Does every WW2 film from any nation's perspective have to cover it's war crimes?

[Gorrath]

To address the actual question, many films made by a given country highlight their war crimes if it makes sense within the nature of the story line. I can think of a couple scenes in Saving Private Ryan, several scenes in The Pacific, a whole bunch of stuff in Downfall, I believe a few parts in Stalingrad (haven't seen that last one in a while though so I could be remembering wrong).

Out of those examples, the most balanced account is what is portrayed in The Pacific. I don't believe you ever see an American marine give quarter to a Japanese soldier, or vice versa.

I'm a historian of the Pacific War and I do find it quite sad that many, though certainly not all, Japanese can't seem to come to terms with what they did.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25901572

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26029614

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21226068

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25411700

In my above statement I made sure not to generalize that the whole country is in denial, because it isn't. For example, there are plenty of Japanese scholars who fully understand what their country did and have done lots of important research on the subject. One of the most important works on the Comfort Women is written by a native Japanese academic.

I don't know much about this new movie but from the brief synopsis I have read it wouldn't make sense within the plot to show Japanese war crimes. It isn't about the Japanese war in China or the Pacific. It is about the designer of the A6M. It is that simple. There aren't graphic scenes of American war crimes in We Were Soldiers because the movie was about a specific engagement, not the Vietnam War as a whole.

That isn't to say that Japanese-made films on the war would include war crimes if they should, because they probably would not, but for this movie in particular there is no need to.

I agree with all of your sentiments here, I think the backlash The Wind Rises is getting is more because of what other media has failed to show instead of what The Wind Rises failed to show. To some, it represents just another Japanese WWII movie that mentions the horror of war without taking any responsibility for that horror. Does The Wind Rises need to? From what I understand of it, no, not really, but there are those who would see it as just another in a long line of media that fails to admit any responsibility. I'm on the side that doesn't think it needs to have any depictions of, or admission of culpability to, Japanese war crimes, but I am sympathetic to those who view it as flirting with the status quo.

 

[carnex]

No but the US government has not decided to add the names of war criminals who had been executed for their crimes to a war memorial. Again with the false equivalence.

Problem is that only USA decides weather their soldiers and officers are war criminals or not. They are excluded from international court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Because of that your reasoning is false.

 

[teebeeohh]

while cities are valid targets i never get why the allies are rarely called out for using time-delayed bombs that were not designed to detonate on impact but hours later so they detonate in the middle of rescue operations. i wasn't even aware those thing were used until a friend of mine who works in bomb disposal told me that like 90% of all the explosives they have to deal with are those kinda bombs from WW2 that failed to detonate.

I'm unfamiliar with any such bombs. They would be an entirely ineffective use of explosives. I think you're confused with the hour break in Air Raids in which they do wait for an hour before attacking again and this is to prevent successful prevention of additional harm (such as preventing fire from spreading further). That's pretty typical in WWII raids but is functionally the same thing as if we had delayed bombs. But if you're going to bomb strategic facilities, you don't want the fires getting put out too early.

unfortunately all the sources i can find are in german but basically they would drop these and they could detonate anywhere up 48 hours later and their purpose was more to scare people so they would halt recovery in fear of bombs but it being nazi germany they just started sending in people anyway.

and the issue with Dresden was never if it was a justified target, it was more about the city center being bombed as opposed to the industrial areas further out.

Several large factories weren't hit but that doesn't mean valid targets weren't hit. I don't know how much we knew about the factories' locations at the time or even if we could have hit them reliably at night. Ever tried to bomb facilities at night? They probably just aimed for light and then after the first strike everyone targets that general area. In what world is a major rail and communications center with 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the enemy's war effort not a justified target?

i literally wrote that Dresden was a justified target in the part you quoted. the industrial areas were on the other side of a river from where the city center is. there were a shitload of bridges that could have been bombed but most bombs fell on residential areas. unless allied intel was terrible someone probably had a massive hateboner for Dresden. i mean if you are not sure where the factories are or if you can hit them at night, why not bomb the whole city, why focus on that one area?

