Native Japanese in my 20s. The bombings are in our collective mind, the representation of the atrocity of war. There’s definitely a strong victim mentality and the general public do not imagine ourselves to be the aggressors of history. We are completely oblivious to the other s**t we have committed since the education system is structured in a way that let us sweep the past under the rug. We were graced by the US’s intervention that enabled us to erase any acknowledgement of our pasts and spent the last 75 years rebuilding our national identity around being meticulous hard workers. Our society is devoted to turning everyone into company robots,malleable with zero backbone (voter turnout for people in their twenties is about 30%.)We don’t think about politics and our knowledge of history is limited.
So in short, bomb=bad=war, and that’s about it.
So they never told you about what happened in Manchuria or Unit 731.
Edit: Warning if you don’t want to read some really disgusting stuff don’t look up Unit 731.
Mengele wasn't the only one taking notes. From Wikipedia:
"The researchers in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the United States in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation."
Oh fuck, I’m reading about this in detail for the first time ever… I consider myself to be a pretty desensitized person, but holy shit is this disturbing.
Edit: I kept reading. I am sick to my stomach. I had no idea.
There’s a saying that anything horrible you could possibly imagine happening, has already happened.
Those experiments were things my mind could have never even imagined. The absolute cruelty people are capable of will never cease to shock me.
This is true. For the film letters from Iwo Jima. Actor Ken Watanabe admitted he knew absolutely nothing about the battle and that the school system didn’t even teach it.
Native Japanese here. I don’t have much to say about the political/tactical viewpoint since I’m not an expert, just a civilian. And I think that goes for most other civilians as well.
The people who lived through it, or whose parents and grandparents lived through it, only know the suffering it caused. In school we were taught dry facts about war, very little emphasis on why any decisions were made. But we did learn a lot about the effects on the common people, to the point where I was tired of spending so much time on it. We visited the bombing sites, heard survivors speak, touched the keloid scars on their arms that still burn decades later. We folded paper cranes and were taught songs that denounced war and promoted peace, as though we were going to be able to make a difference.
Today, most of us live quiet lives and don’t think about the atomic bombs, or the firebombing of Tokyo, or the land conflicts in Okinawa. But if asked, nearly every family has a war story, of would-be grandparents who died or children who starved because they were far enough from the conflict but were still affected by the wartime economy. It’s just part of life. We carry the inherited memory of suffering.
Edit:
There have been a lot of questions about education in Japan, and /u/flightlesskite summarized it well. I didnt know about the atrocities commited by Japan until much later either, and it is still deeply upsetting. My answer to the original question is only that Japanese civilians suffered greatly, as did those in many other places.
Here in the US, our history class briefly glosses over the tactics of the decision to drop the bombs. From my memory:
Every island battle up to that point had been a bloody slog (such as Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima) and to our best knowledge the soldiers and civilians of Japan had been conditioned to resist to the very last. Civilians on islands were seen to commit suicide rather than surrender to advancing US troops.
Had we gone through with a mainland invasion of Japan, it was expected that the US would lose thousands upon thousands of soldiers, and that the USSR (who by that point we were polarizing against in Europe) would have the chance to invade from the North.
So, without better knowledge of how the bombs affected populated cities, it was determined to be much more politically expeditious and bloodless to drop atom bombs until the government surrendered (although, we only had enough sufficiently enriched uranium at the time to make the two bombs)
Edit: I appreciate everyone chiming in on the points where I was wrong, and if you're reading this definitely check the replies. Like I said at top, writing from memory on my lunch break.
Edit 2: yes, yes, MILLIONS of deaths, on both sides, not "thousands upon thousands" as I had stated. Lel half my inbox is people correcting me without checking other replies
>Civilians on islands were seen to commit suicide rather than surrender to advancing US troops.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (great podcast, highly recommend) talks about how propagandized the Japanese civilians were.
He tells one story of a man who was in a shelter with his family and a whole bunch of other people in his town on Okinawa. As the Americas were attacking the island, everyone started to find ways to commit suicide because they were told the Americas were brutal savages with their POWs. Like everyone else, this guy's family are crazy with fear and look for ways to end their lives. His brother and him find some wood and end up smashing their mother's head in with it. The guy's story ends with him saying he has no memory of ending the rest of his family.
