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1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

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Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#81

Post by TaylorAlexander »

geon wrote: post #72

Can someone parse the title for me? I feel like there might be a couple of garden paths in there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

"1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo" > The 1953 movie "Hiroshima", about the atom bomb, will be screening in Tokyo. The movie had 88,000 extras. (The word 'Phantom' is confusing. According the article, the movie is called a "phantom" movie because it was produced in Japan but was not released in Japan due to a dispute between the publisher and the filmmakers.)

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#82

Post by [deleted] »

judge2020 wrote: post #66
nerdponx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands. So it's not quite a matter of "A-bomb good". Plenty of Americans alive today lived through the Cold War too, and spent years or decades in low-level fear of nuclear war. It's not quite as simple as "nukes good therefore no criticism of nukes in movie". Part of the interest in things like t…

> Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands. Or, at least, less loss of American life. If The United Kingdom had not consented to the bombs and they were shelved, what are the chances the U.S. would've lost e.g. 50,000 and Japan 150,000 before surrender?

[deleted]

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#83

Post by foogazi »

gre wrote: post #25

"The bomb didnt beat Japan, Stalin did" https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...

This article sounds laughably insane to me, not a historian but hear me out anyway

Japan wanted to surrender:

> “But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1.”

Or maybe not ? Which is it ?

> “Japan’s leaders had not seriously considered surrendering prior to that day.”

Japan’s leaders were worried about the divinity of the Emperor. Insane to believe these people inhabited the 20th century at the same time the Nuclear bomb was developed:

> “What if they decided to put the emperor—who was believed to be divine—on trial? What if they got rid of the emperor and changed the form of government entirely?”

They had their own nuclear program:

> Third, the Japanese military understood, at least in a rough way, what nuclear weapons were. Japan had a nuclear weapons program.

The US (not Stalin) was having their way with Japan through the summer of 1945:

> In the summer of 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force carried out one of the most intense campaigns of city destruction in the history of the world. Sixty-eight cities in Japan were attacked and all of them were either partially or completely destroyed.

Japan’s junta didn’t care about it’s citizens:

> Japan’s leaders consistently displayed disinterest in the city bombing that was wrecking their cities.

They should have been Mussolini’d along with the Emperor

AKA the find out stage:

> The Japanese were in a relatively difficult strategic situation. They were nearing the end of a war they were losing. Conditions were bad.

No shit sherlock - they couldn’t even project power beyond their island

But, they had two plans! How had the other plans been going so far ? Doesn’t matter:

You know shot is bad when you have two plans to surrender:

> They had two plans for getting better surrender terms; they had, in other words, two strategic options. The first was diplomatic. Japan had signed a five-year neutrality pact with the Soviets in April of 1941, which would expire in 1946. A group consisting mostly of civilian leaders and led by Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori hoped that Stalin…

OME You must have been truly desperate to come to Stalin for help in 1945

> The second plan was military.. They hoped to use Imperial Army ground troops to inflict high casualties on U.S. forces when they invaded.

Hope is not a strategy

> It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions.

Hmm where had we seen this before

> Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months.

Did they predict that they would lose their Navy and have two atomic bombs dropped on their home land ?

Anyways, we are supposed to believe that based on this timeline,

Aug 6 - Hiroshima Aug 8 - Stalin invades China Aug 9 - Nagasaki Aug 11 - Hirohito surrenders

after getting blown to pieces on their own home islands, with no Navy, Stalin invading China was somehow the final straw.

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#84

Post by mopenstein »

darkclouds wrote: post #74
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because of the saying, the victor writes the history books, Yeah, in all my history books, the bad guys always lost and the good guys always won 100% of the time. What are the odds of that? /s

I know, but its never really taught how much more complicated the situation is that leads to the start of a war. At best it documents events, but history at least in my case never went into the politics. History was more a case of just remembering facts, but teaching might have changed a bit since my time. One example of some of the stuff I heard the imperialist forces were up to in Japan, again I dont know how much…

You get the gist of things in school and can later pursue further education either through more institutional learning or independently seeking out information on you're own. Which you've seemingly have done.

Schools couldn't possibly teach the entirety of human history from every perspective.

