Ernest Schaal wrote:

> in article 4177C8AC.4C211872@yahoo.co.jp, Eric Takabayashi at
> etakajp@yahoo.co.jp wrote on 10/21/04 11:33 PM:
>
> > Ernest Schaal wrote:
> >
> >> Gifu and the whole Chibu region was a major industrial complex supporting
> >> the war effort. As such, they were legitimate targets.
> >
> > How nice. So Japanese researchers and the people you live among are simply not
> > telling the truth.
>
> What Japanese researcher is saying that the Chibu region is NOT a major
> industrial region?

Particularly in Japan, they may question whether or not Japanese civilians are
worthy of killing, or if burning the cities to kill and create terror were not the
objective, as on that page.

Japanese wish to see themselves as victims of WWII. They were, actually. That is
not the problem. What they do not see their country having done abroad, resulting
in such suffering for their own country, is the issue.

It's another example of a double standard. Death toll for the Hiroshima A-bombing
continues to rise. I think it is now over 400,000. My wife's late mother is claimed
to be a victim of the A-bomb. Perhaps the A-bomb is also (considered to be) one
reason I don't know of other people in my wife's family (other than her 94 year old
grandmother in Tokyo) old enough to have fought in the war. I'm not even going to
ask. I only found out about her mother, because her uncle got loud while drunk last
year. Then other people confirmed it.

What would be the Japanese reaction if Chinese continued counting their war dead,
saying they have found new evidence, or that people dying even 60 years later, had
their lives been shortened as an effect of the Japanese war, and thus should be
included as casualties of war or Japanese atrocity?

What is the Japanese reaction, that Asian victims of WWII wish to remember and pass
on the knowledge of their own suffering, the way Japan does 60 years after the end
of the war? Chinese are to be criticized for continuing to teach the young about
what Japanese did in the war (it is propaganda), or how Chinese suffered. But of
course Japan must never forget how Japanese suffered.

Double standard. Bad Japanese.

> > Reaction?
>
> To what?
>
> > Was the continental US also a legitimate target, whose civilians were
> > acceptable to kill?
>
> Was the continental US a legitimate target? yes.

So if geography for one, had not prevented Japan and German from inflicting like
casualties upon American military and industrial targets with the expected cost in
civilian lives, akin to European casualties, it would have been fair?

> Did the Japanese attack the continental US? Yes (firebombs sent by balloons)
>
> Were the Japanese attacks successful? Not really. They did create a
> significant about of damages, but not enough to influence the war effort.

--
 "I'm on top of the world right now, because everyone's going to know that I can
shove more than three burgers in my mouth!"