Japan was one of the major powers of Axis Powers during the World War II. From 1937 to 1945, Japan started a series of wars, and resulted in millions of casualties along the way. Japanese battlefield consists of three parts: China, Pacific and Southeastern Asia. Japanese started these wars because they wanted to gain resources and war advantages for their own country. Japan committed crimes against humanity during their wars, which means they neglected human dignity and degraded human value by humiliation. During the Sino-Japanese War, the Pearl Harbor Attack and wars in Southeastern Asia, Japan, in pursuit of self-interest, violated human rights and committed crimes against humanity. Japan's attacking China in 1937 is a crime against humanity. On July 7, 1937, Japan attacked Beijing using a missing soldier as an excuse, without no official declaration to war against China. On December 13, 1937, Japan started a series of massacre in Nanking, which resulted in a casualty of 300,000. During the three-month-long massacre, Japanese army kill for pure fun, and their crime include brutal rape of innocent women, beheading civilians as competition, and murder newborn babies. Unit 731 of Japanese army used Chinese people as human test subjects to develop chemical weapon to win the war. They performed amputation and poison gas test on innocent Chinese civilians. When the war reached stalemate, and Japanese troops suffered from hunger, they kill war prisoners and eat the bodies. Japanese officers forced Chinese women to be "comfort lady" for the troops. While the name sounded great, reality was that these "comfort ladies" ended up raped by Japanese soldiers over and over again until death. (Yoshimi 146) These were all crime against h... ... middle of paper ... ...self-interest contradicts humanity and one fails to protect the latter, then it is the unforgivable crime against humanity, and should be punished. Works Cited "Unmasking Horror" Nicholas D. Kristof (March 17, 1995) New York Times. A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity Keenan, Joseph Berry and Brown, Brendan Francis, Crimes against International Law, Public Affairs Press, Washington, 1950. Secondary sources: Yoshiaki Yoshimi, 2001–02, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II. Columbia University Press. Lord Russell of Liverpool (Edward Russell), The Knights of Bushido, a short history of Japanese War Crimes, Greenhill books, 2002 Willmott, Hedley P., and Michael Barrett. "World War II (Causes)." World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 18 May 2014.
Okihiro, Gary Y. Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.
In 1937, Japan started a war against China, in search of more resources to expand its empire. In 1941, during World War II, Japan attacked America. This is when the Allies (Australia, Britain etc.) then declared war on Japan. Before long the Japanese started extending their territory closer and closer to Australia and started taking surrendering troops into concentration camps where they were starved, diseased and beaten.
"World War II." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. William A. Darity, Jr. 2nd Ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 147-151. World History In Context. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.
Japan led a ruthless assault in the Pacific for fifteen years. This small island was able to spread imperialism and terror to neighboring countries through means of force and brutality. Japan even attempted to combat and overcome European and Western countries such as Russia and the United States. Even with an extreme militaristic government, Japan was unable to achieve the glory it was promised and hoped for. The Pacific War analyzes Japan’s part in the war and what the country could have done to prevent such a tragedy.
It is recognized, then, by all that even wars have limits. The limits that must be applied are essentially in the Geneva Conventions, plus other treaties of international humanitarian law. All the countries participating in WWII accepted these terms, however Japan failed to follow through and ignored the laws. The Japanese captured thousands of American soldiers and held them in Japanese camps. The Japanese held prisoners of war in horrible camps throughout Japan, forced them to work in horrendous conditions, and treated them inhumanely.
"World War II". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 05 Nov. 2013. .
...the Japanese military in World War II and the spontaneous atrocities that occur in most other. There is much of the blame on the Japanese society and its interpretation of bushido that had virtually no concept of individual human rights, which found its epitome in the Japanese military, to whom the concept had no semantic value whatsoever.
Bruce Elleman, Japanese-American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941-1945 (New York City: Routledge, 2006), 55.
"World War Two - Causes." History on the Net. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.
23 .Roger Daniel, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in the World War II 1993, Hill and Yang.
This paper is a review of the book Japan’s Comfort Women-Sexual slavery and prostitution during WWII and the US occupation by Yuki Tanaka. This book was published in 2002 by Routledge. The book deals with the thousands of Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other Asian and European women who were victims of organized sexual violence and prostitution by means of “comfort stations” setup by the Japanese military during World War II.
Naturally, American citizens did not take the bombing of Pearl Harbor lightly. This was a threat, a threat that eventually led to an agreement of war and that led to the infamous anti-Japanese sentiment of World War II in America.
Dundes Renteln, Alison. "A Psychohistorical Analysis of the Japanese American Internment." Human Rights Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1995): 618-48. doi:10.1353/hrq.1995.0039.
The Japanese leaders had different methods of killing that were instructed to the soldiers. However, the prisoners of this “City of Blood” soon found their liberation and their justice was served. The Japanese saw China as the place to spread their imperial and expansionist objectives. A rough estimate of 300,000 Chinese men and women died in the six weeks after December 13, 1937 (Jones). Around 20,000 women from ages 8 to 70 were raped by Japanese soldiers (Scarred).
In this essay I will be looking at the main causes of World War 2 and