Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 207 - Nanking Part 3

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

The conclusion to the nanking series Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-10/tokyo-trials Iris Chang. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII Timothy Brook. Documents on the Rape of Nanjing David Askew. The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An introduction. Sino-Japanese Studies Vol. 14 Joseph Chapel. Denying Genocide: The Evolution of the Denial of the Holocaust and the Nanking Massacre. Robert P Gray (translation into english. Originally by the Nanjing University Department of History Professors Gao Xingzu, Wu Shimin, Hu Yungong, and Cha Ruizhen) Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing museums.cnd.org/njmassacre/njm-tran/ Herbert Bix. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. This is certainly not the third time I'm trying to introduce this episode. Please don't ask us what happened the previous two times because the answer is nothing as you can tell i am joe and with me is liam suffering with me as my computer dies from the inside out hey buddy this just goes to show you what happens when you attempt to uh insult the great empire of japan yes i agree they have they have hacked my fucking soundboard and made it sound like shit i have covet again i'm assuming i also have that due to wronging the imperial family i'm on that bolsonaro shit uh yeah unfortunately

plus that bolsi wide open if you will oh god none of the fascism all of the internal disease that that's that's me it's the difference between being bolsonaro say what you will about me but i did not help install a brazilian military government i do however uh have various untreated illnesses and stab wounds just like he does. Yeah, that's terrific. Our fearless leader, Joe Kasabian, leading us once again into the misery abyss. That's right, baby. Speaking of misery, we're on Nanking Part 3. This time it's organized state violence.

Yeah, so I shouldn't sound so fake happy when I say that. Yeah, I'm always a little worried when I talk about how much I've taken psychic damage recording an episode of Lions. You would never post that picture of Jim from The Office just looking through it. And I'm just like, yep, it's great. I love to take years and years off my life. You get used to it after a while. I think I point out in the first or second episode of the series that like uh very rarely does anything i read actually bother me anymore right there's underlying

issues there but this one that was not the case like this this one sucked um and you know when we left you at the end of part two the the uncontrolled violence of the the rape of nan king was over um there's different phases of of occupational violence there's the initial contact uh which obviously in this case is far outside anything else outside of like gangas con sacking a town and then it slowly shifts into the official violence which is occupation gone our soldiers become like bloodthirsty marauders in the street and in their places administrative violence and i'm not saying one is better or worse than the other they're both horrible and unspeakable it's just different phases qualifying genocide

everybody that's what he's doing god damn it i guess this means i can write for counterpunch now now. That's the sound of my agent firing me. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. Now, by the time the Japanese went to occupy the city, there was hardly a city left to occupy. In the eight weeks of uncontrolled chaos, they had done nearly $1 billion in damage to the city.

Soldiers had set fire to most of the city's scape while looting and murdering everything. Nothing was safe. They burned homes, churches, embassies, department stores, shops, mansions, hospitals. There's nothing untouched by them within the eight weeks. Not even the safety zone was spared from the arson spree. The soldiers even robbed the bank, blowing it

open with hand grenades and then making off I don't think cash is useless. That just seems like a waste of explosives. And like, if they stole gold... As opposed to genocidal bloodlust, you know, it doesn't need logic. Yeah, I try not to rationalize with psychopaths, I guess.

Like, it's like trying to rationalize with someone who's guess like it's like trying to rationalize someone who's like no liam you're simply not on the same level of humanity as i am like well i'm not going to debate you out of this because you clearly didn't rationalize your way into this way of thinking speaking of which that we should just clip that and uh have it ready to go for when it's gonna be the new intro yeah when the nan king deniers rock up to annoy us yeah that's why i have this meme of it's like a rocket launching into space that just says suck my dick on it i'm gonna get a lot of use of it yeah i mean the soldiers weren't exactly thinking and

on a high level of functioning i mean they're mostly teenagers early 20s so they're like hey look a bank let's steal the money not to mention that that like the local currency is going to be made useless we'll get there it would make sense if it was like precious metals gold you know things that they used to back their currency but it's noted that they stole chinese cash which they could not use it's used okay yeah you know you're doing a genocide you're not you're not uh genocide. You're not thinking logically anymore. Yeah, and the rape of Nanking was not limited to the city of Nanking. It was a very large region.

But the entire surrounding area was victimized as well. Japanese soldiers descended upon villages like swarms of locusts, stealing anything that they wanted and burning down anything they didn't take. The region was stripped clean of farm animals, crops, and women. They took everything. Whatever they didn't take was killed. If you were a man on one of these farms, you were dead. You were still murdered. If they didn't use you for labor, which

the end point of that is also dying. By January of 1938, not a single shop in the entire town was open. The harbor was empty. There was no food, there was no electricity, and no drinkable water. People were reduced to looting the houses not already picked clean by the Japanese in order to

survive, as they were pretty sure the occupants of those houses were dead or they had fled. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, they weren't going to need those things. This loot-based black market, both building material and food, was the first spark of a local economy after the bloodbath was over.

The Japanese propped up a local puppet government, which was called the Nanking Self-Government Committee, by the spring. Could I assume they didn't do much in the way of self-government? Well, self-government, no. I mean, they certainly didn't work for themselves. The city was kind of functioning like it was by spring, like prior to the occupation, before the violence began. It even became a shipping hub for the Japanese military effort

and the Japanese economy in the home islands. However, the Chinese were heavily discriminated against, go figure. They were taxed more than anybody else, and the local currency, the one that the soldiers had just looted, was replaced with worthless Japanese military script. Oh, that's helpful. Yeah, not even like

the yen. Yeah. Because remember, Japan, in their mindset for World War II, they're going to take these areas over. This is not a temporary occupation. You would think that would mean they introduce their own currency, because you're going to take these areas over. This is not a temporary occupation. You would think that would mean they introduce their own currency because you're going to be part of greater Imperial Japan. Or greater

co-prosperity sphere. Yes. Right. But they didn't. They forced them to use literally useless script. That way the Chinese couldn't hoard any kind of wealth to try to move. It effectively made them serfs. Well, I don't know. Imperial Japan's real good at being dicks about it. It effectively made them serfs. Well, I don't know.

