from the history-is-in-the-culture-of-the-teller dept.
An interesting phone interview with Carol Gluck, a professor of Japanese history at Columbia University.
"The Japanese ignore everything before Hiroshima and the Americans ignore everything after Nagasaki."
On Tuesday, President Obama announced his decision to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the site where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in August 1945. Obama will specifically visit Memorial Park, which commemorates the event; he will be the first sitting American president to do so, although he does not plan to offer any sort of apology. The bombing of Hiroshima killed around 100,000 people; three days later, tens of thousands more were killed after the United States bombed Nagasaki.
Related Stories
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition has won big in the recent elections and may eventually push for changes in Japan's constitution, although such plans are tentative:
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling bloc scored a big win in Sunday's election, bolstering his chance of becoming the nation's longest-serving premier and re-energizing his push to revise the pacifist constitution. Abe's Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition won a combined 312 seats, keeping its two-thirds "super majority" in the 465-member lower house, local media said.
A hefty win raises the likelihood that Abe, who took office in December 2012, will secure a third three-year term as LDP leader next September and go on to become Japan's longest-serving premier. It also means his "Abenomics" growth strategy centered on the hyper-easy monetary policy will likely continue.
[...] The U.S.-drafted constitution's Article 9, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. But Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defense. Backers of Abe's proposal to clarify the military's ambiguous status say it would codify the status quo. Critics fear it would allow an expanded role overseas for the military. Abe said he would not stick to a target he had floated of making the changes by 2020. "First, I want to deepen debate and have as many people as possible agree," he told a TV broadcaster. "We should put priority on that."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly benefited from tensions with North Korea and is likely to serve as Prime Minister until 2021:
The elections were a result of a risky move on Abe's part. He dissolved the lower house of parliament last month and called for fresh elections a year earlier than scheduled to "face a national crisis" in North Korea. It was a gamble, considering Abe's approval ratings over the past year have ranged from iffy to dismal. One Washington Post headline from the summer read "Japanese prime minister's poll numbers are so low they make Trump's look good." "Abe is personally not that popular of a guy," Hu said. "But after North Korean missiles flew over Japan two times this year, Abe's popularity shot back up."
Also at The Diplomat and Bloomberg. Japanese general election, 2017.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:40AM
Trump will eliminate anime and waifus.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:37AM
Don't you know that Trump supporters are Teenage Nazis who masturbate to Anime?
Just take a look at how wrong you are. [google.com]
Trump will make Anime Real!
"I will find every shitlord a waifu and it will be the best waifu they've ever had because no one finds better waifus than Trump."
"I will build a Weeb's Paradise in these United States"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:05AM
We remember plenty after WWII. The Japanese simply parrot "war is evil", and deliberately forgo thinking about why.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:20AM
Moreover, you reenforce that memory every day even now [wikipedia.org] and at a at great cost [nationalpriorities.org].
Are you afraid you'll forget it?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:28AM
Now the incomprehensible suicide bombers who hate our freedoms are brown people instead of yellow.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:48AM
Imagine the monstrous love child of Amaterasu and Allah, raping the Statue of Liberty.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:59AM
How about just some tentacles? You know?... from international waters, no religion or nationality involved, pure sexual delight for a french girl. Mmmm?
(would you be able to accept a new dimension to your melting pot? You only need to get rid of those hypocritical puritan politicians of yours)
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:07AM
Unidentified international tentacles have violated our liberty! Invade an oil-filled country!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:08AM
You aren't listening! Didn't I tell you about getting rid of your hypocritical politicians?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:40AM
You're right, invade a solar-filled or wind-filled country instead.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:59AM
Looks bad for Europe, as we know that Germany has more sun than the US. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html [slate.com]
Wind? We're good, the US has us beaten on that. At least until the elections are over. Having said that, there will be 4 years of even more wind after that, and then the cycle will repeat. Yeah, as I say, we're good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:28PM
How about just some tentacles? You know?... from international waters, no religion or nationality involved, pure sexual delight for a french girl. Mmmm?
(would you be able to accept a new dimension to your melting pot? You only need to get rid of those hypocritical puritan politicians of yours)
(grin)
I respectively have to disagree.
Just accept FSM into your, and the Lady Liberty's, um, heart. And maybe convert a few congrees critters to his beautiful appendageness, and we're good to go.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:05PM
In all seriousness, so long as it wasn't hurting and/or infecting and/or impregnating me, getting tentacle'd actually looks like it could feel really, really good. Yes, I know what this sounds like coming from someone with my username.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday May 13 2016, @03:42AM
I don't know, the dog just stuck her cold nose on me and I'd imagine cold rubbery tentacles might be a bit shocking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @03:36AM
I'm guessing you are a Canadian or European, sitting pretty safe in your neck of wood because we do all the dirty work to keep things "stable".
We have been doing some nasty shit, in the name of ... fuck me if can I tell. But that's ok. Once Trump /Hillary gets into the white house, we will pull all our troops out of your sorry-ass countries like you always wanted.
Won't be long. You will get what you ask for, and we are only too happy to oblige. Let us say "fuck you" to each other, and let that be that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 13 2016, @04:13AM
Naturalized Australian of East European extraction
Actually paying taxes because the last bouts of American adventurism [wikipedia.org] and military programs bungles [wikipedia.org] - do I need to tell I'm not happy about it?
Well, it doesn't seem you are managing a good job, does it?
Besides, I have doubts about your claims for the reasons. "Oil" is a much simpler explanation, keeping the MilInd complex "stably profitable" is another.
