zboy1 wrote: ↑January 4th, 2014, 6:53 pm
Japan is basically occupied territory for American imperialists--with thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed in the country; so, how can you say that Japan won the war? That's ridiculous.
I think such strange claims were originally generated by the Japan ultra-right groups, especially from Yuko Tojo, the grand-daughter of the former War Minister Hideki Tojo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuko_Tojo
Some people in Japan do not want to hear the truth, of course Japan lost the war.
gsjackson: I agree the US should shut its bases in Japan, but right now we seem determined not to let China dominate the region and are developing more of a military presence in the region.
It's not only about Japan, but also about South Korea, South Korean government also pays for the US presence in their territory approx. 40 percent.
The China/North Korea threat is a real threat and cannot be ignored.
About the US troops in Japan, they will stay here for a long time I guess, and Japan is paying about 80 percent of all their expenses, even the salaries of the US servicemen, even the fuel of their airplanes and ships and their accommodation and air-bases, ports and other facilities are all free of charge.
Japan has not enough servicemen at the moment, however otherwise the Japanese army is technically very good equipped. On the other side, to recall these US-servicemen back to the States will be a financial problem for the USA, what to do with all these servicemen after their arrival? They might be about 80.000 or more, what to do with all these facilities in Japan and South Korea?
The idea is to reduce the US-forces slowly, year by year, Japan is not against US presence in general, but the question is why do we need so many of them. South Korea shares about the same opinion.