Joined Dec 2015
6,662 Posts | 1,295+
Buffalo, NY
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When one looks at the 1930s-1940s, this was a time when segregation and bigotry played a role in American, British and Japanese societies.
This type of bigotry that we saw worldwide during the WW2 era may have been minimized perhaps if the racial equality proposal proposed by the Empire of Japan in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, had succeed. The racial equality proposal was actually accepted by most countries involved including Italy and France. It was the British Empire and United States which did not agree with the racial equality proposal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Equality_Proposal
Now some have said that the Japanese delegation wrt the racial equality bill of 1919, wanted Japanese people to be on equal grounds with European white people, as opposed to the view that all people are equal regardless of their race or religion. The latter point though might be contested at least to a small degree if one looks at the documents and links provided itt.
The Empire of Japan like America and England had individuals and groups whom argued for respect among races in the 1930s-1940s.
I have many a question wrt this topic. Perhaps some Japanese people were about true racial equality , where as others thought it was righteous that the Japanese would be Kings and all other non Japanese people would be below the Japanese and would be happy to be in such a position? And how many Japanese people during the WW2 era felt like they were fighting a war of good vs evil? That is to say how many Japanese people during WW2 were against bigotry and discrimination because the CIA link and Wikipedia links I provide tell us that some # of Japanese people felt themselves to be morally righteous.
A CIA document from 1945 provided below actually shows that even when American forces were having success against Japan late in WW2, that many Japanese people were about Asian cooperation even in the face of the allied advance. Now as to the extent of Asian cooperation and how for example Japanese and Chinese people felt about each other, this seems to vary when it came to the Japanese population of the WW2 era. And certainly China has a warriors history and many of the Chinese fought bravely agaisnt the Japanese during the WW2 period. So as for Chinese Japanese relations, The CIA document uses the term "Asiatic cooperation" and indeed their were nationalist Chinese leaders allied to the Japanese cause during WW2 such as Wang Jingwei.
It was not until the 1960s that black folks in the United States received equal respect in their own birthplace when compared to their white counterparts. And simply put there was a massive difference between the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan in terms of morals the links I provide itt show this..There was never afaik any sort of racial equality bill ever proposed by the Third Reich in its existence. There is no way I can possibly say oh yes in the 1940s USA blacks and whites were equal because they were not equal in 1940s USA...
The history of WW2 that I was taught growing up told of the horror stories of Japanese treatment of pows, and of how America the so called land of the free was fighting to defeat the tyrannical Empire of Japan. Let me say it might be that America was more free then the Empire of Japan was during the 1940s...it is worth noting though that at one point in the WW2 era that the American civil rights group the NAACP... basically thanked the Empire of Japan for pointing out how blacks were treated as 2nd class citizens in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_fascist_Japan#Negro_propaganda_operations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Conference
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000710366.pdf
I was quite taken back by the wiki article as well.. Now again I am not here to prop up the Empire of Japan and denigrate the USA. I admire the allied side of WW2 and at the same time understand the facts that racial segregation was a real thing in the USA. It is also true that the media outlets of the USA and EOJ put out propaganda depecting the other side in a poor manner , ie the USA used the word Jap many times and US media outlets portrayed Japanese people poorly in cartoons, where as the Empire of Japan media portrayed the Americans very poorly as well.
The Wikipedia article I link above tells that the Japanese side of WW2 put out a media campaign to portray Americans, more or less white Americans as beasts who wanted to uphold a racist society. And that the Empire of Japan were the good guys fighting against "white supremacist powers" such as the British and the Americans. Now again I am not elevating the Empire of Japan over the United States or Great Britain in terms of morals, its just that I was quite taken back by the language in the Wikipedia article as well as the CIA document provided itt.
This type of bigotry that we saw worldwide during the WW2 era may have been minimized perhaps if the racial equality proposal proposed by the Empire of Japan in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, had succeed. The racial equality proposal was actually accepted by most countries involved including Italy and France. It was the British Empire and United States which did not agree with the racial equality proposal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Equality_Proposal
Now some have said that the Japanese delegation wrt the racial equality bill of 1919, wanted Japanese people to be on equal grounds with European white people, as opposed to the view that all people are equal regardless of their race or religion. The latter point though might be contested at least to a small degree if one looks at the documents and links provided itt.
The Empire of Japan like America and England had individuals and groups whom argued for respect among races in the 1930s-1940s.
I have many a question wrt this topic. Perhaps some Japanese people were about true racial equality , where as others thought it was righteous that the Japanese would be Kings and all other non Japanese people would be below the Japanese and would be happy to be in such a position? And how many Japanese people during the WW2 era felt like they were fighting a war of good vs evil? That is to say how many Japanese people during WW2 were against bigotry and discrimination because the CIA link and Wikipedia links I provide tell us that some # of Japanese people felt themselves to be morally righteous.
A CIA document from 1945 provided below actually shows that even when American forces were having success against Japan late in WW2, that many Japanese people were about Asian cooperation even in the face of the allied advance. Now as to the extent of Asian cooperation and how for example Japanese and Chinese people felt about each other, this seems to vary when it came to the Japanese population of the WW2 era. And certainly China has a warriors history and many of the Chinese fought bravely agaisnt the Japanese during the WW2 period. So as for Chinese Japanese relations, The CIA document uses the term "Asiatic cooperation" and indeed their were nationalist Chinese leaders allied to the Japanese cause during WW2 such as Wang Jingwei.
It was not until the 1960s that black folks in the United States received equal respect in their own birthplace when compared to their white counterparts. And simply put there was a massive difference between the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan in terms of morals the links I provide itt show this..There was never afaik any sort of racial equality bill ever proposed by the Third Reich in its existence. There is no way I can possibly say oh yes in the 1940s USA blacks and whites were equal because they were not equal in 1940s USA...
The history of WW2 that I was taught growing up told of the horror stories of Japanese treatment of pows, and of how America the so called land of the free was fighting to defeat the tyrannical Empire of Japan. Let me say it might be that America was more free then the Empire of Japan was during the 1940s...it is worth noting though that at one point in the WW2 era that the American civil rights group the NAACP... basically thanked the Empire of Japan for pointing out how blacks were treated as 2nd class citizens in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_fascist_Japan#Negro_propaganda_operations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Conference
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000710366.pdf
I was quite taken back by the wiki article as well.. Now again I am not here to prop up the Empire of Japan and denigrate the USA. I admire the allied side of WW2 and at the same time understand the facts that racial segregation was a real thing in the USA. It is also true that the media outlets of the USA and EOJ put out propaganda depecting the other side in a poor manner , ie the USA used the word Jap many times and US media outlets portrayed Japanese people poorly in cartoons, where as the Empire of Japan media portrayed the Americans very poorly as well.
The Wikipedia article I link above tells that the Japanese side of WW2 put out a media campaign to portray Americans, more or less white Americans as beasts who wanted to uphold a racist society. And that the Empire of Japan were the good guys fighting against "white supremacist powers" such as the British and the Americans. Now again I am not elevating the Empire of Japan over the United States or Great Britain in terms of morals, its just that I was quite taken back by the language in the Wikipedia article as well as the CIA document provided itt.