Agreed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:24AM
I am always curious when an AC says "we". Who is this "we"? "Who am I? Why am I here?" (Adm. Stockdale, VP candidate running with Perot)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:41AM
Take a guess, Einstein.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JNCF on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:56AM
So place your bets lets speak to the enemy
Don't let em pretend that we seek blood
And who's we anyways Kemo Sabe?
Mighty warlord wanna-be street thug
-Jonny 5
Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
-Hermann Göring
If I am my foot, I am the sun.
-Alan Watts
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @01:20PM
I'll see you foot sun and raise you a walrus [youtube.com]. Ku ku kachu!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:30PM
In 1964, he was Commander Stockdale, flying top cover for the US Navy's ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
He has said that the USA was firing blindly into the dark.
There was no adversary on the water or in the air.
The start of the USAian incursion into Vietnam was a complete sham.
(McNamara later confirmed that.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:29AM
Hiroshima was not that bad. Most of the destruction was caused by fires -- most of the city was made out of wood with thatched roofs. The fires quickly spread not unlike the historical fires of London or Chicago and it was these fires that killed most of the people in the given death toll. In fact, people as close as 600 feet from ground zero survived and lived well into their 80's, and many of the concrete buildings at ground zero still stood after the blast.
No idea about Nagasaki, but I imagine it was a similar situation.
Afterward, the Japanese had the tenacity to rebuild Hiroshima and Nagasaki into great cities with post-modern skylines and infrastructure. Meanwhile, we watch the regression of American cities such as Detroit and Cleveland back into the tribal neolithic and wonder what the fuck we are doing wrong.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:32AM
Meanwhile, we watch the regression of American cities such as Detroit and Cleveland back into the tribal neolithic and wonder what the fuck we are doing wrong.
Obama gonna fix everything. He got six months and dats plenty o time. U see He gonna pull miracle outta His ass.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:48AM
No - outta OUR asses.
And, I don't think anyone will describe the result as a "miracle". It'll be the same shit, just a different day.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:46AM
Thats enough. Back to your domistile.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:08AM
Meanwhile, we watch the regression of American cities such as Detroit and Cleveland back into the tribal neolithic and wonder what the fuck we are doing wrong.
Your definition of "meanwhile" is whack. 50 years ago Detroit and Cleveland were also roaring metropolises.
Sounds like you've never heard of japanese ghost homes. [nytimes.com]
8 million abandoned houses so far, on track to break 20 million in the next couple of decades.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:25AM
Those ghost homes are way up in the hills next to abandoned rice paddies that the young'uns didn't want to farm, choosing instead to move to the big city and work in factories making cars and cameras for fat, lazy Americans.
I knew some foreign teachers of English who were outside Shimonoseki without a program or government sanction, who taught at Jukus (the cram schools Japanese kids go to after regular school lets out to prepare for university exams). They were squatting in one of those old farm houses, and it was awesome. There was no electricity or utilities, but that was fine because it far predated such things and was self-sufficient. They lived by candlelight and wood stove and well water. In many ways they had a far more authentic Japanese experience than we government-sponsored teachers had.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Geezer on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:31AM
Indeed, the fire bombing of Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo [wikipedia.org] caused far more widespread damage and many more casualties. The novelty of Hiroshima/Nagasaki was the one plane/one bomb part.
The tactical value of the bombing was tertiary to Truman's primary motives of avoiding a messy invasion and sending Stalin a message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:01PM
Hiroshima was not that bad
Indeed
Everywhere the USA military has gone, it has murdered children by the thousands.
In WWII, most died in fires (firebombing).
Cologne, Dresden, Frankfurt, Hamburg, etc. etc. etc.
Repeat for Japanese cities.
Casualties from the moment of the explosion till 6 months later are generally put at 140,000 in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki (poor targeting).
Virtually all were civilians.
About a third were kids.
sending Stalin a message
That part is true.
avoiding a messy invasion
That part is false--and the brass knew it was.
Top USA military men have repeatedly said that Japan was already beaten. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [counterpunch.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:19AM
I've only passed through Hiroshima, but I've been to ground zero in Nagasaki several times. Seems like it was pretty bad to me. Buildings and people vaporized. The museum at the International Peace Park there has lots of pictures of the aftermath, people with radiation burns and the like. It's horrific. You really can't minimize that. As an American I know it was their comeuppance for the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731 [wikipedia.org] in Harbin (where I've also been and seen the pictures--horrific), and all the other attrocities they committed against the Chinese, Koreans, and other peoples of East Asia and Oceania. As a human being, I recoil.
I can't argue with you on the regression of American cities, though. Ditto.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:15PM
Sounds like you never been to Japan or Cleveland.
Gotta get out of the basement bro
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:09PM
Been to both, thanks. Matter of fact, I'll go ahead and claim that I've lived in more countries than you've ever visited, or ever will visit.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:16PM
Afterward, the Japanese had the tenacity to rebuild Hiroshima and Nagasaki into great cities with post-modern skylines and infrastructure. Meanwhile, we watch the regression of American cities such as Detroit and Cleveland back into the tribal neolithic and wonder what the fuck we are doing wrong.
