7 ms·

There are many views on the bombing. The difference is that Americans do not hide it. It's controversial, but people know about it. Same with Germans. People k

There are many views on the bombing. The difference is that Americans do not hide it. It's controversial, but people know about it. Same with Germans. People know about how the Germans behaved in WW2, they're not proud about it, it's learned in schools, and they do not hide it. Japan on the other side, actively hide their actions. Japanese schools present a revisionist version of history in which all their horrible and brutal war crimes never happened. The Japanese people promote a vision of Japan with a tradition full of honor and virtue. Do they teach their kids that they dropped a bomb carrying the bubonic plague? or the massacre of Nanking? the mass beheadings of people? the sexual slavery? and many other horrible crimes, even targeting kids... probably not. This is the difference.

chimeracoder 10y ago
> Japan on the other side, actively hide their actions. The US, like the rest of the Allied powers, do more than their fair share of actively hiding their crimes during the war years. They also love to gloss over the degree to which, before they saw him as a threat to their existence, the Allied powers actually admired and respected Hitler and even sought to emulate his leadership. I mean, most Americans sure as heck don't know that FDR literally modeled the genocide in Puerto Rico after 'the methods which Hitler used effectively'[0]. Because very few schools actually bother to mention Operation Bootstrap in the first place, let alone acknowledge that that the US forcibly sterilized 40% of Puerto Rican women (on the grounds that they were 'unfit to reproduce'). Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the exception only because the events directly led to the Cold War as we know it[1], and it's kind of hard to understand the next 50 years of world history without understanding that the Cold War was happening. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=3llNN7jmQE4C&pg=PA255&lpg=PA255&dq=%27the+methods+which+hitler+used+effectively%27+allies+of+a+kind&source=bl&ots=4pSLg7kGgE&sig=__41LBUfymnpFdU_RsuGK9PBhjE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0-oHFh-_MAhUkE1IKHefrBCUQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%27the%20methods%20which%20hitler%20used%20effectively%27%20allies%20of%20a%20kind&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=3llNN7jmQE4C&pg=PA255&lpg=... [1] Yes, the Cold War would still have happened even if the US had decided not to drop the bomb, but since we did, the bombings became the unforgettable, tangible symbol of the fear that the Cold War was based on.
doall 10y ago
It's not that Japanese people are hiding their history. If there are clear evidences that are not flawed and could not be denied, they will not deny, but admit and apologize. For example, there was the famous Korean sexual slavery issue coined by Seiji Yoshida that later he and Asahi Shimbun admitted it was a complete fiction. This revealed that the comfort women issue was not about slavery but prostitution. Why do you apologize for the thing if it wasn't true? The thing which is making complicating is that the Chinese government is promoting hatred towards the Japanese government as a propaganda and is exaggerating the results. Do you really believe the claims of the country which has the Great Firewall? Do you really believe the country which the government is officially producing anti Japanese movies? Do you believe the country which hides the Tiananmen Square Incident and the ongoing killings of the people in Tibet and Xinjiang? There are suspicions of the claims and the numbers coming from such country.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- partycoder 10y ago
  https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2016/05/11436-japanese-activist-tamaki-matsuoka-interviewed-nanjing-massacre-collection https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2016/05/11436-japanese-activist-tam... http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068
  - doall 10y ago
    Both articles refer to the same person Tamaki Matsuoka, which is known to be writing books based on logically mistaken interviews. For example, there is a book written by her about 102 "anonymous" ex-soldiers, which she claimed that an 11 years old boy was sent to Nanking as a soldier and raped many women. http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%8D%97%E4%BA%AC%E6%88%A6-%E9%96%89%E3%81%96%E3%81%95%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E8%A8%98%E6%86%B6%E3%82%92%E5%B0%8B%E3%81%AD%E3%81%A6%E2%80%95%E5%85%83%E5%85%B5%E5%A3%AB102%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E8%A8%BC%E8%A8%80-%E6%9D%BE%E5%B2%A1-%E7%92%B0/dp/4784505474 http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%8D%97%E4%BA%AC%E6%88%A6-%E9%96%8... There were no Japanese soldiers of such a young age.
eceppda 10y ago
http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/1943/article.html http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/1943/article.html Here is an excellent analysis of American high school textbooks and their handling of the war with Japan. It's pretty clear that Americans do in fact censure what is taught.
rtpg 10y ago
