilians is unavoidable.
Still, it does not mean killing civilians at war is not to blame nor soudenjapan imply that.

To kuri
Thanks for your insight.
People say a lot of nasty things about the enemy.
You know how it is if you think of how football fans talk non-humanitarian unhumanisitic things about their opponent to boost morale.
I think you might need more argument to claim that Japan's racism was widespread at the time.
And how do you explain the Japan's bid for the inclusion of a racial equality clause in the League of Nations Covenant in 1919?


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/24/2005 9:44 PM by Searl
http://www.nzasia.org.nz/journal/NZJAS-back-issues/NZJAS-Dec01/Bennett.pdf


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/25/2005 3:24 AM by soudenjapan
Searl,

>How will you counterargure to the point Kuri has made:"
>the operatives in Unit 731 were not battle frustrated
>front line soldiers"

I cannot tell the true intention of the Imperial Army with any kind of certainty, but my understanding is that the original purpose of setting up the organization was to develop weapons for potential biological, chemical warfare against Soveit Union, which was the foremost concern and the potential adversary of Japan in the Imperial Army's view.

This organization, of course, turned out later to be the most notorious center for those who were regarded as "extremely bad people" from Japanese point of view, as someone like the former cheif researcher of the institution mentioned somewhere in a magazine interview. Those "extremely bad people" were, in a way, as dangerous for the occupation force as Al-Zarqawi in today's Iraq. China's Al-Zarqawis were caught and sent to Harbin for execution.

I don't if that is a sufficient explanation or not, but that's all I know at this point.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/25/2005 3:31 AM by Searl
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/Koeller/ModWorld/Versailles/RacialEquality.Index.htm
http://www.zackvision.com/weblog/archives/entry/000509.html


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/25/2005 3:38 AM by soudenjapan
Chris,

> How would this characterisation not apply, for instance, to the
>Nazis on the Eastern Front:

So what? If it explains how an atrocity took place in Europe, and if it is readily applicable to any atrocities in the past, what is the point of attempting to reject the thesis?


>I think the fact that you can make such a weak argument

But you don't even have your own co argument.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/25/2005 3:57 AM by soudenjapan
bingfeng,

>killing is the business of soldiers (to imply that
>you should not blame japanese soldier because they
>were just doing their "business" in sino-japanese
>war of WWII)
>am i right?

You think that is the essence of what I'm saying. I don't think so.

The point of using this kind of model is that it explains with a single idea, not only soldiers' conducts, motivation, and goal of the Japanese side, but also the Chinese side, their conducts, motivation, goal at one time, and it integrates them all.

So let's turn to the Chinese side for a while. What were Chinese civilians expected to do when they participated in the anti-Japanese movement? What were they exactly doing to eradicate the Japanese in China?


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/25/2005 4:23 AM by Searl
To soudenjapan and kuri

It seems Unit 731 needs to be viewed in still another context.
http://www.micahbooks.com/readingroom/humanexperimentation.html


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/25/2005 4:13 PM by soudenjapan
Corrections

>With or without racism and hate,
>they did it anyway.

they did it anyway.
→they would have done it one away or another.

>This organization, of course, turned out later to
>be the most notorious center for those who were
>regarded as "extremely bad people" from Japanese
>point of view,

the most notorious center for
→the most notorious execution center for


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/25/2005 4:14 PM by Kuri
What do you mean co-argument? Your argument is rubbish because it is irrelevant and wrongheaded. I don‘t need to make any "coargument" about the size of China, because the whole issue of trying to limit the moral responsibility for the massacre of lots of people is not something I am trying to do. I am simply showing your sophistry for what it is.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/26/2005 12:21 AM by soudenjapan
Chris,

>What do you mean co-argument?

I did'nt notice this one. I meant to write either a "complete" or "comprehensive" argument.

>because it is irrelevant

Unfortunately, it is not your call, Chris. It rests with the framework of the issue. You are in a wrong thread under wrong assumption and are in fact wasting your time.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/26/2005 3:37 AM by Searl
We need to distinguish texplanation and justification.
If Tom killed Mary, we explain the action by pointing out, for instance, that he did it to take money from her, and/or that he was poor, and/or he was cruel.These ex;planation is usuful in understanding the action but it does not follow that he is morally or legally justified in doing so.
Both soudenjapan and kuri know the differnce.
Thus kuri said,"It is simply a factual claim about the context for the violence and has nothing to offer us whatsoever in any moral judgement of the Japanese in China."8/12/2005 8:28
And Kuri feels as if soudenjapan is trying to " blur the line between historical explanation and moral justification" 8/13/2005 2:51 PM
But Soundenjapan, after his explanation, said " That has nothing to do with justification".8/12/2005 4:59 PM

Kuri wants to examine the sino-Japanese war from a moral point of view while Soundenjapan want to examine it war from a moral-free , perspective.