Simple, we are not spending (and have not spent) the money to modernize the cities and their industries. We would rather allow the industries to be lured away to places that allow lower wages/benefits/environmental standards/etc. and replace them with nothing. Whether we should or not is another question, but the cause is pretty obvious.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:20PM
I went to the museums at both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. What really got me was Nagasaki's take away message seemed to be not so much that the bomb was bad, but that the second one days later was not needed. Japan was defeated, and while the bombs did accelerate the surrender, the real purpose was a display of America's might to the Soviet Union.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:00PM
Hiroshima was not that bad. Most of the destruction was caused by fires
100k civilians may have died, but at least they were burned to death. Besides, they haven't had a single witch problem since, so if anything they should be thankful.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:38AM
the US's use of nuclear weapons in WWII was tragic and devastating but if I could, i wouldn't prevent it from having happened. the reason for this is simple, it put the terrifying power of nuclear weapons on display for the entire world to see. before japan was nuked, there was no widespread comprehension of the capabilities of nuclear weapons. this gruesome display is why nobody has used nukes and wiped out tens of even hundreds of millions of people. those who died should be remembered because they became the sacrifice for humanity to learn the sheer terror of nuclear weaponry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:18AM
> this gruesome display is why nobody has used nukes and wiped out tens of even hundreds of millions of people.
That's a big leap.
(1) It presumes we would not have had the self-control without such a gruesome demonstration
(2) Even if a gruesome demonstration of was necessary, the first use anywhere would have provided it, Japan was not unique.
(3) Either way, it does not excuse the bombing of Nagasaki. Hiroshima was more than enough of a display for the rest of the world.
WRT to #2 we could have least waited for a situation in which it actually accomplished a military objective. Lots of people like to argue from ignorance that it was necessary. But a TON of top american brass thought otherwise, [colorado.edu] including but not limited to Gen MacArthur, Adm Nimitz, Adm Leahy (who was also the President's Chief of Staff), and Gen Eisenhower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:42PM
does not excuse the bombing of Nagasaki. Hiroshima was more than enough
The Hiroshima weapon was a gun-type.
It fired a sub-critical mass of uranium into another to rapidly form a critical mass.
There was no doubt that that would work; there's no evidence that they even did a test before using it as a weapon.
The Nagasaki weapon used explosive "lenses" to rapidly squash segments of a hollow sphere of plutonium into a critical mass.
The Trinity test in New Mexico proved that the concept worked.
Murdering civilians with these devices was simply typical racist imperialist USAian brutality.
the first use anywhere
It would be good if, when speaking of this topic, everybody would have foremost in their minds that the ONLY use of nuclear weapons in anger was done by the USA.
...and that killing civilians is a war crime.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:34AM
OTOH had the Manhattan project not produced working bombs, that failure might have discouraged others from making the attempt.
H.G. Wells, for one, imagined that atomic energy and atomic bombs could be very powerful:
-- The World Set Free [gutenberg.org] (circa 1914)
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday May 12 2016, @01:30PM
shoulda, woulda, coulda.
it would have been figured out eventually and then maybe the first nuclear bomb used might have wiped out 20 million people because those in power didn't listen to the scientists that told them it was too dangerous to use, just like before we dropped nukes on japan.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday May 12 2016, @09:05PM
> shoulda, woulda, coulda.
It's all right for you, but not for me to write about things did not happen? I can accept that.
> those in power didn't listen to the scientists that told them it was too dangerous to use
Einstein and Szilard sent a letter to Roosevelt [hypertextbook.com] urging shows an understanding of the magnitude of the explosion, at least, that would result from an atomic bomb:
The letter went on to ask Roosevelt "to speed up the experimental work" on fission.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:12PM
incorrect. i didn't write about anything that didn't happen, i simply stated that even if i could, i would not alter the past.
and you have made my point.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:41AM
Americans hated the Japanese far more than the NAZIs. There was widespread famine just after WWII - I don't know but quite likely before their surrender, as all the men were fighting, all the women working in weapons factories.
We eventually clued in to that many were dying, so we sent them a lot of wheat. At the time, the Japanese didn't know what to do with wheat. It was the invention of Ramen that enabled them to survive. I Am Absolutely Serious.
The, uh... "plotlines" of today's Hentai, and the fact that child pornography was completely legal in Japan until the dot-com boom drew foreign attention, leads me to believe that child prostitution was widely practiced during the famine.
Nagasaki got bombed because they wanted to keep their emperor. We killed over 100,000 Nagasaki residents, then let them keep their emperor anyway.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:58AM
Ironically ramen is now helping starving Americans survive Obama. Where's that Newer New Deal when we need one? Nowhere! The rich are hoarding money and Bama won't tax them because prosperity trickles down like piss down the leg of a drunken whore.
The Japanese kept their emperor in the same way the British kept their queen. As a figurehead. Neither is head of the actual government of their former empires.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:05AM
Yeah, totally. Obama is the one going "oh no, we can't have any more taxes. We've got to eliminate taxes on the wealthy, so they can give the poor a golden shower."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:21AM
Imperial presidency has been the trend lately, Obama hasn't raised taxes by executive order, therefore it's Obama's fault.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:34AM
If only there were a candidate that wants to eliminate taxes for those earning under $25k per year, and reduce taxes for the middle class while increasing taxes for the very rich. Alas, that's Donald Trump's tax plan, and clearly he's a joke. He's going to drop out any day now. He doesn't really want to be president.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:17PM
increasing taxes for the very rich [is] Donald Trump's tax plan
First, Trump's record shows him to be a classic Neoliberal (tax cuts for the rich; screw everybody else).
Investigate how he treats his employees in Las Vegas (a union town with fair wages--outside Trump's domain).
...and that's after he's made gobs of dough from the stuff that union craftsmen have skillfully built for him.
Next, for every "position"[1] that Trump has taken, you can find an instance of his taking the exact opposite tack. [google.com]
He's actually quite the politician.
[1] If you only hold it for a day--until your next speech to a different crowd--is it really a position?
...or would it be more accurate to call that a disingenuous ploy?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:58PM
That's not Trump's plan, his plan is to reduce taxes for everyone, which won't work without reducing spending by a whole lot. What you're grasping at is his recent statement that taxes for the very rich will likely go up after all the negotiation is done. I will give him credit that at least he's more honest than regular politicians who will make all kinds of crazy claims; at least he's reminding us that the President doesn't have ultimate power and that budget deals are the result of compromise.
