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COMMENTS:
It should be noted that Yasukuni Shrine host a war museum that presents a revisionist view of Imperial Japan and W.W 2.Visitors to the museum are shown a video that claims Japan's aggressive imperial actions against their neighbors and W.W 2 done inorder to protect against Western imperialism.
Should they? Yes. Will they? No. These protests happen every year.
Voted : No
No. Not unless it's wrong for every other nation to honour those who died in their own wars. Will Americans stop visiting war memorials as well? Will anyone else? Should they? No, I think not.
^ I think the problem is not the memorial to their dead, it's the memorial to their war criminals and a complete rewriting of their history to make the war look like anything other than an imperialist land grab.
They should stop visiting it, and while they're at it come to terms with what evil little bastards they were during the war, so far they've never really admitted any of their crimes. In a great many ways they were the same, or even worse than the nazis. And yet they seem to have gotten off light.
Does the USA come to terms with their own war crimes? No they don't. They hide them as well.
As to War Criminals, well, in my mind General Sherman of the US Civil War was a war criminal. Whoever gave the orders for the nuclear bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were also war criminals. So were those who gave the orders for the firebombings of Japanese cities, they too were war criminals. I can list a great many atrocities committed by the USA as well as you can list atrocities committed by Japan. Which side killed more civilians?
If Japan can't honour it's war dead, then neither should any other nation honour their own war dead.
Quite simply they should remove war criminals from the shrine list and either remove or revise the offending video segment shown in the museum.
Don't be too harsh - it wasn't that long ago that the Custer Battlefield National Monument went under revision to become the Little Bighorn National Monument.
National pride is a strong emotion and essentially the monument is dedicated to those who died whilst in army service.
Only a small revision would be necessary to retain dignity.
"...rewriting of their history to make the war look like anything other than an imperialist land grab."
Something the USA will have to do in order to remain guilt free with regards to the current Iraq conflict.
Maybe the Native Americans would like us to stop celebrating Columbus Day? I mean that could not be a day they think of with joy, right? :)
Don't be too harsh - it wasn't that long ago that the Custer Battlefield National Monument went under revision to become the Little Bighorn National Monument.
by wideheadofknowledge on Aug 13, 2006 8:28pm
Another perfect example.
"Maybe the Native Americans would like us to stop celebrating Columbus Day?"
Yes, as a matter of fact, we would.
Thanks. I was expecting your "words of wisdom" at any moment. Pop on over to my new ballots, would you. I'm eager to get your views. Thanks! :)
I think Wideheadofknowledge has the best solution.
Voted : No
Of course they shouldn't stop visiting a war memorial as to avoid China from getting all butt hurt.
After reading Wide Head's solution I've decided his solution is most agreeable.
I can agree that revision of the shrine to remove the worst would be a good idea, but there's no doubt that the Japanese government could never, and would never do this. In Asia, they would see it as a "loss of face" to bow down to the political pressure of China (which is how they'd see it). Also, they are extremely conservative about avoiding change of any kind.
The main ruling party, the LDP, make the Republicans look like flighty airheaded greenies in comparison.
Voted : They should revise the shrine and museum
I do not understand why so many here excuse one bad action by pointing to another bad action.Two wrongs do not make a right and for Japan to gloss over their murderous and quasi genocidel actions during the 20th century is a crime in itself.
I agree with wide that the war criminals should be removed from the war memorial and the revisionist elements of the museum corrected.However until those things are done I don't think that any Japanese politician should visit the shrine.
I think that it is an internal political situation.
I don't think that the PM is going there to specifically honor the war criminals. The problem really is that those people should have never been allowed to be buried there in the first place.
I think that by demanding that no pol go there would be tantamount to saying that our president shouldn't visit Arlington.
Certainly, someone somewhere could make the case that a war criminal is buried at Arlington {although I am not aware of any myself.}
{for Japan to gloss over their murderous and quasi genocidel actions during the 20th century is a crime in itself.
by Corrupt on Aug 14, 2006 9:42am}
for the USA to gloss over their murderous and quasi genocidal actions during the 20th century is a crime in itself.