I feel Japan's real good at being dicks about it. Yeah, they're not great. Japanese businessmen treated their Chinese workers like slaves, sometimes killing them for the slightest infraction. One woman was beheaded behind the factory she worked at for simply being accused of stealing. Another man was stoned to death for the same reason. Jesus. Like an accusation

was all it took and that accusation was literally just like a Japanese person says that you stole something you're guilty now the Japanese also took a little card out of the British's deck and allowed the opium trade to flourish

yeah now opium has been a thing in China for quite a long time, but it had been minimized and shunned away into dark back rooms. Stopped enforcing any kind of regulation. They could skim the profits off the top of the opium trade as well as get their labors addicted to it

and then simply pay them with it rather than anything that had any actual material worth. They also plied young men, boys and girls with opium before getting them hooked and then kidnapping them. And you know where those girls went. Yep. This, as you can imagine, caused an eventual spike in crime. Now, I'm not saying drugs and crime aren't linked. However, deprivation and people doing what they need to do in order to survive certainly is. Now, this spike in crime was used by the Japanese as an excuse for their continued heavy-handed occupation of Nanking. Like, wow, look at all this opium as

they throw... There's packets of opium. I guess I'm not aware of the measurements of opium distribution. A dime bag equivalent? I don't fucking know. Yeah, more or less. Yeah, they'd sell it for literally almost nothing. Yeah. So anybody could afford it? That's how you want opium to be, yes.

I was buying heroin. I was buying it in bags. It's not cheap though, right? It used to be cheaper. Now it's it's always with fentanyl man i i have not been in the game for a long time the game okay fair enough yeah yeah uh i never fucked with anything quite that hard that's why i compared it to like weed that's what i'm here for joe But they made it so far below market value that any peasant could afford it. I mean, they were doing it on purpose and then using the opium as a reason to stay

because like, wow, look at all this freely flown opium. We have to help you control this as they're spreading it along from their cargo pockets or whatever. You need help, I say, as I beat you to death with the butt of my rifle. I'm trying to help lower crime as you shoot another person in the back.

Oh, shit. That one's a little bit too close to home. Imperial Japan Crime Stoppers. Hooray. Oh, God. You call them a gruff and it's just a rabid dog that eats you. The Imperial Japanese Officers Benevolent Association at the Loke City Hall. Now, in 1939, the Japanese established Unit

1644, which... I don't like when Imperial Japan establishes units, I'll tell you that. Especially when they're followed by a number. Yeah. This is an umbrella unit of 731. That unit. That one. Yeah. Go back, listen to our episode on that one. Or don't.

Whatever. Now, Unit 1644 vanished people off the street and used them to conduct horrific medical experimentations on them in a converted hospital in the outskirts of town now i think i pointed this out before and none of these experiments had any actual medical purpose so it's a lot like auschwitz and other experimental groups like this. The cruelty is the point, not the medical research. Right, of course. The U.S. took in Shiro Ishii of Unit 731 after World War II.

We did not need his medical expertise to know that if you inject someone with bleach, they would die. Because that's the kind of shit that they're doing. I hate to make a Trump joke, but apparently we didn't learn that lesson. To be fair, i think he wanted you to drink it more than inject it it's hard to remember i don't know to be fair i think shiro ishii would probably support this uh hypothesis and like there's other things like what happens when you use mustard gas on people we've known that since world war one we didn't we didn't need to like do further human research not mention, there were no test groups.

There was no meticulous record keeping. These aren't scientific experiments. They're just murder with extra steps. I bring that up because oftentimes you hear people not necessarily excuse the crimes. I rarely hear that. I mean, from insane people, you hear that. But normally, you hear equivocations like well you know nobody had ever done that kind of experimentation before we wanted their records we don't want to do the

experiments ourselves when it's like no man i think we had a good idea that if you put someone in a block of ice they'd fucking die yeah we we did your fucking freak shows yeah anyway this place is something of a of a assembly line of death they'd bring people in they inject people with poison germs and lethal gases which this might shock you liam we already knew that they would kill people right as we know we didn't need more of this and the imperial japan also knew this because they're one of the few powers and of world war ii or I guess the Sino-Japanese War, the theater, to actively militarily use chemical and biological weapons.

They knew what they were doing. Right. But yeah, they did that anyway. They killed about 10 people per week in this facility. And then they'd throw their bodies in an incinerator. So the number is kind of unknown because their remains were completely destroyed.

So we only know what they're willing to tell us. Now, as if this fear of horrible death and torture wasn't bad enough, the occupation also created a new social structure that was kind of a revamp of a traditional, I believe it was a king dynasty social structure, which was every 10 households were ordered to appoint a head man. And every 10 of those head men were ordered to appoint another head and so on and so forth. It was a pyramid scheme type of network of governance. Under the system, every person was required to carry a registration card signed by his head of 10, head of 100, and head of 1,000 men attesting to their loyalty to the local government. This is something of an internal passport. And if any unregistered person showed up, you were bound by law to immediately report

this person to the Japanese authorities. Being reported is pretty much a death sentence because Nanking was meant to be a labor pit for the Japanese. They didn't care about city administration, whatever. They wanted you to work in their factories, work in their harbors, you die, whatever. And every city was going to be like this. They weren't going to let people internally migrate. So if you were from outside the city

and you didn't have your internal passport, you were fucking doomed. Now, of course, the Japanese didn't trust the Chinese. Remember, they believe them to be a subhuman race to the Japanese. So they often tested the system by releasing unregistered men into the city and waiting to see if they could find a place to stay or work. And if they did, the heads of that area would probably be executed. Oftentimes they're brutally punished and if they were killed, so were their families. So they created a massive atmosphere of complete impenetrable paranoia as well.

Now, as Japanese soldiers were pulled further and further away of the growing war, life in the city kind of returned to a new normal. I'm not going to say normal, but a new normal. Right. As normal as things would be under the Japanese occupation. Because the main problem, I mean, administrative violence is horrible, but the main problem was those tens of thousands of soldiers being there and just committing violence against civilians, knowing that they would not be punished.

Right. As the war expanded and they began to lose, those men got pulled further and further away, allowing something that resembled normalcy to return to Nankang. People came back to the city to look for work. They took their families with them. And by 1942, 700,000 people had moved into the city.

