WI: Allied Final Solution in the Pacific?

I could see Asian nations being harsher to Japan, were they involved in occupation, be they Chinese (KMT or PRC-or Malaysian/Singaporean, both hated the Japanese) or Malay or Filipino. Indians might not as much.
There is still a strong anti-Japanese sentiment in the PRC and Malaysia, and perhaps in Singapore.
 

Das_Colonel

Banned
Is he trolling or has he been indoctrinated with guilt for the sins of his ancestors?

(NOt trying to troll myself, just seen similar guilt, in other non-specific cases, not what your thinking if I've offended anyone:eek:;))


No Corbell, he was trying to garner support for his idea by attaching a red herring of what happened to Australia's indigenous population. He was called on it.

As for indoctrination, I would doubt that is the case. Indigenous heritage and history has only really been introduced into mainstream schooling over the last 10-15 years.

Regarding allied atrocities in the Pacific in the vein (deliberate industrial scale murder as opposed to an ongoing war) of the Holocaust, I think that would be fundamentally impossible. In combat situations, yes I can see a more 'no prisoners' attitude if there were more widespread and higher publicized Japanese war crimes.

To my limited knowledge and understanding, it boils down to the fundamental difference between a fascist dictatorship or a militarised society and a democracy.
 
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Operation Starvation had the potential to cause more casualties than the holocaust.

So, delay nuclear bombs, get the Japanese Government too stubborn to surrender after Okinawa, and there you go.
 

Morty Vicar

Banned
If there were brutal recriminations anywhere it would be in countries occupied by the Japanese, or maybe isolated incidents at liberated Japanese POW camps.
 
Given how the Japanese behaved in China the Chinese deserve great credit for letting the Japanese who surrendered return home safely.
 
I can see this happening only if the USN proposal of starving Japan is adopted.

No, that is not going to be the way it happens. Japan will be besieged until the government agrees to unconditional surrender.

Truman did not like the Japanese very much, neither did a lot of other people at that point in time, to even suggest that these were the kind of people who would consciously stomach the extermination of an entire people just a few months after liberating the concentration camps. The US won't do it and for God's sake neither will Australia, Australia is not that kind of country.
 
Australia is not that kind of country

This, a thousand times this. I don't know why people insist on having Australia as some kind of Allied Nazi Germany thing, the stolen generation was bad, really bad but the behaviors of other nations at the time toward minority or indigenous people was in many cases no better. Anti-black sentiments were rife in South Africa and the African American population in many parts of the US were still treated as second class citizens. To propose that Australia is on the same podium as Nazi Germany when it comes to dealing with racial tensions is ridiculous and as for the post saying that the white population of Australia now secretly wants to eliminate the aborigine population and vice versa is just the height of ignorance and stupidity.
 
This, a thousand times this. I don't know why people insist on having Australia as some kind of Allied Nazi Germany thing, the stolen generation was bad, really bad but the behaviors of other nations at the time toward minority or indigenous people was in many cases no better. Anti-black sentiments were rife in South Africa and the African American population in many parts of the US were still treated as second class citizens. To propose that Australia is on the same podium as Nazi Germany when it comes to dealing with racial tensions is ridiculous and as for the post saying that the white population of Australia now secretly wants to eliminate the aborigine population and vice versa is just the height of ignorance and stupidity.

Indeed, even the non-Soviet W. Allies were far from perfect (Churchill was a zealous defender of the British Empire long after its decline was terminal, De Gaulle was an all-around jerk, etc.), but really you need to fall very, very far to be even anywhere near the same level as Nazi Germany, or even to the same level as a thuggish brute like Fascist Italy (gassing the Abyssinians to grease the skids of what would have been a pathetically easy victory against a weak and defenseless country was a real strike against the "least bad" Axis power).

People who would have done horrible things that could even begin to compare to the horrors of Nazi brutality in the East or elsewhere were almost always one-off examples in a conflict that wasn't particularly nice to begin with, like the mutilation of Japanese war dead by American soldiers. All this really reminds me of a similar thread where someone speculated in all seriousness that Japanese Internment camps in the United States could have been concentration camps with the right PoD, and that of course requires the assumption that the US Army is the same as the Einsatzgruppen and that people who attempt to totally exterminate a group of people under US custody (in this case the Japanese-Americans) will somehow not be court-martialed and wind up doing the gallows dance later on.
 
This is virtually ASB in my opinion. While both the United States and Australia have undeniable histories of treating indigenous and (in the case of the US) African slaves in genocidal ways, these had to do with the treatment of what both nations saw at the time as inferior or primitive people within their own borders. Not justifiable by any means, but possibly understandable given prevailing western attitudes in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Japan, for all its war crimes, was a modern independent nation that had been beaten in a war involving an alliance of many nations. It was also a war in which both the US and Australia claimed to follow international and military laws - and that was the official policy, regardless of the fact that they weren't followed always in actual combat with Japanese soldiers. Also, Japan had been flattened and millions of its citizens had already been killed and left homeless by US bombing and blockade. While the MacArthur occupation was amazingly benign and farsighted given US wartime attitudes, I suspect the typical Australians would react similarly in a similar role. They would not support a policy of deliberate brutality against the Japanese civilian population - especially considering the virtual absence of outright resistance (or even hostility) to the occupation by the average Japanese civilians.
 
Operation downfall, if it would have happened would basically be genocide IMO. Its mostly japan forcing that upon themselves but eventually the Geneva conventions are gonna be totally wiped clear off the table when the war is done and Japan is a wasteland.

I mean, if they force your hand to nuke and fire bomb your cities, is it genocide?:mad::rolleyes:

The way nukes where gonna be used is genocide for both Japanese and american soldiers though. The Japanese army and government would make sure the rest of the population will die in mass suicide and pointless attacks.
 
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