Nuclear shadow, NagasakiLDarrell t1_j95ro0s wrote
Maybe Japan shouldn’t have attacked the US in the first place. BTW what about the millions Japan killed in China and Korea? Together Japan, Germany and Italy were responsible for the deaths of between 50 and 60 million people. Hard to feel sorry for them.
vincentx99 t1_j99ivpt wrote
It's actually very easy to feel sorry for the innocent people that had to die in this bombing, Heroshima, and the Tokyo fire bombings.
Most shouldn't have to try.
Of course that doesnt detract from the genocides Japan committed in China.
However, what makes the Nuclear Bomb unique, is that for the first time we are capable of nearly instantaneously killing all of humanity, without much effort at all.
DrewbySnacks t1_j9626qo wrote
Right, because all of the civilians killed in that blast definitely had control over the actions of their government /s
LDarrell t1_j9659y5 wrote
And what about all the innocent civilians killed by the Japanese in the various countries the Japanese caused all the death and destruction? Killed by the Japanese by the millions.
RemRose t1_j96jx3h wrote
So the answer to people killing millions of innocent people is to kill millions more? Yeah good thing you aren’t in any sort of position of power huh? Every country has killed innocents in mass numbers so it would be no problem if we just burned your children for those crimes right? With that thought process you are part of those sorts of problems and it would be beneficial if you never had a say in anything ever.
TinKicker t1_j96ovj5 wrote
The answer to the killing of millions of people? No.
The way to stop the continued killing of millions of people? History would indicate, yes.
RemRose t1_j96pva2 wrote
Oh yes history would in fact indicate that because if you try to remove a entire island out of existence then absolutely yes they stop their shit. However if i want my baby mother to stop being controlling about my child i should just kill her, if i want my dog to behave i should just beat it to a inch of its life so it cant misbehave anymore if i want the bullying in school to stop i should just shoot it up. The point is yes it worked. Was that necessary and should we just have the thought process of well they killed people too so its cool. No. All of this aside am I suffering from guilt and losing sleep over this no absolutely not but to defend the slaughtering of a race cuz they did bad stuff too is really not how your brain should work.
tkrr t1_j975j0x wrote
You do not understand the assignment. Nor do you seem to understand war or authoritarianism.
The point was not to eradicate the Japanese people. That was the kind of shit the Axis powers were doing. Allied forces had endured a bloodbath in Okinawa and had every reason to believe it would be much, much worse in the Japanese home islands. Make whatever argument you wish in hindsight, but remember that the Allies didn’t have that information (the Cold War, whatever was going on in the Japanese commanders’ or Stalin’s head, any of it) in front of them. Diplomacy wasn’t going to work, as the Japanese kept trying to negotiate conditional surrender even though they had no leverage.
The Allies wanted the war over and the ones responsible punished. That was it. That was their motive. Given that Churchill and Stalin in particular didn’t like or trust each other, Operation Unthinkable had the potential to become a reality the longer the war continued. The bombs were the least bad option on the table.
RemRose t1_j980bnw wrote
Also i suppose one more thing as someone who has grown up in a military family but not served in any war myself i would absolutely say no i do not understand war, not from a personal level, however i do understand that the slaughtering of millions of innocents even if thats “ what needs” to be done is not something that people should have the mind set of “well serves them right”
tkrr t1_j9b0hxw wrote
Ok Edith
Honestly, the fact that you even mentioned sanctions upthread shows you’re either being obtuse or actively misrepresenting the facts. The time for sanctions ended December 6, 1941. The blood of the Japanese people that died was on the hands of the Japanese government from that point on.
The hidden assumptions I mentioned above that I see include 1) that the US was the aggressor in the Pacific war (no one except the historically ignorant seriously believes this) and 2) that entirely destroying the Japanese people was a desired outcome (it wasn’t, at least not to anyone with actual command authority). I don’t know if that’s ignorance or malice on your part, but either way, that makes you a de facto Axis apologist, which is totally indefensible.
