The link with the pics really hit me hard. Please consider that before clicking. This was all new to me so I wonder if others here had heard about the place or crimes.





I just stumbled into this wiki article and then did some more searching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datong_Mass_Grave_Memorial



Not easy to look at pics from the memorial. VERY not safe for looking. Pics hosted on Reddit in case you care about not visiting reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ww2/comments/1ruh8se/preserved_skeletal_remains_at_the_datong_coal/

And from a Chinese source on the Memorial

http://www.goshanxi.com.cn/2025-07/21/c_1117323.htm

I don't think I could bring myself to visit the place knowing what awaits.

CanyonAg77 said:

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I've never understood why the Nazis were justly vilified, while the Japanese got a pass for even worse atrocities.

Even allowing for the immense scale of the German atrocities

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It's mainly because Chiang Kai Shek strongly advocated a stance of "repaying malice with virtue" based on his Confucius tenets which included amnesty for war criminals and waiving reparations (which ended up biting him in the ass during the Chinese civil war that followed shortly afterwards). But also because the majority of Japanese atrocities were committed against Asian people, the eurocentric panel of judge and jurors were not comparatively as much "out for blood".

We also had a much stronger interest in Japan as an ally post-ww2 against communism. We had very little footprint or as many options in allies in the pacific theatre as compared to our list of allies in Europe against communism (France/England).

If we had a strong ally in the pacific after WW2 that was a victim of Japan, it would have probably gone much more the direction of how we prosecuted Germans for their actions.