vinniram wrote:

just wondering, have countries like china, japan, and south korea ever received reparations for being forced via gunship diplomacy into signing the unequal treaties? or is it something the west prefers to pretend never happened?

The US' colonial history isn't taught in schools (at least at the secondary level) telling from my four years studying there. Even if most people DID know about it, they'd probably be proud.

I don't know about the other colonial powers involved (France, Germany, England, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, etc).

No reparations were ever offered up, but it's silly to think that they would be.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 May 29, 11:27 pm)

Yeah, another post for "community."

People do bad stuff to one another, so do nations. What do you propose should be the statute of limitations on bringing up the past? Why? I think countries (and people) should just move on and focus on the problems at hand, of which there are plenty.

I've met many people proud of the US nuking Japan and saying that they should do it again if they get too lippy. It's not hard to extend that to being proud of colonizing less advanced countries. Mind you I lived in the south when I was in the US.

It's the same mentality of "we kicked your ass in ww2 and we can do it again if we need to" or "we saved your ass in ww2 so you should be quiet and do what I/we say".

lagwagon555 wrote:

I don't think anyone's interested in paying reparations for wars which happened hundreds of years ago. You don't trial the murderers children, if the murder took place 100 years ago. And how you could think the west owes Japan any reparations is beyond me...

Well, the thing is that this wasn't 100 years ago. America still holds many pacific islands as "protectorates", which is another name for colony. The nuclear testing which was happening as late as the 1970s also devastated a number of island nations in the pacific. The Vietnam war was fallout from the French trying to hold onto their colony there after WW2. etc. A lot of this is still recent history. Probably the only reason why old-school colonization isn't still a reality is because it's more effective to just make a nation economically dependent or install puppet/"friendly" governments. Most of the action in this regard has shifted to South America. Most of it isn't taught in US schools or shown on US news.

Not that I think reparations are required, but it's not all water under the bridge.

Nukemarine wrote:

[...]
Had the WWII in Japan not ended with atomic bombs, but instead with an allied invasion that included Russia you may have had a similar issue that Germany had (a quarter of the country Communist, with 1/4 of capital city equally made communist). A cold war that might have become nuclear due to the change of the world stage.

Yeah, horrible acts that may have prevented much, much worse horrible acts in hindsight.

Like I said, it gets complicated quick.

That part gets a lot simpler if you visit the peace park in Hiroshima.  It's amazing how a few hours can change your whole outlook.

Last edited by welldone101 (2009 May 30, 2:10 am)

One might also keep in mind that "reparations" demanded by France and England (and largely opposed by Wilson) after WW I are often cited as the key to a German economic malaise that planted the seeds to WW II.

Those that don't learn from history ...

P.S. Want a war?  The West (the payer apparently) could put up a dandy.  They might not win, but nobody would want to be around in either case.

The question is stupid and provocative, not really deserving of a serious answer.  But I honored it nonetheless.

Last edited by Wally (2009 May 30, 2:19 am)

vinniram wrote:

Wally wrote:

The question is stupid and provocative, not really deserving of a serious answer.  But I honored it nonetheless.

My original question, to clarify, was not "give reparations NOW!!", it was a question about whether, at any stage in history, reparations were given for western crimes against China, Japan and South Korea around the time of the unequal treaties. I was asking out of interest, and I think that asking questions about history is neither "stupid" nor "provocative".

Jarvik7 wrote:

I've met many people proud of the US nuking Japan and saying that they should do it again if they get too lippy. It's not hard to extend that to being proud of colonizing less advanced countries. Mind you I lived in the south when I was in the US.

sounds like there's lots of bigots and racists in the south. For them to be PROUD of nuclear bomb detonation on innocent civilians? I don't know about others, but the fact that there's people like that in this day and age, in the so-called "land of the free", is a bit distressing! How anyone could condone nuclear weaponry is beyond me - only two words come to my mind: mass murder. that's IMO, anyway.

Your "mass murder", then, would apparently not apply to the American troops that would have had to storm Kyushu.  Then Honshu.

No, that's not mass murder, is it?

You simpleton.

Actually, you are not a simpleton, just a troll.

