Kiichi Miyazawa Quotes

During WWII, the Japanese militarists maintained what they euphemistically described as “brothels” of “comfort women.” They Japanese forced 200,000 Korean Women to become sex slaves for the Japanese Troops in addition to Dutch and other white civilians interned by the Japanese in Asia. For years after the war, the Japanese Governments denied this or maintained a discrete silence. Finally some of the Korean women demanded an apology and restitution and it became a world-wide scandal. Unlike Germany which went through a public nationwide assessment of their WWII atrocities, Japan’s apologies for their war crimes have always been very muted and discrete and Japanese students are not even taught about the Japanese atrocities. Worse, nationalist Japanese politicians have either denied the facts about the sex slavery or as in this quotation, attempted to justify the horrid behavior. See {632770} for an American approach to the same problem.

The president believes that Israel was created solely to atone for the Holocaust. He has suggested that Israel should be in Europe. He does not mention the fact that that most of the Middle East including Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and others where part of a Jewish Kingdom over 2000 years ago and Jews were in the Holy Land ever since. He also does not consider the fact that Arab leaders were allies of the Nazis and supported the Holocaust.

to make that kind of moral assessment. Others attribute the refusal of Japan to, as Germany had done, come to grips with the worst of their World War II atrocities to the power of a strong nationalist minority of the LDC party who have been able to block all attempts at apology since 1945. See Hosei Narota {41051} for the nationalist contrary view.

The note was found in an abandoned Japanese camp on Bataan. There are some who believe that this note was a forgery. However, most think it genuine as it reflected one of the Japanese
“aces in the hole” to defend against an allied invasion of the Japanese mainland. It was one of the reasons that some American planners advocated use of the Atomic Bomb. Of course that was a real risk of using the bomb. The Japanese might be so angry and feel morally abused and kill the many allied prisoners they had. Many thought it was a lesser risk because it did not have the symbolic animus that foreigners occupying the Japanese homeland had. The quotation illustrates the amazing complexity that the American and allied leadership faced trying to end WWII in the Pacific.

After the Japanese surrender in World War II, the Japanese assumed that the American occupational soldiers would rape Japanese women the way that the Japanese soldiers had done in their occupations. They therefore came up with a plan to have some Japanese women serve as prostitutes in organized brothels so that the Americans' lust would be satisfied.

This statement caused great consternation. NcNutt did try to explain that he was speaking personally and not for the Government, but there was a small proportion of America who had concluded that all Japanese should be killed. Such an concept which was unthinkable 5 years earlier was considered as a result of several factors: The Japanese had murdered many American prisoners of war. Killed millions of civilians throughout Asia including doing medical and weapons experiments on live human beings. They had practiced torture, compulsory prostitution and mass rape of conquered territories. At the same time, the Germans had tried to exterminate all the Jews and, with some Japanese help, did kill two-thirds. The concept of genocide had been introduced to Americans as the concentration camps were liberated. And American casualties in the Pacific had been heavy. Vengeance was desired by many. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Americans never considered genocide seriously.

The Senator had been illegally frequenting prostitutes and was a regular customer of an infamous DC Madam. The reason this quotation is noteworthy is that it is a stunning example of moral hypocrisy in politics. Vitter ran as a very conservative politician who placed traditional Christian and family values at the forefront of his political philosophy. When his behavior was made public there were calls for his resignation. He refused and instead gave this statement. However, he had been elected to replace Robert Livingston who had been the Speaker of the House but had resigned when he was caught frequenting prostitutes. Vitter’s hypocrisy was all the more hypocritical as he had demanded the resignation of President William Clinton who had engaged in adulterous sex while in office. When he was running for office and his opponent complained that Vitter had been frequenting prostitutes, Vitter said that the accusation was absolutely and completely untrue" and that it was "just crass Louisiana politics”. This reinforced the hypocrisy in that Vitter claimed that one of Clinton’s failings was that he lied about his adulterous affair, while Vitter not only lied, but did so the public for purposes of getting elected. And just a few months before this statement, Vitter proclaimed the importance of abstinence for teenagers and faithfulness for adults. See {625896}.

The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. The focus of the scientists had been to beat the German’s who were terribly evil might develop a bomb first. After the defeat of some scientists began to have concerns about their purpose. Most were very distrustful of the army and believed little of what they were told, by the military at Los Alamos. However, in a remarkable our de force of leadership, Oppenheimer had the trust of virtually all of the staff. This memo and a briefing of the invasion plans of mainland Japan (see {629858} ) convinced the scientist to maintain their intense and punishing pace.