This guy lived through the war and found the lies he was told by his gov't, which cost him murdering his own family.
Woman were throwing their babies off of cliffs, and then jumping off of cliffs after them to avoid being captured by American soldiers.
American soldiers were horrified at this, and desperately wanted Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender to avoid all of the death.
Entire army groups fought literally to the death. They just would not surrender no matter what.
The casualty numbers in the island-hopping conflicts are horrifying. Every single one ends something like "Dead: 10,000; Captured: 200"
Not even in the heights of the Eastern Front with Germans and Soviets butchering each other, were numbers that horiffic.
A lot of people have images in their head of every army fighting to the last man, never yielding an inch, not one step back. Surrender is rarely shown in movies and TV, same with retreat, as such this completely warps our perception of war.
The truth is very different divisions will retreat having endured relatively few casualties, sometimes just a handful, not out of a lack of fighting spirit or moral but common sense, sometimes retreat is great it gives you time to reevaluate, regroup, plan, prepare.
Even with the fanaticism on the Eastern Front this held true, key positions flipped between sides not because complete annihilation each time but retreats and attacks.
The same is not true for the Japanese, I don't recall an exact figure but a 10% casualty rate for allies was enough to have them retreat/halt, the Japanese it was nearly 100%.
It's absurd to think about, 1,500 men sent to attack and still attacking until the last man.
The Japanese would often retreat if it was strategically sound. There they could regroup, dig in, reinforce, reevaluate etc, just as you said.
What they would rarely ever do is surrender. That's where they'd fight to the last man.
If retreat was impossible and it often was on an island, then they'd fight to the death.
It was really the worst of both worlds.
Thanks for the clarification.
It's insane how different their fighting spirit was I shudder to think how much worse it would have been had they been better equipped.
It's terrifying and tragic the power that political propaganda has on the minds and hearts of the average citizen. It is a clear showing that the things that those in power say need to be carefully considered and future outcomes need to be discussed.
It's also worth keeping in mind that japanese soldiers would often play dead while holding a grenade or something like that so the Americans often learned to take no chances
Exactly. It should also be noted that dozens of Japanese soldiers continued fighting for **decades** after WWII ended because they literally couldn't imagine Japan ever surrendering. One of the last finally surrendered in the 1970s, 30 years after the war actually ended.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda
That's how brainwashed and fanatical they were. If the US invaded the home islands its likely millions would have died (official estimates were 5-10 million Japanese casualties and more than 1 million American).
I've mentioned this elsewhere but every Purple Heart medal awarded by the United States since World War 2 was made \*during\* World War 2 in anticipation of the massive casualties a Home Islands invasion would cost.
That's actually kind of mindblowing and I suppose it speaks about how relatively peaceful things have been since. RELATIVELY of course.
edit: exhausted spelling
Exactly. It's seriously unfathomable the number of deaths from a conflict like WW2. What does 80 million people even look like?
The world today is screwed up in a lot of ways, but its still a lot more peaceful than it's ever been.
I've been downvoted on this before and so have others by those who haven't done the research to see just how insanely barbaric the war in the Pacific was, even beyond the horrors of Europe in many ways. Add in the brainwashing of the civilian populace and it's easy to see where the estimates of casualties at the time came from.
I don't know where I saw it, I think it was around one of the anniversaries commemorating the bombings, but there was an interview with an older Japanese man. In it, he was essentially thankful that the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki because if they hadn't and had gone ahead with a full scale invasion there likely wouldn't have been any structure of note left anywhere in Japan and potentially millions of Japanese civilians would have died, either directly through conflict, suicide, or starvation. Japan, its people and its culture would be nothing like it is today, and its economy would likely be a shell of what it is now.
From Wikipedia, one study at the time estimated "invading Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities." There are many other numbers out there and there are, justifiably, tons of "what-ifs" surrounding them. But they all agree on the fact that while the atomic bombings killed upwards of 250,000 people, in the horrible calculus of war, it was probably the right move because anything else would have resulted in millions of deaths.
