70th Anniversary Flypast:

[Ocean Person]

The flypast against a background of blue sky was not only spectacular it was also enlightening. Stand up Eight-One.

O.P.

[Yonosoy Marinero]

All hail the Regime.

[SloppyJoe]

Your right it was. Have included a link to a video below for those who missed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZEw8D8dQ8I

[Frogman1484]

I didn't know the Chinese defeated the Japanese army 70 years ago!:=
Here to the allied forces:ok:

Then again the Chinese government make up their own history:ugh:

[spleener]

A very spectacular flypast. Thanks for bringing it to our attention OP.

But, it was the 70thanniversary wasn't it? A couple of quick questions [and some answers] then:

Q: When was the PLAAF formed?
A: 1949

Q: So, it was formed after the PLA's great Victory over Japan?
A: Yes

Q: So what did the PLA's previous airforce do between 1939-1945?
A: Very very little as it didn't really exist. Flew a limited number of older and obsolete Soviet aircraft. Remember, the entire PLA were annexed into the National Revolutionary Army to fight against Japan's Imperial Forces.

Q: But, wasn't the National Revolutionary Army the military arm of the Kuomintang? That is, under the command of General Chiang Kai Shek?
A: Well yes, and the PLA were not very happy about it - preferring to fight guerilla skirmishes instead against the KMT.

Q: From my understanding, the KMT and Allied [Primarily US led] Forces were the defining military offensive against, and ultimately victorious over, the Japanese Imperial Forces. So what did the PLA actually do in their War efforts against Japan?
A: Erm, not much.

Q: So what is this glorious 70Yrs Anniversary about?
A: Well....

Q: But the PLA wouldn't lie or make this up in an effort to rewrite history, or redirect and influence the Chinese Peoples' thoughts... would they??
A: Well.... better ask OP, apparently he was "enlightened".

But it was a nice flypast.

[Gnadenburg]

http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff187/coronatower/images.jpeg (http://s236.photobucket.com/user/coronatower/media/images.jpeg.html)

Victory Flyover Sept 1945 Tokyo Bay.


Sadly, for the people of China, the slaughter continued under the communists.

[Captain Dart]

...and they didn't collide with any EP-3s

[spleener]

Very True Frank,
And so did the Phoenicians, Romans and a myriad of others.
However, there are degrees. And now we have Books. And, the internet. And, in this case, people still alive who remember...
because they were there....

[Trafalgar]

hmmm....approximate deaths due to WWII, 55,000,000. Approximate number of Chinese deaths due to Mao's "Great Leap Forward"...45,000,000. Not too much to celebrate there i'm thinking. A bit ironic that the parade is held in the very square that sports a giant portrait of Mao (and the blood of several thousand students). The real enemy and threat to the Chinese people is much closer to home.

[spleener]

Thanks Trafalgar,
Sobering statistics.

[giggerty]

The Japanese are pretty good at writing their own history as well. The museum at the Yasukuni Shrine is a disgrace that portrays Japan as a liberator of the Asian people but fails to mention the misery, murder,rape and destruction they caused. It portrays a gross distortion of history that many Japanese now believe as fact. Even the building of the Thai Burma railway with its 100,000 deaths is shown as a great achievement.
Up to 10 million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese including up to 300,000 in the Rape if Nanjing. Japan has never apologized or come to terms with their past like Germany has. That's why none of their Asian neighbors really trust them, even now.

The Nationalist Chinese army under Chiangmai Kai Shek spent most of the war building up their forces and avoiding the Japanese. They wanted to be strong to fight the real battle with the communists when the war ended. The communists mounted a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese but again was eyeing the bigger picture of the civil war after the Japanese were gone.

The Japanese weren't defeated in China. They lost the war in the pacific and Burma and had to surrender in China as a result.

Nice parade though

[Dan Winterland]

From "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" by Li Zhu-sui, who was Mao's personal physician. Commenting on the visit of the Japanese prime Minister Tanaka to Beijing in 1972.

Mao credited Japan with the communist victory in the civil war. If Japan had not invaded China in the 1930s, the communists and the nationalists would never have cooperated in the struggle against the Japanese aggressors, and the communists would have remained too weak to seize power. Japanese aggression, he maintained, was a bad thing that had been transformed into good, for which the Chinese communists should be grateful.