Full choice. Yeah. If you remember all the way back to episode 1, that is a full 300,000 less than what had been there before. Now, when I'm not talking about casualty numbers yet, we'll get there because it's kind of complicated. Now, Nanking's hell finally came to an end

on August 14th, 1945, after the Japanese finally surrendered after being punched in the dick with a double dose of nuclear hellfire. Soldiers remained in theth, 1945, after the Japanese finally surrendered after being punched in the dick with a double dose of nuclear hellfire. Soldiers remained in the city, however, because when you have armies spread across what you want to be your empire,

it tends to kind of be hard to reel them back in. So the Japanese soldiers, knowing the war was over, were just kind of sitting in parts of China going, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? Right, right. Now, Chinese civilians rightfully were worried, like, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? Now, Chinese civilians rightfully were worried. Like, what the fuck are these guys going to do? They know they've lost.

They're surrounded by people they see as less than them. They've already killed so many of you. Like, what are they going to do now? Is the answer more genocide? Actually, no. Wow. Surprisingly, it seems like all of the soldiers just got drunk in the streets and cried i didn't see any reports are written down of any outlying violence committed by them on their way

out of nankang but finally and maybe mercifully this is where the part of the story we get to talk about at least some people that were responsible for this getting what was coming to them but in order to do, we have to talk about war crime trials. Yay. Everybody's favorite thing. Everybody's thing that they think is an actual thing that still occurs. Now, even before the end of World War II,

the Allied powers had been organizing what would eventually turn into war crime tribunals to bring the losers to justice because that's how history works. But also because the Japanese military are fucking monsters. And sometimes these, you know, victors writing history crosses over

with they deserved it. So it's kind of... Yeah, I'll buy that. Yeah. It's not often. It's not often. And not to mention, not everybody that was responsible

for the horrific crimes of world war ii got brought to justice unfortunately operation paperclip is a happy thing that happened yeah and the ussr had a system as well that snuck away tens of thousands of ss and gestapo people who you know like you know we had verner von braun sliding into nasa and they staffed like the sti and shit with these guys. So it's the handshaking meme of just everybody is fucking awful. Everybody is fucking awful, Joe. Yeah.

And of course, we had our own version of Operation Paperclip from the Japanese. We brought Shiro Ishii from Unit 731 to work in Virginia, I believe it was. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Maybe it was Fort Meade. I think that's Maryland. I don't know. It's wherever we work on biological chemical warfare. For me, it is Maryland. You pass the secret government installation do not look sign on the

beltway. Oh, really? Yeah. It actually says that. This secret government installation sign is making the secret government installation very noticeable. I mean, in all seriousness, there is like an NSA exit off the Beltway. Is that me too? Washington Parkway, yeah.

Yeah, it's got like the supervillain looking building, right? Yeah. The mirrored cube. Thinking about the cube. It's funny because one of my first places I went for the military is Fort Knox. And everybody thinks Fort Knox is like the gold place. And there is a building on Fort Knox.

It's completely separate from the rest of it called the Depository, where all of those things are. And it's very noticeable. Yeah, there's a tank museum. That's in main contomment of Fort Knox, which is very cool. That museum fucking rocks. I hope it's still there. They may have moved it to Stewart. Anyway, you can see the depository

building from a fucking mile away. It's a little like a Christmas tree. It's just surrounded by a fence. Someone said if you pull over to the side of the road, because it's ran by the Department of Treasury, they have their Department of Treasury cops that patrol it, and they're all 80 years old. But they'll come over and

tell you to fuck off, but that's about it. i pay for this now the u.s and the chinese nationalist government which still existed at the time had made arrangements for the trials for japanese war criminals in march of 1944 and that's when the un created the investigation of war crimes committee a further subcommittee that was formed for Pacific war crimes in Chongqing, China. Now, after the surrender of Japan, the planning ramped up because they realized, wow, we're going to have a whole

lot of people to hang in a short amount of time. A whole lot of dudes. We're going to need more rope. You ever see that video of like six Philly flyers in the penalty box all at once? Yeah. It's like that. a whistle uh i'm trying to remember who's the very famous philly guy that was missing teeth back when you guys won cups okay that was the 70s yeah yeah it's like they were the broad street

bullies yeah it's like murray or murph i don't know maybe i'm thinking i'm getting him and the canadian uh or the the calgary flames guy at the big mustache confused but anyway just imagine like a un referee blowing the whistle like five minutes genocide i mean effectively that's all the un does now because they're like oh you said you don't want to go to the penalty box we're gonna fine you okay okay now fuck that actually this means the NHL has more authority over its players

yeah now like I said after the surrender of Japan the planning ramped up for these tribunals and especially the one in Chungking and there'd be several different war crimes trials including the Tokyo and Nanking trials which would bring these men to justice. Asterix

next to that one, unfortunately. For Japan, the war criminals were broken down into categories A, B, and C. Sure. Now, this depended on the rank and the crimes they were being accused of. Now, I couldn't actually find an exhaustive

definition. It turns out they're actually quite broad, which means that these categories were quite fluid, depending on how much the Allied governments hated one particular guy. Sure. I was going to say, if I'm trying to do war crimes, you're going in the war crimes bucket. Well, the easiest way to determine them is class A, where against japan's top civilian leadership and charges b and c were military leadership the emperor thanks uh was it macarthur that oh yeah we're getting there baby oh yeah not just the emperor either now

unlike the nuremberg trials the charge of crimes against peace was a prerequisite for prosecution. Only those individuals whose crimes included crimes against peace could be prosecuted by the tribunal. Don't ask me why. Dumb legalese reasons. In this event, no Class C charges were heard in Tokyo. However, Class C charges were heard at man king so because the tokyo trials are the most serious of the japanese war crimes trials that's including people like tojo and shit sure uh so the most serious guys went to tokyo the fucking japanese d team squad or d league squad

like triple a war crimes yeah yeah even bay't pay him at a child on a spear see it's calling them triple a war crimes is unfair to triple a luchador wrestling nobody watches like d-league basketball uh i disagree with you but that's fine okay if you're a d-league basketball aficionado you're fucking weird okay okay we're on this pod together asshole you can't fire me please don't fire me that's like being a really big fan of your local minor league baseball team okay first of all do not insult the iron pigs that way of course they're called the iron pigs uh and they are phils and god rest the camden river sharks taken before their time river sharks yeah camden's a weird place man was that like a historical base name or is that God rest the Camden River Sharks, taken before their time. River Sharks.

Yeah. Camden's a weird place, man. Was that like a historical-based name, or is that like every three college sports teams called Bearcats? No, it was the fact that if you go into the Delaware, you'll be eaten by sharks. Is there sharks in the Delaware River? There probably are, Joe. Okay. I'll have to take a fucking word for it. I don't fucking know.