There has been a significant amount of misinformation on the subject though. But in 1942 it was listed as one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich and in 1944 the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops which supplied the army with material. (thanks wikipedia)

Have you looked at the tonnage of bombs dropped on Dresden compared to other cities of comparable size? It was the least bombed city in Germany despite being comparable in size to several of the other targets.

It is easy to look back in hindsight and say one thing or the other. But Dresden was absolutely a valid target as is and honestly should have been bombed sooner.

the reason Dresden was not bombed as much was because for the longest time was because the bombing was done by western allies and Dresden supplied the eastern front. and containing the soviet advance(the town where a lot of the german nuclear research was done is just a couple of kilometers of Berlin and was bombed to prevent the soviets gaining access to the research) as much as possible while also finishing the war as fast as possibly was a goal towards the end of the war.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Out of those examples, the most balanced account is what is portrayed in The Pacific. I don't believe you ever see an American marine give quarter to a Japanese soldier, or vice versa.

There is a telling scene in the Pacific regarding the Marines and the IJA. In Episode 9, the Marines come across a handful of Japanese POWs, an extremely rare sight for them. Turns out that they had been taken hostage by the Army, rather than the Marines. And then there is a scuffle where the Marines nearly murder the prisoners out of spite.

It just shows how much bad blood came to pass in the Pacific, and why there are so many raw emotions regarding the Japanese military even to this day.

Also, the Wind Rises technically deals with Horikoshi's development of the A5M, not the A6M Zero/Zeke. I believe the controversy comes less from the film denying war crimes (Jiro's character laments the destruction caused by his designs late in the film), and more from the conditions under which the planes were built. Lots of Koreans were used as laborers by the Japanese, and they built thousands of planes under extremely harsh working conditions. This isn't brought up in the film. Then you get the leftist political parties coming in and blasting Miyazaki for making a film based on a military designer, while nationalists declare him a traitor for daring to voice his opinion against the conservatives.

However, the film's controversy has more or less been appropriated as an excuse to start talking about war crimes.

 

[A_Parked_Car]

Out of those examples, the most balanced account is what is portrayed in The Pacific. I don't believe you ever see an American marine give quarter to a Japanese soldier, or vice versa.

There is a telling scene in the Pacific regarding the Marines and the IJA. In Episode 9, the Marines come across a handful of Japanese POWs, an extremely rare sight for them. Turns out that they had been taken hostage by the Army, rather than the Marines. And then there is a scuffle where the Marines nearly murder the prisoners out of spite.

It just shows how much bad blood came to pass in the Pacific, and why there are so many raw emotions regarding the Japanese military even to this day.

Also, the Wind Rises technically deals with Horikoshi's development of the A5M, not the A6M Zero/Zeke. I believe the controversy comes less from the film denying war crimes (Jiro's character laments the destruction caused by his designs late in the film), and more from the conditions under which the planes were built. Lots of Koreans were used as laborers by the Japanese, and they built thousands of planes under extremely harsh working conditions. This isn't brought up in the film. Then you get the leftist political parties coming in and blasting Miyazaki for making a film based on a military designer, while nationalists declare him a traitor for daring to voice his opinion against the conservatives.

However, the film's controversy has more or less been appropriated as an excuse to start talking about war crimes.

The Pacific is probably my favourite piece of media being a historian of the Pacific War. We don't have much to watch on the subject, but the little bit we do have is great.

Ahhhhh, so it is the Claude then. That is interesting information on the whole thing. I'm not well read on either the movie or the specifics of Japanese aircraft production but now I can see why some people are angry.

 

[josak]

Dresden was precision bombed in the central areas which were population centers, the factory outskirts were actually less damaged, high population areas were intentionally targeted so as to send a message.