At least in my experience in the US school system, not a lot talks about American behaviour in WW2 Besides the atom bomb, America basically bombed Japan out of existence. So much so that when the atomic bombs were dropped, it was first assumed to be just another part of that night's bombing runs. No major city was less than 90% destroyed. The issues of Japanese war behaviour comes up very often, and the people have been very outspoken in not wanting to return to a militarised state. I would say that Japan has mostly behaved in a similar manner to Germany on the topic (if with several decades of lateness). You can open up Japanese textbooks and find the history of the war (and the unrest beforehand that lead to the military getting so much power). EDIT: another thing. There are movies/TV serials about wartime Japan. Every single one of them highlights the absurdity of the war that people are being sent out to. The lies the government propagated to keep the war going. The punishing of intellectuals for expressing even the smallest doubt. Some even covering how foreigners were mostly thrown out of the country. I have rarely heard doubts about whether we should have bombed Japan as much as we ended up doing.
- fatman13gg 10y ago
  > I would say that Japan has mostly behaved in a similar manner to Germany on the topic Are you sure on that? I doubt Japan's neighboring nations would agree on that.
freemore 10y ago
Today, Chinese government says that Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanking. In reality, Nanking's population had been doubled at that time. Plus, there were only 200,000 people from the beginning. I still think there had been something small massacres though, why can't we find dead bodies for 300,000 people? Talking about comfort women, the system was not only Japan. USA and South Korea had also introduced exactly same system during Korean war. Look at today's USA. How many Korean prostitutes are out there? They would be called sex slaves 50 years later.
- kbart 10y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but such claims really require good sources.
  - freemore 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for_the_U.S._military https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for...
joshfraser 10y ago
When I visited the peace museum in Hiroshima, I was surprised by how honest the exhibits were about admitting their own ugly history that led up to the bomb. I was shocked by the forgiveness of the Japanese people. Some survivors actually work in the museum and greet visitors coming through. The peace museum is one of the most emotional places I've ever visited and it leaves such a vivid picture of the human cost of war.
mevile 10y ago
Americans may not hide their actions, but they certainly paint the actions in a light favorable to the American self-image. Germany on the other hand exhibits complete contrition and there is no denial of the wrongness of the actions that happened. There are extreme and fringe holocaust denial beliefs in some sub-groups in Germany, but as a government policy what I've said is true.
- partycoder 10y ago
  There are also groups of Americans that condemn such actions. There is also compassion for the victims. There is a mainstream ethical debate, which is what allows society to move forward.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  As an American, this is a question I struggle with. The the atomic bombs did what they were meant to, a swift end to the war with a full capitulation by the Japanese, before the Russians were able to mount an invasion of their own. This is generally forgiven because it in theory saved the lives of American soldiers who would have had a hard fight to take Japan. But all of this was done, and with an understanding that it would, cause a massive number of civilian casualties. The US and allies did this to Tokyo and Dresden with non-atomic weapons as well. To me these are crimes that we as a country have never really admitted to. We discuss it openly, but we have never truly said that we were wrong to kill so many innocent people. I believe that this is partly why we today do not also hold ourselves accountable to the large number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Edit: I should include Vietnam as well in which we killed some multiple of millions. But even that has the list too short. We as Americans suffer from the Sam euro centric view we've always had, if your white, it's a death worth counting, if not, eh...
  - sukilot 10y ago
    You never noticed the opposition to the Vietnamese war? It is the primary cultural feature of the 1960s-1970s, and then in movies through the 1980s
    - 10y ago
nihonde 10y ago
For the record, this doesn't reflect my personal experience in Japan in any way whatsoever. People here are quite well aware of their history, but they don't understand some people's focus on Japan's most recent expansion into China and Korea any more than Americans would understand someone whose sole concern is the eradication of native Americans. This kind of "they're not sorry enough for me" discussion is fruitless, because no nation or ethnicity has a moral high ground to stand on. Edit: I want to add that in my personal experience, there is no place on Earth that is more peaceful and pacifistic than Japan in 2016. Don't pay attention to the government, which simply tows the line for America...I'm talking about the people in the cities and villages. Meanwhile, to my point above, America does nothing but wage wars since WW2. Make of that what you will.
