Posted: Feb 02, 2012 3:03 pm
epepke wrote:
However, if I am to judge prohibition of holocaust denial in that context, then I am by the same token entitled to judge Judenhass and the holocaust itself in that context. The other fierce allies of the Nazis were the Japanese, who were also big on honor. So maybe being that big on honor sucks in the first place.
Don't talk to me of Japanese honor during the war. They dishonored themselves for ever with some pretty nasty atrocities even an SS would blush at the thought of it.
What I'm talking about is called "War crimes against women" and is exhaustively described in the homonimous book written by Kelly Dawn Askin.
Amongst the many, horrible stories of women's sufferings during various wars, you can read about "comfort women", a pleonasm of what were in fact young women -- mainly Asiatic but also Dutch and many as young as 15 years of age -- who were forced to work as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers during WW2.
They were abducted from Indonesian villages or concentration camps for families of allied PWs, brought to makeshift bordellos, beaten and gang raped day and night until, when completely destroyed mentally and physically, they were returned to their mothers if they survived the ordeal. Actually many mothers later referred to the allied soldiers who delivered them they would have preferred death for their daughters rather than the horrific ordeal hey had to go through.
One Dutch woman, who lived in Indonesia during the war -- Ruff-O'Herne -- was the first Western woman to provide support to Asiatic women forced to work as prostitutes. Later, she wrote a book where she described her own experience as a "comfort woman": Jan Ruff-O'Herne. 50 years of silence (1994).
The Japanese Government denied involvement but, when confronted with conclusive evidence, was forced to knowledge its direct implication. I don't believe any Japanese was ever punished for those crimes.