Just a few days ago, it hit me on some new level that we fucking NUCLEAR BOMBED a country. TWICE.
We are literally the only country that has done that. And it’s just sort-of this fun footnote of history. “Fine, maybe that was a whoopsie, but blah blah blah something about land invasion blah blah blah. Our baaaaad!”
In the last days of WW2, the Japanese military were getting children to make sharpened bamboo spears and training those children to attack American soldiers on sight. The elderly and women were told that they should kill themselves before potentially coming under American control.
The Japanese civilian population had been indoctrinated into the belief that western soldiers were absolute monsters who would carry out unspeakable acts on the should they become prisoners.
In the battle of Saipan, hundreds of mothers leapt from cliffs with their babies in their arms to evade capture, men would slit their children’s throats and booby trapped the bodies to injure Americans and then themselves fought relentlessly, before mostly killing themselves or being killed to prevent capture.
The level of blood shed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unprecedented but it did in fact save untold Japanese civilian and American soldiers’ lives.
Crucially, even after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima Japanese High Command still refused to surrender.
What of this assertion do you disagree with?
In the last days of WW2, the Japanese military were getting children to make sharpened bamboo spears and training those children to attack American soldiers on sight. The elderly and women were told that they should kill themselves before potentially coming under American control.
The Japanese civilian population had been indoctrinated into the belief that western soldiers were absolute monsters who would carry out unspeakable acts on them should they become prisoners (ironic considering the IJA/Ns actions during the conflict).
In the battle of Saipan, hundreds of mothers leapt from cliffs with their babies in their arms to evade capture, men would slit their children’s throats and booby trapped the bodies to injure Americans and then themselves fought relentlessly, before mostly killing themselves or being killed to prevent capture.
The level of blood shed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unprecedented but it did in fact save untold Japanese civilian and American soldiers’ lives.
Crucially, even after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima Japanese High Command still refused to surrender.
Have you ever even read any of the history of the proposed plan for the invasion of mainland Japan and the reasoning for opposing the Imperial Japanese Government?
Or Is this your opportunity to virtue signal to people on the internet by implying Americans are murderous pigs and the jApAnEsE dId NoThInG wRoNg?
Americans are murderous pigs and the jApAnEsE dId NoThInG wRoNg?
how about: they are both murderous pigs?
Just like Ukraine bOmBiNg CiViLiAn TaRgEtS in Russia amirite
Both sides bad I is very smart
(Of course America was bad, but not for bombing Imperial Japan)
Arguably fighting against Japan and Germany in WW2 is one of the only times the US used their military in a justifiable way. Fascism had to be stopped.
The Japanese military expected to lose 20 million people in the very first battle of the invasion, and the Americans were considering using poison gas because the casualties of fighting it out in the streets would have been in the millions of troops. People don’t realize how dark it was in 1945, food shipments had all but ceased, Japan was entering a famine; if the war had dragged on through a land invasion it would have been cataclysmic.
Knowing the necessity for the defeat of the Imperial Japanese government, the burgeoning country-wide famine, combined with the inevitable bloodbath of a mainland invasion, the Allies justified the use of nuclear weapons. Nazi Germany and the USSR were also developing their own nuclear weapon systems. A demonstration was deemed necessary.
I personally would not have authorized dropping the bombs on cities. Easy for me to say. But I certainly would have been living the rest of my days in despair at the mindless slaughter and ritual mass-suicide that would’ve ensued during the invasion of mainland Japan.
I don’t envy the choices the Allies had to make while combatting Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan.
as opposed to just embargo the island now that all the axis had fallen?
no, America wanted the show of force
embargo is cowardly
of course, killing civilians is manly
But thats dishonest. It assumes that:
The nuking of Japan was the reason they surrendered
The nukes were gauranteed to make then surrender.
Like would it still have been justified if Japan hadnt surrendered? Then youve committed an atrocity for no reason.
Or what about if it was a different atrocity? Would tourturing a few hundred thousand Japanese to death be justified for the same reason?
Bombing Japan == horrific but better than the alternatives we had.
Though even then there were variables.
When the US nukes Japan, almost everyone in my homeland (China) knows what’s coming next. It maked the end of a terrible age of war, and era of subjugation by inperialists. The japaneese invaders are soon gonna be gone. It was a huge relief.
Then when the news of japan’s surrender hits the news, there was celebrations throughout China. And I’m sure those in Korea and various Southeast Asian countries would also be celebrating that.
It would’ve taken months and possibly years for the US to do a non-nuclear attack of japan, and that would’ve allowed them to continue doing massacres across Asia. Civillians shouldn’t have to die for the crime of their government, but there were not many options, and this was the lesser evil.
Yeah and as we do, we fucked up their transition to a democratic state but in the process created a very unique nation
The Japanese civilian population had been indoctrinated into the belief that western soldiers were absolute monsters who would carry out unspeakable acts on them
We nuked them twice after carrying out a campaign of what we cozily referred to as “moral bombing”, where we targeted civilian populations to kill he families of soldiers.
We are absolute monsters.
I mean Japan and the US have a pretty solid relationship now
Fash support fash.
So prior to the nukes Japan had just lost their entire navy, their air force, and practically all their conquests in Asia where they killed well over 20 million civilians and lost 2 million soldiers in the process.
