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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)

#51

Post by quietbritishjim »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #21
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…

[flagged]

A country, as a whole, is not an individual person and therefore can't "deserve" anything. What you're describing are acts by citizens of Imperial Japan (some decisions made high up or at the top, some made by individual units or soldiers) and killing of other people in the country. Some people who were responsible for atrocities were no doubt affected (either personally killed or people they loved were killed which of course would impact them emotionally) but for the most part you're talking about killing people who had no influence whatsoever on use of weapons in China or any other atrocity. Those people, without almost no exception whatsoever, had no say on what their citizenship was.

The technical term for what you're describing is "collective punishment". Personally, I see it as a logical fallacy: failure to see that a country is not a single collective consciousness.

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

#52

Post by rimliu »

jessaustin wrote: post #24
someperson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read it's very likely they'll be rolling out vaccines with ~50% effectiveness this year (and deploying it in high volumes in 2021). The vaccine doesn't have to be perfect. As long as it's proven safe, confers some level of protection and is deployed in badly affected areas (including nursing homes) it will help drop the death numbers and we'll reach herd immunity faster. Operation Warp Speed has meant…

Everything I've heard/read on the vaccine topic has pegged my personal wishful thinking meter. We don't currently have a vaccine for any virus similar to SARS-CoV-2. The nearest thing is the annual flu vaccine, and while they are sometimes as much as 60% effective they're normally more like 40% effective. (Some people say that SARS-CoV-2 won't mutate as much as influenza, but the only reason to believe it won't mutat…

we currently have dozens of vacine candidates for SARS-CoV-2 not just "something similar".

The reason to believe it won't mutate much is exactly in the difference of SARS-CoV-2 from influenza: coronaviruses mutate at much slover rate.

I can add some wishful thinking parts though: coronaviruses usually mutate to get less severe, and the threshold for the herd immunity may be way lower than the 60% or 70% (cross-imunity, non-hemogenity, etc.).

Not sure what it the point in comparing it to the influenza, because a) that's a very different virus b) there are several different strains of the flu floating around so is is a guessing game.

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

#53

Post by handedness »

khuey wrote: post #19
someperson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's off-topic, but (as a non-American) I personally believe Trump will win re-election. Steve Bannon (the architect of Trump's 2016 election win) has said Trump will win re-election if the Chinese Communist Party is the central issue of the election (which it increasingly is). Come November they'll likely be multiple vaccine candidates in late-stage trials, and the compelling argument can be made saying the botched…

I'm not sure you understand how bad the coronavirus situation is here. People's kids aren't going to be able to go to school in person this fall. Short of the outbreak of WW3 I can't imagine the pandemic not being the top issue.

SARS-CoV-2 and the CPC/CCP can't be decoupled.

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

#54

Post by redis_mlc »

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…

A Japanese sub also shelled San Diego, and balloons were launched into the West coast with either flares to start forest fires, or plague.

Pearl Harbor was surveilled by a Japanese officer attached to the Japanese Embassy from restaurants above the base.

The endgame for both Germany and Japan was to invade the USA.

Having studied WW2 at length, I don't see an alternative to the Japanese internment at the time.

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

#55

Post by Ma8ee »

barrenko wrote: post #46
Ma8ee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can think of several west-European countries that are better models (even though none are completely without faults).

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

#56

Post by rorykoehler »

barrenko wrote: post #46
Ma8ee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They’re just misinformed. Too much Hollywood propaganda not enough reality.

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

#57

Post by mlindner »

Ma8ee wrote: post #22
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…

You write like there are dangers that the US might forget or lose their values, like innocent until proven guilty or that everybody is created equal. The US has never lived up to those. Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (I hope no one forgot about that one) or all the tragic events that ignited the BLM movement are just current examples.

The fact that there have been unfortunate exceptions is proof that they are actually followed. Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp notably was done in secrecy so as to prevent the general populace from objecting. What's needed to fix that case is more transparency and I don't take that as an example of values being forgotten.

> all the tragic events that ignited the BLM movement are just current examples.

A tiny minority of people caused the incidents that ignited the BLM movement. They're not widely held opinions, but happen to be rife in the police force. It's a bad culture in the police that needs to be cleaned out, not that it's in the US culture itself.

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

#58

Post by gadders »

khuey wrote: post #19
someperson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's off-topic, but (as a non-American) I personally believe Trump will win re-election. Steve Bannon (the architect of Trump's 2016 election win) has said Trump will win re-election if the Chinese Communist Party is the central issue of the election (which it increasingly is). Come November they'll likely be multiple vaccine candidates in late-stage trials, and the compelling argument can be made saying the botched…

I'm not sure you understand how bad the coronavirus situation is here. People's kids aren't going to be able to go to school in person this fall. Short of the outbreak of WW3 I can't imagine the pandemic not being the top issue.

That's mostly due to teaching unions. The risk to children from Corona virus is vanishingly small.

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/what-have-been-the-fatal-ris...

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

#59

Post by slightwinder »

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…

> until one realizes that the atomic bomb murdered more civilians that a conventional attack would have killed

The conventional bombings on Tokyo killed more people than any atomic bomb.

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

#60

Post by brabel »

mardifoufs wrote: post #48
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

You should definitely try to understand that. Perhaps if the bombs had been targeted at LA or NY by Germans (who would certainly be as correct as you are that doing that would've saved millions of lives in a potential invasion of the USA by Germany once it was done in Europe) it would be easier for you to understand that the potential for a future, prolongued military battle in no way can be used as a justification for immediately killing hundreds of thousands of civillians.

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