Okay. okay i'll take a fucking word for it i don't fucking know okay so for the trials of b and c war criminals they began the city of nanking in august of 1946 nearly a decade after the rape of nanking had begun just because sometimes people think of like world war ii is like 1939 to 1945 so right i can't stress enough how much earlier World War II began if you were Chinese. The trials lasted until February of 1947 and more than a thousand people

testified about 460 different cases of murder, rape, arson, and looting. Now, this is not an exhaustive list. At one point, the prosecution simply had to accept that there was no way they were going to be able to charge everybody with everything yes they could have you fucking babies no it's it's more like for one you can't parse all the details there is not a lot of surviving witnesses to a lot of stuff don't need to i'm taking the extreme

track on this i mean don't get me wrong i I don't disagree with you. Okay, thank you. I didn't. If you're going to look at the war crimes trials of World War II from a legal perspective, none of these trials pass snuff. They're all fucked up. And we'll talk more about that later. But it's a lot like serial killers who have 60-something odd victims. Cops are like, look, we got him on 10.

That's fucking good enough. He's going gonna be executed i i mean obviously prison abolition and we're gonna have to rethink the justice system in many ways but one of my favorite things is when they absolutely nail someone's dick to the floor with like 13 life like just in case it's like 13 life counts plus eight years just in case it's like the larry nasser case out of my alma mater michigan state i think the michigan federal court ended up finding him guilty of x amount of cases and sentencing him to like 1500 years in prison or something just in case you never know he he might be the fucking highlander present abolition but that guy goes last. Yeah.

Now, some of the evidence that was used had been collected by, you guessed it, the Japanese themselves, which is very common for genocide and war crimes trials. They're the least favorite trials assholes. Yeah, most people doing this shit don't think they're going to lose. Hold this L. They had collections of photo albums, newspaper clippings we talked about that too now like the the most important photo album came from a japanese general which had 16 pictures where they documented their own crimes with notes um you know great record keeping fella it's like the abu grob shit it's just like you stupid assholes right it's a frontier census as a human being but it's a frontier census is like why are you so dumb

it's like most of the holocaust evidence outside of physical evidence like the orders and pictures and things like that were almost all taken by nazis right we didn't like stumble upon these things they're like oh look here's an order ordering exactly this. Okay. Now, the newspaper clippings were an interesting part. They were used since they were censored very, very little. This also happened during the trials of those two officers that took part in the killing contest that we spoke about. They both denied that the contest ever took place.

Fuck you. They both denied that the contest ever took place. Fuck you. With one man claiming he had lied to a journalist because he knew if the Japanese public knew him as a guy that beheaded 100 Chinese people, it would be a lot easier to get a good wife when he got home. I swear to God, that's his excuse. Tell me this guy gets his dick nailed to the floor. More like a short drop followed by a lot of strangulation. Oh, okay'll take it yeah well actually correction they were shot oh oh that's they used firing squad uh in the chinese trials while the u.s whenever the u.s ran trials they tend to like

to use hanging now to put this in the easiest terms that don't make a lot of sense, remember, these are military tribunals. And the U.S. did and still actually does consider execution by firing squad to be an honorable way to execute someone. To allow a military officer to go out by gunfire is considered much more honorable than hanging them, which is why the U.S. uses hanging across the board during World War II. I love that even our execution methods are out of spite. Yes, they are. And not to mention, universally, the U.S.

is very bad at hanging people during World War II. Wasn't there the guy who fucked it up on purpose just to squeeze out a little extra suffering? Now, it depends on who you believe on that he was the executioner in Europe after the Nuremberg trials he claims he fucked it up on

purpose most other people's accounts where he was a drunk and he's really bad at his job oh it doesn't matter you know yeah I mean yeah it means to an end it depends on who you believe uh he was a pretty pretty savage alcoholic as what would be as a guy who hangs people for a living yeah yeah that's fair yeah and not to mention like he lied

to the military saying he was an executioner in his job as a prison guard back in the united states which he was not he didn't even know how to tie a noose correctly once again hold this l nazi germany yeah yeah like if if if he went back to the united states and was executing people that way i would have a very big problem with it here i'm gonna let this one slide take your battles homie yeah like i'm against capital punishment however i'm gonna keep quiet on this one yeah i just it's like when they execute like somebody who like assaulted children or something you're just like all right like like yeah the state shouldn't be in the business of murdering people but god damn i don't

want to have to like defend this guy right it's like abolish the death penalty next on the docket is timothy mcveigh i'm gonna stay quiet for like five minutes abolish the death penalty can you guys still hear me this guy actually believed that by murdering people Can you guys still hear me?

This guy actually believed that by murdering people, he would be considered. And honestly, he's probably not wrong. He was famous. It probably would have gotten a really hot wife that was attracted to his mass beheadings, which is a sentence I never thought I'd have to say. But yeah, both of them were actually by firing squad. Yeah. I fucking hate it. Now, the next attraction at the trial was general or former general at this point, I guess,

Tani Hisao. He was the commander of the 6th Division, which was the division responsible for the majority of this insanity. 80 people testified against him. In his indictment was a length of a book turning hundreds of pages covering stabbings,

burnings, drownings, strangulations, rapes, theft, and general destruction. This is just one guy. I believe it was 400 pages long. Jesus. At one point, Chinese officials displayed heaps of skulls dragged up from mass graves that were created by Taiwanese troops. Tens of thousands of people wanted to attend and testify against him, but there simply wasn't enough seats, leading for court officials to broadcast the entire proceedings on loudspeakers outside for people to listen, where they had camped out to make sure this all happened.

out to make sure this all happened. On March 7th, 1947, Tani Hisao was found guilty and most of the city turned up to watch him be executed on April 26th. Lines of spectators flanked the road and sidewalk as armed guards drove him through the city to be executed by firing squad.

