WW2 or Cold War?

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

There's something I've only now noticed. The EWII we see in VC might be not only an analogy to WW2, but also to the Cold War. Not only because of the mere fact that the Empire hails from the East side of Europa (thus EW2 is a war between East and West): the Empire it's made of a bunch of allied (or conquered) states and republics in which the Emperor should have less power than it actually does. It sounds a lot closer to the URSS than to Nazi Germany. Also, in WW2 stories, normally one side (the nazi-fascist forces) is portrayed as the absolute evil fought by rightful and justice-minded bearers of the ideal of liberty. Here, on the other hand, the Federation is portrayed as being as much a power- and resource-hungry nation as the Empire is, only in a more treacherous and manipulative way. Basically, it's a black-and-dark-grey morality with Gallia in the middle just trying to live its life without being invaded every five minutes by opposing imperialisms; which, again, reminds me of the proxy wars in the Cold War rather than WW2. Thoughts?

[Stafoo]

Gallia seems like a the Winter War between the USSR and Finland, atleast that's the vibe I'm getting from it. The Empire does strike me as USSR and Federation is a protrail of the NATO forces, it's somewhat true of how both act for the in part.

[Captured Joe]

Maybe it's closer to how the Japanese see WW2, them being far removed from the atrocities that took place in Europe during WW2. I suppose it's a combination of WW1-WW2 and the Cold War though.

[Swing]

The Japanese call WW2 "The Great Pacific War" I suggest you all watch Saka no ue no komo, if you pay attention you'll see ♥♥♥♥ actually used armored techs during War so the VC didn't make it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFF-sSf6qVY

[sere]

Originally posted by Captured Joe:

Maybe it's closer to how the Japanese see WW2, them being far removed from the atrocities that took place in Europe during WW2. I suppose it's a combination of WW1-WW2 and the Cold War though.

Not so sure. The Japanese experience in WW2, along with Japanese motives, do not reflect at all in the VC landscape as you suggest. I mean this for both the military and civilian population and while they were "geographically far removed" from the events taking place in Europe, they were not "psychologically far removed" from those atrocities. They were guilty of heinous aggressions that resulted costly devasation from conventional campaign and more importantly, atomic weapons.

[Zeon08]

Originally posted by Captured Joe:

being far removed from the atrocities

they commited their own atrocities. Google unit 731.

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

Originally posted by Stafoo:

Gallia seems like a the Winter War between the USSR and Finland, atleast that's the vibe I'm getting from it.

Hm, that's actually quite fitting. With Marina Wulfstan as Gallia's own Simo Häyhä!

Originally posted by Captured Joe:

Maybe it's closer to how the Japanese see WW2, them being far removed from the atrocities that took place in Europe during WW2. I suppose it's a combination of WW1-WW2 and the Cold War though.

Hmm... well, they weren't THAT far removed (Japanese invasion forces in China did just about the same things that nazists did to Jews... fascism, unfortunately, is the same everywhere), but you make a good point: maybe they did see WW2 as a similar struggle between two resource-hungry forces, one more aggressive the other more manipulative. Still I don't know, the clear-cut division of Europa in two huge alliances of smaller nations makes it more similar to the Cold War scenario than the WW2 scenario...

[Turtler]

It's definitely a whole mixture of influences. The main ones I saw in the canon are WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, though I would also add in the Thirty Years' War (partially as fanon, partially as fancy).

In particular, the Empire strikes me as more something like one of the autocracies of WWI (or before) than anything that popped out of the post-WWI Revolutions and turmoil (like Communism and Fascism both did).

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

Not only because of the mere fact that the Empire hails from the East side of Europa (thus EW2 is a war between East and West):

This isn't nearly as definitive as many people would think. So was WWI (after 1917) and WWII (before the late 1941 backstab when Hitler turned on the person who was his most hated but by far most important ally in the form of the Soviet Union). And at thet ime they were shamelessly aped up as such (and with fair reasons).

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

the Empire it's made of a bunch of allied (or conquered) states and
republics in which the Emperor should have less power than it actually does.

