Sunday, July 14, 2013

Is the Holocaust Unique chapter 10

Kinue Tokudome in chapter 10 looks at Japanese atrocities during World War Two and the Holocaust. Tokudome starts off with Iris Chang's book The Rape of Nanking and the controversy that followed. Many historians disagreed with Chang's opinion that the episode in Nanking was a genocide and many scholars argued that the Japanese did not want to exterminate the Chinese. I found it interesting when Iris Chang gave speeches about Nanking at the Holocaust Museum, she mentions that not one Jewish and non-Jewish people. I wonder if Jewish people feel a certain connection with the Chinese? It should be noted that after the death of Emperor Hirohito, Japanese historians started to write about Japanese war crimes. It should be also be noted that before Hirohito's death, not much was written in both English and Japanese about war crimes committed by the Japanese. The chapter includes a section on Unit 731, Japanese biological warfare department. At the end, Tokudome asks if historians should compare the Japanese war crimes and the Holocaust. But he does mention Unit 731 experimented on twelve time the amount tested by Nazi doctors. I also read somewhere else that the former head of Unit 731 was given asylum in the U.S. after the war.

Should Unit 731 and Nazi experiments be compared?

The Japanese have long debated the Rape of Nanking. Should they finally admit their fault and should it be compared to Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide?

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