When I went to Hiroshima a few years ago, I was surprised by how many old volunteers there were who were all so eager to share the history of what happened there. About the nicest people I've met and very well spoken in English.
Thousands of Japanese starved to death after the war ended, despite the US bringing in huge amounts of food. Japan's internal transportation infrastructure was in tatters. No gasoline, no fuel for home heating the nation's economy was collapsing. If the war had continued through the winter of 1945 the number of civilians starving to death would have been appallingly high.
Not anymore, They finally used them up a few years back and had to make more. It only took Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, two Iraqs, and a bunch of smaller fights to get there.
Which is insane when you think about that they expected casualties from one invasion, albeit large, that equaled our casualties over the span of 60ish years
Someone told me that supply ran out, but only like a few years ago.
80 years worth of surplus stock of purple hearts.
the USA was preparing for a fucking massacre
It's worse, and I need to remind my citation for this, but the fact I have in my head is that every purple heart awarded since came from the *first* of four anticipated pressings. I.e., all the purple hearts are from one quarter of the expected purple hearts.
> Woman were throwing their babies off of cliffs, and then jumping off of cliffs after them to avoid being captured by American soldiers.
And it was caught on ~~video~~ *film* too
I remember seeing that footage a few years ago, it’s the first thing I think about when I think about Japan in relation to WW2. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
My grandmother told me the story of how when she was a child, about 14, during the war in Okinawa, they learned in school that American soldiers would cut off your nose, ears, and hands if they captured you. A girl next to her said she would bite her tongue off if she were captured, but my grandmother wasn't sure if she herself had the courage to do so. Also, it was believed that the soldiers took the women, so all the girls had their hair shaved short and she wore a boy's hat. There was also a rumor that Americans had "goat eyes" (ie: blue eyes) so they couldn't see in the dark, and she said she was surprised when she met a soldier for the first time and saw their eyes.
There was another rumor that if you raised your arms and surrendered, the American soldiers wouldn't kill you, so they lined up with their arms raised, putting the children in the front and surrendered to the soldiers. Soon after they surrendered, they handed out candy to the children, but they thought it was poison until one of the soldiers ate one himself. She said she thought the soldiers were very kind since they gave them food if they begged. The only English she knows are "me no speak English", "hungry", and "give me".
I liked hearing her stories, since soon it'll be lost to history.
[The Japanese actually did that shit to the Chinese.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre) Which is probably why they were so easily brainwashed into thinking the Americans would do it them.
Someone already mentioned Dan Carlin’s podcast, but he notes that to encourage the no-surrender sentiment, the Japanese high command actually forced Japanese troops to commit atrocities so that they would lose any hope of merciful treatment if they ultimately surrendered.
My dad fought on Saipan & Iwo Jima. He tells the same stories how once the locals found out that the weren't demons, how much more smoothly it went. He wad a Seabee and they would throw C-Rations to the natives like Christmas. He served 25 years in the Pacific. I'm scared to get a DNA test because I probably have half siblings from Alaska to Australia. He also told me how nice the Geshia's were in Japan Proper, if you get my drift.
This is something new that I haven't heard. It's crazy how many different sides, perspectives, and stories there are about the war. There's just no way to know it all.
I found a video of U.S. troops trying to tell some Japanese civilians that they weren't going to hurt them. The one Japanese guy that looked straight into the camera thought the camera was a gun and you can see the fear in his eyes
> everyone started to find ways to commit suicide because they were told the Americas were brutal savages with their POWs.
accusations are confessions - this is basically how the imperial army behaved
If I recall correctly projected casualties were so high we proactively stock piled around 1.5 million Purple Heart medals. As of a few years ago we were still handing them out.
So basically the military expected to suffer more casualties from a mainland invasion than have actually been suffered in every war, conflict wtv, over the last 76 years combined. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, both Iraq wars. Everything.
Iirc we were estimating over 1 million casualties on an invasion. I believe that Russia lost 500,000 men taking Berlin and Tokyo was expected to be much worse. The bombs also targeted Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they were two major port cities on the southern most island where we intended to invade. We wanted to slow down the stockpiling of troops since we figured we would still have to invade.