The same goes both ways. No nation is innocent in wartime; don't pretend that they are.
{I think that it is an internal political situation.
by Noblese_Oblige on Aug 14, 2006 6:37pm}
That's the main problem; all those extreme rightwingers in Japan still wield a great deal of political power behind the scenes. I don't like it either.
When the rightwingers make a big demonstration at Yasukuni, the police will actually back them up when the leftwingers come to attack them.
But when the leftwingers have a demonstration march, and the rightwingers attack them, the police will still arrest & beat up the leftwingers.
Ahhh the evil righties.
You know over the weekend in the city of San Francisco a bunch of leftist scum came out to rally in favor of the violent terrorists Hezbollah and Hamas.
but of course only the right is bad right?
{Ahhh the evil righties.}
Extreme rightwingers are as bad as any other extremists. Just like extreme leftwingers.
In Japan, the leftwinger groups like the Chukakuha fire mortar rockets at the Imperial Palace occassionally, use molotov cocktails when fighting the police, and love nailguns and a good fight. They look more like skinheads than the rightwingers do. They have a fortified building in Tokyo from which they have successfully fended off the police many times, but which the JSDF is legally unable to be used against under the present constitution.
Some good advice; never try to frame the politics of another nation in the terms of your own - you'll get seriously confused and surprised.
{ but of course only the right is bad right?
by Noblese_Oblige on Aug 15, 2006 6:51am}
Are you assuming that is my opinion, or is it only your own?
Lovelynice why can't you criticize Japan without pointing to the behavior of another nation?Also what genocidal actions did America take during the 20th century?Were we raping women like Japanese soldiers raped Korean and Chinese women when they occuppied those nations?Were we conducting gursome experiments on human beings like the Japanese did?
I am not making any assumptions other than to assume that when someone zeros in on the right they are usually left, and vice versa.
{Were we raping women like Japanese soldiers raped Korean and Chinese women when they occuppied those nations? by Corrupt on Aug 15, 2006 2:04pm}
In Japan, yes, by the tens of thousands of Japanese women raped by USA soldiders in the first months of Occcupation. 30,000 in Kanagawa-ken alone in just 3 months. It's in the Japanese national police records.
{Were we conducting gursome experiments on human beings like the Japanese did?
by Corrupt on Aug 15, 2006 2:04pm}
Wow, you put your foot in that one.
1939: In order to test his theory on the roots of stuttering, prominent speech pathologist Dr. Wendell Johnson performs his famous "Monster Experiment" on 22 children at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport. Dr. Johnson and his graduate students put the children under intense psychological pressure, causing them to switch from speaking normally to stuttering heavily. At the time, some of the students reportedly warn Dr. Johnson that, "in the aftermath of World War II, observers might draw comparisons to Nazi experiments on human subjects, which could destroy his career"
1940's: In a crash program to develop new drugs to fight Malaria during World War II, doctors in the Chicago area infect nearly 400 prisoners with the disease. Although the Chicago inmates were given general information that they were helping with the war effort, they were not provided adequate information in accordance with the later standards set by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago studies as precedents to defend their own behavior in aiding the German war effort.
1941: An article in a 1941 issue of Archives of Pediatrics describes medical studies of the severe gum disease Vincent's angina in which doctors transmit the disease from sick children to healthy children with oral swabs
1941: Drs. Francis and Salk and other researchers at the University of Michigan spray large amounts of wild influenza virus directly into the nasal passages of "volunteers" from mental institutions in Michigan. The test subjects develop influenza within a very short period of time
1941: Researchers give 800 poverty-stricken pregnant women at a Vanderbilt University prenatal clinic "cocktails" including radioactive iron in order to determine the iron requirements of pregnant women
1942: The United States creates Fort Detrick, a 92-acre facility, employing nearly 500 scientists working to create biological weapons and develop defensive measures against them. Fort Detrick's main objectives include investigating whether diseases are transmitted by inhalation, digestion or through skin absorption; of course, these biological warfare experiments heavily relied on the use of human subjects (Goliszek)
1942: U.S. Army and Navy doctors infect 400 prison inmates in Chicago with malaria to study the disease and hopefully develop a treatment for it. The prisoners are told that they are helping the war effort, but not that they are going to be infected with malaria. During Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors later cite this American study to defend their own medical experiments in concentration camps like Auschwitz
1942: The Chemical Warfare Service begins mustard gas and lewisite experiments on 4,000 members of the U.S. military. Some test subjects don't realize they are volunteering for chemical exposure experiments, like 17-year-old Nathan Schnurman, who in 1944 thinks he is only volunteering to test "U.S. Navy summer clothes" (Goliszek). The experiments continue until 1945 and made use of Seventh Day Adventists who chose to become human guinea pigs rather than serve on active duty.
