Battle for Nanking

No country involved in the war is completely innocent of human rights violations. Some obviously had a more sever amount than others, but no country is innocent. Race based violations occurred everywhere. Think about it, propaganda used terms like Jap, Nip, Kraut, etc. While on the other side, terms like Yank, Limey, Frog, etc existed. Dehumanizing the enemy is part of war, and has happened throughout history.

renrich said:

Michael, your points are very well taken. People today should be made aware of inappropriate,(to say the least,) behavior of citizens, military or civilian, of our respective countries. The old saying, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it," (or something like that) is very true. Studying misbehavior in the past also gives one a sense of perspective about the present. Holding responsible, people today though, for acts of their ancestors is useless and does more harm than good.

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Very well said.

evangilder said:

No country involved in the war is completely innocent of human rights violations. Some obviously had a more sever amount than others, but no country is innocent. Race based violations occurred everywhere. Think about it, propaganda used terms like Jap, Nip, Kraut, etc. While on the other side, terms like Yank, Limey, Frog, etc existed. Dehumanizing the enemy is part of war, and has happened throughout history.

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The difference as i see it, is the difference between state sponsored murder and individual acts of barbarism. The US army is often criticised for the massacres that occurred in Vietnam, yet they were never orsered to do that, and at least the military went through a due process of trial by independant peers. It was still against the law for those soldiers to do what they did.

In China, it was completely different. The Imperial Army of Japan was never issued specific orders to carry out genocide in quite the same way as the Gewrmans, but commanders were never repreimanded for excessive brutality of their troops. This was essentially why Yamashita was hung. Even though he knew about the massacres taking place in Manilla, he did nothing to curb the Naval commander.

In Nanking the army commander (a corps commander in our system) knew what was happening in the city and took no action, in fact he commended units that excelled in the ethnic cleansing. it was dark mark against the honour of japan and its army

a good summary of the massacre, which may be useful


http://www.cnd.org/mirror/nanjing/NMNJ.html

parsifal said:

In Nanking the army commander (a corps commander in our system) knew what was happening in the city and took no action, in fact he commended units that excelled in the ethnic cleansing. it was dark mark against the honour of japan and its army

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The Geneva convention was not signed by the Japanese. I am in no way an apologist for Japanese attrocities, I have worked in China and Nanjing was a very small part, what the Japanese did used to be called sacking a city in Europe, there are no newsreels no photos and no written accounts but that used to be commonplace in Europe. Japan was a small country invading a larger one and paralysing your enemy with fear is a tactic that has been used since the start of warfare.

If the movie and still camera was invented 2000 yrs ago history would be very very different the problem for the Germans and Japanese is they waged war when a permanent photographic record was made. That is why journalists were/are not allowed to film freely by US and British forces in Iraq or Afghanistan.

How about state sponsored acts incarceration based on race? 120,000 Japanese were put into "relocation camps" in the United States based on race alone. 60% of those placed into those relocation camps were American citizens. While it isn't rape and murder, it was theft (they were give very little notice of relocation and many had to sell their properties for a fraction of the value), robbing them of their rights herding them into cramped camps.

What was done in China was wrong, but what was done in the US was wrong as well.

tail end charlie said:

The Geneva convention was not signed by the Japanese. I am in no way an apologist for Japanese attrocities, I have worked in China and Nanjing was a very small part, what the Japanese did used to be called sacking a city in Europe, there are no newsreels no photos and no written accounts but that used to be commonplace in Europe. Japan was a small country invading a larger one and paralysing your enemy with fear is a tactic that has been used since the start of warfare.

If the movie and still camera was invented 2000 yrs ago history would be very very different the problem for the Germans and Japanese is they waged war when a permanent photographic record was made. That is why journalists were/are not allowed to film freely by US and British forces in Iraq or Afghanistan.

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Not signing the Geneva convention has nothing to do with whether a nation is guilty of war crimes. If Nin Laden ever gets caught, he could otherwise calim he never signed the genva Convention, and therefore is allowed to undertake arfare in whatever form he likes.

