US Women’s Soccer Gold, Payback for Pearl Harbor?

August 10th, 2012 [ Tags: , , ]

The U.S. Women’s team defeated Japan to win the gold medal this year at the London 2012 Olympics. This was one of the biggest grudge matches of the Olympics as Japan had defeated the U.S. women’s team in the 2011 World Cup.

As you might expect, people took to twitter to congratulate the team on their victory. There was a small percentage of that population who felt it necessary to contextualize the U.S. victory in a historical perspective:

Japan Probe has collected a few more of these messages but you kind of get the point.

This is why we need better education in the U.S. Anyone who’s ever read anything about World War II knows that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were payback for Pearl Harbor. That score card has been settled years ago. And for good measure, we put Japanese Americans into relocation camps just to make sure we totally outscored the Japanese. If we’re going back to World War II, we’re up on the Japanese two to one. They bombed us one. We bombed them two AND put our own people in camps. If anything, Japan’s victory in the 2011 World Cup was payback for Nagasaki.

Using history in your insults can be tricky. If you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, you sound like a complete fucking moron. I find it so hard to get upset at these people because they just come off as absolute idiots. It also makes me worry about our education system. I mean, what kind of history are they teaching in schools if these morons think we still owe Japan for Pearl Harbor? You’d think with such jingoistic fervor, these dumb fucks would quite like to know that we’ve already paid them back.

To the rest of the world, we’re sorry that idiots like these can afford computer access but not real education. Clearly, we have failed on that front. These few idiots represent a very small, but very loud minority of people who speak in talking points fed to them by pundits from so-called news channels that are anything but. They don’t understand the true spirit of the Olympic games. We’re sorry you have to put up with their stupid shit. At least you don’t have to live with them.

From: Japan Probe with more over at Angry Asian Man and SB Nation

Sidenote: Now, if they were to say this was payback for Nanking, well, that one might have some teeth. But again, that would take some education.


  • Firework the Comic

    I’m disgusted.
    I’m a white American but the Nadeshiko squad is always my team. They’re World Cup Champions. Twitter racist bitches can’t take that away. Fuck them. Nadeshiko forever.

  • Tony

    That is really sad that people had to tweet those comments. It is a sad, sad world out there. :(

  • Drakmarth

    It amazes me how much emphasis in the Olympics is put on camaraderie and
    the spirit of the games, and then you get people like this bringing up
    quite hateful ignorance – as mentioned two atomic bombs and the
    separation of a people wasn’t enough?

    But America isn’t alone in this, as a Brit I hear people go on and on
    about “How we can’t let the Germans beat us.” “How we can’t let the
    French beat us.” because these are for some strange reason deep seated
    rivalries stemming back before the birth of anyone currently living in
    Great Britain.

    Old hatreds live longer than old alliances – how many Americans will
    call a Frenchman a coward than the only European nation to help them
    scare off those Redcoat bastards? Those Redcoat bastards that America
    more recently helped fight off the Axis of Evil in World War II? I use
    America there as a simple example, England can be and is just as bad.

    It makes me wish I were a fly on the wall of Japan for 2011, did some of
    the Japanese go onto Twitter and Facebook and say “That was for
    Hiroshima and Nagasaki!”? Part of me doesn’t want to know the answer because that part of me thinks the answer was, “Yes. They did.”

  • SJ

    This sort of jingoistic nonsense happens anytime national teams clash. It took a massive campaign in Britain just a couple of years back to get English fans to stop mocking German players about the War. With Korean men beating the Japanese for the the bronze in men’s soccer, you would have thought it was liberation in 1945 all over again.

  • Kyle

    *Face in hands* I hate stupid people. Like you said, pearl harbor…old news. That’s long been settled. WTF does that have to do with the olympics? Also America is the greatest country in the world? Nope, the first episode of “The Newsroom” gives concrete evidence about how that’s not true. These statements? They add to that proof. We are a country with unlimited potential that we waste so we can eat McDonalds and listen to Kesha. I hate stupid people.

  • Vortigar

    And then we go back to how the US strongarmed the Japanese and basically stole Hawaii in the first place. And then there was that brilliant move before that, with the US shelling the heck out of Japanese cities until they agreed to trade with them. And then the Japanese torched all foreigners out of their country because the Christian infection was dangerous. And then… you get the point.