What's bad is that Trump is clearly a blowhard and a buffoon, yet he's still in many ways a better candidate than most of the other people the establishment has been promoting, namely corrupt Hillary and theocrat Cruz.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:02AM
Unsure who your history teacher/professor was, but you might want to get yourself checked.
The Emperor wanted to surrender before things had even reached this point, his generals were a big part of the resistance to surrender due to honor/power/etc.
Far less Japanese died because we used the bombs. Had we not used them we would have had to firebomb the two cities, fight city to city in an invasion, and the Japanese would have had to face the Soviets from the north. We all know how well the Soviets treated women and children in Germany.
Would have been interesting if Truman had not had such great respect for the Japanese that he canned the FDR administrations plans to nuke Kyota. Truman felt bombing Kyoto would have been a sin we could never repay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:37AM
Far less Japanese died because we used the bombs.
You fucking war criminal! What you say may be true, but to end a war and save the lives of your cowardly troops (of which ever side) or other civilians by deliberately attacking non-combatants is a class-A war crime. Truman should have been hung. We don't count lives like that. If you do, you might be a Nazi, or English.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:08AM
Dresden? Coventry? Unfortunately, 99% of war is war crimes, live with it.
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:31PM
to end a war and save the lives of your cowardly troops (of which ever side) or other civilians by deliberately attacking non-combatants is a class-A war crime.
It's more complicated than that. It's only very recently that our targeting was good enough to perform precise strikes on desired targets, which is why carpet bombing was a thing in the first place. If you wanted to hit a factory, you had to cover the entire city block to ensure it was hit. Incendiary bombs increased the reliability of the attack; secondary fires could destroy the target if the primary blast was ineffective.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both chosen as targets because of their strategic importance for the Japanese military. [atomicarchive.com] From that last link, Hiroshima "contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. . . The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries".
Yes, it was known that large civilian losses were going to occur as a result of the nuclear strikes on those cities. This was acceptable collateral damage at the time. Modern military analysts are still debating whether our modern style of warfare with its reduced civilian casualty rate is better or not - without these losses, a nation often maintains the will to fight, even if its means for doing so have been neutralized. What's better: more casualties now with an extended peace afterwards, or another war in just a few years' time?
My point is, the strategic nuclear attacks on Japan that ended WWII are not obvious war crimes. There are strong arguments made both then and now regarding why it was necessary, and history has shown that it was effective. This shifts the burden of proof somewhat on to those who call for Truman's lynching; in the absence of an alternate universe to check in on where the bomb wasn't dropped, it's difficult to demonstrate that another choice would have been better, or successful at all.
Death is bad, war is hell. We're trying to learn our lesson from the past, and so far current U.S. war doctrine holds that we should avoid civilian casualties as much as possible. At least that much we've recognized that our previous behavior was bad and we are trying to do better. Play armchair general all you want, you're entitled to your opinions. Please stop before crossing the line of calling for more deaths, especially from among those who were doing their best to make hard decisions.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday May 12 2016, @09:32AM
> Had we not used them we would have had to firebomb the two cities [...]
Had fire-bombing [wired.com] not been employed, the Japanese might have been more inclined to surrender. Imagine how might be to face an enemy who uses indiscriminate violence, as compared to one who uses the least violence necessary to prevail. Couple that with the demand for unconditional surrender that other posters have discussed.
> [...] the Japanese would have had to face the Soviets from the north.
The Americans may not have been eager to divide China and Japan between themselves and the USSR in the way that Europe had been divided.
Japan was dependent on imported oil. A blockade could, I believe, have limited its ability to wage war. The attack on Pearl Harbor looks like a response to an embargo. [history.com]
> We all know how well the Soviets treated women and children in Germany.
Rather [wikipedia.org] badly [wikipedia.org], it seems. I wonder whether word of such events reached the Japanese leadership. Even if not, becoming part of the Soviet sphere may not have appealed to them. The Americans, I think, could have shown a bit of benevolence and obtained a favourable outcome. At least, it seems that way from my comfy chair.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:45PM
> Had we not used them we would have had to firebomb the two cities [...]
Had fire-bombing not been employed, the Japanese might have been more inclined to surrender. Imagine how might be to face an enemy who uses indiscriminate violence, as compared to one who uses the least violence necessary to prevail. Couple that with the demand for unconditional surrender that other posters have discussed.
Read a history book, seriously. If you think pre-WWII Japan would surrender more easily because the people they were fighting were more gentle toward them, you haven't read how they treated everyone they fought against and their own soldiers and people. The average life was not valued. And I don't mean to imply that the behaviour was specific to Japan at the time. It's very common behaviour throughout human history generally, but was definitely Japanese culture at the time.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:33AM
The Japanese military and the bureaucracy really ran the show at that point. The emperor didn't have much choice.
Most Westerners are not aware that after the surrender the bureaucracy was kept nearly intact, so the people who had played such a large role in Japan's drive to create the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere got off scot-free.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by davester666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:08AM
It certainly is true that the US was much more racist towards the Japanese than Germans. It's why we imprisoned huge batches of Americans whose crime was that some of their ancestors were from Japan. We didn't do that for Germans, unless we actually caught them doing something wrong, like spying or sabotaging something.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:39AM
Anyone who doubts that can view American propaganda toward the Japanese during the war. They were commonly portrayed as monkeys, apes, animals.