There are international rules imposed on all nations, as to the conduct of warfare. The system is far from fair, the victors tend to go unpunished for their misdemeanors. However, the basic rules of war are this....you cannot mistreat an eney that has surrecdered, or a population that is no longer resisting. This might mean a general surrender, or it might mean that a particular city or region capitulates. once that is deon, the occupying nation has a responsibility to maintain the rule of law. Japan did not observe that basic principal, and from that all the warcrimes her oersonnel committed, and the nations government as a whole, committed a fundamental criminal act

evangilder said:

How about state sponsored acts incarceration based on race? 120,000 Japanese were put into "relocation camps" in the United States based on race alone. 60% of those placed into those relocation camps were American citizens. While it isn't rape and murder, it was theft (they were give very little notice of relocation and many had to sell their properties for a fraction of the value), robbing them of their rights herding them into cramped camps.

What was done in China was wrong, but what was done in the US was wrong as well.

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An unjust act, to be sure, and one that should be compensated for, i agree, but not a warcrime in my opinion. The US government, pased the necessary legislation, and exedcuted the law as required. It was an unjust law, possibly contrary to the US constitution but not contrary to international law, and therefore not a war crime. The US as a nation did not sponsor state terrorism of populations, despite the popular myths that say they support regimes like Chile or Nicuagra (I can never spell that place). If anything the US could be found guilty of extreme Naivete but not much else

I agree that what happened was wrong, and i dont hide from that, just as our treatment of our aboriginals over the last 200 years is wrong. But in neither case does that qualify as a war crime. I confess too, that I just cannot put the incarceratiuon of the Japanese -Americans is even remotely comparable to what happened in China. I would much rahter be a n ehtnic Japanese living in the US in 1941 than a Chinese citizen living in Nanking in 1938

parsifal said:

Not signing the Geneva convention has nothing to do with whether a nation is guilty of war crimes. If Nin Laden ever gets caught, he could otherwise calim he never signed the genva Convention, and therefore is allowed to undertake arfare in whatever form he likes.

There are international rules imposed on all nations, as to the conduct of warfare. The system is far from fair, the victors tend to go unpunished for their misdemeanors. However, the basic rules of war are this....you cannot mistreat an eney that has surrecdered, or a population that is no longer resisting. This might mean a general surrender, or it might mean that a particular city or region capitulates. once that is deon, the occupying nation has a responsibility to maintain the rule of law. Japan did not observe that basic principal, and from that all the warcrimes her oersonnel committed, and the nations government as a whole, committed a fundamental criminal act

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Parsifal it is a fundamental right of a population to resist, I believe that is what the second ammendment enshrines in law. You seem to quote a new definitition of a war crime written after the event to permit a nuclear attack. There is no definition of crimes against humanity that I know of that can forbid chemical weapons and allow nuclear, nuclear weapons as was known in 1945 cause death from the fallout and not only kill the immediate victims but also their decendants and people down wind. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been viewed as the most grotesque of medical experiments if the allies had eventually lost. Just think how many people were involved in researching the effects.

Consider the plight of a female German teenager in Berlin in 1945, a child when the war started seeing her city destroyed in a firestorm by British and American bombing then raped as part of the red armys occupation. When all is over she has to spend her life listening to the moral allies lecturing her on behaviour.
I have visited Germany many times and that is always in my mind when I see an old lady walking down the street.

The first victim in a war is the truth and the victors write the truth. It doesnt mean that because some victor has written it that I have to believe it.

I will be busy in the next few weeks reading wikileaks documents on Allied forces turning a blind eye to torture and executions in Iraq. Others while wandering about on what is left of any moral high ground may just consider that Guantanamo was specifically constructed to get around the letter of international law while everyone knows it breaks the spirit of it.

I do find it interesting that you mention the allies turning a blind eye to torture and executions, but nothing about the people actually doing the torturing or executions.

vikingBerserker said:

I do find it interesting that you mention the allies turning a blind eye to torture and executions, but nothing about the people actually doing the torturing or executions.

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That is because we are supposed to be in control, please do not pretend that torture and executions have not been carried out by allied forces it was organised under the name of "extraordinary rendition". An unmanned drone doesnt hold a trial, we are shown footage of a bomb exploding and killing people sometimes civilians in pakistan (that is a war crime) sometimes people concerned with resisting a foreign power (that is acceptable in war but none is declared in pakistan) sometimes a "leader" of a terrorist group. Personally I think its a propaganda war and I dont believe any of it.

Unintentionally killing civilians is not a war crime, unless it's due to gross negligence. By the definition you are using, every Allied and Axis Commander in WW2 and most other wars could be put on trial for war crimes.