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#85

Post by adastra22 »

cubefox wrote: post #69
nerdponx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands. So it's not quite a matter of "A-bomb good". Plenty of Americans alive today lived through the Cold War too, and spent years or decades in low-level fear of nuclear war. It's not quite as simple as "nukes good therefore no criticism of nukes in movie". Part of the interest in things like t…

Yes, but the American views about specifically Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem different from most other countries, or at least from Japan. Outside the US it is quite common to view the bombings as war crimes, while this is uncommon in the US. This probably influenced how "Oppenheimer" handled the matter. (A comparison would perhaps be the difference between a Russian and a Polish film about the Sowjet invasion of Poland…

Maybe because a lot of our grandfathers lived through the war because they didn’t have to invade the home islands of Japan. So the “lives saved” argument is a little more visceral when I wouldn’t even exist today if it weren’t for the atom bomb.

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#86

Post by adastra22 »

judge2020 wrote: post #66
nerdponx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands. So it's not quite a matter of "A-bomb good". Plenty of Americans alive today lived through the Cold War too, and spent years or decades in low-level fear of nuclear war. It's not quite as simple as "nukes good therefore no criticism of nukes in movie". Part of the interest in things like t…

> Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands. Or, at least, less loss of American life. If The United Kingdom had not consented to the bombs and they were shelved, what are the chances the U.S. would've lost e.g. 50,000 and Japan 150,000 before surrender?

The war department was planning for 500,000 American deaths and millions of Japanese.

The Purple Hearts ordered for the invasion of Japan are still being given out today.

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#87

Post by numpad0 »

justinclift wrote: post #32
durkie wrote: post #2

In light of the release of Oppenheimer, people have been talking about, basically, the other side of the development of atomic weapons. John Hersey's "Hiroshima" article from the August 23, 1946 edition of the New Yorker came up as the definitive piece on the immediate impact of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, and it is a gripping read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

Ugh. Clearly the author was paid by the word. That's painfully super stretched out writing. :( Couldn't even make it a 10th of the way through that without losing all interest and moving on.

This is news writing in non-English plus translation. Translated text is always off-putting, especially beyond same language groups. I found the link to the original if anyone needs it, by the way.

1: https://mainichi.jp/articles/20230728/k00/00m/040/198000c

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#88

Post by WalterBright »

darkclouds wrote: post #59
cubefox wrote: post #49

According to a 2015 survey[1], 56% of US Americans say the bombings were justified, while 34% say they were not. This relatively positive (or non-negative) assessment of the A-bombs might have influenced their portrayal in "Oppenheimer", an American production. The Japanese re-screening of "Hiroshima" might be aimed at countering their depiction in "Oppenheimer". [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/08/04…

This is why history is selectively taught at schools. Here in the UK we werent taught anything about Hiroshima but whilst its portrayed as shortening the war, thats using an argument which is hard to prove. It also means that once that step is taken, ie dropping the bomb, there is no going back, the US will have to remain the dominant power for the foreseeable future in order to prevent retaliation. This then undermi…

> I cant believe so many people were willing to go fight for a side

The price of freedom is always blood.

Don't take your freedoms as a given - many have died for them.

Re: 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

#90

Post by Crunchified »

cubefox wrote: post #69
nerdponx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands. So it's not quite a matter of "A-bomb good". Plenty of Americans alive today lived through the Cold War too, and spent years or decades in low-level fear of nuclear war. It's not quite as simple as "nukes good therefore no criticism of nukes in movie". Part of the interest in things like t…

Yes, but the American views about specifically Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem different from most other countries, or at least from Japan. Outside the US it is quite common to view the bombings as war crimes, while this is uncommon in the US. This probably influenced how "Oppenheimer" handled the matter. (A comparison would perhaps be the difference between a Russian and a Polish film about the Sowjet invasion of Poland…

War crimes vs necessary evils appear to be in the eye of each beholder. Heh, consider the U.S.' War Between the States, a/k/a Civil War, a/k/a War of Northern Aggression. Even nearly 160 years after, there's plenty of cultural controversy over who was evil and who was in the right. Even recent government banning of old flag motifs, tearing down of statues, and renaming of domestic military bases hasn't taken the wind out of those old sails.
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