- sukilot 10y ago
  The peace treaty that ended WWII handed over control of Japan's military to the USA. Japan's peacefulness is a gift from foreigners.
- partycoder 10y ago
  I don't know how much of it can be attributed to the fact that they are required to be peaceful (as a country) by law.
- krapp 10y ago
  >Meanwhile, to my point above, America does nothing but wage wars since WW2. Make of that what you will. America is the reason Japan is pacifist. America forced Japan to become pacifist at the point of (quite a few) guns. While it's wonderful that the Japanese people have embraced pacifism culturally, their country's pacifist stance is nonetheless paid for with the obligation of American military violence.
  - travmatt 10y ago
    Yea the snideness of that last sentence is a bit much, seeing as its current pacifism was bought with American blood and is secured by the Pax Americana.
cletus 10y ago
I came here to say pretty much exactly this. There are a lot of Japanophiles (be it culture, food, anime or whatever). Much of it seems to spring from disaffection for the West. All of that's fine but this revisionist view of history is one thing that's always bothered me about Japan. Now we have China and Japan squaring off over some uninhabited rocks in the South China Sea and I think it's at least in part a byproduct of WW2. The Chinese remember Manchuria, Nanking, etc. From the outside looking in it seems like "payback" might not be the goal of this but it sure is a nice bonus. The Japanese on the other hand as a whole I think don't understand this motivation because they don't have this foundation in historical events. To them it must seem like the Chinese actions are unprovoked and unwarranted. This sort of thing is a dangerous and inevitable consequence of ignoring the lessons of history. Population and economics are on the side of the Chinese here.
- sukilot 10y ago
  It's rather xenophobic to think that anti-Westernism is the reason people find Japanese culture interesting. US Hollywod movies (and McDonalds) are popular worldwide. Do those fans hate their home countries?
- fatman13gg 10y ago
  The "rock" is actually located in East China sea.
rangibaby 10y ago
It's not like Japan would be the first country to selectively remember history to make itself look good. I doubt they teach much about Dresden in the UK, or the extermination of Indians in America, or killing literally every Aborigine in Tasmania, or the British forcing the Chinese to buy opium. I went to school in Japan and we didn't learn a sugar-coated version of history. We went to Hiroshima and listened to a talk from a bomb survivor who told us it was our job to make a world where something like that could never happen again.
- vacri 10y ago
  In Australia, the extermination of all Tasmanian aborigines was definitely not taught in highschool, in at least the late 80s when I went. It's not suppressed at all, and plenty of people are aware of it, but it's certainly not taught (or at least, wasn't at that time).
  - Cogito 10y ago
    We were taught in high school, ~15 years ago. I remember wondering how it was actually performed. The story was told as a long line of men walking from on end of the island to the other, killing any aboriginals they found in the process. Tasmania is a very large island, so it seemed like they would need an inordinate number of men to form a line that joined all the way across it, and it would take a very long time to walk the length of it. Turns out the line was a real thing, called the Black Line [1], and was part of a war called the Black War [2]. Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur decided to remove all Aborigines from the settled areas in order to end the escalating raids upon settlers' huts. He was also concerned about preventing the settlers from taking the law into their own hands and launching revenge attacks. To accomplish this he called upon every able-bodied male colonist, convict or free, to form a human chain that then swept across the settled districts, moving south and east for several weeks in an attempt to corral the Aborigines on the Tasman Peninsula by closing off Eaglehawk Neck (the isthmus connecting the Tasman peninsula to the rest of the island) where Arthur hoped that they could live and maintain their culture and language. This action was only directed against Aborigines of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, since the conflict was only with these two tribes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War
fenomas 10y ago
> probably not Do you know whereof you're speaking, or are you attacking a school curriculum you've imagined? Japanese education does cover these topics. There was a big controversy around 2000 when the government approved a new textbook that greatly downplayed Japan's military past but it was never used in more than a handful of schools. Obviously there's a never-ending debate about precisely what gets taught, and right-wing activism to whitewash textbooks is always in the background. But the topics you're talking about do get taught, and discussed widely, and you'd have a hard time finding an educated Japanese person who isn't familiar with them.

