Right, maybe you should have some empathy and understand how many people you're insulting when you compare Hiroshima to Auschwitz and Nanking.
I think the biggest legacy was a quarter-to-half billion white people opting out of capitalism and parliamentary democracy for a half century and taking nearly half of Asia with them. And of course the contrasting legacies of British disengagement from India and Africa.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion and I won't disparage you for holding that opinion. The reasons behind those actions were very different and I have no trouble saying the Nazis and Japanese imperial army were evil. I have not problem saying that most likely the A-bombs might've saved more lives than they cost but we will never know that for sure. The end result though of all of those incidences were that tens of thousands of people died. Whether for good or evil and that is a legacy that shouldn't be forgotten.
I think many know this story but it is important to remember. Oppenheimer when he finally saw the A-bomb work his first thought wasn't a note of triumph or hope. His first thought was a quote from Bhagavad Gita, "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds." Even though he had built the bomb and believed in the righteousness of the cause he knew that this weapon would kill many and the world would never be the same after it was used.
It is shocking how many regular American citizens celebrate and defend the atomic bombs on Japan. It should not have happened, period!
Civilians were targeted by us to break Japan. We killed many more civilians with firebombing than we did with the nukes. The war was a horrible horrible war and the line between civilian and military was blurred many years before the bombs were dropped. That said it doesn't change the reality of how we actively targeted and killed civilians with this amazingly powerful weapon.
Your post has nothing to do with Judo's topic and is simply another attempt to attack Japan for its heinous actions that began over 75 years ago and ended when WWII came to a close. Japan is a country that has gone to absurd lengths to limit its own self-defense in the face of continual and excalating threats from China, which seems to believe that it "owns" vast areas of the East and South China Seas hundreds of miles from its coasts and in international waters. China is driving Japan to increase its defense capabilities and expand its relations in the defense sphere with the other nations being threatened by China's actions. Yes, Japan still doesn't completely acknowledge the terrible actions it took in the Pacific Theater against no only China and Korea, but numerous other countries, most colonies and possessions of European nations and the United States at the time, with brutality also aimed at the captured European and American defense forces, as well as the general populations there. If you want to attack Japan for it's actions today regarding the portrayal of its history in China and elsewhere during WWII, why don't you start yet another thread discussing the topic? Judo can correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think that particular subject was what spurred him to start this thread.
Well, there are some historians who believe other European nations had opportunities to stop Hitler before the war. Also have to wonder what would have happened if Japan never attacked (or was provoked to attack) Pearl Harbor because it doesn't seem that Americans were too concerned about what was going on over there.
I don't celebrate the use of the atomic bombs, but I have no problem defending the use of the bombs. After years of war in Europe and in the Pacific it was time for the fighting to come to an end. The bombs ended the war within days. My grandfather was in the navy and stationed on Guam at the time. I don't know if he would have survived the war without the use of the bombs. The U.S. had hundreds of thousands killed in WWII, it's hard for people living today to understand what it was like to live during that time. I feel sorry for the people who suffered because of the bombs, but I blame Japan and its leaders for that suffering, not the United States.
Chill, my post was just a response to another post stating that Japan would probably get more sympathy if they owned up to their history and stop pulling stunts like the Yasukuni visits etc. I'm not attacking Japan's actions in WW2, that happened a long time ago, I'm just critical of Japan's actions today of trying to somehow portray itself as the victim throughout that period. What vast area that's hundreds of miles away is China claiming in East China Sea? Do you mean the Senkaku Islands? That's a bunch of rocks with about 2 square miles in terms of surface area.
Nice try, but it's easy to read between the lines and see where your loyalty lies. I hope you're getting some tangible benefit out of this. Otherswise I don't see why you feel so duty bound to defend that segment of Japan's history and disrupt any discussion that may serve as a reminder for people who didn't know the extent of that country's war crimes. I can't agree with the idea that body count is the only thing that matters. As horrific as the nukes and their aftermath were, they had a purpose. The civilians of Hiroshima didn't die for the sake of a drunken bet over which officer had the sharper sword.
Indeed. They have me on a retainer. They're paying for the river cruise I'm taking from Budapest to Amsterdam next summer. My son was inspired to take the complete Japanese Rosetta Stone course while in high school, paid for by my stipend. He then sleep walked through Japanese as his language major in college. His fondest desire is to go to Japan on vacation. I've been there. That's where they recruited me. It's a secret I've kept buried for many years, pulled from me, despite fighting against it, by the indisputable logic displayed by the China Defenders in this thread. (I know this should be in the Classified Section of the BBS, but I was recently made the broker for the imminent sale of the Congress Avenue Bridge across Lady Bird Lake. Interested parties can contact me through the board)
Actually I think that is a fair topic of discussion as Japan's postwar history and also how the Japanese remember the war is important. The PRC's behavior in many ways is also a legacy of the war when you consider that China had the most casualties of any country in the war except for the USSR and also had about 2/3rds of the country occupied. In many ways the aggressive stances of both the PRC and even in Putin's Russia come from lingering fear that the only way to protect the motherland is through aggressive control of region. There is certainly an argument that that strategy is no longer needed and causes more problems than it might solve but there still is a cultural memory of when they were invaded and humiliated by smaller neighbors.
It's easy to say the ends justifies the means but as I said earlier this is part of the terrible calculus of war. While the firebombings of Dresden, Tokyo and the A-bombs might've been necessary they were very brutal acts that ended the most brutal war in human history.
This simply isn't true and it's quite clear that the A-bomb wasn't dropped to save American lives at all but rather to test it and impress Russia. Peter Jennings skillfully exposes the myth of saving American lives in that video I posted.
I agree there is plenty of evidence that shows the dropping of the A-bombs was to send a message to the Russians but we can't ignore how many lives were lost in the invasion of the Okinawa and that pretty much everyone the US military figured that the invasion of the home islands would be just as bloody or worse. The US could've kept on firebombing to try to force Japan to surrender but once they had the bomb there was a very strong desire to end the war in a swift and decisive move. In the end I don't think there is one singular reason to dropping the A-bombs and it is also complete speculation whether the A-bombs would've saved more lives than was lost. I'm actually not arguing whether the A-bombs were justified but am making a broader point that wars are always brutal and the A-bombs were the final act of brutality that ended the most brutal war ever While Hiroshima might been done for good reasons the amount of death and suffering from it for those who suffered was really no different than the death in suffering in many instances.
If you watch that documentary - which is amazing by the way - it really shows how little the U.S. military was with American lives and how it was actually a political decision. The U.S. was actually afraid of the Soviet Union getting more territory or share and wanted to end the war before then if they could. They even gave the order to drop the bomb BEFORE the Potsdam declaration was made.
Saving American lives was a part of the calculus. It wasn't everything. I watched the same video you did and I was able to gather that.
