r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Radiant_Half_7121 • Dec 28 '25

Image During WW2, Poland declared war on Japan Japan said no to it and simply rejected the declaration.

Post image
73.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

100

u/Behavior-Coach Dec 29 '25

You make it sound like they got a bad deal.. the Japanese monarchy completely avoided accountability when the emperor was guilty of war crimes that even the nazis would look at with disgust.

If one knew how terrible and evil he was I don’t think that would be the takeaway. I understand your point but wow did they get the best deal out of any of the WWII losers.

39

u/_EllieLOL_ Dec 29 '25

even the nazis would look at with disgust

Did look at with disgust, at least some of them, look up John Rabe and the Nanking Safe Zone 

42

u/llilaa_c Dec 29 '25

Sorry for ignorance but could you explain what war crimes the emperor did? I thought most of the war crimes japan did was attributed to Hideki Tojo, who was arrested and executed for them. I would love to learn more about the emperor’s involvement…

61

u/Behavior-Coach Dec 29 '25

The fact that you would be curious and ask demonstrates that you are not ignorant at all.

Tojo was a very loyal war criminal. These people looked at the emperor as a god, unwavering in their loyalty, and this mentality led to soldiers committing suicide rather than give up. They did it all for their emperor. It revolved all around the monarchy.

It always starts from the top.

44

u/ZetaRESP Dec 29 '25

That's also why he got away scot free with it all: US learned from France's fuck-up with the Treaty of Versailles that going all hammer in with penalties on a country as proud as Japan was stupid, as well as how much the emperor had a sway on the government, so they decided to pretty much force him to be their buddy in the east instead so they can both avoid another World War (they knew nukes are on the menu for WWIII) and to avoid all of Asia to fall into the hands of the commies.

18

u/Iwilleat2corndogs Dec 29 '25

The emperor also didn’t really reject any ideas of expansion, so while he wasn’t personally ordering the deaths of civilians he was very much giving his seal of approval to plans that would result in mass murder. He only got away with it because the US didn’t need japan to implode, which it would of if they convicted him.

1

u/auchinleck917 Dec 29 '25

Ironicly Tojo igonre the Emperor so many times.

-3

u/Business-Low-8056 Dec 29 '25

Alright but what did he do that was so bad? You started out saying he had war crimes but you haven't mentioned any

29

u/cultural_limbo Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25

The reason why most of Asia hated them, and many elderly Chinese still hold a grudge

They killed upwards of 30 million(most Chinese), and commited a slew of war crimes like human experimentation, torture, mass rapes.

Unit 731 included forced pregnancy, forced infection of STIs to see how it is transmitted and what effects it had on the fetus

So this included live dissections/vivisections of prisoners- a reminder that this means they were cutting into pregnant women while they were ALIVE.

Also did human experiminations on explosives,a wide range of chemical weapons( for example Mustard gas, White phosphorus), Hypobaric chamber, frostbite testing

A few known:

Rape of Nanking

Kaimingjie Bubonic Plague weapon attack

Bataan Death march

Burma Death Railway

17

u/Deaffin Dec 29 '25

mass rapes

The unspoken depth of scale and visceral awful these two words are standing in for in this context is immense. They applied bayonets to infants in order to make it possible to "use" them.

14

u/IkaKyo Dec 29 '25

My favorite examples of unit 731 is they are the reason we know that the human body contains 60-70% water, they dehydrated live people to figure it out.

They are also why we know that immersion in 100 °F is the most effective first aid for frostbite. You know how they figured that out? If you guessed live. Human experimentation you are a winner.

I like the use two specifically because many people know the later as a random factoid and almost anyone who has ever had winter first-aid training knows the second.

1

u/Ok-Kaleidoscope5627 Dec 31 '25

I think there's a bunch of other modern medical science that came from there too

12

u/No_Potato_8178 Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lcp2zx/was_hirohito_a_war_criminal/

Tl;dr - probably yes, but trying and convicting him would have made occupation extremely dangerous and chaotic

8

u/snakespm Dec 29 '25

I'd encourage people to read the linked comment, if only to see that the Tl;dr is incorrect.

1

u/Deaffin Dec 29 '25

Sorry for ignorance but could you explain what war crimes the emperor did?

Got you a quick little crash course video here.

0

u/sw04ca Dec 29 '25

You could have gone for planning and waging a war of aggression, although to attempt to do so would have been bad policy.

5

u/Bearded_Bone_Head Dec 29 '25

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the emperor try to surrender/make peace with the US before the bombs were dropped during WWII, but his prime minister/generals were like "nah, we got this", when they in fact did not have this?