Japanese Redditors - what were you taught about world war 2? New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. We celebrated with cold asahi super dry. So even though we used the same standardized textbooks as the rest of Japan, and had Japanese teachers and administrators, my school is probably very different from Japanese schools in Japan. Utilizing an object-based learning experience, educational technology, and its world-class exhibits, the Museum uses its rich collection of artifacts, archives, and oral histories to take history beyond the pages of textbooks and into the hands of curious students. For example, although Germany sent troops t… (My grandfather actually fought in China in WW2, but he never talked about it so I didn't know anything except what was taught in schools.). Many soldiers have told stories of watching the pilots face as he flew into the side of their ship. Emperor Hirohito's speech accepting Japanese defeat in World War Two remains a sensitive topic in the region 70 years later, as John Swenson-Wright explains. Japan is of the most popular destinations for teach abroad programs and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. The kids were SO excited for our answers and had clearly been learning about the bombings in school at a very young age. I am a 48 year old German, born in 1968 and raised in the southern part of the free state of Bavaria. I don’t know much, but I can add a little. Japan ww2 map from nationalww2museum 7. They were feared, and hated simply because they were the enemy, but also somewhat admired for their dedication. Air Force? The priest explained that the pictures included war criminals alongside nurses who only tried to save lives. In general, the Japanese regarded the leaflet messages as truthful, however, anyone who was caught in possession of a leaflet was arrested by the Japanese government. During World War II, why did the Japanese refuse orders from Nazi Germany, its wartime ally, to kill all the Jews within its borders? Miss Universe Japan Ariana Miyamoto is reflected on mirrors as she works out at a gym in Tokyo on April 1. Once the Japanese lost at Coral Sea and Midway the tide has already turned. However, at least in present-day Japan, WWII can be taught in much the same way you'd teach it elsewhere in the world. What to do (help those in need like the nurses) and what not to do (most everything done by the war criminals). The Empire of Japan entered World War II in September 27, 1940, by signing the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, though, it wasn't until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, that the US entered the conflict. For what it's worth, when I was younger I took part in a religious ceremony at a Shinto temple dedicated to those who died in World War 2. This was more than a month after the battle of Okinawa ended (June 21st). Contrary to popular belief, the Rape of Nanjing is taught at some universities (like the one I went to), and the discussion of the dropping of the atomic bomb was handled through the same global lens as the rest of the unit-- you could tell the professor was attempting to teach what happened, not how he felt about what happened. Burma and then Borneo. So they do not have time to learn, or for schools to teach them, "why" in just one event like WW2. Much like any subject where there is room for interpretation of the material on the part of the instructor, you could take a lesson on the same topic at two different academic institutions and learn two entirely different perspectives. Those on the pacifist side push for a … And I can assure you, that the history lessons in the schools can`t be further away from a “We lost” mentality. ", They were only following orders at the end of the day. The Japanese’s soldiers brutally killed, raped, and slaughtered twice as many people that died in Hiroshima, and Nagasaki combined. As far as I understand, a lot of the time the soldiers were forced into 'volunteering' for the position, and they died crashing a plane into enemy lines. Another serious issue is the constitutionality of the governmentally-approved textbook depictions of World War II, Japanese war crimes, and Japanese … I just replied that I was glad he was alive, and by extension that my girlfriend was alive as well. Post WW2, we experienced the benefits of capitalism and experienced a huge growth in the economy. It's a whole 'nother thing to force people you've basically enslaved into it, then obfuscating the true figures for the sake of preserving patriotism. Kamikaze was seen as evil because it was a fruitless, forced destruction that could not change anything. There have been a lot of documentaries on the war and the decision to use the nukes. We were at the Peace Park, which is a memorial to the bombing and has evidence of the bombing. They completely ignore the rape of Nanking? On 26 July, Allied leaders issued the Potsdam Declaration outlining terms of surrender for Japan. It probably helps that the kamikaze's were largely attacking military targets, whereas suicide bombers are often attacking civilians. What to do (help those in need like the nurses) and what not to do (most everything done by the war criminals). And so did the other countries. War is bad, and we need to learn not to make those mistakes again. Don’t forget to check all of these gallery to not miss anything by clicking on thumbnail gallery below! It's pretty white washed. r/AskReddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions. Questions were like, “why did you come to the peace park?” And “how can we achieve peace” and “where are you from?”