When Tanaka tried to apologise for his country’s invasion of China, Mao assured him that it was the “help” of the Japanese invasion that made the communist victory possible.

[Captain Dart]

And they got a little help from the American 'Flying Tigers', not to mention the Burma 'hump' pilots flying stuff into Kunming (who included the founding fathers of Cathay Pacific).

[Average Fool]

You're welcome.


From America.

[Al E. Vator]

Good post Giggerty.

Whilst they say that the victors write history I'm thoroughly sick of the rewriting of history by the Japanese.

The Germans have not only faced-up to the atrocities committed under Hitler they've probably gone overboard with the self-flagellation and regret. Good for them though.

The Japanese however have only made the weakest of efforts and their school text book revisions and mitigation of their own atrocities is appalling. What riles me is that my own generation and later are starting to become brainwashed by this. My ex-wife believed the American atrocities in Vietnam matched the Japanese in WWII.

If you see historical pictures of what happened in Nanjing your stomach will turn. I'm not surprised the Chinese are starting to give the Japanese a bit of a ruffling politically and I would say it's fully understandable. Time the Japs manned-up and fully and genuinely recognise the sh1t and misery they caused to their neighbours and humanity.

[Gnadenburg]

Giggerty

I'd dispute the Nationalists avoided a major fight with the Japanese as it had a lot to do with unity and individual armies being run by war lords and the fact their conventional army structures often disintegrated quickly in battle with the Japanese.

I'm no apologists for the Nationalists either. Their atrocities are remarkably well forgotten- Nanjing evacuation and blowing the dykes on the Yellow River which they tried to blame on the Japanese and killed between half a million and one million of their own people! The Yellow River flooding was a major success for the Communists in recruiting disaffected peasants in the north.

There's some pretty sweeping interpretations of history above and I highly recommend further reading if you live in this part of the world. Not a bad idea to reinforce how quickly you need to get families out of here in any social breakdown event in China.

For a start, this is an excellent overview and if interest sparked, you virtually have to be an amateur historian to find good accounts of Chinese history during the period.

Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 - Amazon.com

[Gnadenburg]

Oh, and what occurred after the Battle of Hong Kong was known as the Little Nanking at the time. The horror of the period is played down in the local media.

I know Hong Kongers were keen to move on but there certainly seems to be a Japanese influence, perhaps even a commercial influence due to some collaboration during the occupation, that silence reporting of the mass murder of civilians during the occupation. The Japanese army was still murdering civilians after the cessation of hostilities- Silvermine Bay, Lantau.

[Ocean Person]

spleener;

Considering China does not claim to have single handedly won WW2 I am surprised that you and others on these boards seem to be having trouble understanding what the 70th anniversary celebrations were all about. To put it in simple words there were two major reasons;--------

(1) Booting the Jap scourge out of China. (2) Sending a modern day message to "others" that they (the "others") are not the only people on this planet.

I trust you have taken on board the words of giggerty, Al E. Vator and gnadengurg as there are some honest truths in their posts. They have saved me the bother of spelling out details that most people don't know' or don't want to know. However I would like to be sure that you and your genus are aware of the existense of the big sign at the entrance to the town city of Jiuquan. Jiuquan stands on the edge of the Gobi Desert in NW China and is the centre of China's nuclear weapons industry. The sign is written in huge scarlet characters in Chinese and huge scarlet capitals in English. It starkly states----WITHOUT HASTE--WITHOUT FEAR--WE CONQUER THE WORLD>

O.P.

[Just Do It]

It starkly states----WITHOUT HASTE--WITHOUT FEAR--WE CONQUER THE WORLD> using western technology :ok:

[Frogman1484]

God help us if China is the future! :yuk::{

[spleener]

I apologise if my post appeared to support the war crimes carried out by other countries.. I am not sure how that was interpreted, but it not my intent.
I was targeting the claim that the PLA - in OP's words- "ran the Jap scourge out of China." Not single handedly won WW2.
However, I think the latest post from OP explains things best.:D

And, on a personal note OP; this is not about me, or my "genus". Being a responsible World Citizen transcends ideological race based dogma. Please back away.

[Shutterbug]

I especially enjoyed the ode to gay marriage. Who knew! the Chinese military were this hip. Then again, they're short a sloppy 70 million marriage-age brides, you gotta figure, endorsing gay marriage at a big event like this is nearly practical necessity. You go China!!!!
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03427/beijing-trail_3427257b.jpg