Serious question

Maybe because of what the US did at the end

superyeah

sorry to ping you like this but this one belongs in the off-topic section right?

Exposure. Countries in the Far East like for example Korea probably talk more Japanese atrocities than they do Germany.

Western countries will talk about Germany more obviously. And some countries wouldn’t bother about either.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

Exposure. Countries in the Far East like for example Korea probably talk more Japanese atrocities than they do Germany.

For the US its pearl harbor, For china its japan's warpath and Nanjing among other areas. My grandpa can't see a japanese person without cussing them out about nanjing, gets worse the older the japanese in question is.

I assume Korea and China focus more on Japan's brutalities since they were the axis power closest to them

You would think the US would also a little bit more compared to some other allied powers because of Pearl Harbor

Quote from dong-thefirst

that was the one and only option for US to end the war

without it, japan would have taken more lives including all of their own ( as was their military regime's policy at the time ) and US's own money would have been exhausted too

btw US helped rebuild japan post war just as they helped rebuild germany

woah, you're the first person i've encountered who acknowledges this.

in fact, the reason why the united states sent two bombs is that even after the first one hit hiroshima, the japanese military still didn't retreat. they wanted to keep fighting. it wasn't after the second one's damage that they settled down.

it seems exceedingly harsh on behalf of the u.s, but the only other option they had was to carelessly waste more men in a war with japan. WW2 had just happened, they couldn't make a choice as idiotic as that.

Depends where you live. In the West a lot of emphasis is put on Nazis and Europe but very little about Japan (for my ww2 history we only studied Japan involvement for literally 2 lessons and that was more about the ethics of nukes rather than about what Japan was actually doing) whereas i assume in the East Japan's actions are bit more will known.

I had a friend in college who was Japanese thinking America had a huge role to play throughout ww2 but knew next to nothing about Russia, Britain and Allies involvement simply because he wasn't taught about. Even his knowledge of Nazi Germany, you know the country that was at the centre of it all, was very sketchy at best.

Then there's stuff like middle east, northern Africa etc that is barely taught in countries other than their own. I had an extremely basic idea of that in school and I actually learned more through TV and games.

In the East, China and Korea (not sure about other places that suffered under the Imperial Japan regime) will focus on that and overlook the West front. That's why you see some funky things like use of WW2 German fashion (which is cool looking if we ignore the meaning behind it and it was on purpose to look cool as the Nazi appropriated lot of cool symbols to legitimize their power). Japan will overlook WW2 completely as well unlike Germany and Italy. Even in their pop culture, you rarely see the whole colonial period being touched upon. It's either the final moments of WW2 (like the bombing of Tokyo or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or parody.

Lot of weebos also repeat propaganda from Japanese far right as fact. The image of 80s to today's Japan is very contrasting to the militaristic Japan.

People bring up some of the bad stuff, but they still ignore more specific stuff like mass displacement of people, eugenic experiments, looting, and use of chemical warfare Japanese committed during their colonial era. Maybe the bulk of the atrocities were during WW2, but Japanese atrocities started way before WW2 and joining Axis Power. They looted the shit of Korea during the 30s and it was largely ignored at the time because after all colonialism was OK for the Allies as they did loot their possessions as well. It is still ignored as bringing up the subject of returning looted artifacts will be touching to lot of countries.

Another example of overlooking things is Turkey in case of Armenian genocide. People forget that Assyrians and other peoples also suffered genocide as well and they overlook the role of Kurds in that.

Even today we focus way too much on some stuff like Uyghurs and Palestine and we should, but we overlook Yemen and Tigray (where lot of people died, I mean WW level of numbers). Before Palestine conflict rose up, Myanmar was the focus, but it rapidly phased away.

If you study WW2 in great details we overlook way too much stuff like the roles of other nations in the war. Whatever you studied about WW2, it was just a scratch.

In general, we overlook lot of stuff in history out of self-interest and convenience or lack of it. People bring up USA role in killing and colonizing Native Americans, but it seems to me Canadians, Australians, and so on get a pass on that regard more often than it should. With the recent news about Canadian residential schools, more people outside that region will be more aware of that.

I don't think it is quite forgotten. I think people interested in history are more aware nowadays than before. The problem is the general population view on history is rather just very footnote-ish save a handful of subjects. The world is highly connected (even since ancient times), but the way we learn history is very disjointed and disconnected.

Quote from dong-thefirst

yeah

i guess in a way, the US's concerns is indeed the world's concern right now

also its very true that education on serious historical topics is avoided a LOT other than this guy good this guy bad simplifications

but then again, most of the interesting parts of history are taught when we are children and should probably not be exposed to some of the stuff

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Yeah even historic subjects we learn in more detail are kinda embellished and some of nasty details are just thrown under the rug. There is a battle between trying to portray history as neutral as possible vs trying to see certain events with certain bias (nationalist bias usually).

I think it is fine to teach history in a footnote way for kids because it is a lot to cover. I think it is fine to ignore the history of Chad for Americans, for instance (probably it is only relevant to that region of Africa and France).

The problem lies when we do that, we do lose the sense of connection. The world portrayed in history is highly fragmented when in reality it was way more connected. I wish teachers would hammer this fact more that they are limited on how much they can teach kids, but there are way more to it. Basically what we lack is critical thinking.

Going back to Imperial Japan WW2 atrocities, both theaters of war were important to Americans. I did learn some of the atrocities committed by Japan and Italy, not just Nazy Germany. It was a footnote worthy of discussion, but I was made aware. Of course, if the subject was given justice, we would study the history of colonial Japan from 1890s till its fall in WW2 and probably we would still need to learn about decades before the colonial era as well to truly understand it. That's way more material than trying to get to understand Nazi Germany (which is about the end of WW1 till WW2). I think even some atrocities of Nazi Germany were overlooked like other peoples persecuted by them (like Romani genocide). I learnt it, but it was a footnote too.

My teacher was very enthusiastic about naval battles, so I may have learnt more about WW1 and WW2 ship sinking than necessary lol

my grandparents have first hand experience of ww2 in China which i will not care to share here since it's not pleasant

I don't know either but I've always noticed this from an American point of view, from a Korean pov..... they disliked Japan even before then

They get political mileage bringing up Nazi Germany (Holocaust, Jews, racism, reparations, white supremacy, etc)

Doesn’t work the same with WW2 Japan unless it’s in East Asia