RemRose t1_j97zcca wrote
That’s historically wrong but i did enjoy that reading. The scientists that developed the bombs had even advised to not use them to our government who was very adamant to just using them regardless because they felt it would end things. (Which it did) That being said the argument of well we had to cuz the fear of the unknown is also easily passed on simply because if we look slightly into the future we had this thing with russia you know the cold war where both parties could nuke each other anytime and our thought was well if thats gonna happen we have to do it first. Yet that didnt happen even with spys and intel neither party knew every single plan at all times so with that argument of “well we just didnt know what might happen so we bombed them” doesnt hold up cuz then we shoulda just did the same cuz well we dont know. Invasion keeps being brought up like thats even valid. If i can kill millions of “bad guys” and lose nobody on my side why would i send my people to die when thats my option. Regardless we bombed the shit out of people that had nothing to do with the war and no matter how you spin that its not good. War is not good, necessary at times but not good.
tkrr t1_j986om2 wrote
There are some fascinating assumptions hidden in your statement, but I can’t be bothered to unpack them.
LDarrell t1_j96l3ia wrote
No the answer to stop the war. Would it have been better to invade the island of Japan and kill maybe a million more military on both sides and main land Japanese civilians?
TinKicker t1_j99vvme wrote
The ongoing conventional bombing of Japan was FAR more destructive (and lethal) than the atomic bombing. People always seem to forget that.
By mid-1945, the US was running out of targets to destroy. Yet the Japanese were showing absolutely zero indication of entering into surrender negotiations. (We were reading their encoded messages. We knew their plans!)
The civilian populations were being trained in the manufacturing and use of homemade weapons to defend the home islands. The Japanese Imperial Army informed the Emperor that it would only require 20 million civilian deaths to repulse an American land invasion, which they felt they could easily absorb and recover from, while the Americans would surely lose their stomach for the war afterwards. (Just as they assumed the Americans would lose their stomachs for war after the attack on Pearl Harbor)
The cities targeted for nuclear weapons were chosen solely because they were ones of only a few cities that had not already been utterly destroyed by conventional bombing, or recognized as having historical/religious significance.
(Yep, that’s right. The US spared some Japanese cities specifically because they had historical or religious importance to the Japanese. I cannot think of another nation in history that has spared an enemy’s cities, in a time of total war, specifically because those cities were precious to the enemy.)
LDarrell t1_j99x2ou wrote
You are not addressing the death and destruction that an invasion of the Japanese main island would have caused. The estimate is that a million death would have occurred had there been an invasion and most of those deaths would have been Japanese civilians caught in the middle of all the fighting.
After the Hiroshima bomb the Japanese military was not interested in surrendering. After the Nagasaki bomb, they were still not interested in surrendering and it was only the intervention of the Emperor that caused the Japanese Military to lay down their arms. An invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been a blood bath on all sides.
Again, please do not dismiss the millions of people (military and especially civilians) killed either directly or indirectly by the war started by Japan and its allies.
TinKicker t1_j99xng0 wrote
Ummm….I think you have me confused with someone who disagrees with you.
(And the one million casualties is what the US calculated it would cost the American military in an invasion of the Japanese home islands. The Japanese estimated it would cost 20 million of its own civilian population in defending against such an invasion…a cost they were actively preparing to absorb.)
LDarrell t1_j99y1yj wrote
I apologize if I have misunderstood you
RemRose t1_j96m2q0 wrote
No but stopping the war has to be agreed upon by both parties and while the majority of the civilians of japan no longer supported the war effort their government would not sign any form of treaty to end this. Nuking them was a gross extension of power not just once but twice. The proper answer would have been to sanction the fuck out of a island that had burned most bridges to its surrounding neighbors but our answer to the problem was unfortunately to try to cause the most death we could to a bunch of people not involved in a way shape or form because we wanted to see a big boom. So the idea that oh well they deserved it because they killed people too is a very harmful thought process in general.
DrewbySnacks t1_j968k77 wrote
That’s some weak ass whataboutism
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