In Defense of Toshio Tamogami

Toshio Tamogami ( legitimate Japanese )

Tobias Harris ( ?)







How is the legality of the European empires any different than the legality of Japan's colonies in Northeast Asia? If anything, the European empires were more secure in their rights in their colonies than Japan was in its colonies, seeing as how it acquired both by coercing the governments of China and Korea. The Dutch had ruled the Dutch East Indies directly for more than two centuries. India had been directly ruled by the British empire for nearly a century at the time of the war. The French had ruled Indochina directly for nearly as long as the British ruled India. In short, international law didn't apply; a Japanese attack on these colonies was legally indistinguishable from an attack on the French or British homelands. And one may recall that Japan did in fact attack these colonies, a fact unmentioned in connection with this argument, meaning ipso facto Japan was an aggressor in the war.












The legality of the European empires? More secure in their rights in their colonies!? Whose rights are you referring to, the people that were oppressed and colonized by Western nations? Japan wasn't a "white" nation, so of course it didn’t fall under the white rule of law( international law is a misnomer). Did not Western empires acquire colonies through coercion and force? This is the point that Tamogami was making in his first paragraph in his words, not your spin Toby. You speak as if Western expansionist policies through colonial rule was legitimate, because they had a firmer grip on the people they were oppressing, and Japan's wasn't. Maybe if Japan had colonized Korea and China for centuries their occupation would’ve been considered “their right?” Even in China today there is evidence of Western aggression by English forces lead by Earl of Elgin.







In 1898 Germany seized Kiau Chau in China. Britain responded by seizing Wei-hai-wei, and the next year the Russians took possession of Port Arthur. A flame of hatred for the Europeans swept through China. There were massacres of Europeans and Christian converts, and in 1900 an attack upon and siege of the European legations in Pekin. A combined force of Europeans made a punitive expedition to Pekin, rescued the legations, and stole an enormous amount of valuable property. The Russians then seized Manchuria, and in 1904 the British invaded. Your Western powers were busy carving up other asian country’s for your own gain with no regard for anything, anybody, or anyone. From 1931-1937 Japan was the aggressor, but in the case of Western powers they had centuries of aggression and oppression against non-white nations in the world, and because Western aggression was more established their legitimacy was more “right?”








What difference does it make whether one colony was more secured than the other? Japan's colonies weren't secured enough to be considered a legitimate colonial power? That's an out right lie since it was Japan that built infrastructure and schools and roads in Korea and educated many of those people. Maybe Japan didn't have centuries of experience in slavery and brutality through colonization as Western nations did, but to paint Japan’s history as one of wars and aggression is wrong, especially when Western powers try to justify theirs with Western law.







Western powers grew their wealth off the backs of free slave labor for centuries, Japan was merely copying what these expansionist Western nations were doing at the time. That doesn’t make them the worst of all evil, and it certainly doesn’t make them the poster child of a bad nation either. I am sick and tired of academics like you who find anything and everything wrong with Japan’s wartime past.




In short, international law didn't apply; a Japanese attack on these colonies was legally indistinguishable from an attack on the French or British homelands. And one may recall that Japan did in fact attack these colonies, a fact unmentioned in connection with this argument, meaning ipso facto Japan was an aggressor in the war








Again, there was no such thing as international law back then, there were only rich Western expansionist rules labeled as "international law" which were exclusively dictated and prosecuted by colonizers of Caucasian extraction. Now, whether you say so- called " international law" didn't apply is left up to interpretation. Japan didn't attack Korea and China in the same way Hitler marched on Poland and France, or the way Napoleon bombed the shores of Haiti and murdered its people, or the way the native Americans were exterminated on their own soil. What about the crown of England, how much blood is on her hands for their aggression through-out Africa and the colonies of North America? Laws didn’t apply to these incidences either, right? But whenever topics of reparations come up then all of a sudden laws are invented to justify not paying back the people Western nations have so arrogantly oppressed for centuries.







Japan didn't put in place extermination protocols in order to wipe out an entire race of people, Hitler did, and other European nations followed similar models of eradication through different means and through different methods, which makes Western nations no different than Japan at that time. Here is one instance where a group of people were targeted for unethical experiments based on race in North America. Some may refer to this as the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment. Even lynching laws which largely targeted a specific race of people was deemed legal even from America’s highest court. These laws were largely put in place to control and contain a specific race of people with the sole purpose of weakening their will to resist.







Japan had done similar experiments on the Chinese for research purposes too, there are faults on both sides here. Dr. Ishii , the head physician of these experiments, was protected by the United States even after the war. Why he was spared criminal prosecution? I don’t know.

Moreover, instances where Western colonizers had similar protocols as Hitler through-out the continent of Africa and North America were evident in the systematic murder, castrations and the torture of thousands of slaves for centuries and then building your vast empires off the backs of free slave labor. You didn't educate those slaves to make them self reliant, you didn’t incorporate them into your societies and governments, you excluded them and kept them ignorant, poor, and dependent on you and your institutions – Jim Crow.








Japan did incorporate Chinese and Korean sympathizers into its larger scheme. There were Korean kamikaze pilots who fought for the emperor, and who are honored still to this day at Yasukuni Shrine, and that included quite a few Chinese soldiers there as well! But of course you wouldn't know that Toby. In Hitler’s Germany African American soldiers who fought on the Beaches of Normandy were still treated as second class citizens even after Germany was defeated. German P.O.W.s were given higher status than African American soldiers, even in chow lines. AA soldiers were second after the German P.O.W’s (America’s enemy).







Both China and Japan's Emperor were very close and shared many common ideals and even bonded on major issues of that time. These two countries weren’t the de facto enemies like you portray them to be. China was in utter ruins because of idiots like Chiank-kai shek and Mao Tsedong's and his private cultural revolutionary policies which cost the lives of millions of his own people. How dare you attack Japan with your inaccuracy's Toby. You are trying to differentiate Western expansionist policies(aggression) from so-called Japanese aggression!? There is no difference between the two evils, just your arrogance and bias at play.







You live and work here and attack these people with your commentary at the same time.