This doesn't seem to be the intention. I was planning to write a bit of an analysis about this, but the Emperor is referred to (in the snippet of the Imperial anthem we see) as "King of Kings", and in the lore we're told he exercises absolute power. So this tells me it's not necessary that he "should have less power than it actually does", in part because we're so used to the idea of constitutional law and royalty being subject to it.

But it sounds more like the Emperor in this situation is more like the Persian "Shahishah" (literally: King of Kings) or the Holy Roman Emperor (in its' stronger forms). Rather than one person uniting the empire by wearing one crown, it's one person uniting an empire by wearing several crowns on top of one another. Hence how all the states of the "Alliance" should owe absolute fealty to the Emperor even if they are all nominally different.

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

It sounds a lot closer to the URSS than to Nazi Germany.

Eh, this is more disputable. Especially if you don't look at all the many allies-slash-vassal states Nazi Germany had. Which were truly staggering. Hungary was allied with Germany before Italy or Japan was, for instance. And then there's Ustasha Croatia, Tiso's Slovakia, Romania, and a whole lot of others that either were outright created by the Nazis (like Quisling's Norway) or grew into being puppets (like Vichy or Mussolini's Italy).

The main thing I see tying the Empire and the Soviets together as similar are their situation, some of the color scheme, and how they fight (especially regarding tanks , where their "normal" ones look more on the Soviet side of things than the German one). As well as the fact that they are totalitarian dictatorships and genocidal ones (but that is shared with pretty much every one I mentioned).

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

Also, in WW2 stories, normally one side (the nazi-fascist forces) is portrayed as the absolute evil fought by rightful and justice-minded bearers of the ideal of liberty. Here, on the other hand, the Federation is portrayed as being as much a power- and resource-hungry nation as the Empire is, only in a more treacherous and manipulative way.

This is more of an Americanism (and Britishism) than many other things. I think Furious D sums this up about as well as anything else (under "2: Harvey Weinstein").

http://dknowsall.blogspot.com/2009/06/hollywood-babble-on-on-302-rosenberg.html

And if anything, it was even worse for much of the rest of the world, where you were caught in the grinders of two totalitarian states (Nazi Germany v. Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, Soviet Union v. Imperial Japan in China, Imperial Japan v. Quasi-Fascist Warlordism in the form of the Nationalist Chinese Government v. the Communist Party of China under humanity's most prolific murder v. Imperial Japan in one endless clustereff that went around and around and around seemingly without end...).

It doesn't look nearly as clean to those who lived up close, especially in the neutral states (though they had their own massive sins, to say the least).

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

Basically, it's a black-and-dark-grey morality with Gallia in the middle

Point of order is that contrary to what some people might think, Gallia (especially in the time of VC1) is reaaally not that innocent. The games spend more time focusing on the horrible things elements of Gallia's government (in VC1 and 3, which take place at the same time) or Gallian rebels against a new government (VC2 and 3) do than against the Fed.

It spends most of 1935 in the middle of something like an apolitical military dictatorship like those that ruled in a lot of places throughout Europe before WWII (like the Baltic states and Poland).

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

again, reminds me of the proxy wars in the Cold War rather than WW2. Thoughts?

I agree, it is one of the major influences behind it.

[Turtler]

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

Hmm... well, they weren't THAT far removed (Japanese invasion forces in China did just about the same things that nazists did to Jews...

Not really, no. Some of them veered very close, but there was never this kind of systematic policy aiming at completely exterminating them. Slaves on the other hand....

The long and short of it is that I am no apologist for Imperial Japan (my Grandfather fought them in the war). But the Japanese military generally went rabid and had theit troops massacre, mutiliate, enslave, and had feelings of racial supremacy to almost everybody without picking any particular "unfavorites" (even though their racism against Whites and Blacks was notorious).

The Nazis would single various groups of people out for total oblitaration and then carry on the time-honored Imperial German military tradition of shooting anybody else who got in the way (or was the designated hostage to blackmail everybody else into submission).

The Japanese would basically kill you if you were in the way without being too discerning of who you were.

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

fascism, unfortunately, is the same everywhere),

No, it really isn't. And personally, as someone whose family (mostly Great Grandparents or early Grandparents generation)_ actually suffered because of the Original, Capital F Fascists (from Musso's group) I get Royally Sick of people throwing this word around like it's a byword for "generic evil" (and thus meaningless).

