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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It drives me bonkers when you ask the simple question of "When did WW2 start?" and you get the typical answer of 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland. That's completely wrong, because the Japanese attacked China even 2 years before that in 1937 and committed many atrocities even long before Hitler even touched Poland. In fact, you could even argue they WW2 started even earlier in 1931 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, or as far back as even 1910 when they invaded Korea and were trying to wipe out their entire culture.

The US entered WW2 in Europe late, and played second fiddle to the Russians at defeating Germany.  All you're ever taught is how important DDay was, yet in the grand scheme of the war, the Battle of Stalingrad was much more important for breaking Germany's back.  Meanwhile in Asia, the US was arguably at war with Japan long before we were at war with Germany (arguably even before Pearl Harbor) and the US played a much, much more significant role in defeating the other major Axis power which were the Japanese compared to r role we played in defeating the Nazis.

We are all taught about the SS, 3rd Reich, Hitler's Arayan race views and all of the deaths due to the Holocaust, but the Japanese had the same exact things with the Kempei Tai, the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, their beliefs that they were the superior race, and the Asian holocaust where the Japanese were murdering millions of civilians all across Asia and literally used to terms like exterminate wrt things like the entire Korean race and culture.

I mean our schools probably teach some of the major battles like Midway and Pearl Harbor, discuss dropping of the nukes, and the Rape of Nanking/Korean comfort women, but they only begins to scratch the surface of WW2 in Asia and all of the horrific crimes committed by Japan. A single event like flooding of the Yellow River killed 500k-1M Chinese, yet all you ever learn are Russia scortched Earth policies.  Everyone learns about Josef Mengele and Nazi human testing, yet the Japanese did the same and worse with Unit 731 and were even dropping biological weapons on China like 'maggot bombs' designed to spread cholera they killed 200k in Yunnan.

It just boggles the mind how poor US education is wrt WW2 and why US education always focuses on Europe when jit as many, if not, more people died in Asia depending on what time frames you look at, the Japanese were just as bad, if not worse than the Nazis, and the US had a far more fundamental role in defeating the Japanese compared to the role the US played in defeating the Germans. US schools should be spending 60-75% of time about WW2 on what happened in Asia and the rest on Europe given how much more the US was important in Asia compared to Europe. The foundations of education on WW2 were probably driven by so much ethnocentrism even though the Marine Corps and Army were allobe the place in The Pacific, China, India, Burma, Dutch East Indies, etc. [/quote]

Oh come on...

Kids often don't even know anything about the history of their own states or about bordering Mexico and Canada and they are supposed to know this sophisticated stuff in Asia?[/quote]

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