Somehow he was not fucking torn apart by the civilians. More discipline, I guess. More discipline than I would be. I don't know. I never want to say what I would do in any situation. If I'm a Chinese civilian, the things I've seen, that is some restraint. You're a better populist than I would have been. Not to compare the two. I hate making comparisons that I don't think are apt. But when certain concentration death camps were liberated,

the US was just just like you guys can handle your business if you want and they like allowed jews to murder their guards there's something animalistic inside of people that truly want that vengeance especially when you've seen like the literally the worst shit that's ever existed and once again i say to nazi germany hold this l yeah i don't care i'm not gonna you executed a whole bunch of my people you know we got one on you that's fine it's like when the few like extermination orders if you want to call like war crime orders that the u.s published during world war ii was to like execute sspows and i'm just like you know what i'm gonna give them a pass on this one guys

my morals aren't always as consistent as they should be yeah it's fine it's fine nobody's And I'm just like, you know what? I'm going to give him a pass on this one, guys. My morals aren't always as consistent as they should be. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. Nobody's black and white, baby. Now, for the worst offenders like Nakajima and Hanagawa, they did not face justice, unfortunately. Though they did get to meet their God if they believe in that sort of thing.

They've been dead since 1945. Nakajima via illness and Hanagawa via heart attack. But Hanagawa was actually quite useful because before he died, he helped write an entire book about the events of Nanking. Unfortunately, that entire book denies that the crimes ever took place.

Yeah. So people often point to Hanagawa's book as a primary resource as to why Nanking is a conspiracy theory. So rest in piss. Yeah, well, he's dead and we're not, so suck it. Yeah, I'm not sure what Shinto hell looks like, but I hope he's in it. Now, more people would be charged at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which is otherwise known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, including all of your heavy hitters from Class A. These trials began

on May 3rd, 1946, and the scope of the trial dwarfed that of the Nanking Trials. It drew over 200,000 spectators and 419 witnesses. The transcripts of the trial would reach 50,000 pages, which is only like 100 pages

shorter than infinite jest sorry you ever read that fucking book it's awful i hate that fucking guy i have not but i have stumbled my way through war and peace at least that's good and i'm getting a lot more people are gonna be mad about me hating on infinite jest now it's the fight club of books isn't fight club the fight club of books no fight clubs the fight club of movies for guys because the dudes that enjoy fight club the movie aren't gonna go read the book it's a fucking joke i know shut up shut the fuck up you shut up this is why i hate you you don't hate me how could you with bright, smiling face and my pretty eyes. That's right. It just brightens my day.

There's few things that bring joy to my life. The laughter of children and the giggling of liams. Oh, thanks, Joe. Let's get through this bitch. Now, this entire trial took two and a half years, which is three times longer than Nuremberg went on and will probably remain the longest war crime trial in history since we really don't do those anymore. Now, of course, people will point to the ICC, ICJ prosecutions over the Bosnian genocide. However, those are a different mechanism. Those are actually more grounded in legal realities than

these were uh they're kind of not comparable this is a how do i say victory lap in some ways oh god yeah there's a lot been written on this there's a few books about nuremberg and the tokyo war crimes trial that point out just how like not legally sound the entire process was. Nope. Like this U S Supreme court kind of called Nuremberg, uh, a kangaroo court, things like that. Not that the Supreme court is good, but you know,

they, you would expect them to understand the most annoying amount of legalese possible. Uh, yeah. Again, I'm not complaining. Um,

now 28 men from the Japanese military and government stood trial as Class A. And according to historian Arnold Brackman, quote, at the trials, a thousand different My Lai massacres emerged. Thousands of horrific details not previously known were broadcast to the world for the first time. Not just the details of Nanking, but of death marches, slavery, and routine and savage torture of POWs, medical experiments, and the full scope of Japanese institutional sexual slavery became known to the world. Not that that doesn't stop people from denying it. However,

this is kind of like we learned the depth of Nazi depravity from their trials. And the same is true of the Tokyo trials. And we made sure to broadcast this to civilians to show what their government did. We also did that in Germany because there was actually a fair amount of people who simply didn't believe that this was possible. Actually, more so on the Japanese side that believe that this is all a Western con job.

Propaganda invention. Yeah. Now, the Japanese defense lawyers attempted to trot out the just following orders excuse, which went over so well on Nuremberg. But they were quickly overwhelmed by the huge amount of evidence. The trials stated that the Japanese

army was, quote, let loose like a barbarian horde and desecrated the city of Nanking. Now, you can... Some racial messaging there that I'm not going to totally go into, but I'm sure you picked up on it. And that's super common,

especially reading shit from 1947. If you look at American World War II propaganda, holy shit. It's rough. It is. It's racist. Yeah. Thanks, Dr. Seuss.

That's what happens when you go to dartmouth now uh it was concluded this information wasn't just eyewitness accounts this is a concluded from cables and telegrams uh that the government back in japan was fully and acutely aware of what the military was doing within nanking like we talked about last episode. The full weight of the blame of the Tokyo trials for what happened in Nanking fell directly on the shoulders of Iwane Mitsui. Now, if you remember, he's the guy that's half dead

from various different illnesses and wasn't actually there. Right. We get to burn his guy. Yeah. Yeah. Now, if that is exactly fair or not, that's really up for debates. And my opinion on this is complicated. Now don't yell at me yet. Matsui was an old man ruled with disease and wasn't even the city when it

fell by the time that he had the power to end the savagery, which he did at one point, but I had yet to start yet. He was no longer in command anymore. That fell to Prince Osaka. That being said, I do not mean to say that Matsui is fucking innocent. He is guilty of a lot of things.

However, to say that he is the main player of the rape of Nanking is incredibly, incredibly historical. He was a fall guy right okay he spent the pre-trial years after his retirement putting on a show of public flagellation uh he built a shrine of forgiveness in his hometown specifically about nan king and he hired a priestess to pray and call out in front of it for the victims of his men now if you want to chalk this all up to a show i don't disagree with you i i do think that mat sui felt bad about what happened

but i also think a lot of this is performative he knew that he was facing a noose and you're gonna do whatever you can to avoid swinging so i i get that too. Yeah. I mean, he was guilty. He's not the most guilty. This is like, uh, Hitler getting away with the Holocaust, but instead you hang, I don't know, Erwin Rommel,

which, you know, hang both of them to be clear, but differing layers of guilt. I'm just saying that it's Prince Osaka who should have swung, but we'll get to that point. During the trial, Matsui was weird. He didn't give a full account of what happened.