It seems that what they disagree is not on the facts nor opinions but on what they want to talk about.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/26/2005 6:33 AM by Kuri
I think, Searl, you are naive about Soudenjapan‘s real motivation. He continually claims to be on this non justification ground but then writes things like. But his writing is full of sentences like this:

"...fighters in civilian clothes who deserved no protection under the International Law."

"Among insurgents, terrorists, and guerrilla fighters, the worst kinds and most evil cirminals, China's Zarqawis so to speak, were captured and trasferred to Harbin for execution where the notorius Unit 731 was stationed. "

"Now, isn't it true that both bingfecg and you are implicitly admitting that Japanese conducts might be justifiable, in part if not all, by describing the essense of the war in the way I did for you?"

"An atrocity like Tongzhou Incident was nothing but terrorism against Japanese people for which then Chinese government paid compensation later, which therefore proves that the Chinese government clearly recognized that the Japanese had had the right to be in China."

"It happened in Vietnam. It happened in Palestine. It happened in Chechen. It must have happened elsewhere. It is, therefore, a fact in guerrilla warfare. Thus it is safe to say that when insurgents start using kids and women as weapon to attack the occupation forces, battles inevitably get nasty."

“Atrocity is probably an unavoidable consequence when civilians start fighting the occupation forces as guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents with support from others inside or outside of their countries."

“The number of deaths and casualties are to be larger, depending on the numbers of local population and civilian fighters involved either in attacking or supporting attackers. China had the largest population.”

I'll boil those quotes down for you (I wanted to bold up the relevant words but this comment box doesn't seem to allow it): "..deserved ...most evil ... might be justifiable ... had the right to be in China...battles inevitably get nasty...Atrocity is probably an unavoidable consequence."

There is a strong undercurrent of justification within Soudenjapan's argument. He is a bit like one of those 2 year old guerilla fighters he is so fond of imagining: he does a bit of justification and then he pops back into his civilian "objective historical" clothes when people start to sniff out his attempts at justification and normalisation. As I have said and you have probably noticed, his historical and objective argument is inadequate in itself. It simply does not explain what happened. You may have noticed that he tends not to address specific facts about what happened when they are introduced into the debate. He does not directly address whether or not other factors might have had a role in explaining these extraordinary events. He tends to dismiss such facts and get on with his fact free theorising, demanding simplistic generalisations from others when infact the whole problem with his approach is simplistic generalisation. He then accuses his interculator of not offering an argument (by which he means a simplistic generalisation), when they infact they have offered quite a detailed argument that steers clear of simplistic generalisation.

If the only problem with Souden was his faulty historical skills, I could live with it and I wouldn't be wasting my time confronting him. But you have to ask why he likes this simplistic generalisation and abhors the specifics and complications? I believe to answer this you have you have to go back to the real undercurrent to his argument, which is the normalisation and implicit justification of what Japan did in Asia. He abhors the specifics because it involves talking about killing babies with bayonets in Nanjing or beheading competitions (were the babies guerillas?). He abhors the complexities of explanation because it involves talking about extreme racism etc. among the Japanese forces. He likes the oxygen free air of pure theory because it allows him to live in an alternative universe in which what Japan did was "inevitable", "justifiable", "unavoidable" and exactly the same as the actions of every other army fighting guerillas in history. (I must have missed the raping of 20,000 women in six weeks in Baghdad and the bayoneting of babies and young men by the River in Fallujah.)

I think he is right in one respect. I feel I am wasting my time confronting this half-baked sophist. I will try again to spend my time more fruitfully.


re: japanese point of view: why nanjing massacre
8/27/2005 2:08 PM by soudenjapan
Chris,

Factors like killing babies and being racists, or the descriptions of brutality of the Japanese army, neither undermine nor disprove the thesis set forth time and time again here. The Japanese were not attempting to erase a racial or ethnic group from the face of the earth. So I don't see any damage given to the point of view by those factors. They are not at all mutually exclusive with the thesis in the first place.

Moreover, those factors don't cover the whole picture of Sino-Japanese War. They only account for highly limited partial snapshots of what were happening in China. Chris's explanation fails to include such a huge portion like conducts of the Chinese side, the other half of the picture of Sino-Japanese war. It does not give a balanced view of the subject, in other words.

I feel sorry that you have wasted your time and effort. That said, however, it was your own choice to join this discussion, and it was you, as we all know, who kept coming back to this thread after declaring several times your retirement from this discussion to save your time. There's nobody else to bame for the loss but yourself. I hope you don't waste your time any further.


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