chimeracoder 10y ago

> Japan on the other side, actively hide their actions. The US, like the rest of the Allied powers, do more than their fair share of actively hiding their crimes during the war years. They also love to gloss over the degree to which, before they saw him as a threat to their existence, the Allied powers actually admired and respected Hitler and even sought to emulate his leadership. I mean, most Americans sure as heck don't know that FDR literally modeled the genocide in Puerto Rico after 'the methods which Hitler used effectively'[0]. Because very few schools actually bother to mention Operation Bootstrap in the first place, let alone acknowledge that that the US forcibly sterilized 40% of Puerto Rican women (on the grounds that they were 'unfit to reproduce'). Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the exception only because the events directly led to the Cold War as we know it[1], and it's kind of hard to understand the next 50 years of world history without understanding that the Cold War was happening. [0] https://books.google.com/books?id=3llNN7jmQE4C&pg=PA255&lpg=PA255&dq=%27the+methods+which+hitler+used+effectively%27+allies+of+a+kind&source=bl&ots=4pSLg7kGgE&sig=__41LBUfymnpFdU_RsuGK9PBhjE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0-oHFh-_MAhUkE1IKHefrBCUQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%27the%20methods%20which%20hitler%20used%20effectively%27%20allies%20of%20a%20kind&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=3llNN7jmQE4C&pg=PA255&lpg=... [1] Yes, the Cold War would still have happened even if the US had decided not to drop the bomb, but since we did, the bombings became the unforgettable, tangible symbol of the fear that the Cold War was based on.

doall 10y ago

It's not that Japanese people are hiding their history. If there are clear evidences that are not flawed and could not be denied, they will not deny, but admit and apologize. For example, there was the famous Korean sexual slavery issue coined by Seiji Yoshida that later he and Asahi Shimbun admitted it was a complete fiction. This revealed that the comfort women issue was not about slavery but prostitution. Why do you apologize for the thing if it wasn't true? The thing which is making complicating is that the Chinese government is promoting hatred towards the Japanese government as a propaganda and is exaggerating the results. Do you really believe the claims of the country which has the Great Firewall? Do you really believe the country which the government is officially producing anti Japanese movies? Do you believe the country which hides the Tiananmen Square Incident and the ongoing killings of the people in Tibet and Xinjiang? There are suspicions of the claims and the numbers coming from such country.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
partycoder 10y ago
https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2016/05/11436-japanese-activist-tamaki-matsuoka-interviewed-nanjing-massacre-collection https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2016/05/11436-japanese-activist-tam... http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068
- doall 10y ago
  Both articles refer to the same person Tamaki Matsuoka, which is known to be writing books based on logically mistaken interviews. For example, there is a book written by her about 102 "anonymous" ex-soldiers, which she claimed that an 11 years old boy was sent to Nanking as a soldier and raped many women. http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%8D%97%E4%BA%AC%E6%88%A6-%E9%96%89%E3%81%96%E3%81%95%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E8%A8%98%E6%86%B6%E3%82%92%E5%B0%8B%E3%81%AD%E3%81%A6%E2%80%95%E5%85%83%E5%85%B5%E5%A3%AB102%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E8%A8%BC%E8%A8%80-%E6%9D%BE%E5%B2%A1-%E7%92%B0/dp/4784505474 http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%8D%97%E4%BA%AC%E6%88%A6-%E9%96%8... There were no Japanese soldiers of such a young age.

eceppda 10y ago

http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/1943/article.html http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/1943/article.html Here is an excellent analysis of American high school textbooks and their handling of the war with Japan. It's pretty clear that Americans do in fact censure what is taught.