He left out any detail that might implicate the imperial family. He went from making excuses to denying them completely, while then occasionally launching into random babbling bullshit about religion and the nature of Sino-Japanese friendship to the point that his lawyers had to tell him to cut it out. There's some people that believe he might have been suffering some early stages of dementia,

which I wouldn't doubt. He's quite old, and he's not exactly healthy. Right. But as far as not pawning blame off on the Imperial family, we'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit there's a reason why he didn't do that the crux of his defense boiled down that he ordered his soldiers

not to murder and they did it anyway it isn't his fault they didn't listen that's his argument of course he also made sure to blame himself and other subordinate commanders rather than to point out that he was not in command, that was Prince Asaka. He just ate it. Right. Along with Matsui, Koki Hirota was charged. He was the foreign minister during the taking of Nanking. He was implicated because the U.S. had long since

cracked the Japanese encryption code known as RED. I think it's an acronym for something. As the foreign minister, he had been sending messages back and forth to the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C., which remember, we had tapped at that point because we were pretty sure

Japan was going to cook some shit up. We were not exactly friends at the time. The war had not quite started yet. Obviously, as there's a Japanese ambassador in Washington, D.C. still. Now, these messages clearly laid out what was happening in Nanking, which the U S then intercepted while not saying the foreign minister had any power to stop them.

Because remember the military is firmly in charge here. He was a government cabinet minister, however, and he could have done something even, even like some kind of telegram to the government saying, what the fuck are you doing? Please stop this, probably would have absolved him, but he did nothing.

Instead, he kind of was like, good job, guys. You're doing great. If you're trying to say you're innocent in terms of genocide, that's probably not what you want to lead with. His excuse more boiled down to I'm the foreign minister. I don't control the military. What did you want me to do?

I had no control over that. You're the fucking foreign minister. You could have done something. You're a pretty high up cabinet minister. Set a telegram, asshole. Yeah. And even if, let's say hypothetically, in a situation that you may or may not connect to a different situation, you are a government minister. And you're part of a government where the government ministers truly do have no power. That's a full centralized dictatorship on, I don't know,

this other guy. Say how people believe that the emperor was used. It's like his word is as good as the word of God, which ideologically that's true and practical, wasn't it? But let's say that is the case and the emperor is having this happen.'re still a foreign minister bitch you're still guilty fuck you you're still in the government right that's my argument is it is it legally based absolutely not do we care no we don't no i do not no mat suey and haroda were both sentenced to death as were five other class a war criminals and various others for their crimes. Now, when he was sentenced, Matsui said, quote, I'm happy to end this way. I'm really eager to die at any time, which sure.

All right, hard out. I mean, yeah, there's the military culture built in there, but also he knew he wasn't long for this world, even if they didn't execute them. Sure. Now, you're probably wondering why Prince Osaka did not stand trial. This is the one that most people probably kind of already know about. Despite a mountain of evidence that should have led to him

getting shot or hung. It's hanged for people, Joe. Huh? It's hanged for people. Whatever. People are hanged. Throw him out of a car for all I care. Okay.

All right. I'm not saying no to that. I'm just, you know. Now, that all comes down to noted psychopath and dumbass General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur had been given the responsibility of governing occupied Japan, and he thought his job would have made a whole lot goddamn easier if he still had the emperor and the imperial household as a figure. year if he still had the emperor and the imperial household as a figure after you know destroying Japan and its society in order for

this to be a figure for the new Japanese society that we were planning on building to rally around the Truman administration fully agreed to this idea so he granted immunity to the entire family thanks for nothing fuckfights not just immunity from prosecution

even from being called as a witness. They were untouchable. Now, you're probably wondering, though, if I'm on trial, and I know the end result to this is me swinging or getting a ventilation hole in my chest, fuck the imperial family, I'm going to rat them out. Right?

Mm-hmm. Wrong. Japanese defendants were coached by the US government to not blame the emperor or the imperial family for anything. Fuck off with that. Now, due to their belief in the emperor as a major part of their Shinto religion and political ideology, the accused were kind of fine with this. This came down to, look, we know you're going to say that you're, especially when it came to like Tojo. The idea wasn't the emperor was giving orders

as much as it was the emperor knew about everything and was fine with it. Right. That was how he was probably going to get it. But when it came to these higher ranking people, it came down to, look, we know you wanted to say that the emperor knew or was telling you to do this,

but here's the deal. Leave him out of it and he stays where he is. We're not going to touch him. At the end of the day, you're going to hang regardless. You know this just-following order shit doesn't work. Why not keep him out of it? And they're like, okay. Now, instead,

when the just-following order's excuse was tried out, and it was, blame fell on Hideki Tojo. He was the former prime minister amongst so many other positions. He was virtually a one-man government at one point. Now, and to be clear here, I could not think of a more deserving scapegoat in any situation

because Hideki Tojo is a goddamn monster. Also, another reason why a lot of the pressure fell on him is because of American wartime propaganda like American wartime propaganda really fucking just dug the knife in on Hojo as like the the main evil doer did I say Hojo? I meant Tojo

fuck Tojo like as far as Howard Johnson's you know what you did as far as wartime propaganda goes the American wartime propaganda was pretty vicious when it came to uh hideki tojo um not that he was not undeserving but they made him like hit germany had hitler japan got tojo right all of their hate went towards them and deservedly so fuck tojo not to mention he was simultaneously the prime minister, the minister of war, and the chief of staff.

That's too many things. So outside of the emperor telling him no, which is eventually how he lost his job, the emperor, quote unquote, lost confidence in his ability to govern. And that's why he ended up resigning before the end of the war. But for all intents and purposes, he was the face of the Japanese war effort and not even completely unfairly. Not to mention, like, when you're the emperor,

you don't address your own people, let alone address an international audience. So, like, even if they wanted to make wartime propaganda focus on the emperor, it would have been really hard to do so. He never spoke in public. Famously, when the instrument of surrender was recorded it was by the emperor and he spoke a much different kind of japanese as normal people did like almost like a noble dialect

that normal people had never heard their emperor speak before things like that uh so the idea that it is a lot easier to just pin this on tojo and you know tojo's sure served at the pleasure of the emperor technically and it was the battle of saipan that finally got him shit canned but he was it's fair to blame him for a lot right now propaganda teams went to overdrive to make the imperial family but mostly emperor hirahito looked like hapless puppets who were kind of like the queen of england you know she's just the ceremonial figurehead powerless to their own military and government something we now know is a complete and total lie there was definitely tugs of war over power, but Hirohito was fine with most things. He was very well

informed on the goings on of the war. While we actually have no idea if the Emperor green-lighted what happened in Nanking, there is no surviving evidence that implicates him, but at a minimum, he knew about