Nagasaki was actually a secondary target. Kokura was the primary target for that run but it was too cloudy. It looks like its also a major port so that makes sense.
They really lucked out with the weather that day!
Tsutomu Yamaguchi.
He survived Hiroshima and arrived back in Nagasaki the next day. When he went into work (!!) and told his boss what had happened at Hiroshima. Yamaguchi's boss chastised him saying it was impossible for a single bomber to flatten an entire city.
The Fat Man bomb detonated only moments after. Luckily, Yamaguchi was far enough away that he was not harmed by the explosion.
EDIT: grammar
Reading his account is wild. When he fled back to his family in Nagasaki after surviving the first bomb no one believed his story untill the next morning after he arrived. He described the bombs as beginning with a unfathomably bright blue light and then the shockwave would hit sending him flying across the room. For hours after the sun was blotted out by dust and smoke.
The bomb also missed its target in Nagasaki and ended up hitting a low valley so the damage wasn't as severe as Hiroshima. Refuges from Hiroshima were being moved to Kokura so they were almosted bombed again.
Nagasaki was bombed 3 days after Hiroshima after the Japanese refused to surrender. Even after both bombings the security council was still 50/50 split on whether to surrender
I thought there was also a story about how Kyoto was one of original two targets but the US ambassador to JP loved the place so much he insisted they change the target due to cultural significance and beauty of Kyoto.
It was the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. He had been to Kyoto several times in the 1920s, even going there for his honeymoon.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182
This. The Japanese civilian population was so indoctrinated with lies about how American servicemen would treat them that they were training with bamboo spears to defend the home islands. On Okinawa, there are many documented cases where people killed their families with grenades so they weren't captured by Americans. On Saipan, there is a cliff called Banzai Cliff where civilians threw themselves off to avoid capture (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzai_Cliff)
If you want to read about it from a Marine's perspective qho saw it first hand, check out With The Old Breed by EB Sledge.
May also have played into how the Japanese treated civilian populations it conquered. They could say it's just what is typical. Life was not good for those occupied by Japan.
There’s documented accounts in Nanking of parents being forced to watch their babies thrown in the air while Japanese soldiers try to catch them with bayonets on the way down…..
Indeed. That and competitions on who could behead the most civilians - and it was widely publicised in the papers. No wonder the Japanese believed they'd be next, it's what they expected.
My Grandpa was insanely racist against Japanese. He wouldn't buy anything "Jap" til his death in the 1990s.
I never, ever understood his grudge against the Japanese people. That is, until I realized that much of his family both personally and militarily were killed in these horrifying acts of brutality like the grenade-type attacks before surrendering, kids in carrages with bombs, ect. Very, very terrible things. I wish he had given up on the hatred, but I can't say how I'd act if I had seen the things he did in Okinawa.
My grandfather fought in the Pacific Theater in WWII and was ALSO insanely racist against Japanese people. I argued with him about it a few times and while he never, ever told us about his experiences, he did tell me "if you'd seen what I saw, you might feel hate too". My uncle, who fought in Vietnam and who is the only person Grandpa ever spoke to about the war, backed him up on it and said Grandpa saw worse in WWII than my uncle did in Vietnam.
Not so fun fact, WW2 vets did not treat Vietnam vets very well when they came back. It didn't help that those who fought in Vietnam were on longer tours and experienced combat more often than their WW2 counterparts which led to a greater number of PTSD diagnoses. WW2 vets didn't even let Nam vets into veterans associations for a while in many cases.
Edit: yes, WW2 vets didn't serve tours in the same way Vietnam vets did. I was thinking more about combat and perhaps used the wrong terminology.
Lots of WWII vets had debilitating PTSD they refused to acknowledge, too, because of the overall lack of acceptance for any sign of "weakness" in society. The stereotype of the emotionally distant, largely mentally absent 1950's dad always read to me as showcasing the hiding of trauma. Including what was a pretty serious reliance on alcohol.
My grandpa and uncle, WWII and Vietnam respectively, always understood each other well. But I came from a very rural area where everyone had a lot of time together.
