I can’t believe that in the year of our lord 2026 someone is like ‘look at my grand uncle’s medal for imperial Japan he was a kamikaze pilot during the war’

[skinnylatte@hachyderm.io]

By the time they started sending young men to their deaths with their planes they’d already killed more than 10 million people

[jnfrd@berlin.social]

@skinnylatte there used to be a statue in Berlin remembering the Korean women forced into prostitution .. used because the Japanese are to pigheaded to accept their ancestors committed horrible crimes and current clown of a Mayor of Berlin thinks there are two sides to rape and slavery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Peace_in_Berlin

[piku@blahaj.zone]

@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io reading comments

If you asked Southeast Asia countries, like Korea

[simplicator@federate.social]

@skinnylatte Years ago I saw an announcement for a talk by a grandson of Wernher von Braun on the topic of his grandfather, & part of the blurb touted von Braun’s high production rate of V2s during the war. Beyond the matter of touting the Nazis’ wartime production prowess… that production was by death camp labor.

[laudanum@hachyderm.io]

@skinnylatte this in-thread screenshot with the ad at the bottom from Frigidaire is insane

[mayintoronto@beige.party]

@skinnylatte OP posted why. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1tdfhhb/comment/olw8c4y/

Quote:
" My great-uncle was essentially forced into becoming a kamikaze pilot. In his final letters he repeatedly wrote “Mother, Mother,” over and over again. That’s not something I can read proudly without also feeling anger and sadness toward the government and military system that pushed young men into dying like that.

I can feel pride in him as a person while still condemning Imperial Japan and the war itself. Those feelings are not mutually exclusive.

He didn’t commit rape or massacre civilians. He died in a plane without even carrying conventional weapons, sent on a suicide mission by the state. This medal represents that tragedy to me more than glory. "

[skinnylatte@hachyderm.io]

@Bumblefish @mayintoronto still unacceptable. Nobody cares what a former Nazi felt about not wanting to participate in atrocities. It should be the same.

[bootlegrydia@social.treehouse.systems]

@skinnylatte thank you for saying this as it's too easy to be dismissed as "ccp propaganda" if it was an "evil" person from a certain "evil" country like me

[skinnylatte@hachyderm.io]

@Bumblefish @mayintoronto I’m not convinced that all kamikaze pilots were as against the idea as they now say. Many of them were pretty into the ideal of imperial Japan.

The rehabilitation of the image of kamikaze is also a recent right wing nationalistic Japanese effort.

Research and interviews with rare survivors say that 60-70% of them were happy to sacrifice their lives for the emperor.

I can have sympathy for youths who are disenfranchised anywhere and who see the military as the only way out, but let’s not pretend that actual imperialist and racist fervor was actually real and continues to persist.

They committed great atrocities as a nation and frankly they have fought to reject any guilt in those millions of deaths and inhumane brutality that maybe even far exceeds any other war time villain in recent history.

[skinnylatte@hachyderm.io]

@Bumblefish @mayintoronto not saying that you are — right wing imperialists still are.

[harib_murshidi@mastodon.social]

@piku @skinnylatte

Depends on which "Korea" you ask; I think most South Koreans were Japanese collaborators (can't seem to remember the name of their military dictator who was a big time Japanese collaborator)

I just think this is more something of a military kink where even you see Americans displaying medals of their Vietnam/Korea/Iraq-Afghanistan war medals (medals for horrible killings ?!)