Iraq's Army has been under Iraqi direction (not allied) since early 2006. The actually declaration of war is a merely a political issue, you can still have a war without it. The majority of the wars that the US has been involved in through out it's history have been undeclared - but they are still wars.

tail end charlie said:

we are shown footage of a bomb exploding and killing people sometimes civilians in pakistan (that is a war crime)

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Sorry TEC but the inadvertant killing of civilians while attempting to eliminate a legitimate target is covered under that very sterile phrase "collateral damage". It isn't a war crime.

tail end charlie said:

Parsifal it is a fundamental right of a population to resist, I believe that is what the second ammendment enshrines in law. You seem to quote a new definitition of a war crime written after the event to permit a nuclear attack. There is no definition of crimes against humanity that I know of that can forbid chemical weapons and allow nuclear, nuclear weapons as was known in 1945 cause death from the fallout and not only kill the immediate victims but also their decendants and people down wind. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been viewed as the most grotesque of medical experiments if the allies had eventually lost. Just think how many people were involved in researching the effects.

Consider the plight of a female German teenager in Berlin in 1945, a child when the war started seeing her city destroyed in a firestorm by British and American bombing then raped as part of the red armys occupation. When all is over she has to spend her life listening to the moral allies lecturing her on behaviour.
I have visited Germany many times and that is always in my mind when I see an old lady walking down the street.

The first victim in a war is the truth and the victors write the truth. It doesnt mean that because some victor has written it that I have to believe it.

I will be busy in the next few weeks reading wikileaks documents on Allied forces turning a blind eye to torture and executions in Iraq. Others while wandering about on what is left of any moral high ground may just consider that Guantanamo was specifically constructed to get around the letter of international law while everyone knows it breaks the spirit of it.

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There is no absolutes, trying to apply the law on moral issues is a wrong test to apply. Instead the best that can be hoped for is to apply a test of equity to each individual case......to assess the relative merits of a particular action or response against the accepted standards of the day. And that pre-supposes that there is an independant body of like minded peers to judge the appropriateness or otherwise of an individuals nation or organizations actions. The most appropriate and successful application of this approach occurred at Nurnberg (IMO), since then the international court of justice has struggled hard for independance and objectivity, but it is a flawed organization at best (that perhaps explains why the US does not allow its personnel to be tried by the court).

If there is an army of occupation, it is of course reasonable for the occupying power to apply rules of military justice to acts of civil disobedience. Moreover, the military code is generally taken to mean a harsher, less rigorous test in the presumption of innocence. If you are caught with a rock in your hand, and there is a broken window nearby, under military occupation you are as good as guilty. Dont laugh, this actual situation has occurred in places like Palestine. However, the response has to be the application of reasonable force to counter the threat. If there are university students rioting, but no actual lethal force is occurring, it would be illegal to use lethal force to curb that riotus behaviour. If there are are acts of sabotage occurring, placing the lives of military personnel at risk, it becomes a more reasonable case to use deadly force

In the case of the little girl in Berlin that you cite....her plight is ultimately the responsibility of the germans themselves. The International trials that followed the war quite appropriately found Germany was guilty of starting the war, of undertaking acts of genocide and wars of aggression, of using illegal and laws contrary to basic human rights to secure political outcomes to their liking (in an extreme and perverted way ....everybody is guilty of this, but not to the same extent and level of perversion that Germans were guilty of). If the education system was set up correctly, when finally she ent back to school, she would learn that harsh as the allied respoonses to german aggression were, it was ultimately the germans who were responsible for her plight. That is not to exonerate the individual acts of bastardry meted out on her. The soldiers who raped her should have faced military justice. That is not a war crime....it s a breach of the military justice sytem of that country, the war crime would be if the soldiers were ordered to rape her, or were allowed to do it without consequence. Thats how it works I am afraid. as an aside, my stepafather is German, a Berliner, fought at Stalingrad, won the iron cross there...returned home to Berlin at the end of the war, says there were many cases of rape in the city, but also says that many Russian soldiers were eventually punished (severely....many were sent to Siberian Gulags for these crimes), though it is popular to paint the Russian authorities as s as uncaring in this situation. In fact it was the common soldiers hardened by four years of the most inimaginable conditions, who carried out these acts....my father-in law was a Soviet Cavalrymen, a Siberian that fought the Japanese, defeated the germans in front of Moscow, and fought all the way through to '45, one of the toughest soldiers I ever met. He says it was mostly the actions of the undisciplined Far eastern and Central Asian raw recruits responsible for the breakdown in discipline that occurred).

