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.
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.
inquisitor
potoooooooo ✅️
Denjin
「黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui」 | (aka: 鳳凰院 凶真 Hououin Kyouma)