Japanese War Guilt??

1) First-World (outdated term, but it still rings quite true to many of us in the world) countries like USA, Britain, France, Belgium, etc.

I apologize for going over your head. I know what a first world country is. I thought your description of the U.S. as “closed off” to be arrogant and simply wrong.

2)Yes, 3 or 4 major cities would have been worse, but the word 'anal retentive' springs to mind.

I would have been in favor of x cities if that’s what it would have taken. Japan had the opportunity to surrender before Hiroshima and again before Nagasaki. Is there some threshold of deaths that triggers your indignation? Or is it the use of atomic weapons (swords would have been ok?) Or is it just that it was the U.S.? The word “dullard” springs to mind.

3)But you're cool with Stalin, by what you are saying... and I am supposed to be the uninformed one! WWI was a war that NEVER should have happened, and WWII + Hitler would never have had their opportunity without the justification of the Treaty of Versailles. It's not about making excuses, it's about claiming culpability. So that something like that can never happen again... getting my point at all?

I never said I was “cool” with Stalin. We know now that Stalin was (perhaps behind Mao) the greatest mass murderer in history. Sometimes the realities on the ground dictate actions that aren’t optimum. In the most simple terms, it was Hitler or Stalin. What would you have done? No war *should* ever happen since there is always the option of complete capitulation from the outset. The fact that events were used pretexutally or don’t meet your standards as weighty enough is not really relevant. Perhaps we shouldn’t have brought the Japanese to the USS Missouri. That instrument of surrender just might make a good excuse in the future…...

4)Compared to Hitler, equality of brutality is not better (I didn't say that), it is just different and not as if it hasn't happened in many other places in the world. Same thing with Stalin, people like to gloss over his brutality because USSR helped end WWII. If you don't understand the difference between Japan and Germany's motivations for going to war, then you know nothing about history!

You said and I quote:
And I am sorry, but at least the Japanese were equally aweful to all their prisoners of war. I don't think they targeted any specific race/religion/group and systematically sought to wipe them out.

You are clearly favorably comparing Japanese brutality to that of the Nazis. I think the Chinese, Koreans and others might say that absence of a formal policy of genocide does not a benign occupier make. That the motivations for the Axis powers were different is not germane as far as the conduct of the war is concerned..

5)BAHAHAHAHA... really really... because Franco was a peach, right? I would rather be beheaded than my neighbours left, right, and centre giving me up to the Nazi's. I didn't say the Japanese were not brutal, the point I was making is they were not alone in their brutality. It's called perspective. And just because you don't "think" that something happened, doesn't mean that horrible things didn't happen to people under Facism. Again, you seem to know MUCH less about history than I do.

No, my point was that Spain was, for all practical purposes, a non-belligerent. You seem to think Spain was an Axis equal. Franco was a thug but did not commit atrocities against the Allies.

6)Why should anyone give a damn about stories of people post 9/11... idiot!

False analogy. Victims of 9/11 were just that (unless you’re a Ward Churchill disciple). With relatively few exceptions, those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were Japanese in full support of their nation’s military aggression and were no more dead than those killed during conventional bombing (which would have inflicted even more casualties had it been necessary to continue). You still need to apologize for equating internment camps in the U.S. to Nazi death camps. Not to me but to those who administered the U.S. facilities and those who died in German camps.

7)FAIL!!!! "Pearl Harbor" is a frikking ENGLISH name for a HAWAIAN/Polynesian place.... so calling it "Pearl Harbor" in the first place is problematic. Again... ANAL when you have NO other point to make!

Huh? No, I think I pass. Pearl Harbor is indeed an English name. In the English used in Hawaii it is not spelled Pearl Harbour. Or should I say the Albionian used in Hawaii?

8)You make it WAY to easy for me... thanks for the amusement...

Considering that you probably are amused by contemplating your navel, I don’t think I achieved much. Feel free to reply but I am not going to continue this exchange.