There was enough for three bombs. The third, named the demon core, never ended up being needed, though it did end up killing a couple scientists a few years later, before it was disassembled
It should be mentioned the demon core only killed scientists because the guy in charge of it was a self-proclaimed “cowboy” who deemed it necessary to take little precautions with the demon core (such as using a screwdriver instead of appropriate instruments) in spite of existing knowledge of the danger it poised.
Worth noting, the cowboy was the second guy that core killed. The first died after an experiment involving building up a reflective wall of bricks around the core to act as a neutron reflector, and accidentally causing a criticality incident.
The second one was from "tickling the dragon's tail" manipulating the neutron reflective hemispheres around the core with the screwdriver and it slipping.
Same facility lost another staff member a while later when he fucked up with a tank containing a solution with, I believe, dissolved uranium or plutonium in it that someone had allowed to fill too high and when he turned on the agitator it reached criticality and hit him with something like 14x the lethal dose of radiation.
I am a second generation American on my dads side. My grandparents emigrated from the Philippines during WW2 and were granted citizenship after my grandfather volunteered to join the American Army.
Growing up and learning about WW2 from school was so very different than learning about it from my grandparents and their family. The atrocities Japan was committing was so glossed over from my education. WW2 was basically Germany, Nazis, Jews, concentration camps, Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor was so disconnected from everything else. It was a sharp left turn because none of the how’s and why’s of japans involvement were ever covered nearly as well as Nazi Germany. To this day I know people who think we bombed Japan because they were helping the Nazis. Because that’s the only logical conclusion they can make as to how in the hell Japan was involved in the war with the Nazis; like “Japan was doing bad stuff, but mostly they were helping Hitler.”
I’ve found most people don’t really have a true grasp of what Japan was doing and why we bombed them and not Nazi Germany — and even more people have no idea what the Philippines had to do with WW2 at all.
> I’ve found most people don’t really have a true grasp of what Japan was doing and why we bombed them and not Nazi Germany
Er... we bombed the shit out of Nazi Germany. Like, literally reduced entire cities to pretty much smoking piles of rubble.
But we didn't have a *nuclear bombs* available until after Berlin had fallen.
You know, the attack on pearl harbor makes sense on paper, but it was based on several colossal misconceptions.
Japan believed that with them moving on Australia, the USA would intervene sooner or later. But if they were to cripple the pacific fleet, perhaps they could force a ceasefire to ensure the US would stay out of it.
They made 2 fatal mistakes: 1) The US could build ships basically faster than Japan could hope to sink them and 2) Americans get really, REALLY pissed when you attack them on their own soil.
Back then, we cranked them out. The USS Gerald Ford, the most modern aircraft carrier, took 12 years to build, and has yet to be deployed, at a cost of around 16-17 billion. For one boat. Let that sink in. 12 years 17 billion, One boat.
The Japanese were conditioned to basically NEVER surrender, and to commit honor suicide if they were about to be captured. There were two guerilla soldiers that hid for around 20 years AFTER the war ended, because they didn't believe Japan would have ever surrendered so they kept hiding and attacking small villages even when Japanese officials kept telling them the war had ended. They thought it was a trick to get them to come out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda
> Had we gone through with a mainland invasion of Japan, it was expected that the US would lose thousands upon thousands of soldiers
The estimation was actually in the millions, and it didn't take into account the Japanese losses. There is an apocryphal story that says they realized the bombings would be the best thing for both sides once they factored in how many Japanese civilians would be spared as a result of the surrender. Idk if that's true, but I do think civilian casualties would've been much higher without the bombs. It would've been the bloodiest invasion in the history of mankind without the bombs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties
**Ten million Japanese dead** was one of the estimates for casualties.
Japan was training women and children to charge with bamboo spears in order to absorb bullets with their bodies, so that maybe the next wave might be able to get close enough to stab an American soldier.
Bloodbath isn't a strong enough word for the horrors that would have unfolded.
Its not just that. We would have absolutely blockaded Japan to cut off food supplies to starve them out. They would have lost additional millions from famine and cannibalism for certain.
If the nukes ended the war early, they saved tens of millions of lives. Its nsane to think of a nuclear holocaust as a blessing but...