And in fact, there Was a militantly anti-racist group of Fascists (that nobody has heard of for good reason). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Integralism .

But anyway.

It's very unlikely that the WWII Japanese military and regime as a whole were Fascist.

We know this because Mussolini outright laid out (in detail) what he thought Fascism was and should be. While in Japan the people we fought in WWII were actually the *more moderate*/less ideological wing of the "Nutcase Japanese Imperialist" branches. That is, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dseiha After the radical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Way_Faction more or less self-destructed in a series of attended coups that *managed to enrage the Emperor they revered against them*.

Yes, these people were unquestionable terrible human beings. Yes, they were alligned with both Nazi Germany and Italian Fascists during WWII. Yes, they shared similar superficial trappings, and a few of them even had strong ideological affinities. But by and large most of them didn't (they were after all staunch monarchists, something that Fascism and Nazism hated).

And they did not murder or kill like the Nazis did (offhand, the Nazis were at least capable of having their military stop raping and murdering when they wanted, like they did during the occupation of Western Europe, or of getting them to start raping and murdering when they wanted, like they did in the East), or even operate like thety did (at the heart of Fascism is the idea of one figure with absolute, direct power; the Japanese militarists played musical chairs and couldn't agree with who that was).

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

but you make a good point: maybe they did see WW2 as a similar struggle between two resource-hungry forces, one more aggressive the other more manipulative.

And sere:

Not really. We know how they saw WWII and the leadup to it., in part because they never shut up about it. But beyond the whole egocentric "Oh Noes Evil Empires Conspiring Against Our Great Nation!!!" they by and large didn't see it the same way. Japan sought to fight those "evil conspiracies" by expanding to "liberate" the Far East From them, not hunkering it out in a policy of armed neutrality.

And what's more they basically saw it being divided into two camps. The racist Western Allied empires (US, UK, France, Netherlands, etc) that had exploited and enslaved "Asians", and the evil Bolshevik Communists who wanted to corrupt an Asia untouched by their materialism and anti-monarchism (both streotypes have juuuust a kernal of truth). Both of which either created chaos (like the warlordoms of China) or manipulated it to keep Asia divided or weaken Japan.

The thing is that WWII saw those two camps ally with each other (eventually), Japan-again- thought the option was to clear out an "Asia for Asians" by throwing those things out. Neither of which Gallia's government thinks of even at its' worst, it's just a bog standard but heinously corrupt dictatorship.

And even beyond all that, that's just the militarist/apologist POV. Which is massively underrepresentative of the Japanese population as a whole, especially today.

The underhearalded fact is that while totalitarian apologism and denierism is a major problem in Japan, those who do it are generally vocal (and sadly influencial) out of all proportion to thei rreal size. And groups like the PRC, North K orea, or even a diplomatic jockeying South Korea will not hesitate to magnify it.

But it's worth remembering that the end of WWII was an absolute *disaster* for Japan as a whole, and that fell squarely on the shoulders of the former government.

To the point where Japanese soldiers returning to the home islands risked facing lynchings from their countrymen because of what the military had done at home and abroad. And you had better believe that those memories are still fresh, even if they're not talked about.

Originally posted by MordredMS 鬱賢:

Still I don't know, the clear-cut division of Europa in two huge alliances of smaller nations makes it more similar to the Cold War scenario than the WW2 scenario...

Agreed. This reaaallly does not read like a Japanese commentary on their own experience in WWII (whether factual, apologist, or whatever), both from what the devs said and from what yous ee.

The very closest thing I think I got was the fact that the AEEIA is a totalitarian, expansionist empire and how some of the members of the Imperial military venerate the Emperor ("May the Emperor Reign Forever!" from Behind Her Blue Flame is rather similar to "May His Majesty the Emperor live/reign Ten Thousand Years!" , in Japanese the "Tenno Heika Banzai!"people might've heard of).

But beyond that it doesn't particularly fit closely, even compared to how things like- say- Amerstris do in FMA. So I wouldn't look for too many specific parallels with WWII Japan.

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

You seem much more well-versed in history than I am, so first of all I thank you for your very interesting insight on the matter.