Well, the second time around that was true, but not the first. During WWI German Americans faced quite a lot of discrimination. We laughed at George W. Bush's "freedom fries" during his invasion of Iraq, but it had precedent in "liberty cabbage" instead of "sauerkraut," and "hot dogs" instead of "frankfurters." It's true they were never interned, though.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:33PM
German's were certainly discriminated against during both wars, we didn't do the Japanese during WWI because we weren't fighting them then. My parents weren't always made to feel welcomed with open arms when they emigrated to Canada after WWII (from Germany).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:54PM
We didn't do that for Germans, unless we actually caught them doing something wrong, like spying or sabotaging something.
Not actually true. The U.S. did intern Germans, just in much smaller numbers than the Japanese and in far smaller proportion to their ethnic population. Something like 10k Germans and 100k Japanaes, and the German population in the US was far larger. But Germans (and Italians) were interned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:16AM
child pornography was completely legal in Japan until the dot-com boom drew foreign attention...
One of the most astute observations made about sex with minors is that it is universally condemned as it is universally practiced. The modern day cult of the child notwithstanding, we are expected to believe those in the past were psychological wrecks or maybe current mores are an aberration.
There were no federal statues against child porn in the US until well into the 70s. A generation is nothing to get excited about.
(Score: 3, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Thursday May 12 2016, @01:51PM
There were no federal statues against child porn in the US until well into the 70s.
This says nothing. First, while "child porn" may have existed before then, the technology to produce and distribute it was available to only a few. Until the Polaroid camera, which provided consumers with self-processing photographic equipment. Second, the Federal government was not intended to enforce criminal law - that was supposed to be left up to the states. The states criminalized child porn first, so it was already illegal and the federal statute was redundant and (arguably) not an authorized power of the Federal government under the Constitution.
Jefferson pointed this out back in 1798:
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:33PM
We eventually clued in to that many were dying, so we sent them a lot of wheat. At the time, the Japanese didn't know what to do with wheat. It was the invention of Ramen that enabled them to survive. I Am Absolutely Serious.
I know the plotline of a manga Yakitate!! Japan [wikipedia.org] has it as a plot point that the Japanese people had to eat a lot of (low quality) bread immediately following WW2, which would of course mean they knew how to use wheat. Granted manga is not a credible source of history, but it is enough to warrant doing investigation of your claim. A quick check of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] suggests that Ramen has an unclear history, but was at least from 1910 (read: substantially before WW2).
Your story sounds like something that people (including me) want to be true... but is it really true?
Can you cite credible sources besides saying "everybody knows" (much like how "everybody knows the nose of the Sphinx is gone because the Nazi's used it for target practice...")?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:52AM
Has Japan directly apologized for the dishonorable sneak attack at Pearl Harbor? Or for maltreatment of American Prisoners of War? Shouldn't such apologies come from Japan before any American one is considered?
Meanwhile in Germany the constant ancestral guilt keeps them weak and accepting of the immigrant invasion. Japan has yet to fall to such cuckoldry, although the declining birth rate can be seen in context of a national decline.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:18AM
> Shouldn't such apologies come from Japan before any American one is considered?
A conditional apology is no apology at all, at best it is just a negotiation.
A real apology is a show of strength of character, just as forgiveness is an act of selfishness. [selfgrowth.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:20AM
If you spend any time in Korea or China, you find hate toward Japan for their war atrocities is still active to this day and instilled in the younger generation. They have not forgiven. Can atrocities be so heinous they cannot be forgiven? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQeA4JVpDRU [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:53AM
I'm guessing such an apology will come after an apology for the behaviour of Perry back in the 1850s...
Asking for apologies for old sins committed by dead people is a very nasty can of worms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:32AM
Should they have notified their enemy before attack?
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday May 12 2016, @01:56PM
In fact, they did [damninteresting.com]. The emperor dismissed it, told the people it was lies and propaganda and there was no reason to leave the city.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:16PM
I think he meant the Japanese should have warned the Americans before Pearl Harbor.
Which they also *tried* to do, but due to some fumbles they didn't manage to deliver the message before the planes reached PH. Ideally they wanted their diplomat to hand the message to the American guy 30 minutes before the attack commenced.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:12AM
This video explains why everyone from the Japanese, to Germans, from US to Russians, and esp. the British all have fucked up and wrong view of WWII. In Japan it was called the War Guilt Information Program. [youtube.com] A censorship and propaganda campaign that is still felt today.
The same reason that the German National Socialists are so heavily vilified still today -- If the Germans weren't vilified so severely then their people might rise up against the Allied war atrocities, such as letting armies of Russian Cossacks rape villages of women and girls (as they were want to do near the end of the war) rather than send in General Patton (who pleaded this case himself to prevent such warcrimes).
If you think the Nazis were simply evil and sought world domination then you're a fool. They thought all peoples should have their own nature and culture. There were Blacks and Arabs and even Jews fighting in the 3rd Reich. Desire for a homeland for Germans does not demand eradication of all others. Quite the opposite. National Socialists thought that the world would be most prosperous with healthy competition between nations and cultures.h They recognized that monocultures breed extinction, and that's why today's Globalists are destroying Europe: They're able to paint any nationalism as "Evil Nazis" because of the War Guilt Information Program and other post-war propaganda campaigns which make such labels seem far worse than they should be.
In truth, everyone did heinous shit in WWII. Everyone should be ashamed of the actions that took place, if they would actually look into them. Such as the firebombing of Dresden and other cities: The indiscriminate fire bombing of non military targets; Entire cities engulfed at once in huge fires which generated their own wind. The fires burned so hot that fleeing civilians were stuck in melted asphalt. Bodies were found in cellars rendered into fat, the flames above turning their concrete into ovens. The destruction in many cities was more complete than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki -- But you don't hear Americans talking about how US Airmen had such low morale after having to commit to those things.