rtpg 10y ago

At least in my experience in the US school system, not a lot talks about American behaviour in WW2 Besides the atom bomb, America basically bombed Japan out of existence. So much so that when the atomic bombs were dropped, it was first assumed to be just another part of that night's bombing runs. No major city was less than 90% destroyed. The issues of Japanese war behaviour comes up very often, and the people have been very outspoken in not wanting to return to a militarised state. I would say that Japan has mostly behaved in a similar manner to Germany on the topic (if with several decades of lateness). You can open up Japanese textbooks and find the history of the war (and the unrest beforehand that lead to the military getting so much power). EDIT: another thing. There are movies/TV serials about wartime Japan. Every single one of them highlights the absurdity of the war that people are being sent out to. The lies the government propagated to keep the war going. The punishing of intellectuals for expressing even the smallest doubt. Some even covering how foreigners were mostly thrown out of the country. I have rarely heard doubts about whether we should have bombed Japan as much as we ended up doing.

fatman13gg 10y ago
> I would say that Japan has mostly behaved in a similar manner to Germany on the topic Are you sure on that? I doubt Japan's neighboring nations would agree on that.

freemore 10y ago

Today, Chinese government says that Japanese army killed 300,000 people in Nanking. In reality, Nanking's population had been doubled at that time. Plus, there were only 200,000 people from the beginning. I still think there had been something small massacres though, why can't we find dead bodies for 300,000 people? Talking about comfort women, the system was not only Japan. USA and South Korea had also introduced exactly same system during Korean war. Look at today's USA. How many Korean prostitutes are out there? They would be called sex slaves 50 years later.

kbart 10y ago
I didn't downvote you, but such claims really require good sources.
- freemore 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for_the_U.S._military https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for...

joshfraser 10y ago

When I visited the peace museum in Hiroshima, I was surprised by how honest the exhibits were about admitting their own ugly history that led up to the bomb. I was shocked by the forgiveness of the Japanese people. Some survivors actually work in the museum and greet visitors coming through. The peace museum is one of the most emotional places I've ever visited and it leaves such a vivid picture of the human cost of war.

mevile 10y ago

Americans may not hide their actions, but they certainly paint the actions in a light favorable to the American self-image. Germany on the other hand exhibits complete contrition and there is no denial of the wrongness of the actions that happened. There are extreme and fringe holocaust denial beliefs in some sub-groups in Germany, but as a government policy what I've said is true.

partycoder 10y ago
There are also groups of Americans that condemn such actions. There is also compassion for the victims. There is a mainstream ethical debate, which is what allows society to move forward.
bluejekyll 10y ago
As an American, this is a question I struggle with. The the atomic bombs did what they were meant to, a swift end to the war with a full capitulation by the Japanese, before the Russians were able to mount an invasion of their own. This is generally forgiven because it in theory saved the lives of American soldiers who would have had a hard fight to take Japan. But all of this was done, and with an understanding that it would, cause a massive number of civilian casualties. The US and allies did this to Tokyo and Dresden with non-atomic weapons as well. To me these are crimes that we as a country have never really admitted to. We discuss it openly, but we have never truly said that we were wrong to kill so many innocent people. I believe that this is partly why we today do not also hold ourselves accountable to the large number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Edit: I should include Vietnam as well in which we killed some multiple of millions. But even that has the list too short. We as Americans suffer from the Sam euro centric view we've always had, if your white, it's a death worth counting, if not, eh...
- sukilot 10y ago
  You never noticed the opposition to the Vietnamese war? It is the primary cultural feature of the 1960s-1970s, and then in movies through the 1980s
  - 10y ago

nihonde 10y ago

For the record, this doesn't reflect my personal experience in Japan in any way whatsoever. People here are quite well aware of their history, but they don't understand some people's focus on Japan's most recent expansion into China and Korea any more than Americans would understand someone whose sole concern is the eradication of native Americans. This kind of "they're not sorry enough for me" discussion is fruitless, because no nation or ethnicity has a moral high ground to stand on. Edit: I want to add that in my personal experience, there is no place on Earth that is more peaceful and pacifistic than Japan in 2016. Don't pay attention to the government, which simply tows the line for America...I'm talking about the people in the cities and villages. Meanwhile, to my point above, America does nothing but wage wars since WW2. Make of that what you will.

