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 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.
*edit: all you 4edgy5me America Bad commenters really need to do some reading about Japanese atrocities during the Pacific War here are some suggestions:
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.
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 the families of soldiers.
The only fair way to solve this is going to be for someone to nuke us for nuking Japan, then someone needs to nuke whomever nukes us, etc…until everyone gets nuked. Then we can get along.
I mean Japan and the US have a pretty solid relationship now, it’s just internet weirdos who can’t get along, which is probably why a lot of us are on the internet in the first place.
If I gave the impression that I was at all interested in entertaining some western imperialists blog opinion on there being alternatives to targeting civilian populations in war then please forgive me, because that was never my intention and I won’t consider such barbaric drivel under any circumstances.
Especially since it probably wasn’t the reason they surrendered. There are multiple papers on the subject. They didn’t really grasp the difference between the atomic bombs and regular bombing, and the US were carpet bombing multiple other cities at the time. They probably surrendered because of the Soviet advance after failed talks with them, which definitely reduced their chances to zero.
I used to think along the lines of this too until I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial where they tell you about all the ways the US min-maxed the bomb to kill as many people as possible and did it truly as an experiment.
Well, idk much about history and politics and war, so I’m just gonna trust 'Muricans claiming they need to bomb other countries to bring peace to the world
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.
You’re right. I do sometimes put more effort into my comments, but this one was not one of those. I simply chose to inform of my lack of knowledge in the probably important fields needed to understand this event, and then said I’d trust 'Muricans speaking, pointing out the claim that the bombing was needed for peace
When the US nuked 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.
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 mean tbf, while I do hate how civillians die from it, it was mostly the imperial japanese government’s fault.
The japanese soldiers were committing massacress on my homeland (China) and if the US hadn’t nuked japan, a lot more people would’ve died by the hands of those imperialist pigs (the soldiers i mean, I have nothing against japanese civillians). It would’ve takes months and perhaps years to actually invade japan, all that while japan commits mass rapes, pillaging, looting on my homeland. I mean national pride and “honor” is a strong thing in many East Asian countries, even in current timeline, we still had a lot of Japanese Holdout, without the nukes, Japan would’ve not surrended for many years and all those years of suffering for all those people in occupied areas by the imperial japanese military around Asia. And even with the first nuke, they didn’t fucking surrender until the US had to do it again.
RIP to the innocent civillians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but its their government’s fault for waging this war of destruction.
Most bombing is. Firebombing of Dresden for example. The V2 bombs falling randomly on Londoners. I’m not in any way trying to handwave away your premise at all, just offer that war is hell and civilian targets are always targets to reduce the opponent’s will to fight. In historic times we’d burn the town and light the fields on fire, starving the population. WW2 firebombed cities. Even today nuclear weapons would be launched at strategic military targets, critical infrastructure, and city centers. War crime? I guess. Seems like plain old war, even if the US used the weapon that dialed it up to 11 first. (IMO nukes shouldn’t exist on any arsenal, but it’s not up to me)
“War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.”
“There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.”
Just as an aside, due to the use of slave labour from nearby concentration camps and the horrendous conditions at the Mittelwerk factory that an estimated 12,000 people died making V1s and V2s, more than the estimated 9,000 people that died as targets.
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 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.
*edit: all you 4edgy5me America Bad commenters really need to do some reading about Japanese atrocities during the Pacific War here are some suggestions:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhejiang-Jiangxi_campaign
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.
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 the families of soldiers.
We ARE absolute monsters.
The only fair way to solve this is going to be for someone to nuke us for nuking Japan, then someone needs to nuke whomever nukes us, etc…until everyone gets nuked. Then we can get along.
I mean Japan and the US have a pretty solid relationship now, it’s just internet weirdos who can’t get along, which is probably why a lot of us are on the internet in the first place.
Fash support fash.
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/
If I gave the impression that I was at all interested in entertaining some western imperialists blog opinion on there being alternatives to targeting civilian populations in war then please forgive me, because that was never my intention and I won’t consider such barbaric drivel under any circumstances.
Bombing Japan = good?
It’s literally the trolley problem writ large. Do you kill a few hundred thousand civilians to prevent the deaths of probably several million.
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?
Especially since it probably wasn’t the reason they surrendered. There are multiple papers on the subject. They didn’t really grasp the difference between the atomic bombs and regular bombing, and the US were carpet bombing multiple other cities at the time. They probably surrendered because of the Soviet advance after failed talks with them, which definitely reduced their chances to zero.
I used to think along the lines of this too until I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial where they tell you about all the ways the US min-maxed the bomb to kill as many people as possible and did it truly as an experiment.
