Quote:
Originally Posted by pretorius
Eternal glory to the brave japanese soldiers! They fought against American imperialism.
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The Japanese soldiers were brave enough, but they weren't fighting against American imperialism, they were fighting for Japanese imperialism. I suppose you don't remember that at the time of WW2, Japan called itself an "empire", and the Japanese army was formally called the "Imperial Japanese Army" (or I.J.A. for short). It makes sense that an army so-named probably belongs to an imperialistic government. In Japan there is no eternal glory for the Japanese soldiers, and even today young Japanese avoid serving in the self defense forces because it is not thought of as an honorable profession.
All lands conquered by the Japanese were conquered in the name of the emperor. Like Hitler's Germany, Japan conquered, looted, and shipped back to Japan anything of value which they could find. The East Indies were conquered for their oil fields, Malaysia was conquered for it's tin, rubber, and quinine. Manchuria was conquered for it's natural resources. Rather than pay for the labor to recover these resources, Japan enslaved several hundreds of thousands of people. More than 100,000 of these slaves died during the building of the Thailand/Burma railroad alone. Countless more died in other wartime projects.
At first, the native peoples of the parts of Asia who were controlled by the British and the Dutch welcomed the Japanese. This feeling was short-lived. The Japanese enslaved or killed outright the Chinese which they found in Malaysia and other places. All Asians with tattoos were likewise killed (to this day Japanese still distrust anyone with tattoos). Native people were paid for their work with Japanese "monopoly" money, which was worth less than the paper it was printed on. Industries and farms in the conquered lands faltered, because their products and food were simply stolen rather than being paid for. Starvation of the native peoples became rampant, and it wasn't long before these natives began working with the Allies to destroy the Japanese.
It was the ultimate irony that Japan itself ended up being conquered by America. But what went around came around.