it. That is inarguable that is a proven fact now herbert bix who's a former professor at hosei university in japan said it was inconceivable that the emperor did not know about nanking oh this the japanese media is splashing it across the front page remember the killing contests were in major media. Not to mention, his own fucking uncle was in charge of it. Even Hirohito's younger brother, Prince Mikasa Takehito, had served as a staff officer in Nanking

after it had begun. He got transferred there, and he described it as, quote, a massacre. So everyone around him knew about it. It requires such an incomprehensible leap of logic to think the emperor hirahito had no idea right and prince asaka was arrested like he was so fucking guilty that american occupation authorities almost broke their own rules because of like what

he did they're like guys he definitely did dan king they arrested him and interrogated him but he was eventually released without charges because macarthur said that there's no way they could charge a prince because it would lead to the emperor that would open some doors that people wanted to fucking stay closed those people namely of course being the u.s government occupation authorities and the soon-to-be new government of Japan. Right. Because a lot of the guys in the first waves of government of Japan, both occupational and otherwise, were very strongly connected to some horrible shit that happened in World War II. Crazy how that happens.

Yeah. I don't want to say something and not be true, but there's very... I can't remember exact specifics, but it's quite a few of them. Now, the only punishment, if you want to call it that, and I don't call it that, is that Osaka was after the war, he became a commoner. Now, this is because the American occupational rules abolished every line of imperial family other than the immediate one to the emperor. So that meant all of the various princes and third cousins and whatever all gone like

that. So this threw him out of his sweet palace and all of his government privilege. Now he and his son, who is also obviously tangentially nobility, were also banned from holding any public offices. Now this actually wasn't because they are former member of the Imperial

family, but because of their prior service in the Imperial army, his house was seized by the government because it was a government owned palace, uh, and turned into the talent art museum, which is still open today. So you can go and walk around asaka's house which is now an

art museum that's a mind fuck i don't like that it'd probably be better i don't know being raised to the ground so the evil spirits can be excised pro pro raising to ground yeah now asaka spent the rest of his life doing what else but becoming a golf course architect that's a new actually i don't know why which is like outside of becoming a major landlord in tokyo or something is the most like yeah of course of course it happened of course he got really into golfing now he died peacefully in his home in 1981 at the age of 93. Now, he died peacefully, very well off. He was very, very wealthy, despite the fact he wasn't nobility anymore.

Of course, his family's going to give him some kickbacks here and there. He didn't hurt for anything. He never wanted for a thing a day in his life. Now, for comparison's sake, let's look at what happened to John Robb. John Robb, from the last episode, of course, saved more people than probably any other person in human history.

He's accredited with 250,000 people being saved because of his actions. During the events in Nanking, Robb had been sending countless messages back to Nazi Germany detailing what he was seeing happen in Nanking. We talked briefly about this when he messaged Hitler. This, it turned out, was a very, very bad idea. Oh, no. If you remember, Japan and Germany, they're bros. This makes their bro

look real bad in a land where you don't really have freedom of speech or expression. So as soon as he got back to Germany, he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was warned to never talk about Nanking again. Just like, shut the fuck up about Nanking or next time we visit, we won't be so nice. Now, this eventually led to him being destitute and penniless.

He continued working during the war. However, obviously, the war ends. He no longer has a job anymore. And he was never vocal about what he did in Nanking. However, to American occupational authorities, he was another Nazi. So he failed the denazification process, which we've talked about before on our Clean Wehrmacht episode, which was horribly flawed. And mostly due to personal politics, he got tagged as a hardcore Nazi, which he was. I'm not going to deny that.

He was a true believer of Nazism from every bit of evidence that we've ever seen. However, at this point, mostly that tag to blacklist people from work was for high-ranking people. By the time he got back to Germany, he was nobody. He wasn't the head of the Nanking branch anymore. He was nothing. They banished him out to the fringes of the German Empire to work in Afghanistan during

the war. Jesus. They had a factory there. Why? I don't fucking know. So after the war, he was unable to get a job due to the fact that he was a member of the Nazi Party, despite the fact that he was a member of the Nazi party, despite the fact that he went through all of the process of officially denouncing them that the

occupational authority laid out. He followed all of it. It wasn't good enough. This eventually forced his family to be virtually homeless. They were living in a shack that they found. They were forced to eat grass and seeds they found in the wilderness.

But by 1948, the people of Nanking heard about what happened to him and how he was living. So they began to send him massive amounts of food packages. Remember, these people are in the middle of a civil war. Yeah, things are not going great. And they're still sending him food and money.

They saved his family. They conducted multiple fundraisers, sending him thousands of dollars, which was literally everything in the world to them. That was how he lived until he died. He died of a stroke in 1950. And I believe it was 1949, they were forced to stop because the nationalist government fell and the CCP took over and they didn't really like this arrangement. But he died in 1950 of a stroke. Now, for the question of how many people died in Nanking, because that's something I said we're going to talk about, we will. According to history professor asked at the Tokyo trials, quote, the question is so big,

I don't know where to begin. The total spread of the killing is so extensive, nobody can give a complete picture of it. And that is largely true to this day. Now, we do have a ballpark. The official count per the Memorial Hall of the Victims of the Nanking Massacre and the Nanking Population put that number on 230,000. And even larger figures proposed by the Japanese Imperial Army by Major Hota Hisao, no relation to the other one, who submitted a 44-page confession while being held as a POW. He said outside of Nanking, the army undertook huge efforts to burn and dump into rivers or bury tons of dead bodies that he said were being brought out of the Nanking area, which he would know. He was a major. He would be in charge of administration.

This means that these would not have been counted in either of those other two counts because they were not in Nanking when they were found. They were assumed to be from a different area. Most corpses of Nanking were left in the immediate area of the city, like literally in the street to rot. So these ones were not part of the total count. In 1937, this is per Oda, which he remembered, the unit dumped 19,000 bodies, which another unit nearby disposed of, and another unit disposed of 81,000. Still others dumped 50,000.