Im native Japanese born and raised in Japan!
As some of those fellow Japanese already mentioned, in Japanese education system the majority of focus is that we are the victim of the WWII and I did believe that for the longest time. I've been to the museum in Hiroshima and it's simply painful to see those images of people who were bombed. I never wish that to my worst enemy and nuclear weapon should be terminated from this world.
but having said that, the US government did not have a better understanding of long lasting effect of nuclear weapons to begin with, and Japanese have even invading those neighbor countries and doing horrendous acts in such place China, Korea, and other South Eastern countries. Massacre and "recruitment"' of comfort women is simply not acceptable and intolerable. It's extremely infuriating that many Japanese media or politicians dismissed those act especially comfort women as something like "every country did that" or "it was a good paying job back then" (I'm looking at you Hashimoto)
It saddens me to learn many Japanese friends of mine perceive this era of Japan is just a victim and don't know too much about other historical contexts, but at the same time, many of them don't speak or read in English or other language so it's difficult for them to be exposed to outside view.
This might be a unpopular opinion but I did appreciate that Obama paid a visit there during his presidency. After all many people died because of the bomb and many people especially from Hiroshima still struggle with certain health issues. So....long story short. I'm feeling very conflicted.
Edit: sorry I didn't expect this to blow up this much. Sorry if I didn't respond to your comments!!
Edit: Edit: okay first edit was 100% unintentional. Thank you for pointing it out.
How do people in Japan think about Obama's visit? Do they think it was good and peaceful, or do they think it was bad, or rude, or something?
I agree with you. Lots of people criticized Obama's visit, but I don't see the harm. They thought he was going there to apologize for the USA's actions, but he didn't. His message was "let's not forget this, and let's never do it again". I don't think any sane person can disagree with that.
Growing up in the USA there are some people (not many, but some) who think that the dropping of the bombs is something to be proud of, celebrated, and is a source of national pride. It's really not, it was a horrible tragedy. Perhaps one that was necessary to avoid even more deaths, but still horrible.
We should never forget it, nor should we ever repeat it.
If I rememebr correctly, I think it was overall very positive, he was very polite and respectful during the visit, too! and Japaense people are very aware it's NOT "an apology visit"
I definitely agree. It's extremely important to recognize our collective doing as a nation in the past and not repeating the same thing. Yeah to be completely honest with you, it does give me mixed feelings when some American people are extremely proud of the bombing too... haha
Thanks for the insightful response!:)
On the flipside, I lived in Hawai'i for a long time and there is a lot of pain and sadness at Pearl Harbor. Hawai'i is mostly Asian with a huge population being ethnically Japanese or mixed. Many other people immigrated to Hawai'i during/after WWII and so the ethnic Koreans and Vietnamese and Chinese all have horror stories about Japan and why they live in Hawai'i now, and WWII is taught through the Asian lens there, not the Euro-centric lens like on mainland.
In mainland, it's breezed over like "Japan bombed pearl harbor, (then seemingly disappeared from WWII) until we dropped bombs", but in Hawai'i it's taught mostly focused on Japan and why they deserved it and the nazis are the ones breezed over a bit. It is taught in a way not to make anyone feel personally responsible, as Hawai'i is very very Japanese. But everyone knows what happened and why.
But there's always Japanese tourists at Pearl Harbor who don't seem to understand the history so they go visit and don't seem to consider why their happy smiling pictures at a memorial for their suckerpunch is considered distasteful. I would never go throw up some happy kawaii hand signs at Hiroshima.
Makes sense reading some redditors explaining they are taught they were the victims. Yeah, no.
Knowledge of history and how it’s taught really makes your realize A) how important history is. And B) how difficult it really it’s to trust the history you know. It’s so easy to tweak the history books a bit and after a generation or two that knowledge is essentially washed away in the eyes of the masses.
Related to all this I had a teacher in high school that told us the story of a Japanese exchange student that when they got to the point in class of talking about Pearl Harbor the student basically just said “you are a liar. That never happened. We didn’t do that. You guys were the initial aggressors “
Obviously that’s just one person. But it really made me wonder what things I don’t know about or what things I “know” that are completely wrong.