Enemy troops are fair game: A driver in a jeep - zap him. A soldier running through the snow - zap him.
But we weren't always scrupulous about our target.
Atrocities were committed by both sides. That fall our fighter group received orders from the Eighth Air Force to stage a maximum effort. Our seventy-five Mustangs were assigned an area of fifty miles by fifty miles inside Germany and ordered to strafe anything that moved. The objective was to demoralize the German population.
Noboby asked our opinion about whether we were actually demoralizing the survivors or maybe enraging them to stage their own maximum effort in behalf of the Nazi war effort. We weren't asked how we felt zapping people. It was a miserable, dirty mission, but we all took off on time and did it. If it occurred to anyone to refuse to participate (nobody refused, I recall) that person would have probably been court-martialed.
I remember sitting next to B[..] at a briefing and whispered to him: 'If we're gonna do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we're on the winning side." That's still my view'"
- Yeager, Chuck & Janos, Leo: "Yeager - An Autobiography" (1985), pp. 62-63
Even General Patton came to his senses and realized, "We defeated the wrong enemy."
My point is that Americans, Brits, Japanese, and Germans alike -- indeed, most of the world -- all have an extremely flawed view of WWII. Contrary to the Hollywood propaganda messaging, it wasn't a war with a clear delineation of Good vs Evil. Hitler was on the cover of Time Magazine twice for the German Miracle of saving the economy from corrupt centralized banking cartels, cleaning up the lying media, and suppressing Socialist terrorists in bombing. WWII was fought to prevent the eradication of debt based currency, to make an example of Germany which had eliminated usury and freed itself from the shackles of currency owned by bankers via using a money owned by the people.
All wars are Bankers Wars. [youtube.com] For example: The main reason the American Revolution was fought was because British banks demanded the colonies not use colonial currency but only that which was sanctioned by England and her Banks. "Taxation without Representation" was done because Bankers screwed the English and so they tried to extract taxes from their colonies. The American Civil War was fought not to end Slavery, but because the President wanted our nation to be able to print its own currency, and so the Bankers threatened and instigated war (not to mention assassinated Lincoln for printing Greenbacks, and J. F. Kennedy was killed after proposing the same thing).
I put it to you that if you don't know how the USA illegally embargoed Japan and forced them to retaliate or starve, then you shouldn't be talking about how anyone remembers WWII in Japan. You're regurgitating propaganda if you're not talking about how the Jews around the world (at the behest of their bankers) called for boycotts of German goods and vowed to starve Germany out of existence, then declared war on Germany before WWII had even began. You're hurting yourself if you're not talking about how the Zionist led Bolshevik communists were using their connections in the Jewish community to bring about riots and terrorist acts, forcing the Germans to build concentration camps to deport Jews (and no country would take them because at least 47 other nations had already expelled the Jews throughout history due to their bankers corrupting society). If you don't know how bad the Typus epidemic was then rather than see how the National Socialists saved Jews by shaving their heads, forcing them into showers, delousing their clothes with Zyklon-B, you'll believe some nonsense about "Evil Nazi deathcamps". You'll ignore that Allied bombing destroyed supply lines, caused starvation and helped the lice carrying Typhus to spread into epidemic levels. You'll believe the Auschwitz communal shower is a "gas chamber" even though the chimney was added on after the war, for greater psychological impact.
Many people read what I wrote and balk at mention of Jews. However, you must realize they were victims of their own Banking elite who sacrificed their own tribe, yet again. If you're not talking about how the Bankers caused WWII and their media outlets continue to spread false information on the war, then you are only helping History to repeat. And it is! LOOK! Golden Dawn is rising in Greece. Hard line right wingers have taken over Poland. Donald Trump is a Nationalist, and successful because he is promising to save the victims of Globalism from its clutches, just as Hitler once did. Hitler was not evil either, or so many would not have rallied around him. If you're still looking at history through the foolish caricature of "Evil Axis Powers" vs "Virtuous Allies" then you can not recognize the problems as they rise. You will ignore the decades of small abuses that lead up to a great purge. You will look at a politician and think, "Well, she's not gassing Jews in gas chambers, Hitlery Clinton isn't as evil as a real Nazi".
The propaganda will backfire! You will be lulled into a false sense of security because you're not seeing the atrocities as being nearly as bad as the horrors described in WWII propaganda. You won't see it coming when the same divisive "oppressor / oppressed" rhetoric is used against your culture and you're the one in the concentration camp. Don't be taken in by the scaremonger's fear porn. Do you really believe "Holocaust Survivors" who claim Nazis masturbated people to death with machines? Clearly embellishments have occurred.
TL;DR: Everything most people know about the Great Wars is wrong. [imgur.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:33AM
> TL;DR: Everything most people know about the Great Wars is wrong. [imgur.com]
Frankly your post reeks of crazy. So much crazy that it seems pointless to put much effort into addressing it. But that link to an imgur page makes for low-hanging fruit. On that page is an allegation that Anne Frank's diary was ghost-written but someone else because "significant portions were written in ballpoint."
