dk i just think that you all western activists- whether you’re whites, poc who arent descended from countries invaded by japan during WW2, or even asians who are but just do not know their motherland’s history - need to actually learn and read about Japanese imperialism. i’m not going to be one of those people who spout antisemitic vitriol like “they were WORSE than the nazis” - the fact of the matter is that while imperial japan carried out the same human experimentation, attempted genocide, call for ethnic cleansing, torture, slavery, massacres etc (along with occupation/colonies like south korea for 35 years and Okinawa to this very day)… somehow in western activists spaces still, we almost reach this point where the term japanese imperialist evokes a lot softer of a response than the term facist or nazi. despite being a nazi ally and committing similar atrocities.
and the i guess that the reasoning behind this is because there is no real benefit to the western white savior complex here (save for the hiroshima bombs which itself were bad and revenge for pearl harbor, not to save the occupied asian nations). unlike how in the western world, the allied powers can gloat over their white savior complex for saving jewish and rromani people (along with other targeted ethnic minority and general minority groups) from nazi germany. the motivating decision for that in upon itself being that nazi germany was harming and posing a threat to the white europeans, not the suffering of the aforementioned groups.
so in a sense i understand how nazism became cemented as the greater evil in the west and how we were forgotten about. but we shouldn’t have been. forgotten about. and you all have no idea how painful and disrespectful it is to see some of you critique japanese media for their imperialist themes only to dance around the word just because it isnt “hard hitting” enough and just call it facism or nazism. or just promote japanese imperialist content in general when it’s not ovbious enough to be called either of those things. the more you forget about us and what japan did to us and our countries, the more they succeed because this is their agenda. read about their war crimes, unit 731, the sook ching massacre, the nanjing massacre, the comfort women and all the other atrocities committed. do not forget about us.