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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)

#81

Post by csomar »

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.

As someone coming from a region that suffered lots of US interference: The US is the world’s last hope to have full peace, open trade and modern value/societies.

Woman did not have rights in most of the world because they wanted to. But because the US pressured them to.

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

#82

Post by unishark »

someperson wrote: post #26
Ma8ee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> I don't disagree that the values of the United States have always been an aspiration rather than actual reality.

The US is a constitutional democracy that was created in a world of kingdoms. It has the oldest constitution, a code of laws that grants its citizens rights which the government is prohibited from violating. And while the UK may be considered as an (perhaps only) older running democracy, it had a king, where the US replaced this role with the invention of a popularly-elected president. Sure it's not so special anymore, since everyone has democracy and presidents these days. But it most certainly was not always the case, especially back when the US was stumbling at times living up to its ideals. I am old enough to remember a world where the most common form of govt was still a dictatorship, not democracy, and there were despicable authoritarian regimes on almost every continent. US history is certainly not all positive, but the positives are there. A constitution and popular elections are not ideals, they are results. People who have positive opinions of this country throughout history were not as blind and irrational as these dismissive posts think.

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

#83

Post by thefounder »

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…

Let's see if the history turns around and another state(i.e China) saves millions of lives in a potential invasion of the USA

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

#84

Post by Hokusai »

slightwinder wrote: post #59
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.

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

Tokyo had at the time a population of 1.1 million and 90,000 to 100,000 dead on the bombing of March 10th 1945.

Hiroshima had at the time a population of 255,000 and 66,000 dead caused by the atomic bomb.

You are right. It would have been way worse if the USA has attacked a more populated area. The situations is no less horrific because it.

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

#85

Post by thefounder »

Razengan wrote: post #30
MangoCoffee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What do China and Korea ""deserve"" for what they did to their own citizens? What does China """deserve""" for what they’re doing to Hong Kong and Uyghurs right now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests You will not run out of digging up other stuff like that.

[flagged]

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

#87

Post by someperson »

hhua_ wrote: post #40

One less known fact is that one of the advisors to US army back in WWII is Dr Liang Sicheng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Sicheng . He is the father of modern Chinese architecture. He recommended that the Americans military authorities spare the ancient Japanese cities of Kyoto and Nara. He married with another legend Lin Huiyin, whose niece Maya Lin later designed Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. ht…

The fact this claim has been at the top of this Hacker News thread for hours piqued my interest. So I did some research.

I read the New York Times "Overlooked" obituary for Dr Liang Sicheng but found no reference to this event. [1]. The closest thing I could find was [2] which writes the following (and links to a currently-unavailable article hosted on the government of China mouthpiece China Daily):

> During World War II, as Japan occupied Beijing and most of coastal China, Liang Sicheng was working in Sichuan. According to Luo Zhewen, a former student who frequently assisted Liang Sicheng in his research, Liang heard that the Allied forces were planning on bombing Japan and Japanese-controlled areas in China. Liang began drawing up a map of the major Chinese cities occupied by Japan as well as Japan’s former capitals, Nara and Kyoto to help American military planners avoid destroying important historic sites and buildings. Liang then traveled to Chongqing, the wartime capital of the Republic of China, and passed the maps to the US Army liaison stationed there.

The NYT article suggests Dr. Liang Sicheng was later in life sent to re-education as a counterrevolutionary of Maoist China, but that he has had his reputation revived by the CCP which turn him into a folk hero. I don't doubt that he passed on maps and messages to the US Army in the hope of sparing culturally important sites from bombing, but without further evidence the claim that he was an advisor to the US military that convinced them to spare Kyoto and Nara appears overblown.

I am happy to be convinced if independent historians believe Liang Sicheng had a part to play in the decision, but right now this claim feels like highly-upvoted CCP propaganda.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/obituaries/overlooked-lin...

[2] https://radiichina.com/did-chinese-architect-liang-sicheng-s...

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

#88

Post by somesortofsystm »

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.

Many non-Americans are kept in the dark regarding America's involvement with modern day genocide - for example, its support of 20 million people being starved to death RIGHT NOW in Yemen.

So, its not necessarily the case that just because everyone believes something, it is true...

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

#89

Post by somesortofsystm »

starfallg wrote: post #65
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.

The counterpoint to that is the fact we know about these issues and can talk about them freely. In a country on the opposite side of the spectrum, doing that lands you in secret jail.

ahem Do you remember who Julian Assange is? ahem

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

#90

Post by starfallg »

somesortofsystm wrote: post #89
starfallg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterpoint to that is the fact we know about these issues and can talk about them freely. In a country on the opposite side of the spectrum, doing that lands you in secret jail.

ahem Do you remember who Julian Assange is? ahem

The fact that you can talk about Julian Assange openly is the point.

It doesn't matter what he did was lawful or not, or whether the law itself is right or wrong. In the end, he decided to hole himself up in a foreign embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on some sex charges.

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