Much is made at this time every year about the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by those who seem to think that the Japanese were somehow innocent victims of American racism and imperialism. To them, I offer this simple list.
Rape of Nanking
Unit 731
Bataan Death March
Massacre of Civilians on Wake Island
Comfort Women
Alexandra Hospital
The Japanese conquered much of Asia under the guise of uniting the continent against the West. Those that were conquered were considered and treated as chattel by the Japanese. Japan did not sign the 1929 Geneva Convention although it promised to abide by it. Which, of course it didn’t.
They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
Even at that they refused to surrender, even after the United States dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki on August 9. It wasn’t until August 14 that Japan agreed to unconditional surrender.
You seem to find it important to remind us what shits the Japs were.
As long as people furnish other people guns (or rocks, sticks and bones) and tell people to discharge them at others because it furthers the interest of any geo-politically defined area and they do what they are told, we’re all shits!
The only real crime in war is killing innocents. Our hands are as bloody as anyone’s.
This is a human problem. There are lessons here EVERYONE needs to learn without bitching about who drew first blood. That’s what needs to be looked at, not the color of a people’s skin or their philosophy.
I don’t see this rhetoric in the form of “reminders” as contributing to anything except bile.
But look at me; I’m pushing back!
How do we NOT play this game? That’s the question that deserves the time to examine.
Because it’s important to remember what caused the war and who was to blame. Sorry if that disturbs you, I hope you feel better.
Well done! and the bombs saved an estimated 1,000,000 American servicemen’s lives!
Speaking as someone who’s Grandfather fought the Japanese in Burma and who wifes Grandfather was taken prisoner at the fall of Singapore, I know a little bit about this. I am not sure how wiping out a civilian city is justified due to the actions of the military dictatorship who ruled over them. The crimes you mentioned, let alone many others which haven’t been brought up, should be placed at the feet of the people who run Japan and the officers and soldiers who committed the war crimes. The Japanese people were the victims of the war, as much as anyone, as they paid the price of their loved ones never returning as well as the the near constant bombing from mid 1944 onwards. I have had the honour in caring for many veterens of the Pacific campaign. If these men find it in themselves to forgive the Japanese people the crimes committed by their goverment and move forward in friendship, who am I to naysay them. Wiping out a city or two may have made might have made strategic sense, but it is still outright slaughter. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I still don’t think civilians are legitime targets in war. Just a different opinion folks.
During war, there are no “civilian” cities. HIroshima and Nagasaki were both industrial cities that contributed to the war effort. Just as Pearl Harbor was attackable because it had Army, Navy, and Marine facilities. In that case the Japanese did not restrict their attacks to those bases. Nor were cities in Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and Germany immune to attacks. Sorry Pete, your Japanese people as victims theory doesn’t fly. Just as the Germans and Italians weren’t victims either. You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do.
I am not sure how you could possibly be aware of how much I know or don’t know about this. You haven’t got cameras following me, have you? I think it is right to honour the courage of the marines and soldiers that went ashore in Guam, Pelilu. Iwo, Okinowa etc. as well as the battles at Kohima, Kokoda and the many others. But to celebrate the total destruction of a city, even if it helped to end the war, is I think too much. That is some interesting moral compass you have there. Like I said, if the people who were actually there can learn to move on and recognise the terrible waste, why can’t we.
You continue to talk about the Japanese as if they were the victims of some crime and that we should seek their forgiveness. Are you forgetting who was the aggressor nation in the Pacific?
Wars are won by killing the innocent. Period. I don’t care whose finger is on the trigger. That’s how Homo-Sapiens does it these days. Please let me know as soon as that changes, meanwhile, I really DO appreciate, TOTWTYTR that you missed the Civil War and needed something to hold on to for a few more generations!
But, seriously, you cling to your position so strongly — and what you have going here sounds so much like predjudice — no matter how much you’d say “Some of my best friends are of the Japanese persuasion.” I’d have a hard time believing you and couldn’t imagine your Japanese patients NOT experiencing some sort of blowback from your bile.
I have no doubts about your professionalism, but I have to call into question your presentation. In fact, I’m hoping you’re just a Blowhard! What you say here doesn’t communicate that you’re evenly invested in the well-being of your patients, regardless of race, creed or color.
Actually Russ, your opinion of me is valuable because it reinforces my belief in the validity of my positions. I don’t know any Japanese, so none are my best friends. If it helps, some of my best cars and trucks are Japanese. Still, my position has nothing to do with the Japan of today. Or the Germany of today for that matter. Wars are won in the western world pretty much the same way that they always have been. Destroy the enemy’s ability to make war as well as their will to make war. Japan was incredibly well treated by the US after the war, as was Germany. The US spent huge amounts of money to rebuild both nations and install democratic governments. If the US was the racist nation you seem to think it is, then we would have helped the Germans (because they are like us) and left the yellow devils to rot in hell. Only we didn’t.
Beating a dead horse but I couldn’t let slide your comment that “If the US was the racist nation you seem to think it is, ”
I never once said or intimated that. My comments were solely about war, humans and shared guilt. WE (all of us) have not outgrown it.