Are we forgetting that the Japanese sided with the literal actual nazis?
This was said at the beginning of the Korean war about the Battle of Incheon which would take place a few months later
Interesting quote from the time period, given his other hot takes from the Korean War were “Let’s Nuke Half of China”
He actually got removed from command because he was genuinely too stupid to realize the USSR wouldn’t let that happen without retaliation.
yup.
but also:
On December 6, 1938, the Japanese government made a decision of prohibiting the expulsion of the Jews in Japan, Manchukuo, and the rest of Japanese-occupied China. This was described as “amoral”, based primarily on the consideration of avoiding antagonizing the United States. Even after Japan and United States became involved in a war against each other, the Japanese government’s neutrality towards the Jews continued.
Germany repeatedly tried to get Japan on board with persecuting the Jews and Japan always stepped back and kept a “nah that’s your thing we’re busy abusing chinese and korean people” policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_and_the_Holocaust
Life is rarely simple. History too.
But also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II.
Edit: I copy pasted the above from Wikipedia and was too lazy to edit out hyperlinks
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
731 and Nanking are literally just the tip of the iceberg. That they weren’t anti-semitic is the weirdest fucking take I’ve ever seen on Imperial Japan.
Speaking as a person of Asian descent, no one really cares about the Jews in that part of the world as much as the West does. Imperial Japan saw Jews-- who are mostly Germans–as, well, Germans. There are too few Jews in the Far East to make an impression on East Asians. Anti-Semitism is more like West/Middle East thing. That being said, I feel like anti-Semitism is a hate fad that has gone on for far too long. I get that it started when Jesus wasn’t recognised as the messiah and Christians hated that, but it was a long time ago. And there are other minority groups who had been persecuted in the past, but now less so compared to the intensity that anti-Semitism has.
I’m not saying that other persecuted groups have had it better-- anyone persecuted is still persecuted-- but there seems to be a far lingering hate fad on Jews. The Irish and Italians in America were discriminated but now not so much. The Jews happen to be very affluent and intelligent, and therefore accused of “secretly running the world”, but Asians are also stereotyped as nerds, tend to take STEM jobs which afford them more flexible social mobility, but no one accuses the latter of also secretly running the world.