They specifically targeted a refugee camp for christsakes.

Citation?

Night raids are imprecise at the best of time. It's only recent that we have GPS to aid our efforts. But in the 1940's they wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between a church and a gas factory (which dresden had). They saw light and aimed for it. Heck, even in the daytime at that elevation it'd be pretty damn hard to precision bomb any particular building. But much more feasible.

I think you're confusing "hit" with "targeted". Imagine having a map of a place you've never seen before and flying over it at night when you can't see it and aiming for anything at all. Nowadays we have tareting systems that can hit a nickle from miles away. Don't project that on 1940's tech.

"the military barracks listed as a target were a long way out of the city and were not in fact targeted during the raid.[ The "hutted camps" mentioned in the report as military targets were also not military but were camps for refugees. It is also stated that the important Autobahn bridge to the west of the city was not targeted or attacked, and that no railway stations were on the British target maps, nor any bridges, such as the railway bridge spanning the Elbe River. Commenting on this, McKee says: "The standard whitewash gambit, both British and American, is to mention that Dresden contained targets X, Y and Z, and to let the innocent reader assume that these targets were attacked, whereas in fact the bombing plan totally omitted them and thus, except for one or two mere accidents, they escaped." McKee further asserts "The bomber commanders were not really interested in any purely military or economic targets, which was just as well, for they knew very little about Dresden; the RAF even lacked proper maps of the city. What they were looking for was a big built up area which they could burn, and that Dresden possessed in full measure."

-McKee (1983), p. 63

"In the north of Dresden there were remarkable military facilities in the Albertstadt which were not hit by the bombings. Today they are still there, used as officer education buildings for the German Bundeswehr and hosting Germany's military history museum (from prehistoric to modern times)."

I other words they ignored barracks, bridges and factories that they knew to be viable targets and bombed built up areas, they were not missing by tens of kilometers.

 

[josak]

I have a question for you, Josak. If this had been any country other than Japan, would you have felt compelled to make this thread? If every country has war crimes we don't admit to, would you have made a similar thread to condemn them as well? Or was it just convenient for you because of the film's current controversy?

I would be just as bothered if someone insisted that Hiroshima or Dresden had to be mentioned in Saving Private Ryan etc. I have no particular alliance to Japan.

 

[Greg White]

Britain (and the US) intentionally targeted civilians during the bombing of Dresden etc. etc.

Wrong. Everything targeted by strategic bombing by the Allies in WWII was attacked because it had value to the enemy's war effort. Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the sites of the 3 deadliest air raids in history, all held production facilities for the Japanese war effort, same with Dresden and the industrial centers targeted in Europe. Leaflets were often dropped in advance warning the people to get out to further minimize losses.

That said, the people working in those factories were not innocent civilians either. They were an integral part of their nation's war machine, deadlier than the soldiers using the weapons and ammunition those people made.

What separates those from the Germans exterminating 11 million people or the numerous accounts of Japanese barbarism(ranging from beating, torturing, and executing prisoners to cannibalism, both necrotic and predatory) was military necessity. Bombing production centers, railroads, roadways, and shipyards serves a distinct military purpose, so are not considered war crimes.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I read once that they interviewed a bunch of American school-children who were present when they opened up the WW2 memorial in D.C., and they found that almost all of them knew about the internment of Japanese civilians during WW2, but hardly any of them could name even a single American General.

At least when I was in school, we spent far more time discussing American atrocities and whether the dropping of the nuclear bombs was justified than we ever did thumping our chests about how heroic and great the US Soldiers were. They also discussed at length how the majority of the Nazi army was fighting the Soviets for most of the war, and not the US Military.

So, at least in my experience, Americans more than acknowledge that we weren't flawless beacons of virtue during a conflict that left almost 60 million people dead.

