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The Infamous Burma-Thailand Railway


FreeTime

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What was really nice was that the Nipponese gents told the prisoners in Singapore that they would have light labour to do and be well fed. Thus their officers mainly sent the men who were not all that well and whom they thought would benefit from the change of scenery!

 

p.s. The POWs were chosen by the Nipponese gentlemen because an attempt to use hired Thai labourers resulted in a near riot and an attack on a Japanese garrison by the pissed off Thais. The Asian labourers (mostly Indonesian) were told they would be working in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), then shipped off to Thailand before they knew what was happening to them. Such was the "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere".

 

 

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I took the tour to Bridge on River Quai.

 

This tour stopped at the military cemetary. Read the grave stones. A facinating glimpse on this footnote of WWII history.

 

None of this is taught in Japanese schools.

 

The tour was conducted by a Thai but all was in English. There were two Japanese gentelmen near me on tour and as the explanation of what took place proceeded - the Japanese men turned beet red and they appeared quite uncomfortable.

 

The depravity and brutality is beyond comprehension.

 

Those POW's that stayed behind fared much better.

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Germany paid heavily for WWII - 1/4th of the country lost, millions expelled from their homes, occupied for years and divided. Yet Germany readily acknowldges the Nazi attrocities and has been a leading supporter of Israel. The Japanese government, on the other hand, tries to deny any wrong doing and teaches that Japan was a victim of US and UK aggression. All that Japan lost were outlying territories with hardly any occupants - and when has Japan done anything for the countries in invaded and savaged?

 

:hmmm:

 

 

p.s. There are some in Japan who do try to expose Japan's militant and brutal past, but they have a hard time being heard.

 

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Jimmy Blonde knows fark all about Thai history too:

 

<< I wonder if any of the poor buggers working the train line knew the river was called after a beast of burden? >>

 

It ain't! The name is the KWAE River. Pierre Boulle called it the Kwai in his novel. Thanks to Boulle's novel and the film based on it, the TAT calls it the Kwai to make tourists happy.

 

 

 

 

 

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Germany paid heavily for WWII - 1/4th of the country lost, millions expelled from their homes, occupied for years and divided. Yet Germany readily acknowldges the Nazi attrocities and has been a leading supporter of Israel. The Japanese government, on the other hand, tries to deny any wrong doing and teaches that Japan was a victim of US and UK aggression. All that Japan lost were outlying territories with hardly any occupants - and when has Japan done anything for the countries in invaded and savaged?

 

:hmmm:

 

 

p.s. There are some in Japan who do try to expose Japan's militant and brutal past, but they have a hard time being heard.

Not exactly correct.

 

Per my Japanese wife, born, raised and schooled in Tokyo...Japan had paid millions to the Korean government as a "sorry for what we did", but the Korean gov sucked up and stole all the money.

 

Thousands of Japanese soldiers were killed.

 

Thousands of civilians starved to death in Japan, in support of the Emperor. Had a personal friend that explained how she watched her sister die from starvation in Tokyo...she was quick to say "fuck the emperor".

 

Japan and the people took their hits.

 

The Japanese history books teach a far more correct history then the US history books even did.

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Foreign Aid:

 

The government of Japan and the Japanese people provide the highest amount of foreign aid than any other country in the world including the USA.

 

The Japanese people do give to other countries.

 

Now, about WWII and Japanese textbooks:

 

"School textbooks in Japan are not written by the Ministry of Education. Instead, the textbooks for all subjects in elementary, and both lower and upper secondary schools are written and published by several major private companies. This system was introduced to Japan after World War II to avoid government having direct authority over the written contents. Japan's School Education Law (教育基本法) requires schools to use textbooks that are authorized by the Ministry of Education (MEXT). However, each local education board has the final authority to select which textbooks can be used in their jurisdiction from the approved list.

 

In Japan, a potential school textbook must pass a sequence of evaluations before receiving approval to be used in Japanese schools. First, textbook companies submit a draft of their proposed textbook to the Japanese Ministry of Education. The Textbook Authorization and Research Council (教科çâ€Â¨Ã¥â€ºÂ³Ã¦â€ºÂ¸Ã¦Â¤Å“定調査審議会), an official council of the Ministry of Education, composed of university professors, high-school and junior high teachers, checks the draft in accordance with the Ministry's educational curriculum guidelines (学習指導è¦Âé ˜) to ensure that the contents of the proposed textbook is "objective, impartial, and free from errors." The Ministry of Education will give the company that authored the textbook the opportunity to revise the draft when it is found to contain information that is inconsistent with national guidelines. Once the textbook revisions are complete and the textbook has received the approval of the Ministry of Education, Local Boards of Education select books from a list of authorized textbooks for schools under their jurisdiction. The process of textbook authorization is ongoing and conducted every four years, the results of which are presented to the public the following year.

 

Critics claim that the government textbook authorization system has been used to reject textbooks that depict Imperial Japan in a negative light. This includes a case in the 1960s where a description of the Nanjing Massacre and other war crimes committed by the Japanese military before and during World War II was rejected by the Ministry of Education. The author sued the Ministry, finally winning the case decades later. Recent controversy focuses on the approval of a history textbook published by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which placed emphasis on the achievements of pre-World War II Imperial Japan, as well as a reference to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere with fewer critical comments compared to the other Japanese history textbooks. Reflecting Japanese tendency towards self-favoring historical revisionism, historian Stephen Ambrose noted that "The Japanese presentation of the war to its children runs something like this: 'One day, for no reason we ever understood, the Americans started dropping atomic bombs on us.'"

 

LINK

 

This is one persective on history textbooks concerning Japan.

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