1943: Tthe U.S. begins research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.
1943: In order to "study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders," researchers at University of Cincinnati Hospital keep 16 mentally disabled patients in refrigerated cabinets for 120 hours at 30 degrees Fahrenheit
1944: U.S. Navy uses human subjects to test gas masks and clothing. Individuals were locked in a gas chamber and exposed to mustard gas and lewisite.
1944: As part of the Manhattan Project that would eventually create the atomic bomb, researchers inject 4.7 micrograms of plutonium into soldiers at the Oak Ridge facility, 20 miles west of Knoxville, Tenn
1944: The Manhattan Project medical team, led by the now infamous University of Rochester radiologist Col. Safford Warren, injects plutonium into patients at the University's teaching hospital, Strong Memorial
1945: Continuing the Manhattan Project, researchers inject plutonium into three patients at the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital
1945: Researchers infect 800 prisoners in Atlanta with malaria to study the disease
1946 - 1947: University of Rochester researchers inject four male and two female human test subjects with uranium-234 and uranium-235 in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7 micrograms per one kilogram of body weight in order to study how much uranium they could tolerate before their kidneys become damaged (Goliszek)
1946: Six male employees of a Chicago metallurgical laboratory are given water contaminated with plutonium-239 to drink so that researchers can learn how plutonium is absorbed into the digestive tract (Goliszek).
1946 - 1953: The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission sponsors studies in which researchers from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston University School of Medicine feed mentally disabled students at Fernald State School Quaker Oats breakfast cereal spiked with radioactive tracers every morning so that nutritionists can study how preservatives move through the human body and if they block the absorption of vitamins and minerals. Later, MIT researchers conduct the same study at Wrentham State School
1946: Human test subjects are given one to four injections of arsenic-76 at the University of Chicago Department of Medicine. Researchers take tissue biopsies from the subjects before and after the injections (Goliszek).
1947: Col. E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) issues a top-secret document (707075) dated Jan. 8. In it, he writes that "certain radioactive substances are being prepared for intravenous administration to human subjects as a part of the work of the contract" (Goliszek).
1947: The CIA begins studying LSD's potential as a weapon by using military and civilian test subjects for experiments without their consent or even knowledge. Eventually, these LSD studies will evolve into the MKULTRA program in 1953
I can go on, there's hundreds of these...
{I am not making any assumptions other than to assume that when someone zeros in on the right they are usually left, and vice versa.
by Noblese_Oblige on Aug 15, 2006 6:27pm}
I'm not right or left. I'm just me.
Voted : They should revise the shrine and museum
1939: In order to test his theory on the roots of stuttering, prominent speech pathologist Dr. Wendell Johnson performs his famous "Monster Experiment" on 22 children at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport. Dr. Johnson and his graduate students put the children under intense psychological pressure, causing them to switch from speaking normally to stuttering heavily. At the time, some of the students reportedly warn Dr. Johnson that, "in the aftermath of World War II, observers might draw comparisons to Nazi experiments on human subjects, which could destroy his career"
No they didn't. 1939 was the year the war started. So the holocaust and its experiments was yet to happen.
Next!
Voted : Yes
They should have the freedom to do so. If they want to let them. They should understand however, that it upsets a lot of people. I would advise the individuals in question to voluntarily consider the negative consequences of such visits on the feelings of others.