As for the air raids, it's important to understand the context of air power in WW2. The concept of heavy use of air power was something that was relatively new in warfare, and many Senior Military Officers, with the horrors of trench warfare and the no-man's lands of WW1 still fresh in their minds, basically adopted the idea of "anything is justified as long as it causes the war to end sooner". Bomb a city and kill 10,000 civilians? War is so terrible that as long as it ends the war sooner, it's ok.

You also have to remember this was before the days of Youtube and the 24/7 news cycle, most people had very little concept of what was really happening beyond what they saw in news reels prior to seeing movies, most of which were financed and controlled by their respective Government.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I have a question for the history buffs here about this whole boondoggle:

Was the man who developed the A5M himself ever charged as a war criminal? Or was he just a good engineer with the appalling luck to have come to his peak in the wrong decade?

 

[Thaluikhain]

"precision bombing" in WW2...was basically hitting the right town...

Exactly, in a world where a person at a desk 100 miles away can target specific people from a drone it is easy to forget that WWII strikes were dropping a water balloon at a usually unseen target while flying over it.

Not entirely true. Much greater precision could be achieved, however, most bombing raids were done during times of as little visibility as possible, for obvious reasons.

I'm unfamiliar with any such bombs. They would be an entirely ineffective use of explosives.

The German forces definitely used them, though I didn't know if others did or not.

A bomb that goes off is only really useful if it damages something. A bomb that sits there looking at people, waiting to go off means you have to evacuate the area until it's dealt with.

Of course, you wouldn't want to make all, or even the majority of your bombs not go off immediately, but you can cause genuine problems using such devices.

 

[Lightknight]

unfortunately all the sources i can find are in german but basically they would drop these and they could detonate anywhere up 48 hours later and their purpose was more to scare people so they would halt recovery in fear of bombs but it being nazi germany they just started sending in people anyway.

Considering that I know 1-hour raid breaks are a thing and were far more harmful, I wouldn't doubt that this kind of thing would exist, I'm just not entirely sure how they could have created something with any kind of reliability in the 1940's that could drop from a plane and survive while maintaining any kind of timer. I'm wracking my brain for what kind of WWII tech could do that but even a basic fuse bomb would have trouble surviving and that's the most likely kind for timed charges around that time.

Honestly, I'm more curious about such a device existing back then than I am disagreeing with it. Let me know if you find some documentation.

and the issue with Dresden was never if it was a justified target, it was more about the city center being bombed as opposed to the industrial areas further out.

Several large factories weren't hit but that doesn't mean valid targets weren't hit. I don't know how much we knew about the factories' locations at the time or even if we could have hit them reliably at night. Ever tried to bomb facilities at night? They probably just aimed for light and then after the first strike everyone targets that general area. In what world is a major rail and communications center with 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the enemy's war effort not a justified target?

i literally wrote that Dresden was a justified target in the part you quoted. the industrial areas were on the other side of a river from where the city center is. there were a shitload of bridges that could have been bombed but most bombs fell on residential areas. unless allied intel was terrible someone probably had a massive hateboner for Dresden. i mean if you are not sure where the factories are or if you can hit them at night, why not bomb the whole city, why focus on that one area?

Perhaps you misread my statement? I didn't quote you as if you said that the city wasn't valid. I was just pointing out that there were far more targets than just the factories outside the city that were missed. Additionally, I pointed out that a night-bombing in 1945 is guesswork at best, like trying to play darts in an extremely dimly lit room. I doubt the factories were lit up at night. Also, unless the factories were tightly packed together, it would have been a waste to mostly bomb empty countryside when there were likely other targets in the city itself.

For some reason, people get it in their heads that 1945 raids were somehow as precise as our rocket strikes today when that couldn't be further from the truth. They probably dropped bombs on the largest concentration of lights and everyone followed suit. I mean, really, imagine holding a map of a place you have never seen and then trying to find it in the dark and even accurately hit targets. Even today with nigh perfect targetting systems we still have human error that accidentally targets the wrong people and places.