This is coolbert: Japanese brutality in WW2. It is commonplace now in Japan, so I understand, for the Japanese people to look upon themselves as victims in the context of WW2. Specifically, the a-bombings are looked upon as being a case where the poor Japanese people were made to suffer terribly at the hands of the Americans. Japan never did have the long series of war crimes trials as did Germany after WW2. And never the recriminations that various segments of the German population have debated over the years. Yes, say the Japanese nay-sayers, we did wage war, but so did others. We fought hard, not cruelly. Only trying to help our brother Asians against western imperialists.

Just one small incident from the war seems to lead one to conclude that this attitude on the part of the Japanese is just not true. After the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and on other Japanese cities in 1942, Japanese reprisals against the Chinese populace that aided the Raiders was brutal in the extreme. About 250,000 Chinese were killed as a reprisal for the miniscule bombing effort against a few Japanese cities! This incident, small potatoes in a war marked by many heinous incidents and atrocities, just shows the brutality displayed by the Japanese toward their Asian "brothers".

Now, in contrast, when the SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by Czech commandos, the SS liquidated the Czech village of Lidice. About 1000 persons were put to death in retaliation for the death of Heydrich. Men shot and burnt to death. Women and children herded off to death camps. Pregnant women had unborn babies aborted and then the women used for hideous experiments. Total number, again, was about a thousand persons. And Heydrich was surely more important than a mere bombing mission on a few Japanese cities. Heydrich was reputed to be the successor to Hitler, if something was to happen to Hitler.

coolbert.