Well, idk much about history and politics and war, so I’m just gonna trust 'Muricans claiming they need to bomb other countries to bring peace to the world
What part of @Denjin@feddit.uk’s statement do you disagree with?
The Allies had just fought the Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest battle of the Pacific Theater.
Have you ever even read any of the history of the proposed plan for the invasion of mainland Japan and the casualty estimates? How about 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?
how about: they are both murderous pigs?
Imperial Japan was far more murderous, in the context of the 2nd World War, which is what this thread is about.
sure, let’s dice and slice the context until the USA is always right
Americans ***ARE ***murderous pigs, and we haven’t changed in the decades since.
As I said, I don’t know much about history, politics, and war.
Clearly not.
What a lazy and shitty comment.
You’re right. I do sometimes put more effort into my comments, but this one was not one of those. I simply chose to inform of my lack of knowledge in the probably important fields needed to understand this event, and then said I’d trust 'Muricans speaking, pointing out the claim that the bombing was needed for peace
Poe’s law.
As someone from the country that’s been conquered by japan: absolutely yes.
When the US nuked 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.
Im context, against the Imperial Japanese Government, unfortunately, yes.
more like least path of resistance to peace.
Yes, when you grow up deep inside the imperial bubble.
Bombing Japan == horrific but better than the alternatives we had.
Though even then there were variables.
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/
The alternative of having to let the soviets get a say in what happens to Japan?
It’s alot easier for them to post a link to a blog than to just say the quiet part out loud.
Sorry, but repeatedly posting a link to some blog doesn’t justify murdering hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people.
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.
Yeah and as we do, we fucked up their transition to a democratic state but in the process created a very unique nation
https://youtu.be/YzRWPGSaKDk
“western soldiers were absolute monsters who would carry out unspeakable acts on them” They were right
To be fair, the people they were stabbing and running from were about to fucking NUKE THEM. TWICE. So.
Those Palestinian children were going to be used to populate the schools and hospitals so they can’t be bombed. Better starve them.
I mean tbf, while I do hate how civillians die from it, it was mostly the imperial japanese government’s fault.
The japanese soldiers were committing massacress on my homeland (China) and if the US hadn’t nuked japan, a lot more people would’ve died by the hands of those imperialist pigs (the soldiers i mean, I have nothing against japanese civillians). It would’ve takes months and perhaps years to actually invade japan, all that while japan commits mass rapes, pillaging, looting on my homeland. I mean national pride and “honor” is a strong thing in many East Asian countries, even in current timeline, we still had a lot of Japanese Holdout, without the nukes, Japan would’ve not surrended for many years and all those years of suffering for all those people in occupied areas by the imperial japanese military around Asia. And even with the first nuke, they didn’t fucking surrender until the US had to do it again.
RIP to the innocent civillians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but its their government’s fault for waging this war of destruction.
Yeah that’s why I hate the nationalist “we” that you’re using here. I didn’t have shit to do with nuking japan. Zero respect for those terrorists.
France nuclear bombed Algeria lots of times and nobody makes such a big deal of it.
Maybe because instead of dropping them on cities they dropped them in the Sahara desert?
Meh. Details!
TIL.
It’s called bigger gun diplomacy
Deserved
I wouldn’t say “deserved”, civillians don’t “deserve” dying in a destructive war waged by their government. It was just a lesser evil.
Still a war crime against civilians.
Most bombing is. Firebombing of Dresden for example. The V2 bombs falling randomly on Londoners. I’m not in any way trying to handwave away your premise at all, just offer that war is hell and civilian targets are always targets to reduce the opponent’s will to fight. In historic times we’d burn the town and light the fields on fire, starving the population. WW2 firebombed cities. Even today nuclear weapons would be launched at strategic military targets, critical infrastructure, and city centers. War crime? I guess. Seems like plain old war, even if the US used the weapon that dialed it up to 11 first. (IMO nukes shouldn’t exist on any arsenal, but it’s not up to me)
“War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.”
“There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.”
Truth.
Just as an aside, due to the use of slave labour from nearby concentration camps and the horrendous conditions at the Mittelwerk factory that an estimated 12,000 people died making V1s and V2s, more than the estimated 9,000 people that died as targets.
That’s a grim aside.
Very unfun fact.
Ofc the state is run by criminal terrorists. It’s nothing to excuse or celebrate.
It can be a statement of fact without being either of those.
US dropped notices for days ahead of the bombing. warning of the imminent danger and horrific results of a nuclear bomb.
many didn’t believe in the warnings as they had been disillusioned by their government.
the rest is history.
edit: looks like I touched a nerve but you can’t argue facts.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/warning-leaflets/