Originally posted by Turtler:

This doesn't seem to be the intention. I was planning to write a bit of an analysis about this, but the Emperor is referred to (in the snippet of the Imperial anthem we see) as "King of Kings", and in the lore we're told he exercises absolute power. So this tells me it's not necessary that he "should have less power than it actually does", in part because we're so used to the idea of constitutional law and royalty being subject to it.

But it sounds more like the Emperor in this situation is more like the Persian "Shahishah" (literally: King of Kings) or the Holy Roman Emperor (in its' stronger forms). Rather than one person uniting the empire by wearing one crown, it's one person uniting an empire by wearing several crowns on top of one another. Hence how all the states of the "Alliance" should owe absolute fealty to the Emperor even if they are all nominally different.

Quoting from the game's glossary, the Empire is "a conglomerate of nations" that were "tightly bound by a network of marriages among their royalty" before "joining hands in a formal international alliance". Also: "While not technically an authocracy, the Emperor enjoys limitless authority". So yes, as you say it seems a lot like the typical medieval fashion of multiple states swearing fealty to a "common king" after being bound by marriages, but the fact that the EEIA is not supposed to be an authocracy kind of bugs me.
Although you're right, one could interpret this as a similarity both to Nazi Germany and its allies (it's an Italian speaking here, so unfortunately I know something about it ) and the Soviet Union and its republics. Both weren't "born" to be authocratical empires, but became so de facto.

BTW, I just noticed I spelled "URSS" instead of "USSR"; sorry, we say URSS in Italian and I forgot the English name.

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

Originally posted by Turtler:

This is more of an Americanism (and Britishism) than many other things.

That's also true. One could expect a Japanese work to not have this kind of clear-cut morality about WW2 as an American work would.

Originally posted by Turtler:

Point of order is that contrary to what some people might think, Gallia (especially in the time of VC1) is reaaally not that innocent. The games spend more time focusing on the horrible things elements of Gallia's government (in VC1 and 3, which take place at the same time) or Gallian rebels against a new government (VC2 and 3) do than against the Fed.

It spends most of 1935 in the middle of something like an apolitical military dictatorship like those that ruled in a lot of places throughout Europe before WWII (like the Baltic states and Poland).

This is also true, but what Gallia did was mostly having corrupt aristocracy (Borg, and General Damon ordering the use of chemical weapons at Ghirlandaio) and a general populace roughly as racist as the rest of Europa. Also censorship on the press during EW2, judging by Ellet's words. You could say that Borg was basically running the country on his own, but with the purpose of "selling" it to either the Fed or the Empire for his own personal political power. At least in VC1 (haven't played VC3 yet), Gallian crimes are basically the work of two people. I didn't mean to say that Gallia was absolutely innocent, but still something caught in the middle of opposing "villains" (broadly speaking).
Also don't forget that the Federation backs up the Gallian Revolutionary Army and its racist noble uprising of the nobles in VC2, so it's financing a country's internal turmoil to overthrow a legitimate government and extend its economic influence, which reminds me a lot of what the USA did in South America throughout the Sixties and Seventies.

Originally posted by Turtler:

Not really, no. Some of them veered very close, but there was never this kind of systematic policy aiming at completely exterminating them. Slaves on the other hand....

The long and short of it is that I am no apologist for Imperial Japan (my Grandfather fought them in the war). But the Japanese military generally went rabid and had theit troops massacre, mutiliate, enslave, and had feelings of racial supremacy to almost everybody without picking any particular "unfavorites" (even though their racism against Whites and Blacks was notorious).

The Nazis would single various groups of people out for total oblitaration and then carry on the time-honored Imperial German military tradition of shooting anybody else who got in the way (or was the designated hostage to blackmail everybody else into submission).

The Japanese would basically kill you if you were in the way without being too discerning of who you were.

I see what you mean, I probably shouldn't have singled out the word "Jews" because it's not the same thing. Still, we're still talking about "comfort women", human experimentation, mass murder and so on (Unit 731 being a well-known example).

