It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%.
Japan without dispute certainly committed appalling acts during that period.
But a few Japanese people i spoke to disputed the figures of the number of dead, i was told China exaggerated claims. Even when i said 'why were u trying to come to India' the japanese said to me the reason was to liberate India from the british raj, i took that with a pinch of salt though.
Actually despite what the Japanese government had in their mind for WW II, but it is true that to most of common Japanese people did have that in their mind as they hold the responsibility of liberating people in Asia from the Western colonial powers as they were the only one in Asia capable of challenge those western nations. As I mentioned before, it was Japanese took off all the signs of "Chinese and dogs are not allowed to enter" that were placed in many places by the western countries when they occupied those area in China.
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