Last edited by Wally (2009 May 30, 2:35 am)

vinniram wrote:

once again putting words in my mouth. I simply stated that an event, the atomic bombings, was a mass murder. I didn't mention any other events, nor their status as either mass murders or not mass murders.

please don't resort to personal attacks. I am not personally attacking you. If you find me to be such a "simpleton" and a "troll", why are you responding to this thread?

Any act of war is "mass murder".  Where do you want to start and where do you want to finish.  Obviously to me, you are trolling here.

The V-2 was mass murder.  So they were not so good at it.  Big deal.  It was mass murder.

The Bataan death march?  Oh?  Not mass murder?  Take a hike, will ya?

welldone101 wrote:

I believe that vinniram is sadly confused about what the average American is like, but maybe he should look a little closer to home before pointing fingers across the puddle.

I believe, Wally, that there's a rather large difference between a soldier and a town full of civilians; between military targets and civilian targets.

The only fair way to even start to discuss that bombing is to agree that the US government and the Japanese government each share 50% of the blame for what happened.

I believe this thread is dumb, majorly off topic, little to do with kanji or society, culture, life in Japan. TJP's History might be the better place.

He's looking for a fight, and nothing less for sure.

*War* is not a game.  War is mass murder, pure and simple.  Always has been, probably always will be.  Better to not start one.  Pointing fingers of blame after the fact is simply another way of saying, "Hey, you were trying to win harder than we were, or at least you were better at it.  NO FAIR!"

Vinniram, can you then re do your first question and be more specific in the terms you use. What you you mean by Korea. Do you mean Korea prior to 1950's. North, south Korea. What do you mean by reparations? Has the economic trading between the nations listed in the last few decades a qualifier in that.

That you threw out a question, made it a binary type of "Either US did reparations, or they're ignoring what they did" as if those are the only two possibilities suggest you are trolling.

welldone101 wrote:

Nukemarine wrote:

[...]
Had the WWII in Japan not ended with atomic bombs, but instead with an allied invasion that included Russia you may have had a similar issue that Germany had (a quarter of the country Communist, with 1/4 of capital city equally made communist). A cold war that might have become nuclear due to the change of the world stage.

Yeah, horrible acts that may have prevented much, much worse horrible acts in hindsight.

Like I said, it gets complicated quick.

That part gets a lot simpler if you visit the peace park in Hiroshima.  It's amazing how a few hours can change your whole outlook.

I've walked the sands of Iwo Jima, Saipan and Okinawa where honorable men from both nations fought in a horrible war. It takes just a look at the 100,000 that died in the invasion of Okinawa to realize what true horror would have occurred in mainland Japan with an allied invasion. Then you can look at Eastern Europe for the last few decades and wonder what the results would have been with Russia involved in the occupation of Japan.

No sir, there's nothing simple about it. Dresden, Nanjing, Okinawa, Berlin, Stalingrad, etc. had horrors occur at that time with just gunpowder, metal and oil. 50 million lives over a 7 year period killed with millions more to die in the aftermath in the decades that follow. I'm not downplaying how horrible the atomic bombings were. I'm saying that that war was beyond the pale, yet it could have gone even darker than it did.

Personally, I think the greatest reparation is to prevent such things from occurring again.

Last edited by Nukemarine (2009 May 30, 6:18 am)

One thing I'm surprised hasn't come up in the debate about if nuking Japan ended up being the better of two difficult choices is that Japan had already been trying to surrender for weeks, and that the US knew it.

The nuking of Japan was a political maneuver (to intimidate the Russians, plus not using it would mean having to explain why they spent all of the taxpayer's money), not a military tactic to make the war end sooner or without an invasion of the mainland. You can actually read the minutes of these discussions among the top US brass. The discussion about money sickened me more than all of the pictures of mangled bodies at the Hiroshima museum.

PS: gimmah reparations for the War of 1812.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 May 30, 3:29 am)

From what Japanese friends have told me, it is a very common belief among Japanese that Japan tried to surrender prior to the bombing of Hiroshima but America would not accept it.  We will never know what the reality actually was though.  Those who win wars write the history books.  Given that jockeying for post war position started well before WWII even ended, it makes sense.  Much more so than the idea that Japanese brass wanted a prolonged campaign on Japanese soil down to the last warm body knowing they had no chance for victory.