- 22 Mar 2015 20:36
#14539179
I mean, is China using WWII as a wedge to drive away Japan basically? And to somehow excuse China's own geopolitical aggressions?
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UnusuallyUsual wrote:I mean, is China using WWII as a wedge to drive away Japan basically? And to somehow excuse China's own geopolitical aggressions?
1. The origin of comfort women
With Japan's victory in Sino-Japanese war (1894 - 1895) the Korean Peninsula was no longer under the control of Qing Dynasty China. As Japanese military personnels and male workers began to spend time in Korea, women (mostly from Nagasaki and Kumamoto) followed to comfort them. Most of these women were from poor families.
2. Korean comfort women
At first comfort women were all Japanese. But after Korea became part of Japan in 1910, ethnic Korean women (Japanese citizens) also became comfort women. By 1920's Japanese women along with Korean women traveled abroad to comfort Japanese men and ethnic Korean men there. These Korean women were the predecessors of who later became known as Korean comfort women.
3. Comfort women and female troops
Although women were working as prostitutes, some of them had accumulated enough savings to lend money and rent places for secret meetings to men who were fighting for the nation. That is why they were also called female troops(娘子軍)and they took certain pride in their contribution.
4. Comfort stations
One shouldn't think comfort women system was created suddenly by Japanese military in 1930's. At first Japanese military licensed existing prostitution houses in Manchuria as comfort stations. As Japan advanced into China and Southeast Asia, more comfort stations were needed. So Japanese military commissioned prostitution brokers to recruit more women and create more comfort stations. Japanese brokers recruited Japanese women in Japan. They owned and operated comfort stations employing Japanese women. Korean brokers recruited Korean women in Korea. They owned and operated comfort stations employing Korean women. (See footnote *3, *4)
5. Two types of comfort women
There were two types of comfort women. (1) Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese women (all Japanese citizens) They were not coerced by Japanese military. (2) Local women in the battlefields (Dutch women in Indonesia, Filipino women in the Philippines, etc.) Dozens of them were coerced by lower ranked Japanese soldiers. These two types should have been treated differently. But when the comfort women became an issue in the early 1990's, all women who provided sex to Japanese military were treated uniformly, and that created a big confusion.
6. The Myth "Korean comfort women were coerced by Japanese military"
The Korean woman who first claimed this in the early 1990's belonged to Chongsindae during the war. Chongsindae (also called Teishintai in Japanese) was a group of teenage girls conscripted by Japanese military. They worked in factories to manufacture military equipments and uniforms. Since she was conscripted, she thought comfort women were also conscripted. It wasn't that she fabricated the story. It was an innocent mistake on her part. When I examined initial testimonies of former Korean comfort women, none of them claimed she was coercively taken away by Japanese military. It should be noted, however, that Korean brokers sometimes lied about description of work. (They sometimes hinted women would be working as nurses and so on) So although Korean comfort women were not coerced by Japanese military (Japanese military was NOT in Korea), some of them were recruited on false pretenses by Korean brokers. Other Korean women were in the world's oldest profession, and they did volunteer to earn good money.
7. The Myth "200,000 young girls were coerced by Japanese military"
Two hundred thousand was the number of factory workers conscripted. About 150,000 of them were Japanese and 50,000 were Koreans. Many of them were teenage girls. Common misunderstanding in the West of "200,000 young girls were coerced by Japanese military" arose because Asahi Shimbun mistook factory workers for comfort women in August 11th, 1991 article, which inflated the number. The estimates of comfort women numbers vary from 20,000 to 70,000 depending on the historians. Most comfort women were Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese, and they were recruited by brokers, not by Japanese military. In the battlefields of Indonesia and the Philippines, dozens of Dutch and Filipino women were abducted by lower ranked Japanese soldiers and were taken to comfort station operators. (Those soldiers and operators were court-martialed, and some of them executed) Most comfort women were not teenage girls but were in their 20's and 30's. So the correct statement should instead be "Between 20,000 and 70,000 worked as comfort women, of which dozens were abducted by Japanese soldiers."
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ThirdTerm wrote:Imperial Japan occupied northern China and Korea and anti-Japanese sentiments were prevalent in the colonial era to the extent that Japanese schoolchildren were routinely attacked by Chinese mobs. The Japanese community as a whole was terrorised by Chinese patriots, which was the main reason why Japan was dragged into the civil war in China. China and Korea keep bringing up wartime issues to settle their colonial grievances, which is similar to African-Americans' general attitudes towards white Americans. On the one hand, African-Americans demand slavery reparations for the coerced and uncompensated labour their ancestors performed over centuries. On the other hand, Korean pressure groups are putting pressure on the Japanese government to financially compensate for the wartime comfort system. Comfort women are often described as "sex slaves" because a left-wing Japanese historian invented the term in the 1990s but Professor Yoshimi, who is often cited by Western historians, recently backpedalled on his sex slave claims, arguing that the comfort system cannot be equated with slavery if comfort women were voluntary participants.
