Friday, February 29, 2008
Japan
This week in class and in the reading I found things out about the Japanese I did not know. The first was the Japan used poison gas during the WWII on the Chinese. I had always thought that beside the gas chamber in Germany poison gas was not never used on the battlefield in WWII. In addition, was the number of battleships that the Japanese Navy had. I always assumed that the Japanese navy was primarily a carrier navy with other surface ships to protect the carriers. I knew they had battleships but not in the numbers they deployed for the battle of Midway. I did not think the Japanese industrial base was able to produce those types of numbers. I wonder why these facts about the Japanese military are not so well known? I can kind of see why little is known about the battleships but using poison gas I cannot. I seems like the Pacific theater was just a sideshow to the European theater.
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3 comments:
Yes, the Pacific theater was a sideshow to the European one but it also held more of a moral importance. After Pearl Harbor the US could not just let Japan off with no reprocussions. So, although it was not as crucial as the war with Germany perhaps, I believe it holds just as great or greater moral importance.
I also did not know about Japan's use of poison gas during WWII on the Chinese. It also seems like things like their different cultural views on treating prisoners of war and their actual treatment of prisoners are not well known either.
Japan loved its battleships. Something about large gun-boats really clicked with their collective psychology. It may have something to do with their cultural inferiority complex regarding western cultures - having a bigger battleship with more guns certainly fits with the small-guy mentality exhibited in Japan in the early part of the 20th century.
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