Just because to 14 people convicted of war crimes were included?????? I hope China, South Korea, and everyone else offended recieve a "Go berkeley Yourself" memo....
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/26/22056272-backlash-at-japan-after-pm-shinzo-abe-visits-controversial-war-shrine?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=2
the everyone else … includes us … those pissants need to shut the berkeley up
Robert Strange McNamara said that he would have been tried as a war criminal if we would have lost the war. I generally admire him, but then again, I wasn't alive when he was at his most controversial.
very seldom are there war criminals from the winning side 
wbjones wrote: the everyone else … includes us … those pissants need to shut the berkeley up
I think our retards were just following the rest of the retards. Even if they were fighting us, its no different than our heads of state visiting any of our cemetries, memorials, monuments, etc. To show respect for those who died fighting for what they believed in means so much more to me than most things.
I look at it this way: those Soldiers died fighting for a cause they believed in. they did not make the decisions that led up to the war, they did not think of the strategy, and they did not decide on what country to invade or not.. they simply marched off to war and did the best they could.
They should be honoured.
To say they cannot be honoured is like saying that the southern states cannot honour their war dead, or the British cannot honour the troops that died trying to keep the Colonies from escaping their clutches.. or those that died in the French Indian War.
I think China and Korea make a big deal out of it for Politics.. the rest do it because they want to be offended. Got news for you.. life is too damn short to be miserable
While his intention might have been to honor the noble war dead, the Chinese and Koreans are seeing it like the Israelis (and probably us) would see Angela Merkel visiting and honoring a shrine including Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Eichmann, et al, and saying it was to honor the dead SS troops, not their leaders.
The Japanese tore through the Korean peninsula and China with a brutality that has probably not been since equaled by a modern, national army. I use that qualifier because there has been genocide in Africa that has probably been worse in many ways.
Sorry, but there's a lot more behind this than someone trying to get political leverage.
In reply to Basil Exposition:
I get that, the Japanese were more butal than the Nazi's ever thought of, but still.....to shame something memorializing 2.4 MILLION people due to 14 is idiotic at best.
what Yamaha said …
and Basil Exposition is right about any German memorials ..
and yes to Africa, the Caribbean, central Europe, China, N.Korea, Russia, etc…. (i.e. China and Korea don't really have much room to complain)
I'm agreeing with Mad Machine, politics ….
.00058% of those buried there
In reply to wbjones:
Didn't the Japanese see their invasion of China/Korea as getting back at them for doing/attempting the reverse centuries prior?
yep … don't think anyone can get all the way back to who E36 M3 on whom first 
Japan has historically essentially ignored and played dumb about the pretty blatant horrors they inflected in the WWII era.
I suspect these reactions are more a reaction to seeing them appear to play ignorant again then an incidental recognition of war criminals as part of war memorial.
Everyone over there is posturing right now, claiming piles of seagull s###t and so forth.
My point is that the feelings run deeper and there is a lot more to the story than a simplistic math calculation.
For example, that shrine has become a rallying point for right-wing groups in Japan that not only deny the atrocities, but want to rearm and become imperialist once again. Abe is seen to be supporting those groups by visiting the shrine, as well. Yeah, the sacrifice of those soldiers that fought and died for their country get lost in all of that, but those whose sisters and mothers were "comfort women" for those dedicated soldiers probably don't have a lot of sympathy for that.
What you know about this situation by reading that one article is only .00058% of what is really involved.
1) There are 1068 convicted war criminals commemorated at that shrine. The number 14 is a reference to the ones convicted of "crimes against peace."
2) most of the controversy is because of the horrible, horrible stuff that happened during the massacre in Nanking
3) this controversy is just as manufactured as the Duck Dynasty one, and is part of a drive to rewrite the Japanese constitution
jimbbski wrote:aircooled wrote: Japan has historically essentially ignored and played dumb about the pretty blatant horrors they inflected in the WWII era. I suspect these reactions are more a reaction to seeing them appear to play ignorant again then an incidental recognition of war criminals as part of war memorial.This the problem with the Japanese. The books, movies, etc. written by Japanese about WW II most always pass over the fact that they started the war when they invaded China! Read about the Rape of Nanking, or how about how the prisoners of the Japanese captured in early 1942 were treated. About half of all Aust., British, & American prisoners died and any Chinese captured were worked to death while in captivity. (American prisoners of the Germans on the other hand suffered less then 5% deaths from all causes while in captivity.) Very few of those responsible were ever tried after the war. It is estimated that after the Doolittle raid the Japanese may have killed up to 400,000 civilians in retribution for the Chinese helping the crew members to escape. We used the Bomb on Japan and I for one support Pres. Truman in that decision. Many so called experts have tried to discount the need to use the Bomb but most of them were not even alive when that decision had to be made. I wasn't either but I still support it. Someone might say that if we had lost would Pres. Truman have been tried for a war crime?.
In reply to jimbbski:
Everyone tied to the atomic weapon would have been.....
FWIW, I don't necessarily see the Japanese as getting "imperialistic" again, so much as china is behaving like japan of the 1930's......too ambitious. They will be put in their place in the same way if they keep screwing around.
The Koreans, they're just upset with the Japanese for tainting their genepool.
yamaha wrote: The Koreans, they're just upset with the Japanese for tainting their genepool.
Can you blame them? When yer wimmens is dat hawt you don't want anything to taint it!
In reply to Bobzilla:
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