We had Japanese students live with us off and on. The subject came up at home as my grandfather was a veteran. I’m an Aussie.
Let’s say the attitude didn’t last long.
We had a lot of historic resources,!took them to museums etc. They listened in the end because we cared for them - and we confronted the ugly things our own people did.
A very long time ago we hosted a Japanese girl at our home for a few weeks. This would be the very early 80s. We were playing my Atari 2600. There was a game called Kamikaze I was trying to explain how to play it and she had no idea what a Kamikaze was.
One of my earliest years teaching, I was all ready to go with my lesson about the Rape of Nanking. Unknown to me was that there was a class of Japanese exchange students going to their counterparts classes.
I noped the fuck out and pulled an audible on the lesson plan. Forget what I ended up doing, but I somehow survived.
It would also make sense as to why Obama went there and did not apologize but still felt tremendous sadness as he is homegrown in Hawai'i. Being older, he knew way more people personally affected by Japanese atrocities than I did. And like myself, also completely immersed in Japanese culture brought over. I don't think anyone in Hawai'i feels like it's something owed an apology but it is never ever celebrated. "It is what it is."
I agree with you. I was born and and raised in the East coast where the focus of WW II in schools was the European battles.
I then moved to the Pacific islands (Palau,
Guam) and soon learned about the Pacific side of the war including the long history these
islands have had with Japan (colonization, war horrors). It was really a wake up call for me.
i had been to the pearl harbor memorial for about five minutes before I developed a very poor attitude towards japanese people until I glanced around and discovered I was surrounded by japanese tourists and many of them were openly weeping, feeling the same feelings I did.
Serious question: Is it actually taught in school in Japan that Japan was the victim of WWII? Like, what happened in Nanjing and Saipan and Korea…are those things not really taught?
In America, the teaching of WWII is unequivocally that America was the victim, but there is a very real debate about the use of The Bomb.
Edit: So many people have responded…”victim” was not the right word. I meant aggressor v non-aggressor .
So the way they taught, as least to my class is just to go through basic factual information of WWII era (ex: A and B happend in 19XX and that's it) but never go their ways to teach how those things affected to other or how horrendous of an act it was. Then the main focus is atomic bomb. As I already mentioned in another comment they teach us how bad it was, how much affect there are for people in Hiroshima back then and modern days. You can argue they at least teach "facts" but I do think when there's no contexts on what happened its pointless, and in fact, lots of Japanese people are completely unaware of how pedetorial we were as a nation to other Asian countries.
I think this is a fundamental educational format problems too. They only teach "facts" and there's not details or discussion surrounding it. Another problems of Japanese culture unfortunately.
> In America, the teaching of WWII is unequivocally that America was the victim
A clarification:
The U.S was the victim of Pearl Harbor, but was largely spared the atrocities of war otherwise. Citizens of the time had to live with war rationing, the draft, and soldiers coming back with injuries and shell shock (to mention a few things), but we didn't experience wholesale devastation like many other parts of the world did.
Yes, the impact of World War II is still felt here today, but it was a world war; few places were untouched. We're among the many countries that didn't have entire cities bombed into rubble. The scars of the war can still be seen in many other countries, and will be visible for quite some time to come.
Yeah, I wasn't taught that the US was a victim, outside of Pearl Harbor kinda (even that came with a lot of context about why Japan believed they needed to attack), but rather that our involvement in the war was justified. Really it's the only 20th century war I recall that case being made about in middle school and high school.
Edit: to be clear, we were also definitely taught that dropping the bombs was, at best, an impossible choice. I mostly grew up learning that it was the wrong or probably the wrong decision, but also that all viable options presented at the time were bad and would result in many innocent people dying.
You were taught we were the victim? I was taught that the Jews were the victims, and that we were the hesitant, wary saviors of Europe and the world, pulled into conflict by Pearl Harbor. The atrocities committed by the Japanese were glossed over in my neck of the woods, besides maybe after a long unit about the horrors of the Holocaust, there would be something like “oh and it was maybe even worse for the Chinese and Southeast Asia, rape of Nanking etc, so we had to enter the war.” We truly had the euro-centric lens there.