. What they didn't know and I might add there was a fundamental misunderstanding of western thought by the Japanese or they never would have considered a first strike on Pearl Harbor an option; was that this sort of behavior only justifies escalation to the west. Before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had already began imperial expansion in China (1937) and in other territories and islands. I had to say that it wasn’t very great. He eventually explained that he had been a pilot training during the war, and that he was slated to have been a kamikaze pilot in a matter of weeks.. For several months, the US had dropped more than 63 million leaflets across Japan, warning civilians of air raids. But while the geographic scope of Hitler’s reach in WWII seems pretty big – extending from Norway all the way down to Morocco – the truth is that most of the Fourth Reich’s “possessions” were fairly nominal. I'm actually still a little confused about why non-Japanese people think the kamikaze program was so evil. The Solomon Islands. "That means schools have to teach about the Japanese military's increased influence and extension of its power [in the 1930s] and the prolonged war in … But not so many. r/AskReddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions. Because even though the Japanese army did terrible things, not everyone in it was terrible. Went with my Japanese GF to visit her grandfather a few years ago in Tohoku, very nice guy. Japan did terrible things. We learned what caused it to happen including the sino-Japanese war and the Russo-Japanese … And the Japanese were throwing lives away on both sides with the Kamikaze for no understandable reason (at least as far as they were concerned). I haven't gotten the impression that people blame Kamikaze pilots for their actions, but instead the Japanese military itself for utilizing them. why did they declare war on china? /r/WWII is a developer-recognized community focused on the title. Japanese kids in high schools learn the entire history of the world (more than 2,000 years) in 1 year. The Philippines. Gone. The terms they were trying to negotiate were somewhat ridiculous in the face of what they and the Nazi's had done (or rather I should say the way they were going about it... a weak inquiry by the powerless royal family through a Russian intermediary is hardly a step towards peace) and America and the allies were coming with a full head of steam after defeating Hitler. Whatcha think... awkward? Source: I have a Korean grandfather who grew up under that crap and I lived in Japan and Korea for a total of six years when I was pretty young. Sending a hundred thousand men to their deaths and allowing 40-150 thousand civilians to be killed as well for a war you've already lost. do they try to justify it? In Japan, students learn Japanese history from upper elementary grades. At the end of the Pacific Theater of World War II, the Imperial Japanese government accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.In 1945, the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan was formally confirmed aboard the Allied battleship, USS Missouri.Once the formal documents were signed, General Douglas MacArthur, representing the Allies, was named the Supreme … Not to mention more than a few documentaries, college courses and History Channel specials along the way. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. I believe a total of twelve Koreans--including these guys and this guy--are recognized by the Japanese government as Korean kamikaze fighters, but since every country's government has their own methods of propaganda and obfuscation in order to make their country look better, who know what the true number of non-Japanese (not just Koreans) who were pressed into kamikaze is. Spent most of my elementary life and some of my middle school life in the US, went to middle school in Japan. "I'm not really sure what to do … Japan's militarist nationalists never really went away after World War II, they just bided their time and waited for the day when they would be able to return to power. as for the kamikaze i don't really think of them as evil, just really fanatical. I understand completely why they used them. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. The course focused on the war through a global perspective, attempting to investigate why Japan entered the war and made the military decisions they did within the larger context of the war itself. Leaflet texts were prepared by recent Japanese prisoners of war because they were thought to be the best choice "to appeal to their compatriots. After watching several documentaries about Japan in WW2, about the kamikaze program, the rape of Nanking and the atrocities that took place in Unit 731, one thing that stood out to me was that despite all of this many Japanese are taught and still believe that Japan was a … "Some Japanese guys found out which school I used to work at and now, I am being pressured to take down the 'Racism in Japan' video," Dezaki posted on Reddit. They also were very excited when my husband put a sticker on the US and I think they whispered to each other something like that’s the country that bombed us. Cookies help us deliver our Services. The statement was taken by both Japanese and foreign papers as a clear rejection of the declaration. Background. The weapon that can't be beaten is always more evil than the one that pits equals against each other with a fighting chance. Each child had a question on their sign they were directed to ask, and then a sticker for the tourist to put an answer on whatever multiple choice answer. Iwo Jima. WWII was like drowning and after what the Japanese pulled on Okinawa there was no way that America was going to accept anything but total surrender and all signs from what the Japanese did at Okinawa pointed to them having no intention of surrendering. Japan ww2 map from thesoundingline 8. Meh, I think the rape of Nanking and Unit 731 is almost forbidden knowledge or something. Ok how you like some nukes then?". On the other hand, we spent the entire week of August 6-9 talking