Originally posted by Turtler:

No, it really isn't. And personally, as someone whose family (mostly Great Grandparents or early Grandparents generation)_ actually suffered because of the Original, Capital F Fascists (from Musso's group) I get Royally Sick of people throwing this word around like it's a byword for "generic evil" (and thus meaningless).

And in fact, there Was a militantly anti-racist group of Fascists (that nobody has heard of for good reason). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Integralism .

But anyway.

It's very unlikely that the WWII Japanese military and regime as a whole were Fascist.

We know this because Mussolini outright laid out (in detail) what he thought Fascism was and should be. While in Japan the people we fought in WWII were actually the *more moderate*/less ideological wing of the "Nutcase Japanese Imperialist" branches. That is, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dseiha After the radical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Way_Faction more or less self-destructed in a series of attended coups that *managed to enrage the Emperor they revered against them*.

Yes, these people were unquestionable terrible human beings. Yes, they were alligned with both Nazi Germany and Italian Fascists during WWII. Yes, they shared similar superficial trappings, and a few of them even had strong ideological affinities. But by and large most of them didn't (they were after all staunch monarchists, something that Fascism and Nazism hated).

And they did not murder or kill like the Nazis did (offhand, the Nazis were at least capable of having their military stop raping and murdering when they wanted, like they did during the occupation of Western Europe, or of getting them to start raping and murdering when they wanted, like they did in the East), or even operate like thety did (at the heart of Fascism is the idea of one figure with absolute, direct power; the Japanese militarists played musical chairs and couldn't agree with who that was).

My grandfather was a partisan, and my paternal grandfather fought in WW2, so my family is no stranger to the capital-F fascism. I generally define "fascism" as a far-right, ultranationalist (not necessarily racist), reactionary ideology advocating authoritarism, national purity, militarism. I realize that it took many different forms in many different contexts, but as you yourself said the main heart is in the idea of one absolute leader (and I'd also add ultranationalism). Now, I don't remember the details in the struggle between the Kodoha and Toseiha, but if I'm not mistaken the centrality of the figure of the Emperor (albeit perhaps more symbolic than practical, as it has often been throughout Japanese history) was common ground between the two, as were the advocating of a totalitarist state. Now, my definition might be too broad (I realize that, as a left-wing person, I tend to be fairly "aggressive" towards certain ideas), but I cannot call an approach like that of Imperial Japan anything but fascist.
Perhaps I should say that it was not an "actual" fascist state, but it was an imperialist power within which the military wanted a fascist state to happen? Sorry about my wording, I'm not writing in my native language here...

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

Originally posted by Turtler:

Not really. We know how they saw WWII and the leadup to it., in part because they never shut up about it. But beyond the whole egocentric "Oh Noes Evil Empires Conspiring Against Our Great Nation!!!" they by and large didn't see it the same way. Japan sought to fight those "evil conspiracies" by expanding to "liberate" the Far East From them, not hunkering it out in a policy of armed neutrality.

And what's more they basically saw it being divided into two camps. The racist Western Allied empires (US, UK, France, Netherlands, etc) that had exploited and enslaved "Asians", and the evil Bolshevik Communists who wanted to corrupt an Asia untouched by their materialism and anti-monarchism (both streotypes have juuuust a kernal of truth). Both of which either created chaos (like the warlordoms of China) or manipulated it to keep Asia divided or weaken Japan.

You're right, I should've worded that differently. I meant to say that it could be that the Japanese NOW see WW2 that way (I should've used the present tense, my mistake). But as I said later, I personally don't think that's the case.
Just to clarify, in my head Japan was part of one the two resource-hungry forces I mentioned.

Despite studying Japanese language and culture at the university, I admit I'm not well-versed in their current political and ideological situation. I'm sorry if I'm not expressing myself clearly, it's a complex discussion and I'm not writing in my native language so I keep slipping here and there. XD

Originally posted by Turtler:

Agreed. This reaaallly does not read like a Japanese commentary on their own experience in WWII (whether factual, apologist, or whatever), both from what the devs said and from what yous ee.

The very closest thing I think I got was the fact that the AEEIA is a totalitarian, expansionist empire and how some of the members of the Imperial military venerate the Emperor ("May the Emperor Reign Forever!" from Behind Her Blue Flame is rather similar to "May His Majesty the Emperor live/reign Ten Thousand Years!" , in Japanese the "Tenno Heika Banzai!"people might've heard of).