Rancid wrote:My wife's parents fucking hate the Japanese, so I'm going to say yes.
Crantag wrote: Also, the one Japanese man who I respect more than any other Japanese person (and for that matter more than most people on the planet) once said to me that Japan never repented in the same way that Germany did.Well, with the Greeks now enthusiastically pushing the Nazi guilt/debt button, the Germans are waking up to the fact that it doesn't make any difference how much reparations you pay, how much holocaust memorials you build, how many documentaries you produce, how many of your politicians fall on their knees and profess to "never forget"... At the end of the day, they'll still not forgive and, what's more important, they just use it to extract money from you.
So the Japanese were actually smart to save themselves the trouble.
For decades, Germany’s bad conscience has been exploited by its European friends. But there is a growing – and dangerous – feeling here that enough is enough.Telling, that they find this to be "dangerous".
benpenguin wrote:What on earth has China been doing to her neighbours "For hundreds of years"? Have you even read a book on Chinese history? Name one instance of Chinese war with nations that is even remotely comparable to Japan's invasion to China, in terms of casualty. Hell, name one major invasion that we actually march to slaughter their population and replace the government.
The Japanese whitewash "comfort women" and call all of them prostitutes. That is insulting. And hell, its just the tip of the iceberg of their brutality. How about Nanking? Unit 731? I remember them trying to white wash those as well. Now how can you even call that "repentant"?
Most of our grandfathers, including my own, still has first hand memories of Japanese brutality. These incidents do not happen in isolated pockets. The occupying army is basically torching entire villages, raping women and being general arseholes. Estimated deaths 21,000,000. Our total population at the time was 400,000,000. 5% of the fucking population of China.
Just because CCP uses anti-japanese sentiments in its propaganda doesn't excuse these horrible crimes done to us. If you think we deserved the genocide, fucking say it out loud, and don't hide it behind some fake "Chinese history".
Look, I know what you are going to bring up next. Tibetian invasion is a limited conflict with no mass civilian deaths. Mao killed Chinese people too and we remember it. Doesn't excuse the Japanese. Next?
I am not a scholar on Chinese history by any means but a cursory perusal of the basics suffices to establish that "China" has dominated and ethnically cleansed/colonized all manner of neighbors over time. You would be a fool to deny that.
I find it highly plausible as well that Chinese have killed over 5% of total populations. Again, can you establish with certainty this did not occur ever? It seems pretty clear Vietnam, Mongolia, Tibet, Korea, etc. would disagree.
By no means am I "excusing" Japanese atrocities... why would you even say such a thing? Or suggest somehow I "endorse genocide of Chinese"? That's just crazy talk. Of course I don't in any way.
A lot of Chinese still have the view they are better than any other Asians and they view Japanese as beneath them somehow, and resent that Japan was "superior" even if was only briefly. That is how I perceive the situation.
UnusuallyUsual wrote:
I am not a scholar on Chinese history by any means but a cursory perusal of the basics suffices to establish that "China" has dominated and ethnically cleansed/colonized all manner of neighbors over time. You would be a fool to deny that. I find it highly plausible as well that Chinese have killed over 5% of total populations. Again, can you establish with certainty this did not occur ever? It seems pretty clear Vietnam, Mongolia, Tibet, Korea, etc. would disagree.
By no means am I "excusing" Japanese atrocities... why would you even say such a thing? Or suggest somehow I "endorse genocide of Chinese"? That's just crazy talk. Of course I don't in any way.
But, I am playing "devil's advocate" here a little and simply suggesting that China has had complete domination over that part of the world for CENTURIES if not MILLENNIA. Japan was finally "above" China for only DECADES. And honestly I do think that is what it is primarily about. A lot of Chinese still have the view they are better than any other Asians and they view Japanese as beneath them somehow, and resent that Japan was "superior" even if was only briefly. That is how I perceive the situation.
UnusuallyUsual wrote:Longer ago times, higher %'s of populations actually died in wars... for example the Mongols killed giant %'s of populations. If anything, the more modern weapons are accompanied by in general better ability to evacuate civilians and so on.
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