about the bombing of Hiroshima (those are the days the bombs were dropped). But then the US dropped the bombs, and the war was soon over. I went to a Japanese school from elementary to high school, and as far as I remember we were not taught about the rape of Nanking, or Unit 731. It was presented as an ultimatum and stated that without a surrender, the Allies would attack Japan, resulting in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland". It's one thing to "encourage volunteering" for suicide missions within your own people. It's my understanding that later on in the war, a large portion of "kamikaze pilots" were just regular Zero pilots who weren't informed they didn't have enough fuel to make a return trip. Japan did terrible things. A class differs depending on a teacher, but they do not learn history of a prejudiced view. What's REALLY interesting to me is the steps that the U.S. took to try and avoid civilian casualties. But how do the United States and Japan, and the rest of the world for that matter, teach this seminal event so many decades after the world witnessed this incredible display of … Most if not all the atrocities committed by Japan have been omitted from grade school and secondary school textbooks. That is the mindset of a suicidal maniac. From my perspective, they seem more like a group to be pitied than hated. Now I wasn't the most attentive of students, but at the very most those events were probably just mentioned in our classes, never talked about in detail. And at the end of they day the important part was to respect the lessons learned from their lives. We never experienced willful sacrifice in war before, we were shocked, we thought that WWII was a civilized war, there was a romanticism of war that's only faded in the last century. Come to think of it, my class spent as much time covering the War of 1812 as it did WW2. Final note: I went to a public Japanese school in America. They all had large signs around their necks. But here's some interesting things I found on Wikipedia that may further enlighten you as to why the bomb was dropped (and why things like Kamikaze tactics were seen as such an evil act due to the fate of the war pretty much already being decided). Loss after loss. Of course, this will all depend on where you study and who happens to be teaching. More than a month after they lost one of their main prefectures, a hundred thousand soldiers and tens of thousands civilians: Japanese Navy? A lot of the younger folks here seem to think that the emperor was trying to negotiate some sort of peace treaty through an intermediary in the Russian government but I remember a documentary I saw that made that seem like it was very unofficial and could barely be called the beginnings of negotiations. But in the wake of World War II, Japan underwent another great upheaval. My understanding is that they refused to rotate out their good pilots, the good pilots were killed off, and nobody was alive to train the replacements well. Recent polls show that there's growing ignorance around the world about the Holocaust, the systemic murder of 6 million Jews in Europe at the center of the Adolf Hitler's plans. We were there early in the morning, and there was a group of about 30 7 year olds sitting in a circle with their teachers and chaperones. Then North korea saved us. No one avoided becoming a victim of WWII. In their place I'd probably do the same. They didn’t have a choice of else their receive a similar punishment to their prisoners. Well we still learn the France of Vichy here in France so i think that the Japanese people are still talking about it ...???!!! I'm American. The atomic bomb was not mentioned in the communiqué. There are different estimates but somewhere between 40-150 thousand civilians were killed in the crossfire. I'm not sure that most folks would consider the pilots themselves evil but what they did and how they did it certainly was. Some people do state that Japan was "pushed into the war" through geopolitical tactics (Yasukuni Shrine stuff), but that is disputed. If anything people feel bad for the pilots in those situations, as far as I've seen anyway. unit 731 basically biological weapons testing group... tested chemicals on prisoners of war and in habitants of occupied territory, killed many many people, many cases cruel and slowly. After this comment I'm going to look up Unit 731, because I've never even heard of it. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Only Kamikaze left... and they still showed no sign of taking surrender seriously. China started the war, then the Japanese army were able to advance into China. But one thing I feel pretty certain about is that the Japanese weren't taking America seriously. Japan was definitely portrayed as the victims in our classes. I get that the spelling wasn't officially changed until the pinyin reform but why is that particular event still called by it's anachronistic name? I took a class on Modern Japanese history (read: Meiji restoration to post-WWII) at a pretty well-known university in Tokyo. After watching several documentaries about Japan in WW2, about the kamikaze program, the rape of Nanking and the atrocities that took place in Unit 731, one thing that stood out to me was that despite all of this many Japanese are taught and still believe that Japan was a victim of WW2 and "not an aggressor". Especially after Okinawa. It was a very even-handed class, one that did not feel overly biased toward or against Japan. I, too, in America, was never taught about either of them. I don't think anyone but the president and maybe MacArthur really know why they decided to do it. It becomes harder to erase history as students get older so university textbooks are more accurate yet still try to portray the Japanese people and the emperor as victims.
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