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A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

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Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#41

Post by scatters »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #32
freeopinion wrote: post #14

I grew up with a cold war era US-centric understanding of why Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to happen. I get those arguments, Later I was taught a very different, also compelling, rationale for Nagazaki from a Japanese perspective. I get that argument, too. I'm USian, so of course I like any argument that puts the US on the right side of history. But as that moment gets more and more into the past, and we lose the conte…

I, like you, learned all the rationalizations that got to be written in history by the victor. The point at which most of it started to unravel for me was when I learned that the United States had a whole spate of atomic bombs they were scheduling to drop if Imperial Japan didn't surrender. We think of it as two because that's all the further we got, but if things had gone a little differently it would have been six,…

Unprecedented? The firebombing of Tokyo (and before that Dresden) witnessed similar levels of destruction and casualties.

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#42

Post by loriverkutya »

oh_sigh wrote: post #38
crooked-v wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> literally every Japanese person In this case, "literally every" means exactly three people, two of whom were first-generation immigrants without citizen. I do hope you understand how that's not a sufficient basis to make conclusions about 120,000 people.

There isn't a shortage of bytes for storing HN comments - you can go ahead and quote the full phrase of "literally every Japanese person the pilot ran across ". Would you have supported the internment if 110,000 of those 120,000 people supported Japan in their war against the USA?

The more important question is, why you seems to be supporting putting 120,000 people to camps based on the fact, that 3 people helped the pilot.

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#43

Post by mjevans »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #32
freeopinion wrote: post #14

I grew up with a cold war era US-centric understanding of why Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to happen. I get those arguments, Later I was taught a very different, also compelling, rationale for Nagazaki from a Japanese perspective. I get that argument, too. I'm USian, so of course I like any argument that puts the US on the right side of history. But as that moment gets more and more into the past, and we lose the conte…

I, like you, learned all the rationalizations that got to be written in history by the victor. The point at which most of it started to unravel for me was when I learned that the United States had a whole spate of atomic bombs they were scheduling to drop if Imperial Japan didn't surrender. We think of it as two because that's all the further we got, but if things had gone a little differently it would have been six,…

These acts of destruction should be compared to the full context of the historic moment and not observed in isolation. At the time the US had been dragged in to the war by a surprise bombing that, while targeted at a military installation, was not backed by any declaration of hostilities. The ensuing battles from island to island were also brutal and from every documentary I've ever seen and every historical account I've ever read painted a very clear picture: that conventional war would not end without far higher casualties on both sides and a protracted land battle with guerilla warfare and atrocities committed by all sides.

In that context an overwhelming and undeniable show of force arguably lead to less death on the obvious side, but also of those who would have been consumed on the side that surrendered as well. Consideration of the 'lessons learned' from (then, possibly either, 'the great war' or WWI) also required the consideration of recovery after the war.

My supposition is that for Japan the outcome is probably within the best likely range of variations. Cultural identity intact; culture nudged towards an easy, slow, movement towards global integration, tolerance and equality; a post-war rebuilding effort to ensure that recovery would stick and general prosperity would persist.

We should be so lucky to reflect upon the post-war lessons and once again apply them within as a New-New Deal. I hope that is how we apply the lessons of recovering from the world wars to recovering from the current 'war' on the pandemic (and all of the forces that cause it to be as bad as it has been; most domestic).

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#44

Post by baddox »

oh_sigh wrote: post #23
someperson wrote: post #3

On this historic day (exactly 75 years to the day since the August 9 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki) we should take a moment to understand more about our shared history. > But he was also behind the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans because, as Mr Stimson put it, "their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese". The internment of Japanese-Americans…

Yeah, the Japanese interment sucks, but I wonder what would have happened if there was no internment. Could US wartime industry on the West coast have operated successfully under constant sabotage? Would it be better for America to lose the war to Japan (or at least reach a deal and let Japan keep all of the Pacific islands and Chinese land holdings) if it meant that the internment didn't happen? It's impossible to f…

The US should have simply interned all citizens regardless of their background to fully guarantee that no citizen could have sabotaged the war effort.

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#45

Post by Hokusai »

I see how hard we are still trying to rationalize such a despicable act as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"We choose not to destroy cultural value" seems a compassion argument until one realizes that the atomic bomb murdered more civilians that a conventional attack would have killed. To try to justify the attack, to talk about the process, the decisions, removes a very important part of the discussion. And that is the consequences on the civil population.

