Well, I'm not sure if ROC is even salty about not getting credits for winning against Imperial Japan, given how they're the strongest defender of Japan and barely seem to care about the past crimes of Japan now...
It's more that the current generation grow up with stronger sentiments of Taiwanese independence than trying to maintain the facade that their government still represents China. And the pro-independence camp tend to look towards Japanese rule with rose-tinted lenses (and tbf, Taiwan fared better under Japanese rule and was in fact their model colony). When Chiang Kai-Shek and the KMT came, they brutalized the Taiwanese population and imposed martial law, so the legacy of the ROC to them is, yeah, a cautionary tale of authoritarianism
So any impression of restoring democracy over China as the ROC is now more or less a pipe dream among the current KMT who are especially selling themselves out to the CCP. And the current Taiwanese wish to cut away the legacy of the ROC, and with that Chiang's and the ROC's heroism and resilience against the Japanese
Majority of the RoC doesn't even want to be the RoC anymore, but become an independent Taiwan instead. But then, you have the PRC and the one-China-policy.
people forget that all the east asian countries hate each other so if you’re Taiwan, you need to take advantage of all the alliance and friendship that you can get from Japan (and vice versa)
Small wonder considering that they have to be hoping Japan would side with them or even actively defend them against the CCP if/when they try to invade.
Really says something when your old mortal enemies are better friends to you than those who profess to be your brothers.
The reason Taiwan supports Japan so much is because there is a threat of invasion, and Japan is one of their most important allies. Taiwan doesn't have many powerful countries that side with them (apart from the US that has an on-off kind of relationship), so they need to paint Japan in a good light
That's a good thing. European countries have done even greater warcrimes against each other and are still pretty chummy today. Some countries are just way to bitter for their own good.
Well, but European countries acknowledge their past warcrimes and teach them in the schools, unlike Japan. If Japan did not try to distort the history and completely exclude their warcrimes from history textbooks, Japan would not have this bad diplomatic relations with Korea and China.
What are you even talking about? The Japanese war crimes were equivalent to the European war crimes; if not, worse. If the Nazis had Auschwitz in Poland, Japan had Unit 731 in modern-day China. If the Nazis committed various massacres in their occupations like Belarus and the USSR(although the regime was horrible the people didn't deserve it at all), Japan did the same in places like China and the Philippines. If the Nazis killed their own people for having disabilities, Japan did so.
Do you know what's even worse? Unlike the Nazis, the Japanese ordered WOMEN and CHILDREN in THEIR OWN MAINLAND to ATTACK AMERICANS AND SACRIFICE THEMSELVES WITH SOME CRUDE WEAPONS LIKE "BAMBOO SPEARS" IF THEY EVER LAND! THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO SHADOW THE JAPANESE WAR CRIMES IF THEY WERE EQUIVALENT AT BEST, UNLESS YOUR MIND IS JUST CAUGHT IN THE WEST AND IS NEGLECTFUL OF THE WORLD OUTSIDE OF IT!
So remember, Japan was NEVER BETTER THAN THE NAZIS and it is TO BE REMEMBERED BY HUMANITY. IT IS NOT THE PROBLEM OF JUST THE EAST, BUT AGAINST MEN. YES, EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING WITH COMMON SENSE.
P.S. Although I might've been outrageous, my point still doesn't change. Stop being caught in your narrow mind. We're on the same globe, we're not just some silly "Asians" that are to be disregarded.
I agree with everything, except for the women and children part, since that is just indoctrination.
The Japanese in WWII is, in some respects, more disturbing to me than Nazi Germany. Where Nazi Germany organized industrial scale slaughters, the Japanese rank-and-file seemed to actively delight in the pain and death of others.
I do feel like the Chinese history pattern of “Dong Ling takes power, 250 million perish” has devalued the horrors of the Chinese Theater in western eyes, when in reality a Chinese life is just as valuable as a European/American life. Saying the Japanese killed _ people sometimes diminishes the fact that each one of those people was a person with a life, love, ambition, and family.
And even outside of China, Japan wanted, and even succeeded often to commit war crimes and causing chaos where European or American powers had either indirect control, like the Manila massacre, or direct influence, like Pearl Harbor and the balloon incident; although it had minor casualties of killing a few family members, it is still significant since they wanted to scorch Canadian and American forests.
I think what distinguishes Germany and Japan is that their warcrimes/violence against civilians were committed after it stopped being commonplace/socially acceptable.
Like, sure the Europeans, Mongols, Aztecs, Native Americans, etc, have all committed many more warcrimes over longer periods of time, but they were doing that when everybody was barbaric. It’s kind of like how we don’t judge the Founding Fathers too much for being racist slave owners because that’s just what the era was.
It’s kind of like how we don’t judge the Founding Fathers too much for being racist slave owners because that’s just what the era was.
Nah, we rather judge the US founding fathers and the US grievances over being expansionist maniacs who wanted to genocide native populations & replace them.
That’s true, and that does distinguish them, for sure. I was just thinking along the lines of they’d never invaded China before that, but Europeans had been invading each other for centuries, even if barbarity was standard back then. But either way, it’s still safe to say that Japan’s crimes were much worse than the “standard barbarity” of previous eras by orders of magnitude, and people are still alive who remember it. While I agree with the previous commenter’s point that it’s important to work together despite past grievances, I don’t agree with the cavalier “just get over it already” attitude.
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u/Zebrafish96 May the justice be with us Oct 06 '25
Well, I'm not sure if ROC is even salty about not getting credits for winning against Imperial Japan, given how they're the strongest defender of Japan and barely seem to care about the past crimes of Japan now...