If you put all those together, that brings the count up to 377,000 victims within Nanking. These are only the dead. For comparison, that is greater than the death toll of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Now, ever since, the Japanese government has done seemingly everything it could to cover up this event, deny it entirely,

or simply not talk about it. Something that continues largely unabated to this day. Previously in the first episode, I pointed out this is largely weird far-right groups, but that isn't entirely true. Not a single major Japanese political party does not contain a core grouping of people who deny the atrocities of Nanking, including the Liberal Democratic Party, which has run Japan almost entirely uncontested for decades. The party is Shinzo Abe, who himself is part of this. Though over the years, various different prime ministers have apologized for Japan's actions,

most of these apologies have gone unaccepted for various reasons. Normally, quirks of speech, weird facilitating that they've done on certain parts of it. And quite honestly, that is not up for me to decide if these apologies are good enough or not. And that's not any of ours. That's up to the people of China. Emperor Akihito apologized as well. A fact generally ignored or explained away by people who still insist on denying it, while being a hardcore return to tradition monarchist in Japan, which certainly exists. Other officials and prime ministers have apologized since. And unfortunately, others have still attempted to downplay what has happened. Japan, a land of contrast, I suppose. Now, while denial isn't always in the mix,

justification is. With one minister of education calling the events of Nanking, quote, just a part of war. Though I should point out that like most genocide denial or other atrocity denial, this is not done by actual historians, at least not most of the time. It's sentenced by politicians and lay people who happen to be just the loudest motherfuckers in the room. Unfortunately, a combination of government censorship, propaganda, and God knows what else has led to a general population of Japan to see things in a very fucked up way in regards to the wartime past. For starters, there's the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the various executed Class A war criminals, Matsui included. Over the years, several different prime ministers have visited the shrine, causing all kinds of problems with countries that were victimized by Japan during World War II, namely Korea and

China. As you can imagine, this is unpopular in these places. Now, if you're wondering what is the general vibe, what does Japan think about? What do Japanese people think about this? I don't know. There was a poll done in 2013, though, that showed the largest percentage of about 50% among Japanese people polled that there's no problem about Japanese prime ministers visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which is, for people unaware, it's a Shinto shrine. I don't know enough about the religion to go into it, but it's a shrine. They go to it, they show their respects. Sure.

Now, this included those who see no problem if the visit is made by a private citizen, and more than 70% of the Japanese poll sounded tolerant towards such a vision by a member of government. Most of the attempts made to deny or distort the events of Nanking happened in the 1970s. By the 1980s, the Japanese veterans group known as Kaikosha Shaker, they were a very right-wing group, attempted to add their voices to this swelling of Japanese nationalism, which of course means denying war crimes and atrocities that occurred in Nanking. So their goal was to interview the members

who had served in Nanking and be like, see, they said nothing happened. Don't do that. Funny story, that isn't what happened. Kaiosha was fucking horrified when they found out all of their veterans they interviewed openly admitted to doing awful things without much prompting. Who was the Indonesian dictator in the 70s?

Sir Hato? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a documentary about his soldier's tale. It's called The Act of Killing, right? There we go. It's incredible. Very, very good. One of the most unsettling things I've ever seen in my life.

Also, not to change the atmosphere of the recording but i may also have covid outstanding i gave it to you via the internet no uh my girlfriend's mom has it so now we might all have covid so that's tight uh yeah let's let's keep talking about uh man's inhumanity towards man. Thankfully, we're almost done and we can stop giving COVID to each other over the Internet. Now, like I said, Kyosha was fucking shocked that it turns out that their veterans were like, no, bro, we totally did that. This caused the veterans group to back down and apologize publicly, saying, quote, Whatever the severity of war or special circumstances of war psychology, we just lose words faced with this kind of illegal mass killing.

As those who are related to the pre-war military, we simply apologize deeply to the people of China. It is truly a regrettable act of barbarity. That's not what I was expecting to hear. No, that's like the ultimate fucking U-turn. Now, historians have tried to figure out why this is the case, why this keeps happening, and they've posited that the decision by MacArthur to grant immunity and to cover up for the imperial family later impeded the Japanese people's own historical awareness and willingness to accept such crimes took place. Again, Herbert Beck said, quote, many would find it difficult to believe

they have been accomplices in aggression and murder in your genocidal scale when the emperor never had to bear any responsibilities for his own speech or actions. MacArthur helped prepare the ground for future Japanese conservative interpretations of postwar monarchy that denied the emperor ever held real power. This has denied any kinds of transitional justice to ever occur. That, unfortunately, is the rape of Nanking. held real power. This has denied any kinds of transitional justice to ever occur. That unfortunately is the rape of Nanking. Liam, thankfully I'm going to do something to light the mood here on our way out because we do a thing here on the show called

Questions from the Legion. Cue that theme song I do not yet have. I keep telling myself I'll get one for that. I don't have one. If you would like to ask us a question to Legion, donate to the show. There's a large thread going on our patreon add your question to it i will get to them all like i said at some point on a long enough timeline all these things are possible right today's question is if you can make one thing that's legal right now into a misdemeanor in the whole of the united states what do you pick? Oh, boy. I'm going to go with talking on speakerphone

in public. Talking in the elevator. We have similar ones. Just in general, talking to anybody in the elevator. Really? Just talking. Fuck, we're unemployed now. Actually, I would make littering punishable by death.

I love petty despot, Liam. I would not be kind. I don't know how to explain this without being able to show you what it's like but I was in the underground in the metro when I was in Yerevan and there was someone trying to desperately talk on the speakerphone and I've actually never been on an underground subway in the United States so I have no idea how quiet they are normally? They're not. Okay so Yerevan's was built

in the 80s still largely uses trains from the 80s it's loud as shit i can't hear someone talking right next to me right and there's this guy just like what i can't hear you like on speakerphone i was impressed as he kept the signal smoking on the subway in philadelphia you could smoke on the subway yeah Smoking on the subway in Philadelphia. You can smoke on the subway? Yeah, people do. On the L and on the subway. Ugh. For those of you at East Subway, if you smoke on it, I should have the right as a human being

to throw you off the train, hopefully into the path of an oncoming train. Nate, you might have to delete that. That's disgusting. That's gotta be illegal, though, and people just do it anyway. Yeah, those people should be hanged I'm hungry man you know so

Liam again thank you for joining me in the series everybody thanks buddy everybody also I'm sorry but I hope you learned something I hope I didn't just like victimize 50,000 people or however many people want to listen to this. But if you like what we do here on the show, I promise that if you found us during the series, I promise that everything we do is this fucking awful and grim.

He's lying. It's various shades of awful and grim, I'm going to be honest with you. But if you like what we do here and you'd like to support it please support us on patreon you make everything we do possible um and i have no cutesy way to end this until next time don't do genocide don't do a genocide we shouldn't have to say that i know oh well this is how we make money unfortunately uh don't do anything i just talked about for the last three hours yeah please