LogFAQs > #977020919

Zikten posted...

I do sympathize with the normal civilians of 1940s Japan. It wasn't their fault.

Modern Japan would really like us to forget that their fascist imperialist death cult was integrated throughout every level of society. Nobody was allowed to openly be a pacifist or anything but a nationalist willing to die for the emperor. People were rewarded for being good subjects and most people bought into it. Nazi Germany was the same but they've done a ton of atoning since the war. Japan just wants to pretend it never happened, and as a nation for them the worst thing about the war was that they lost, not that they started it.

I'm not going to say that the civilians deserved it or that they were completely guilty and responsible for everything that happened to them, but they were literally raised from birth to revere the emperor, to support Japan's imperialist conquests, to die for the country, and to see all foreigners as their mortal enemy. It's not as simple as saying "oh well the civilians were just misled by their evil government." Average Japanese civilians voluntarily worked in wartime oil refineries and airplane factories and shipyards, and would have gladly killed as many foreign soldiers as they could using their bare hands. Anyone who was against the government or the war, even secretly, would have been turned in and executed by the secret police.