Well, simply googling that claim turned up a very through debunking. [annefrank.org] One short excerpt:
The origin of the "ballpoint myth" is the four-page report that the Federal Criminal
Police Office (the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) in Wiesbaden, which was
published in 1980. In this investigation into the types of paper and ink used in the
diary of Anne Frank it is stated that "ballpoint corrections" had been made on
some loose sheets. The BKA’s task was to report on all the texts found among
the diaries of Anne Frank, and therefore also on the annotations that were made
in Anne’s manuscripts after the war. However, the Dutch investigation by the
Forensic Institute in the mid-1980’s shows that writing in ballpoint is only found
on two loose pages of annotations, and that these annotations are of no
significance for the actual content of the diary. They were clearly placed between
the other pages later. The researchers of the Forensic Institute also concluded
that the handwriting on these two annotation sheets differs from the writing in the
diary "to a far-reaching degree." Photos of these loose annotation sheets are
included in the NIOD’s publication (see The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised
Critical Edition, 2003, pages 168 and 170). In 1987, a Mr Ockelmann from
Hamburg wrote that his mother had written the annotation sheets in question.
Mrs Ockelmann was a member of the team that carried out the graphological
investigation into the writings of Anne Frank around 1960.
Based on that simple, easily verifiable fact being false, it seems likely that all the crazy sounding stuff you wrote is at least as wrong.
It is ironic that the link telling us what we know is wrong is to something that you 'know' which turns out to be so utterly wrong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @12:40PM
Ah, good morning, Soylent's resident Nazi true believer!
I agree that our respective national perceptions of WWII are heavily skewed by propaganda. It's dangerous to reduce Hitler and the Nazis to cartoon cutouts the way Hollywood and other forces have, because it blinds people to how easy it is to slide from policies based on reasons to abject evil. They think, well, there's no way we could ever turn out like the Nazis because they were the personification of Satan, whereas we are reasonable people who are responding rationally to real issues. When it comes down to it, the step from rational policies to atrocity can be ever so slight, almost imperceptible. Look how easily the United States has utterly abandoned its fealty to its own Constitution and the rule of law, setting up places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and total police state surveillance through the NSA, CIA, and FBI. American citizens are disappeared in numbers into black sites in Chicago [theguardian.com], where they are tortured and held without access to counsel.
It's also hard to argue the pernicious, persistent evil that is the international banking system. Those people are utterly amoral and corrupt and must be rooted out. The Unaoil scandal, the Panama Papers, LIBOR-rate fixing, drug cartel money laundering, subprime mortgage crisis, and many, many other scandals (and none of those are older than 10 years, BTW), prove that.
But the way you interleave apologia for Hitler in all that is sinister. It's not that we should condemn him and the Nazis less, as you wish, but that we ought to condemn parties like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton more. It's not to displace all moral culpability onto international bankers or some other party, as you wish, but to recognize that we all bear responsibility to cleave to honor and moral rectitude rather than succumb to mindless terror. Even if all we can individually do is to speak up, we all must. The answer to moral depravity is not to call, "Everybody does it, so it's OK," the way you're doing here and the way, say, the NSA's defenders have, but to denounce and oppose it vehemently everywhere. Excusing it makes you an accessory to the crime.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:34PM
"Everybody does it, so it's OK," the way you're doing here and the way, say, the NSA's defenders have, but to denounce and oppose it vehemently everywhere. Excusing it makes you an accessory to the crime.
Hear, hear.
Or the common refrain "hey, your country is doing it, too; you can't criticize us for doing it." To which I often say, "I wish my country wasn't doing it either."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 12 2016, @09:46PM
Or even worse. "You are committing war crimes too."
No, I am not committing any war crimes. And I have been voting against the establishment in my country that has been for the past 2 administrations.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:50PM
And indeed, painting Hitler and the Nazis as cartoonishly inhuman monsters is a good way to fail to notice when other people try to do what they did.
By all appearances:
- Hitler was a very bitter paranoid drug addict, angry about the loss in WW I and his completely failed career as an artist, who was on a mission to Make Germany Great Again.
- Goebbels was a flat-out sociopath, out for what was best for Goebbels, not for anyone else, and hitched himself to Hitler because that seemed to be profitable. But he also seems to have had a homicidal-suicidal streak along the same lines as Reverend Jim Jones of the People's Temple.
- The early Nazis (the S.A. in particular) were bullies who wanted a chance to beat people up without consequences. Those kinds of people are never hard to find, anywhere.
- The professional officers in the German military (Rommel, Paulus, etc) were mostly following their orders, but do not seem to have been fans of Hitler. The feeling was mutual. But of course, they followed Hitler's orders, in part to try to save their own necks.
- The early part of the war was fought by the established German army, and that again was mostly professional soldiers following orders.
- The later part of the war was fought mostly by conscripts. Those guys mostly just wanted to somehow get through alive.
- The real fanatics were the S.S., who did in fact want to kill as many Jews as they could get their hands on. Some of them, of course, were just the sort of bullies that had joined the S.A. earlier.
They weren't nuts (at least, at first). They were evil bastards who made it legal to be an evil bastard and illegal to not be an evil bastard. There's a difference.
As to what to do about Nazis and Nazi-like people, at the very least, you refuse to cooperate [businessinsider.com] (that guy was killed, in part because he refused to salute Hitler).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:09PM
As to what to do about Nazis and Nazi-like people, at the very least, you refuse to cooperate (that guy was killed, in part because he refused to salute Hitler).
Do you have a link to an actual page about that guy?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:34PM
Read all about August Landmesser [csmonitor.com], the man in that photograph.
I actually had it somewhat wrong: He wasn't killed for it. However, the Jewish woman who he was trying to marry died in a concentration camp, and he was drafted and MIA.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:24PM
The list you laid out is important, because it reconnects the roots of Nazism to its banal, reasonable origins. But I would reiterate that sociopathy was not unique to the German High Command, and in fact obtains in American government to an alarming degree today. Nothing structural remains between the everyday of American society now, and the pathological path that was Nazi Germany then.
There are no massive protests against the NSA on the streets of America today. Nobody is decrying the massive gap between exit polls and reported vote tallies in the 2016 Presidential primary races.
