EJ: The Japanese didn't think Europeans were their 'betters'. Why should they? By their standards, Europeans, at least most of the ones they saw in Japan in the 19th and early 20th century, were quite uncivilised. Anyway, everyone thinks they are the top dogs on the planet.

They were actually emulating the Europeans. If Europeans can have empires and colonies, why shouldn't we Japanese have them too? If Europeans can fight each other and take over each other's colonies, why can't we do the same? They had 'no right'? From their perspective, they had just as much right as anyone else; they were insulted by the fact that Europeans regarded them as a lower class of people with lesser rights (there is a degree of deja vu in your comment). And when countries go to war to acquire power, resources, territory, people get killed.

Japan had some similarities with Britain: a small island nation with a growing population, strong on some resources, low on others. Both had a culture which glorified military prowess and believed they were the most sophisticated and advanced people in the world. Unlike Britain, however, Japan kept itself closed off from the world until very late, while Britain looked outwards, taking over/invading/colonising land around the world. If Japan had done that in the 16-17C rather than waiting to try it on in the late 19-20C, the world today - the Americas, Australia - might have been very different. People on this continent might have been speaking Japanese for centuries and fending off 20C European invasion.

This is not condoning the cruelties inflicted by the Japanese, and it would be good if they genuinely owned up instead of being defensive. But no cruelties in war, by anyone, can be condoned. I am just suggesting that from the Japanese perspective, by going to war, they were just doing what they saw Europeans do, and wanted what they felt was their share of the pickings.

Cossomby, people defending their own and others' right to self-determination are VASTLY better than the Jap garbage whose message was not just "we are here for your resources" but "we are here to kill you by the million, rape and kill your women and destroy your civilisation".

That was the Japs' de facto message, put unrelentingly into practice by lowgrade uniformed mongrels, to millions of their betters from Manchuria to Australia. Their bleating "they did it too" about someone else somewhere else (primarily resource thieves working more through cunning than through main force) a couple of generations ago can't deflect eternal contempt and condemnation of the invaders and any of their kin who erect shrines to them.

NOBODY else except the lowest of the Germans ever did ANYTHING like that in recent history. Even the Thief of Normandy a millennium ago.
A war of aggression and conquest and killing and rape and plunder launched over an area of thousands of square miles and dozens of homelands. They and those of their descendants who obscenely "honour" them were and are ultimate lowlives.

Dear EJ,

Two words for you:

Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

We have nothing to be self-righteous about.

Hi Cossomby,

Just because police were involved in giving out rations, doesn't on its own mean that they were also 'herding people onto Missions' etc. - you may need some extra evidence than 'might have' or 'could have
'. Just a skerrick might be enough :)

As for the Japanese, no, I don't see how their whinge about a Korean sex-slave statue is even relevant to section 18 (c). After all, truth is a pretty strong defence.

My reservations about the statue are on different grounds: unless there were Australian sex-slaves, I'm concerned about importing an issue from overseas, no matter how dreadful, to Australia. Otherwise we could have monuments to the Polish officers murdered by the Russians at Katyn, to Bosnian men murdered by the Serb fascists at Srebrenica, an anti-apartheid monument to the sixty Africans murdered in South Africa in 1960 at Sharpeville, and so on, ad infinitum.

Joe

And why not Joe? We have thousands of monuments to Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by the Romans in AD 33 or thereabouts for crimes against the state. If people want to put up monuments, and they can find someone to erect them, who are we to say what is relevant enough or not. I think the obscure Jew is still relevant, 2000 years later. Some of my atheist acquaintances disagree. Tough luck.

Joe
A few Australian women were victims.
also
Truth is not a defence for 18c.