sukilot 10y ago
The peace treaty that ended WWII handed over control of Japan's military to the USA. Japan's peacefulness is a gift from foreigners.
partycoder 10y ago
I don't know how much of it can be attributed to the fact that they are required to be peaceful (as a country) by law.
krapp 10y ago
>Meanwhile, to my point above, America does nothing but wage wars since WW2. Make of that what you will. America is the reason Japan is pacifist. America forced Japan to become pacifist at the point of (quite a few) guns. While it's wonderful that the Japanese people have embraced pacifism culturally, their country's pacifist stance is nonetheless paid for with the obligation of American military violence.
- travmatt 10y ago
  Yea the snideness of that last sentence is a bit much, seeing as its current pacifism was bought with American blood and is secured by the Pax Americana.

cletus 10y ago

I came here to say pretty much exactly this. There are a lot of Japanophiles (be it culture, food, anime or whatever). Much of it seems to spring from disaffection for the West. All of that's fine but this revisionist view of history is one thing that's always bothered me about Japan. Now we have China and Japan squaring off over some uninhabited rocks in the South China Sea and I think it's at least in part a byproduct of WW2. The Chinese remember Manchuria, Nanking, etc. From the outside looking in it seems like "payback" might not be the goal of this but it sure is a nice bonus. The Japanese on the other hand as a whole I think don't understand this motivation because they don't have this foundation in historical events. To them it must seem like the Chinese actions are unprovoked and unwarranted. This sort of thing is a dangerous and inevitable consequence of ignoring the lessons of history. Population and economics are on the side of the Chinese here.

sukilot 10y ago
It's rather xenophobic to think that anti-Westernism is the reason people find Japanese culture interesting. US Hollywod movies (and McDonalds) are popular worldwide. Do those fans hate their home countries?
fatman13gg 10y ago
The "rock" is actually located in East China sea.

rangibaby 10y ago

It's not like Japan would be the first country to selectively remember history to make itself look good. I doubt they teach much about Dresden in the UK, or the extermination of Indians in America, or killing literally every Aborigine in Tasmania, or the British forcing the Chinese to buy opium. I went to school in Japan and we didn't learn a sugar-coated version of history. We went to Hiroshima and listened to a talk from a bomb survivor who told us it was our job to make a world where something like that could never happen again.

vacri 10y ago
In Australia, the extermination of all Tasmanian aborigines was definitely not taught in highschool, in at least the late 80s when I went. It's not suppressed at all, and plenty of people are aware of it, but it's certainly not taught (or at least, wasn't at that time).
- Cogito 10y ago
  We were taught in high school, ~15 years ago. I remember wondering how it was actually performed. The story was told as a long line of men walking from on end of the island to the other, killing any aboriginals they found in the process. Tasmania is a very large island, so it seemed like they would need an inordinate number of men to form a line that joined all the way across it, and it would take a very long time to walk the length of it. Turns out the line was a real thing, called the Black Line [1], and was part of a war called the Black War [2]. Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur decided to remove all Aborigines from the settled areas in order to end the escalating raids upon settlers' huts. He was also concerned about preventing the settlers from taking the law into their own hands and launching revenge attacks. To accomplish this he called upon every able-bodied male colonist, convict or free, to form a human chain that then swept across the settled districts, moving south and east for several weeks in an attempt to corral the Aborigines on the Tasman Peninsula by closing off Eaglehawk Neck (the isthmus connecting the Tasman peninsula to the rest of the island) where Arthur hoped that they could live and maintain their culture and language. This action was only directed against Aborigines of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, since the conflict was only with these two tribes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War

fenomas 10y ago

> probably not Do you know whereof you're speaking, or are you attacking a school curriculum you've imagined? Japanese education does cover these topics. There was a big controversy around 2000 when the government approved a new textbook that greatly downplayed Japan's military past but it was never used in more than a handful of schools. Obviously there's a never-ending debate about precisely what gets taught, and right-wing activism to whitewash textbooks is always in the background. But the topics you're talking about do get taught, and discussed widely, and you'd have a hard time finding an educated Japanese person who isn't familiar with them.