Why did we go to war with Japan in WWII?

[4x4Tyke]

PZR said:

He was a surgeon in the Imperial Japanese Navy...

I would like to hear more, it's not a perspective that is very common.

[vonuber]

Digga said:

You are probably right - and the UK and Germany had their own, tit-for-tat bombing of cities - but you'd have never convinced my great aunt. She never forgave the Japs, having seen what they inflicted on the occupants of that train.

My grandma struggles with forgiving the yanks for strafing her and other refugees fleeing across a railway embankment, so it's not unique to either side.

[irocfan]

vonuber said:

Digga said:

You are probably right - and the UK and Germany had their own, tit-for-tat bombing of cities - but you'd have never convinced my great aunt. She never forgave the Japs, having seen what they inflicted on the occupants of that train.

My grandma struggles with forgiving the yanks for strafing her and other refugees fleeing across a railway embankment, so it's not unique to either side.

I seem to recall my grandmother's opinion of the Russians being very low and the Yanks (if anything) even lower

[Digga]

vonuber said:

Digga said:

You are probably right - and the UK and Germany had their own, tit-for-tat bombing of cities - but you'd have never convinced my great aunt. She never forgave the Japs, having seen what they inflicted on the occupants of that train.

My grandma struggles with forgiving the yanks for strafing her and other refugees fleeing across a railway embankment, so it's not unique to either side.

Another great uncle of mine was a pilot in WW2 - had an amazing (very lucky) career in the RAF - and one of the (many and hugely varied) missions he was involved in was the 1,000 bomber raids and I know he never stopped feeling guilty about that. As a child, I remember he always had a Mercedes saloon - very pro-German.

[Pan Pan Pan]

As has been touched on before here, and a genuine question, Did the Japanese believe that Australia should be part of their Pacific empire, and if they had not been opposed by the allied forces, could/would they have attempted / succeeded in making it so?

[jmorgan]

Think they saw it as a step too far with the allies around, perhaps un opposed they would have. Kokoda really is something to read up on and what that was to achieve. Bearing in mind Pearl Harbour was meant to knock the US out of any conflict and out of the Pacific.

[Dr Jekyll]

I did see a suggestion by a respectable historian (can't remember who) that they did consider a partial invasion. Taking Darwin and establishing a beachhead.

Edited by Dr Jekyll on Thursday 1st September 10:39

[Rude-boy]

I'll just drop this in here then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98zeyqfFmMg

[The Don of Croy]

so called said:

sooperscoop said:

Derek Smith said:

The Koreans and Chinese still carry resentment against them. The 'comfort women' episode is horrible.

The following cartoon, "The Story of Ok-sun Jung", is a must-read on the subject, well worth the 5 minutes of your time.

It's SFW, but enraging.

http://foxtalk.tistory.com/98

That's some seriously unpleasant history.

My only anecdote relating to Japanese WW2 memories was being banned from parking my Honda in view of my bosses' Dad's house in Epsom, the elderly Dad having been a PoW in Burma, and the aggravation it might cause (this was in 1992). He refused to buy anything Japanese.

The de-humanisation of Japanese soldiers is well documented, and not unique.

[SPS]

Ayahuasca said:

If we had pulled back our military resources from the Far East and deployed them against Hitler, would it have made any difference to the European war?

Not really - we had obsolete aircraft and no mechanized army units of any size or quality in the Far East.
Two capitol ships and a few destroyers making up Force Z - BS Prince Of Wales and BC Repulse - had been sent from the home fleet without ANY effective air cover - and both being sunk by far superior Japanese naval air power within a couple of hours of each other.
At best they would have been pulled back to India and maybe the Middle East which Hitler always saw as a "side show" until it was too late.

[parabolica]

I would recommend the documentary "The Fog of War" to anyone interested in this thread; it focuses on Robert McNamara's time as Secretary of Defense under JFK and subsequently Johnson, however he talks at length about how the actions of WWII and especially those in the pacific theatre were turned to statistics to assist with the war planning in Vietnam and Korea. The way he describes the damage inflicted by both sides is quite harrowing - Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and had some atrocious human rights violations for POWs etc (that foxtalk link is harrowing), but the Allies were just as vicious when it came to war strategy (the gloves were off) including the extensive use of incendiary bombs against large populated areas of Japan, almost all of which were wooden structures, plus the eventual boiling of thousands when they dropped the bomb.

War is never clean.

Edited by parabolica on Thursday 1st September 12:55

[Halb]

Ayahuasca said:

The Allies used up vast amounts of treasure and blood to force Japan's unconditional surrender.

But Japan was not a threat to the UK home countries or to the US mainland. Unlike Germany, it had no intention of invading us. It simply wanted dominion of the western pacific, and access to the raw materials of the far east.