    History is messed up and we’re really selective with it. The English apparently never want payback for the times the Dutch beat them (look up the Anglo-Dutch wars, we conquered Britain and then pissed it away). Nor is Holland all that interested in holding a grudge against Spain while we fought our war of independence against them back in the day. Nor do we care for the fact that Napoleon conquered Holland and put his brother on the throne, heck that guy is regarded as a pretty good king who apparently learned Dutch in a matter of months.

    I always feel a little bad for the French though, one of the greatest European powers of all time, basically unbeatable for some 1000 years and they get called surrender-monkeys because they have the common sense to back out of wars they can’t win. You can always do like the Japanese and fight to the last man, that ended really well for them… Oh wait, they had a foreign legion that did exactly that and earned great respect for it.

  • FmF

    Yes because we all know winning at a sport game(which most Americans don’t care about) is totally the same as having hundred of people dieing.No fucken seriously I don’t know who they are really disrespecting more.The soldiers who lost their lives that day by saying their lives means as much as a 2 hours game or The Japanese.

    Well I would expect the Chinese to Say the Nanking thing rather then us but then again China and the surrounding country just straight up hate japan cause of it and probably dont see winning a soccer game as any kind of equallasation of the war.

    I wounder if Israel and Germany have the same issue or Hungary and Italy.

  • Watson

    on behalf of the (seemingly fewer and fewer) sane people who are left, i apologize for the horrible willful ignorance, hatred and intolerance of my country. i am ashamed.

  • toag

    there are far too many competitive jerks in america. To bring up the horrors of WWII over a game is pathetic, while the Pearl harbor attacks where deadly, let us not forget the good ole USA killed anywhere between 150000 to 250000 civilians in the two nuclear attacks on Japan. Two wrongs do not make a right, which is why i can never understand fighting. it sickens me that a few idiots think its just hilarious to be glib about war.
    i guess i just don’t get it

  • VonKraut

    Winning or losing a sporting event has nothing to do with tragedies in the past. I disagree about the nuke being payback for Pearl Harbor. We didn’t nuke Japan for payback, we did it to end the war. The reason there were 2 is because Japan didn’t give up after 1. I believe as my grandfather who served in the pacific in WWII that the nukes did end up saving lives. He saw how fiercely the Japanese fought for Okinawa and the cost of lives would have been even worse on the main land.

  • Simsy

    Seriously, why can’t these people learn from Australia. In Oz we keep our sporting rivalries seperate from any other conerns. Sure we are giddier than schoolgirls when we beat England but we leave it on the sportsfield. Unfortunately social media has given an idiotic minority the power to ruin a nice moment for everybody and that saddens me.

  • Mr. Average

    I think it’s just in poor taste to refer to any kind of mass killing as in any way equivalent to a sporting event, but I also think it’s falling into the trap to start talking about how sorry you are other people aren’t as enlightened as you are. You don’t have to be educated or progressive to know that war is stupid, and that violence is a waste of time. World War II was a massive tragedy from beginning to end. But it has nothing to do with the Olympics. It’s just a non sequitur. Trying to draw the comparison or trying to apologise for it is just foolish either way. Nothing ever “evens the score” when it comes to war atrocities, and that kind of thinking just perpetuates the myth that “getting even” will make anyone feel better; your response to this nonsense is understandable, but you’re falling into the same trap by getting up in arms about the atrocities Americans committed as some kind of justification or excuse or mitigation for what the Japanese did, or the Nazis, or the Communists, or whoever. An atrocity is an atrocity, and war is just a waste of life and resources no matter who’s waging it. Would to heaven World War II had never happened at all, but it did, and no kind of balancing of the books is going to change that, and soccer game certainly won’t do it, God knows.

    You’d have been better off reflecting on the fact that the vast majority of both Americans and Japanese, in spite of the times in which we were the most implacable enemies anyone could imagine, and in spite of all the violence and destruction we dealt out on each other, now consider each other friends, partners, and allies, a mere sixty-seven years after a time when we hated each other and could never imagine it being otherwise. That seems to me a much better way to look at it.

    –M

  • Kugelblitz

    FYI, The US did not fight Japan in WWI.

  • VonKraut

    Not sure where you thought I said that. When I said they didn’t give up after 1, I meant 1 atom bomb. They dropped 2 bombs one on Nagasaki and another on Hiroshima.