{warn Dr. Johnson that, "in the aftermath of World War II, observers might draw comparisons to Nazi experiments on human subjects, which could destroy his career"
No they didn't. 1939 was the year the war started. So the holocaust and its experiments was yet to happen.
by wideheadofknowledge on Aug 16, 2006 11:15pm}
They weren't talking about that particular holocaust, they talking about Nazi experiments on human test subjects - and those had already become known BEFORE the war had even started, back in the early 30s.
1939 had just begun, I'm sure that the students were aware that there was a war on, don't you thinks so, or do you think they didn't read newspapers back then? Even if the USA wasn't involved yet.
Well, if 1939 had just begun then the war hadn't in fact started.
If you can't cite sources that get even basic facts right then how can we trust any of your sources on anything you post?
Funny how you whinge and whine about the need to cite specific sources but suddenly go all quiet when one is painfully and obviously b*llsh*t isn't it?
You have lost all credibility on ANY of your citations and evidence with this clanger!
"They weren't talking about that particular holocaust"
Aah, of course! they were talking about that OTHER holocaust. Oh, right, right I get it now.
Pathetic.
{"They weren't talking about that particular holocaust"
Aah, of course! they were talking about that OTHER holocaust. by wideheadofknowledge on Fri Aug 18, 06 9:45am}
^ Strawman argument there ^
As I stated;
"They weren't talking about that particular holocaust, they talking about Nazi experiments on human test subjects - and those had already become known BEFORE the war had even started, back in the early 30s.
1939 had just begun, I'm sure that the students were aware that there was a war on, don't you think so, or do you think they didn't read newspapers back then? Even if the USA wasn't involved yet."
and there have been MANY holocausts. Including quite a few done by jews too. They don't have the monopoly on being victims.
{but suddenly go all quiet ...
by wideheadofknowledge on Fri Aug 18, 06 9:43am}
What??? Do you think I'm going to spend the rest of my days sitting on one ballot and that I don't have a real lie?
Lovelynice, your source states that in 1939 students warned Dr Johnson that his experiments would draw comparison to Nazi experiments IN THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II.
Clearly, this data is wrong - either you made a mistake with the date or the source is utterly bogus.
Pointing that out is neither a strawman argument OR worthy of negative karma.
Germany didn't invade Poland until SEPTEMBER 1st 1939 with war declared on Germany two days later. This hardly warrants as the beginning of 1939 and once again is clearly not in the aftermath of world war 2.
For someone who takes great pride in furnishing us with stacks of quotes, evidence and sources you should have the integrity to a) admit this is f*ck up and b) be a lot more careful when throwing stuff at us in your comments.
{learly, this data is wrong - either you made a mistake with the date or the source is ...
by wideheadofknowledge on Tue Aug 22, 06 12:16am}
OR THE SOURCE HAD THE DATE WRONG TOO.
That's simple isn't it?
Not necessarily "bogus" but just a typo. Maybe you can bother to find the correct date. Ot would you rather just throw insults everywhere you go?
General Sherman of the US Civil War could be considered a war criminal too. Maybe the USA government should stop honouring his name as hero and admit that he was a mass murdering psycho?
Some of you people also don’t seem to realize that Japan’s war shrine is centuries older than WWII and that it contains the names and/or remains of people who died hundreds of years ago. In these troubled times, Japanese people go to remember the tragedies of war by remembering their ancestors, and you criticize them for this. You have no pity and no shame if you would deny somebody the right to remember an ancestor who died a needless death in an ancient war simply because a war criminal war remembered in the same shrine.
Would you deny American’s the right to go to the Vietnam memorial to remember conscripted brothers just because a handful of those named there were war criminals.
Every year, thousands of foreigners also go to visit Japan’s national war shrine, as well as people remembering the tragedies of war, are they worshiping war criminals too?.
Let the Japanese remove those criminals from the shrine and then I think it would be okay for the public to keep visiting the shrine.Otherwise it is morally wrong and revisionist to honor these murderers as heros.The Japanese have yet to fully admit the crimes they committed against the world during the war,this is just another example of Japanese nationalism spiting in the face of justice.
Japanese nationalist and/or Japophiles like you're self Lovely need to acknowledge Japan's disgraceful post-war behavior.
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