But beyond that it doesn't particularly fit closely, even compared to how things like- say- Amerstris do in FMA. So I wouldn't look for too many specific parallels with WWII Japan.

Yeah, I doubt it's a commentary or a parallel to WW2 Japan. It's clearly meant to recall real historical events to a certain extent though, and I was asking myself if there was more of the Cold War than we might have thought initially.


Sorry about the multiple comment, for some reason Steam was acting up and it wouldn't let me post one single comment. Probably it was too long...

[andrewdemayo]

Honestly, I'd say it is a bit of mix and match from various parts of history. Take the Empire, for example. Like Nazi Germany, it has, at least at first, a technological edge over most of its enemies. Like the Soviet Union, it is not technically only one state, but instead is an alliance, though one controlled largely by the largest/most powerful member.

Unlike both of those, and like the pre-WWI Russia, Germany, and Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is a monarchy, and a near-absolute one.

So, while it does have certain clear parrellels to WWII, yeah, it also has links to the Cold War, and, for that matter, pre-WWI Europe. Which, I think, is one of the great things about the fantasy universe setting, because it doesn't have to just correspond to one real time/place.

[Poobah Gorg]

My thinking is that Sega wanted to produce an anime-style game in a WW2-esque setting. They weren't going to touch anything close to the Pacific with a 10 meter pole. South Korea, China, the rest of Asia and the U.S. would get up in arms if they did that (and it wouldn't likely sell well at home, either).

Actually doing it in Europe presents issues for game publishers because depictions of swastikas and other Nazi things are ILLEGAL in places like Germany, Oesterreich and many countries the Germans either occupied or set up puppet gov'ts in (France). Generally it's the places the Germans didn't manage to take over that allow such things (and allow neo-nazi type groups). The UK (to some extent) and the U.S., but those places are mostly fine with it so long as you're SHOOTING the nazis.

Sega wanted the game to sell big on consoles without issues at home or abroad. This alt-history setting with imaginary countries seems like a no-brainer.

[Ruydo]

FMPoV this game has nothing to do with our reality at all. Meaning with it's history ofc.
Intolerance, henocide, corruption, hatred, war, all put together in a large pile of s**t, with a blooming Lion's Paw atop.

Just a story told.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

You've got to bear in mind that this is a Japanese game, not a Western one, so it has a very Japanese perspective. The Japanese were brainwashed with militaristic fascism, they went to war and committed terrible warcrimes, they had nukes dropped on them, they were occupied by American soldiers who setup military bases for about 10 years and proceeded to rayp and rob the locals, often destroying their homes for land for their bases.

The Emperor was ordered to announce he isn't divine and give up his right to rule and abolish shinto-buddism but he used vague terms in his speech deliberately. The new government is very pro-imperial and continued brainwashing the people with nationalism and making them feel they were the victims even while the system was reformed and forcefully moved towards pacifism.

Japan got it's independence but there are still small occupations of American forces, mostly on Okinawa where the rayping and harassment continues. The government still uses propoganda and is very racist. The textbooks make no mention of Japanese warcrimes and paint Japan like a victim that was only trying to unite Asia against the western threat. Young Japanese people grow up feeling like their country is in an age where it's fallen from it's glorious past and feel vindictive towards the west.

That's why you get so many animes where Japan gets invaded by foreign powers that proceed to oppress them while the innocent valiant Japanese freedom fighters fight to protect their country and restore it to an Empire.

Anyway in Valkyria Chronicles they didn't lay it on as thick. The Allied forces are sneaky and corrupt, the imperials are the Nazis, the Darcsen's represent the jews but they look Japanese and represent the Japanese feeling of being persecuted. I think Gallia is supposed to be Britain what with it's monarchy and single handedly holding off a massive invasion force but instead of being saved in their darkest hour by America they get stabbed in the back by America

Not saying Japan is at fault or anything, I'd imagine I'd be much the same between the propoganda, nuclear bombs and abuse of power by occupying forces. People are people wherever you go and react much the same to cultural and political influences

If you're interested you can read a bit more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan#Impact