I accept that talking about strategies and politics make sense. But, to remove any human consideration from the discussion only makes us one step closer to repeat the horrific acts of the past.

As we have seen so recently, facts do not change people's minds, but feelings do. To talk about the effects on the population, to talk about the suffering will help people to change their minds about using atomic bombs.

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#46

Post by barrenko »

Ma8ee wrote: post #31
someperson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree that the values of the United States have always been an aspiration rather than actual reality. Thomas Jefferson wrote that "All men are created equal" in 1776 as part of the United States' founding principles, but it took until 1865 for slavery to even be abolished in the United States. He even owned slaves himself and famously bore 6 children with his slave, Sally Hemings. As recently as 155 years…

Of course you should have aspirations! But many people seems to think that the US is this shining light of enlightenment and democracy in the world that, just a little bit, at a few occasions, forgotten they way. But that is just not true. From slavery, Jim Crow, internment camps, McCarthy, Vietnam, killing of “enemy combatants”, etc. You have never been even close to the way.

Trust me, to many non-Americans US remains the sole idea of a free country, whatever happened over there so far.

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#47

Post by barrenko »

GolDDranks wrote: post #27
MangoCoffee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What if you don't believe that Hammurabi kind of thinking? (Especially when it comes to bombing civilians.) Japan had already lost the war.

The bomb, while vicious, probably stopped the war on many more fronts than just in the Pacific.

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#48

Post by mardifoufs »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #32
freeopinion wrote: post #14

I grew up with a cold war era US-centric understanding of why Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to happen. I get those arguments, Later I was taught a very different, also compelling, rationale for Nagazaki from a Japanese perspective. I get that argument, too. I'm USian, so of course I like any argument that puts the US on the right side of history. But as that moment gets more and more into the past, and we lose the conte…

I, like you, learned all the rationalizations that got to be written in history by the victor. The point at which most of it started to unravel for me was when I learned that the United States had a whole spate of atomic bombs they were scheduling to drop if Imperial Japan didn't surrender. We think of it as two because that's all the further we got, but if things had gone a little differently it would have been six,…

That's a pretty absurd take. I mean, of course the bombing wouldn't have stopped if there was no surrender...considering that was the whole point of using nuclear bombs in the first place. I can't understand how 2 nuclear bombs can be considered to be worse than the millions of deaths a land invasion of Japan would have led to. I absolutely understand why the Americans weren't willing to risk a conventional land war in Japan, considering the insanely bitter Japanese resistance in Okinawa.

Everything indicated that Japan and it's civilian population was willing to fight off an invasion at all costs, through the bitter end. The Americans witnessed that absolute suicidal fanaticism in every single battle they've had with the Japanese whether they were military or civilians. What's actually "rationalization" is to pretend the Americans didn't try everything to convince the Japanese to capitulate or to push for the disproven theory that Japan was about to surrender anyways. I get that it's hard for some to acknowledge that the US has ever done anything good, but there are already tons of valid reasons to dislike America. This absolutely isn't one of them.

Btw in ww2, history seems to have been written mostly by the losers who pushed for the omnipresent "underdog" narratives that are usually nothing more than outright historical revisionism . The Japanese white washing of their ww2 history or the german generals post war memoirs that started numerous myths about the Werhmacht are proof of that. Ironically, one of those narratives is the tired maxim that history is supposedly written by the winners, which is a pretty convenient way for the losers to make their revisionism more compelling.

Re: A man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb (2015)

#50

Post by redis_mlc »

Hokusai wrote: post #45

I see how hard we are still trying to rationalize such a despicable act as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "We choose not to destroy cultural value" seems a compassion argument until one realizes that the atomic bomb murdered more civilians that a conventional attack would have killed. To try to justify the attack, to talk about the process, the decisions, removes a very important part of the discussion. And t…

> the atomic bomb murdered more civilians that a conventional attack would have killed.

That's false. More Tokyo residents died from incendiary bombing. The alternative to the two nuclear bombs was to use 10,000 bombers with napalm to literally incinerate every village and town in Japan.

Because of the failure of the Treaty of Versailles in WW1 due to no occupation of Germany, in WW2 the only acceptable outcome was occupation and unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan. (An exception was made for Japan to keep the Emperor.)

The Japanese military were end-of-the-world type leaders, same as in Germany, so no negotiated surrender was possible.

And calling the USA murderers after Japan declared war on them is absurd. The Japanese population got off easy compared to their butchery in China, which they still deny (because they have to - there was no honor in their conduct and no excuse.)

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