After Hiroshima the US gave them three days to surrender.
They didn’t. One of most inevitable defeats in modern history and not only did they not surrender after the first, they tried to call America’s bluff, and there was a coup attempt to prevent surrender after the second.
If you’d like some reading on the Japanese militarist cult and propaganda campaigns that enabled a people to be so delusional there’s quite a lot of scholarly work available.
In any event the cause of their delusional dreams was the same cause that led them to having baby-bayonetting contests in China: ethnic supremacist rhetoric functionally identitical to Nazism that told them Americans and Soviets would be doing to them what they’d just done to China.
Japan appealed to the USSR to arbitrate surrender. The USSR responded by holding to the Yalta conference agreements and declaring war on Japan and occupying Manchuria and Korea.
USSR broke the neutrality pact they had with Japan to do so, and the US dropped the second nuke after that pact was broken.
The bombing, declaration, and surrender was a period from August 6-August 15. Eleven days.
So prior to the nukes Japan had just lost their entire navy, their air force, and practically all their conquests in Asia
Yep. No point in a genocidal terrorist attack on civilians in japan.
a people to be so delusional… ethnic supremacist rhetoric functionally identitical to Nazism
Lol. Have you seen USA today? It’s the birthplace of racism. They’re still justifying this nuclear terror attack on japan while genociding people in palestine and all over the world. Never changes.
“nuclear terror attack” lmfao
You can shit on the US for so many evil things, but atomic bombing of japan is not one of them, that was probably one “least evil” things they’ve done.
Crucially, even after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima Japanese High Command still refused to surrender.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very much the first stages of the Cold War pivot as the USSR declared war on Japan and took Manchuria and Korea from Japanese occupation.
Imperial Japan had hoped the USSR would arbitrate peace with the Allies as they had not fought or invaded, but the Soviets chose to declare war, sealing their fate.
I wonder when, if ever, this narrative will finally be laid to rest. Perhaps, as long as the US military exists as a globe-spanning hegemon, we will always have to hear some version of this story.
No contemporary historian or political scientist takes this view for granted. It is one of many, and I encourage you to read about more than the wikipedia articles about Japanese atrocities. All militaries commit attocities. This is not the point.
The argument you offer is that the United States had a moral imperative to invade and occupy the Japanese home islands. What is the justification for this? Why would this have been necessary? Everyone who has seriously studied the history knows that the Soviet Union was preparing to invade Japan and its leadership was preparing to surrender in one form or another. The bombs were dropped because the US wanted to ensure that they were the negotiating party and occupying power.
The justification to avoid further violence is extremely cynical. Nowhere in the rules of war does it say that the only way to end a conflict is to utterly annihilate your oppnent. That rule was invented by expansionist empires. You can go back to the history of Rome’s wars with Greece to see this type of logic (or lack thereof) play out. It is a message. It says that we are not your equal and we will not broker any deals on equal footing. We are your hegemon and we will dictate the terms. And then we’ll blame you for any atrocities we commit, and everyone will know that we did what we did in the name of peace and justice.
The Soviet Union had already invaded Manchuria and annihilated the Kwantung Army. We can argue tit for tat about which part of the final days of the Pacific War contributed the most to the final surrender of Japan. It’s clear though that no single part of that was enough and it was the combination of the firebombing of Tokyo and Osaka, the destruction of the remaining IJN fleet strength at the Battle of Tsushima, the Soviets invading Manchuria, Korea and the Northern Islands, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Although there are records of some of the civilian government campaigning Hirohito and Koiso for unconditional surrender, the main war cabinet still refused and preferred the path of a final confrontation.
I think it’s impossible to say if the atom bombs hadn’t been dropped whether they would have in fact surrendered, given that all the other things listed above were true after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki and they still were arguing for a negotiated settlement when no opposing force (USA, Commonwealth or Soviet Union) were prepared to accept anything less than an unconditional surrender.
Also, if you want more details on the extraordinary level of depravity by Japanese soldiers during the Second Dino-Japanese War and the wider World War 2 I can recommend reading Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, Japan’s Infamous Unit 731 by Hal Gold and Hidden Horrors by Yuki Tanaka, all of which contain first hand accounts and then you can try comparing and contrasting by accounts of those carried out by Allied forces in the conflict and give me your false equivalence then.
There’s no false equivalence. There is no equivalence at all. There’s absolutely no point trying to figure out the most atrocitiest world power. Atrocities do not justify further atrocities.
In terms of whether the bombings were justified or not, I don’t think it’s impossible to say. Same with the firebombings, which were carried out under false pretenses of total warfare hypotheses that were later disproven.
There was talk of doing a nuclear demonstration in Tokyo harbor before the decision to annihilate two cities was undertaken. Yes, these were decisions made with limited information and lack of 20:20 hindsight, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t war crimes or that the people who made them aren’t mass murderers. This kind of zero-sum my atrocities vs. your atrocities thinking is an intellectual dead end, but it’s great for justifying American exceptionalism.
To defeat them totally. That was their goal. You can argue about it, but it could have been not enough if a land war wasn’t done. Like apeasing doesn’t work, only strength.
But for that you’ll have to read up a lot on history itself and more, I do not have an answer to that question, and I suspect those who pretend to, do not fully understand the question itself.
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