I wish Soylentils and everyone else would read and process what you're writing, because it's important. We're skittering about on the surface of a perception bubble that's about to burst.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:43PM
Not entirely true. There are two differences that matter quite a bit:
1. Americans for the most part have enough to eat. The Germans during the rise of the Nazis didn't. That made the Germans more susceptible to the more despicable aspects of Hitler's rhetoric, because hungry people can't think straight (I know, I've gone hungry for financial reasons before).
2. The opposition is much more organized and unified. Hitler only got about 35% of the vote when elected into power, and only ended up in charge because the remaining 65% was fractured among 5 other parties. By contrast, there's typically only 1 opposition party in the US government, so they're much more able to act as a unified force to stop someone with that much of a fringe idea.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @11:40PM
Hitler only got about 35% of the vote
Yup. 37.27 percent.
Note also that over a quarter million voted None Of The Above or had their ballots rejected.
Hitler [...] ended up in charge because the remaining 65% was fractured among 5 other parties
Actually, the number of parties in the German election in July 1932 was **61**. [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:29PM
delousing their clothes with Zyklon-B
while they were still wearing them
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 12 2016, @09:41PM
You are just insane. I am not sure if anything in your post is true aside from, "history lies", which everyone with half a brain already knows.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by shanen on Thursday May 12 2016, @07:04AM
I have concluded that we were not really experimenting when we dropped the bombs. From our New Mexico test we knew it was a big bad thing. Mostly we wanted to send a very clear message to everyone, but especially to the Soviet Union.
My belief is that if we had really wanted to end the war ASAP, then we would have dropped the first one on Mount Fuji, and the second one would have been the first and probably only city. No one in Hiroshima could figure out what had happened. There was only one physicist close enough to the city to see it, know what it was, and survive. If we had hit Fuji first, then ALL the physicists in Tokyo would have known EXACTLY what it was, and the second bomb would have made it absolutely clear that it wasn't a one-off.
Second disclaimer: I live in Japan now. While I think my views are consistent, they have evolved somewhat over the years since I walked through the Enola Gay during its brief exhibition in the Smithsonian.
--
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2) and your negative mods only make me stronger!
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:22AM
My belief is that if we had really wanted to end the war ASAP, then we would have dropped the first one on Mount Fuji
So, you're a Scientologist? Droping H-Bombs in volcanoes is the first step to releasing Thetan souls.
I walked through the Enola Gay
The Scientologists believe Emperor Xenu dropped the Thetans and bombs from space ships that resembled C-130s. Don't get any bright ideas, I'm on to your self fulfilling prophesy crap. The Missionaria Protectiva can't save you, witch.
Checkmate, Bene Gesserits.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:16PM
It's a good thing we didn't do what you recommend. Dropping the first one on a city obviously did not end the war. It took a second city being bombed to end the war.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:07PM
Your claim that we needed to drop a second bomb to get them to surrender seems contrived. We dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945; we dropped the second one on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. That is a mere three days between those bombings. Shouldn't we have given them just a little bit more time to collect evidence of the first bomb's destructive power and contemplate the consequences of continuing the war before we let go with the second salvo? I'm all for punching them a second time if they still obstinately refuse to surrender, but I also think it would not have been unreasonable to give them just a bit more time to think it over.
(Score: 1) by shanen on Friday May 13 2016, @01:46AM
You're feeding a mindless troll, but I'll add a bit more data to the topic. I should look up the details, but if someone wants to take the time, more power to them...
We only had two bombs ready at that time. At the current rate of production, it was going to take a month or two before the next bomb would be ready, but after that we would have been able to produce them at the rate of about one per month.
There actually was a legitimate military reason to hit Hiroshima. It was the headquarters of one of the army divisions that would have been tasked with defending Honshu from invasion. The military argument for hitting Nagasaki was much weaker. By that stage of the war Japan just didn't have many significant military targets left. Still lots of little military targets, but nothing that really needed an atomic bomb. Most of the targets had to be nonmilitary.
However my main point is that much of the delay until the 15th in surrendering was because the Japanese couldn't figure out what had happened for about a week. A demonstration on Mount Fuji plus a strike on Hiroshima would have made it absolutely clear that we had nuclear bombs. I think that would have pushed the broadcast forward, and it is quite possible that the proximate and implicit threat to Tokyo would have forced an even faster reaction.
Now if the troll wasn't so mindless, he would have noted the actual ethical problem of my suggestion. Depending on which way the wind was blowing, it is quite possible that the radioactive fallout from a blast on Fuji might well have killed more people and more gruesomely.
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2016, @01:43AM
Because not dropping the bombs would have opened the scenario to executing Operation Downfall and tearing Japan in two similar to what happened to Germany.
It wasn't a good thing because of the casualties, but there could've been more if the American and Russian invasions were allowed to happen.
(Score: 1) by shanen on Saturday May 14 2016, @12:46PM
Well, I certainly understand why you are AC, but have you considered studying English to improve your ability to read? There's nothing morally wrong with your functional illiteracy.
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:26PM
How Japan and the U.S. Remember World War II
"The Japanese ignore everything before Hiroshima and the Americans ignore everything after Nagasaki."
The headline and quote don't really mesh unless you replace "World War II" with "history." Unless you really mean that the U.S. remembers the whole war except the last 6 days?
I think I can live with forgetting 6 days, or ~0.28% of the war's duration.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday May 13 2016, @02:51AM
There were nothing on Google news main page on May 8th; Google run mother's day picture.
On May 9th there were evil Putin news; that's it.
There were nothing in our little community either. Shame on us. It is said that when people forget the last war, the new one starts and they deserve it.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.