http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanko_sakusen
"Three Alls Policy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Three Alls Policy[1] (Japanese: 三光作戦, Sankō Sakusen; Chinese: 三光政策, Sānguāng Zhèngcè😉 was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three alls being: "Kill All", "Burn All" and "Loot All". In Japanese documents, the policy was originally referred to as "The Burn to Ash Strategy" (燼滅作戦, Jinmetsu Sakusen?).
The name "Sankō Sakusen", based on the Chinese term, was first popularized in Japan in 1957 when a Japanese war criminal released from the Fushun war crime internment center wrote a controversial book called "Sankō, Nihonjin no Chūgoku ni okeru senso hanzai no kokuhaku" (The three all, Japanese confessions of war crimes in China) (new edition : Kanki Haruo, 1979), in which some Japanese veterans were confessing their crimes committed under the leadership of general Yasuji Okamura. The publishers were forced to stop the publication of the book after receiving death threats from militarists extremists and shôwa fanatics.
Initiated in 1940 by Ryûkichi Tanaka, the "sankô sakusen" was implemented in full scale in 1942 in north China by Yasuji Okamura who divided the territory into pacified, semi-pacified and unpacified areas. The approval of the policy was given by Imperial Headquarters army order number 575 on 3 December 1941. Okamura's strategy involved burning down villages, confiscating grain and mobilizing peasants to construct collective hamlets. It also centered on the digging of vast trench lines and the building of thousand of miles of containment walls and moats, watchtowers and roads.
According to a joint study of historians such as Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo, Mark Peattie and Zhifen Ju, more than 10 millions Chinese civilians were mobilized by the shôwa army for slave work in north China and Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kôa-in. (Zhifen Ju, "Japan's atrocities of conscripting and abusing north China draftees after the outbreak of the Pacific war", Joint study of the sino-Japanese war, 2002).
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert Bix, based on the works of Mitsuyoshi Himeta and Akira Fujiwara, claims that the Three Alls Policy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, was responsible for the deaths of 2.7 million Chinese civilians, far surpassing The Rape of Nanking not only in terms of numbers, but perhaps in brutality as well.
Like much of Japan's WWII history, the nature and extent of the policy is however controversial today. Because the now well-known name for this strategy is Chinese, right-wing Japanese historians claim that the policy is merely Chinese propaganda, that using this term promulgates this left-wing disinformation, and they have even argued whether or not this policy actually existed. They further claim that this kind of scorched-earth policy was a part of Chinese, not Japanese history, saying that the Chinese maintained a scorched-earth policy during World War II—known in Japan as "The Clean Field Strategy" (清野作戦, Seiya Sakusen?)—under which, Chinese soldiers would destroy the homes of their own civilians in order to wipe out any hiding places that could be utilised by the Japanese troops.[1]. Many supposed victims of the Three Alls Policy, they claim, actually died at Chinese hands, and their deaths were misattributed to the Japanese.
"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes_in_mainland_Asia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image😕layers.jpg
"Two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda competing to see who could kill (with a sword) one hundred people first. The bold headline reads, "'Incredible Record' (in the Contest To Cut Down 100 People—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings""
http://www.mbe.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/retrospect.htm
"The nation hardest hit, however, was probably China. Beginning with the invasion by Japan in 1931, perhaps 15 million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese Army or from the war's attendant starvation and disease. The toll on Asia and the Pacific was psychological as well as physical; controversy still rages over the numerous war crimes committed by the Japanese Army, including biological warfare experiments conducted on civilians, the execution of prisoners of war, and wholesale rape and murder committed against entire cities, such as happened in 1937 in the Chinese city of Nanking where 200,000 or more Chinese civilians may have died. Well over two million Japanese soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the war, of which perhaps as many as 300,000, or even more, were as a result of the two atomic bombings. About 300,000 Americans died during the wars against Germany and Japan. Though no one will ever know for certain, the worldwide death toll for the war from 1931 to 1945 probably reached 60 million. "
see Thread 64721 "dropping the A-bomb " and Thread 27271 "60 years ago".
it all looks nice and clear and doable, 61 years on, to the armchair generals. why didn't they just negotiate with Japan? they were ready to drop!'
but atrocities were ongoing, casualties, were ongoing, and it wasn't so nice and clear 61 years ago.
it had to be done. maybe not only because japan would not have surrendered unconditionally otherwise, but as someone said in a thread here, the americans needed to make a statement: "i have a big boom and i am not afraid to use it" directed at stalin, a person just as psychotic as hitler who only circumstances brought to the allied side. all throughout history the russians have been testing the americans to see any sign of weakness. and only because there were none we talk now about the cold war instead of the WWIII.
moreover, it said to the world that from now on the wars will be changing and that US will play a major part in policing the world. and that the us doesn't take crap from anyone.
(which was a good thing until exaggerated in vietnam and irak(the second irak))