Oriental wrote:I have ill-feeling about the deliberate ignorance of this portion in global history.
Hi Oriental, I agree with you. I believe the whole problem boils down to ignorance in the western mind. I don't think it was deliberate though, sometimes we just don't get all the facts or think out of the western box or sphere... When WWII happened, it was also a differnet world back then. We mainly looked at things from our point of view (like the bombing of Pearl Harbor) and not China's. We also didn't have the internet back then either to get the news across as well. People here knew what was happening to China, they just didn't focus on it until it became their problem. Much of Europe was also upset with the U.S. for entering the war so late. By the time the U.S. entered the war, many many Europeans and Jews perished.. In fact, it wasn't until
after the war that we knew that so many Jews were killed in the holocaust, (6 million..).
Anyways I'm sad to hear about this bad treatment of the Chinese people back then. I knew about it, but not in much detail. I'm sorry your people were mistreated by the Japanese. I believe China was treated more harshly than the Americans in many ways. From what I understand following the Battle of Lugou Bridge in 1937, the Japanese occupied Shanghai, Nanjing and Southern Shanxi in campaigns involving approximately 350,000 Japanese soldiers, and considerably more Chinese soldiers. Chinese historians estimate as many as
300,000 people perished in the Nanjing Massacre, after the fall of Nanjing.
Some Chinese historians claimed the total military and non-military deaths of the Chinese were at most
35 million. That is amazing...
Today it is different though... We can look up all the wars that have occurred throughout the world for or facts. I usually use Wikipedia for that. This is what it says about the Second Sino-Japanese War (July 7, 1937 - September 9, 1945 ).
Chinese casualties
* The Kuomintang fought in 22 major engagements, most of which involved more than 100,000 troops on both sides, 1,171 minor engagements most of which involved more than 50,000 troops on both sides, and 38,931 skirmishes.
* The CPC mostly fought guerilla attacks in rural area in North China. It would later give them credence to win them support in the Chinese Civil War.
* The Chinese lost approximately 3.22 million soldiers. 9.13 million civilians died in the crossfire, and another 8.4 million as non-military casualties. Some Chinese historians claimed the total military and non-military deaths of the Chinese were at most 35 million.
* Property loss of the Chinese valued up to 383,301.3 million US dollars according to the currency exchange rate in July 1937, roughly 50 times of the GDP of Japan at that time (7,700 million US dollars). [citation needed]
* In addition, the war created ninety-five million refugees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
If such a calamity happened today I'm sure it would be a different story... On every T.V. channel...