Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I think it's less about discipline, and more about feeling entitled to treat others as a slave race.
Japanese mayor says that WWII 'comfort women' were necessary
- Thread starter Lea
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You're missing my point Johnny. These are questions that are about the creation and maintenance of any army. The treatment of women in the creation and maintenance of brutality is part of that.
Not sure why you're trying to make out that I'm defending the Japanese army
Is this the Canucking that everybody refers to? Or was I supposed to add a disclaimer that talking about brutality and rape in the context of killing does not mean that I condone the use of rape against women? Really?
Not sure why you're trying to make out that I'm defending the Japanese army
Is this the Canucking that everybody refers to? Or was I supposed to add a disclaimer that talking about brutality and rape in the context of killing does not mean that I condone the use of rape against women? Really?Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I was trying to point out that there were a number of quite brutal armies in existence at that time; but none of the others seemed to need to maintain slave brothels in order to keep discipline. As I said, I believe the creation of slave brothels arose more from a societal attitude that this was ok treatment for members of what the Japanese considered to be an inferior race.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Social mores are social creations, they aren't inherent in the human brain, imo.
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wobbly
So you demand evidence, but can't actually provide any of your own, other than the claims of the authority that organised the rapes.
do your own damn research
Well, exactly. So what is the process involved in creating these mores and how does this relate to the creation of brutality in the Japanese army in WWII?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
We aren't talking about the creation of brutality in the Japanese Army.
We're talking about the creation of slave-rape centers by the Japanese Army.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I know. And I don't agree.
You don't agree with what? That encouraging brutality towards women isn't part of creating brutality for killing?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
I don't agree with this:
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
That's right: Tito Puente did. You seemed to take up the argument in his absence, though. The idea linking the slave-brothels to the general brutality in the Japanese army, appears to first be raised by him.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
btw: the bit I quoted from Tito: do you agree with it, or disagree with it?
I raised questions - I didn't put forward answers. This is what I said trying to expand the discussion into talking about armies in general.
How do those in power unleash that kind of brutality, keep it up, and prevent it from being exercised against the soldiers they're fighting alongside or their superiors? How do you create and maintain an army of men that kill the 'enemy' and not eachother?
I don't know the answer to that but I think these are the kinds of issues we're talking about.
How do those in power unleash that kind of brutality, keep it up, and prevent it from being exercised against the soldiers they're fighting alongside or their superiors? How do you create and maintain an army of men that kill the 'enemy' and not eachother?
I don't know the answer to that but I think these are the kinds of issues we're talking about.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
i don't know for sure but i can be fairly certain.
Well I can't be. I have no idea what I'd do in such a situation. I know what I'd like to think I'd do but actually I don't know what I'd do if I thought I could save my children's lives. Even thinking about such a situation makes me feel shaky and sick. I can't imagine the terror.
coley
Well-Known Member
Well, it's done on a regular basis by most nations and without recourse to organised rape, in fact for many years, in the British and US army, the penalty for rape was death.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
In the context of imperial Japan's relationship with its neighbours, the two could be said to be indivisible. When a society is so rigidly heirarchical, and where social and physical violence are standard tools in the maintenance of the social status quo, then that social patterning acts as a template for how client states and their people are treated. The treatment of subject nations and their peoples was a direct function of internal social processes, hence you can project how most empires treat their vassals through looking at how they treat those of their own who are on the lowest social rungs.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
Nobody is saying that it wasn't in the military model of the Japanese army. What I am saying is that it wasn't necessary for it to be. What the Japanese mayor - and you - are saying is that it was necessary. It wasn't, the simple fact that other contemporary armies did things differently shows that the Japanese army could have done things differently. They didn't and now you are just shrugging your shoulders and saying well that's just the way it was, it was necessary in their model of discipline. Bullshit.
Like FW, would I fuck have grassed them up. How do I know this? Like FW I can't know because I'm not and have never been in that situation but I have relatives whose lives were saved in Austria and Poland by people who didn't, and by people who actively smuggled jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto. I would rather starve then die in a concentration camp than grass someone up to the gestapo if we were in a similar situation now (and it wasn't jewish people who were being persecuted, cos in that situation I wouldn't have been in the position of having the option of grassing or not grassing cos I'd be the one being grassed on).
In any case that's all irrelevant to the question of whether the mass enslavement and rape of women was necessary to maintain discipline in the Japanese army. I should think there were probably more than a few Japanese soldiers who refused to take part in it and were punished or killed for that refusal. Like German resistance to the NAZIs being underplayed or ignored. We're not talking about individual actions here, we are talking about systems, the right and wrong of those systems and the necessity of them.
This system was wrong and unnecessary. You are saying it was necessary, and in saying that you are defending its existence.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
No, you're talking about the creation of slave-populated brothels for use by soldiers, created as an instrument of policy, by elements of the Japanese high command concerned about several separate issues: The effect on individual military operations and everyday conduct of allowing "casual" rape by frontline soldiers; the creation of a culture of impunity among Japanese troops that could possibly fuel rebellion in client states to a greater degree than already existed (the high command missed the boat on this one - the culture of impunity had already existed for decades, but the Japanese power elite were too corrupt to notice); the "homogenisation" of sexual activity so as to control any adverse medical effects.
All of which are horrible, and better dealt with through "commercial" routes, but Japanese culture was arguably such at the time that acknowledging such a thing, and ceding "control" of the matter wouldn't have occurred to anyone in a culture more interested in "face" than the rights and wrongs of imperial policy.
I don't see that Tito Puente is saying anything significantly different to VP. Is he? He uses the word necessary whereas VP outlines a social and historical situation in which alternatives may have been impossible. Is that so different? Because if it is someone will have to explain that to me.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
as long as they didn't suspect you of being a jew or a communist, or of hiding jews/communists you'd be ok. i would be scared too but would say "i don't know, sorry mate". i wouldn't grass anyone up and if i was in the position of having to grass someone up or save my own life i'd probably be fucked anyway and they'd come back for me anyway.
and if it was a similar situation today but with muslims or something I wouldn't grass anyone up either. I'd just say I didn't know. I'd rather die tbh. I couldn't live with myself if I helped the gestapo or anyone similar in anyway.
The question in the post was about saving your own family not saving yourself.
Actions of terror aren't really terror are they if most people do the morally right thing in the circumstances? I think the gestapo knocking on your door threatening to kill your children would evoke terror and I think it's extremely difficult for people to say what they would or wouldn't do in a situation of terror but if you think you know that about yourself then I guess that's your prerogative. I don't know that about myself.
Actions of terror aren't really terror are they if most people do the morally right thing in the circumstances? I think the gestapo knocking on your door threatening to kill your children would evoke terror and I think it's extremely difficult for people to say what they would or wouldn't do in a situation of terror but if you think you know that about yourself then I guess that's your prerogative. I don't know that about myself.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
thing is after you'd grassed somebody else up who's to say they wouldn't shoot you anyway? A lot of people would just say that they didn't know. Or make up some bollocks. If you have got to the point where you are being told you and your family will be killed unless you do x then they are probably gonna come back to kill you anyway so you may as well just lie. And I do have someone in my family who risked his life (and also risked his family's life) to save Jews etc and eventually was killed in the last few weeks of the war. I would rather die doing the right thing than live for the rest of my life knowing that I grassed people up.
i'm not judging anyone i'm just saying. Loads of people didn't grass anyone up, loads of people actively helped Jews, gypsies and communists and risked their own lives to do so.
I know loads of people risked their lives. Where did I say that someone would automatically grass? I just said it's hard for people to know how they themselves would act.
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