There will always be versions of the truth, like Irvings assertion of Holcaust denial, and the like. There will always be those that say the International court of justice is flawed and ought not be supported. I dont support those notions at all. The basic fundamentals in a free society are true.....in a democracy you fool all of the peoiple only some of the time. If you choose to disrespect the scarifices made on your behalf by a generation of people fighting tyranny and oppression, thats your business. I will prefer and continue to support that version of the truth closest to what I believe is the real truth.


As for guantanamo, this is NOT the applicvation of International law, neither is it the application of US dometic statutes. Its a very dicey interpretation of creating a stateless, haven that is outside all jurisdiction. I actually agree with its principals, because the situation it was dealing with ( essentially a war underetaken by stateless individuals, who took it upon themselves to wage war free of all moral or legal limitations).

Excuss me for being naive (my forte with WWII has always been the ETO) but can someone enlighten me about what actually happened at Nanking?

Chinese city falls to the Japanese - who then rape, shoot and bayonet their way through the city. Berlin with bayonets +. God awful and especially so because it revealed just how racist the Japanese were to the defeated Chinese -- on a visceral level that took more than one generation to infuse into the national character of Japanese people .

Nanking was a sign of "things to come" -- in the the same way that Guernica was in Spain during the Civil War.

MM

Njaco said:

Excuss me for being naive (my forte with WWII has always been the ETO) but can someone enlighten me about what actually happened at Nanking?

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Posted a link earlier that gives a pretty balanced summary of the events. Roughly 400000 fatalities, at least 20000 rapes, an unknown number of serious torture victims. From 1945 through to about 1980 Japanese government acknowledged the incident as a massacre. Since the early 1980s have downplayed it as an event...now referes to it as an incident, and honours some of its participants.

This later position by the japanese has attracted widespread diplometic backlashes in East Asia, particulalry China. Western nations have remained tight lipped and uncommittal on this issue. They appear reluctant to side with China over a long term friend, Japan.

tail end charlie said:

Consider the plight of a female German teenager in Berlin in 1945, a child when the war started seeing her city destroyed in a firestorm by British and American bombing then raped as part of the red armys occupation.

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My wife has family that is all to familiar with that very thing you just said...

buffnut453 said:

Sorry TEC but the inadvertant killing of civilians while attempting to eliminate a legitimate target is covered under that very sterile phrase "collateral damage". It isn't a war crime.

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I agree, it is a fact of war. Unfortunate but not a war crime.

I also wish to point out. TEC the torture that possibly happens in Iraq is not state sponsored. Individual soldiers that may commit such acts and the commanders that order them to do so should be punished but it can not be compared to the type of war crimes committed during WW2 by the Axis powers.

parsifal said:

The difference as i see it, is the difference between state sponsored murder and individual acts of barbarism. The US army is often criticised for the massacres that occurred in Vietnam, yet they were never orsered to do that, and at least the military went through a due process of trial by independant peers. It was still against the law for those soldiers to do what they did.

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Parsifal, sorry to come in so late on this but i've been on the lake for the past 4 days. let me set the record straight on vietnam:
The bielief that American Atrocities were widespread is totally false.
During the entire war there were TWO cases of War Crimes by military
personnel. March 1968 My Lai by the 1st platoon of Charlie company,
Lt Calley and February 1970 16 women and children by 5 Marines
Bravo company at Son Thang. Both case resulted in court martial
and all were found guilty. After 3 years, Calley was pardoned by
Nixon.
Meanwhile the press never mentioned any of the widespread civilian
murders committed by the VC/NVA. During Tet alone the VC/NVA
murdered over 5,000 civilians, in Hue alone over 3,000 were tortured
and murdered. Civilian USAID workers, missionaries and any other
westerners were captured starved, tortured, and murdered with never
a press comment.

mikewint said:

Meanwhile the press never mentioned any of the widespread civilian
murders committed by the VC/NVA. During Tet alone the VC/NVA
murdered over 5,000 civilians, in Hue alone over 3,000 were tortured
and murdered. Civilian USAID workers, missionaries and any other
westerners were captured starved, tortured, and murdered with never
a press comment.

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And that's what really p*sses me off about stuff like that. People will show up to protest against executing a murderer, but don't show up at his/her trial to protest them murdering somebody in the first place. Thousands were protesting the invasion of Iraq, but those same people were never protesting while Sadam was killing innocents as a policy.