It was a threat to the parts of the British Empire in that region, but did we go to war with Japan to protect Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and India? They all became independent soon after anyway.

They may have taken India and China, but due to the massive populations and different cultures they may not have been able to hold them for long, and they would have been bled dry trying to.

How would it have played out if the allies had just let Japan get on with it anywhere north of Australia and west of Hawaii?

UK got rich from empire and it's goodies, as a power, all those goodies and pilfering would then go to Japan, the UK fought to retain it's cashcow. No-one had any idea that the UK version of Empire was over and finished.

[DMN]

Halb said:

No-one had any idea that the UK version of Empire was over and finished.

Apart from the British, of course:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilateral_Declarati...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

and with regards to India:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_India_...

Which in short:

"authorised the establishment of independent legislative assemblies in all provinces of British India, the creation of a central government incorporating both the British provinces and the princely states, and the protection of Muslim minorities. The future Constitution of independent India was based on this act"

Without The Second World War, India may have become independent sooner, just as Eygpt already had.

[Halb]

Lots of stuff gets declared, it actually happening is another matter of course.
The war and the changes that occurred either at the same time or due to it put the boot on any clinging onto the old idea of empires. The Brits at least went into the night far more gently than the French, who still thought thr old way was the way.

[stuttgartmetal]

The biggest mistake Hitler made was being a total coke head.
Him, and his little gang of Kamp followers. Harrey Enfield noted how camp the Nazis were.

The Japs were brutal, spiteful.
That guy who couldn't park his Honda near his boss's house hit the nail on the head. Imagine the brutality that guy witnessed, to provoke a reaction like this afterwards.

The japs were trying to play with their toys in our front garden.
Leaving their kids toys on our lawn, and ruining the flowerbed.

They got f cked in the end. And rightly so.
Im amazed after all this, how much of corporate America they seem to have overrun.
Sony owning big studios etc.
Onwards and upwards, forgive and forget.

[Halb]

stuttgartmetal said:

Im amazed after all this, how much of corporate America they seem to have overrun.
Sony owning big studios etc.
Onwards and upwards, forgive and forget.

A lot of top NAZIs were useful after the war, also top Japanese scientists too. The stuff they did at Unit 731
fueled decades of research.
I've read that the security branches of the USA (NSA, CIA others) followed the German route of sub brackets to ensure no other groups really knew what each others were up to, and one has to keep climbing to get a clearer picture. The way Hans Kammler had it during the war.

[stuttgartmetal]

Halb said:

stuttgartmetal said:

Im amazed after all this, how much of corporate America they seem to have overrun.
Sony owning big studios etc.
Onwards and upwards, forgive and forget.

A lot of top NAZIs were useful after the war, also top Japanese scientists too. The stuff they did at Unit 731
fueled decades of research.
I've read that the security branches of the USA (NSA, CIA others) followed the German route of sub brackets to ensure no other groups really knew what each others were up to, and one has to keep climbing to get a clearer picture. The way Hans Kammler had it during the war.

All those rocket scientists at NASA were German, V2 experts you see.
At the end of the war, Russia too half the German Rocket Scientists, and America took the other half.

[irocfan]

Halb said:

A lot of top NAZIs were useful after the war, also top Japanese scientists too. The stuff they did at Unit 731
fueled decades of research.
I've read that the security branches of the USA (NSA, CIA others) followed the German route of sub brackets to ensure no other groups really knew what each others were up to, and one has to keep climbing to get a clearer picture. The way Hans Kammler had it during the war.

IIRC this caused a fair bit of soul-searching by the allies. On the one hand advances in how to treat hypothermia and issues WRT survivability at high altitude were incredibly useful for the war effort - however it was, in part, the result of 'medical experiments' in places like Dachau


(edited to get my bloody spelling right!!)

Edited by irocfan on Thursday 1st September 21:04

[Ayahuasca]

irocfan said:

Halb said:

A lot of top NAZIs were useful after the war, also top Japanese scientists too. The stuff they did at Unit 731
fueled decades of research.
I've read that the security branches of the USA (NSA, CIA others) followed the German route of sub brackets to ensure no other groups really knew what each others were up to, and one has to keep climbing to get a clearer picture. The way Hans Kammler had it during the war.

IIRC this caused a fair bit of soul-searching by the allies. On the one hand advances in how to treat hypothermia and issues WRT survivability at high altitude were incredibly useful for the war effort - however it was, in part, the result of 'medical experiments' in places like Dachu

Are you married? Look at your wedding ring. There is a fair probability that it contains a proportion of gold pulled from the teeth of concentration camp victims.