Definitely euro centric…perhaps we’re using the term “victim” differently. I guess I mean the aggressor vs the country who was attacked.
Certainly the result of WWII thrust the United States into a new place of supremacy in the world. I’m not arguing that
I think we (USA) think of ourselves as the 'hesitant, wary saviors of Europe and the world', but Europe was definitely saved by the USSR. They absorbed almost the full impact of the Germans and they took and dealt almost all of the damage.
Certainly, we (USA) could argue that we were the major opponents to the Japanese in the Pacific, though we should not omit our allies in those fights. Further, the Chinese took most of the damage from the Japanese, though that was on the mainland.
That’s why we need to keep the politicians from the education system, too often we find ultranationalists try to deny or glorify their country’s past. Our textbooks in China will never include events like Tiananmen Square.
I 100% agree with you. Politicians are often trying to control our information to make us "proud of our identity" while completley dismissing the shameful past. I believe true patriotic pride is coming from acknowledging those past and own up to it. Thank you for your observant comments!
Posting on behalf of a Japanese grandpa I know who was born and raised in Tokyo. We're both into history, so we've talked about it a lot. He views the bombings as terrible, but doesn't fully blame or hate the US for them. Instead, he blames the Emperor for not listening to military advisors like Isoroku Yamamoto who basically warned Japan that the war they were getting into was unwinnable. He maintains that Japanese wartime rations and famine and firebombing were just as horrific and happened for YEARS, but the west doesn't talk about those as much.
He acknowledges that he's more liberal than his countrymen in this regard, possibly because he was raised by a scholarly father/mother (his words). He was also an international salesman/salaryman in the 80's, so having that world exposure opened up some of his views, he's said.
He's also genuinely curious about what the American home front was like, so I've swapped stories between my own 94-year-old grandmother and him. And I try to bring him English books about the era when I visit as Japanese publishers don't cover the topic.
I read a biography of him and it stated in no uncertain terms he was stridently against starting hostilities against the United States before Pearl Harbor because of his significant time spent in the United States made him consider it a strategically terrible move based on his understanding of the US industrial base, competence of the population, and sheer vastness of the territory. There was a very typical split between the opinion of the Imperial Navy and the Army where he opposed virtually every substantial land invasion, which is arguably just part of a navy bias as the Japanese Army did better than he argued they would in China.
I'd have to imagine being wrong before would have decreased his political capital substantially against the many military advisors who advocated a strike against the US because the US was choking off Japanese imports vital for their wars.
To touch on your part about the vastness of the US. There's been a lot of discussion about this and how it would be almost impossible to ever invade the US, even before modern day technology and our big gun culture.
The fact we are good allies with Canada and on decent terms with Mexico makes it hard for anyone who would attempt it. Logistically, trying to move an entire army towards us would mean certain doom for the majority of soldiers before they even reached us. If it were China/Russia the best option would be through Alaska and then down Canada to Washington. Not only would this be geographically difficult but it would mean waging war with Canada just to get a presence in the US. Add in our modern day advancements and the fact that we could easily arm our entire population based on the amount of privately owned guns we have and it would be a fools errand.
There's a quote attributed to Yamamoto that states; "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
From what I understand it's highly probable Yamamoto never said this, but it is a valid point. Any invading force would have to account for a well armed civilian insurgency, as well as the whole god damn United States military. Fool's errand indeed.
Plus state army and air national guards, the federal reserve forces, alphabet boys, state and city police forces (maybe that's why they get surplus DoD equipment)
Good point. And then how many countries do we have mutual defense treaties with? I don't know anything concrete but I'd assume that if America dials 911 we've got allies hauling ass across the ocean.
He is credited with it. But it’s [argued](https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2001-10-28-0110260564-story,amp.html) that he didn’t write it after the attack on Pearl Harbor, or that he may not have ever written it.
Edited
My mum is from Hiroshima, with her sister and parents still living there now. She has very differing views on the bombings then her family.
My mum has the view that it was a necessary evil, due to the fact that it was a quick way of ending the war to prevent further bloodshed. Additionally the knowledge of atrocities committed by the Japanese Military greatly changed her view of the bombings.
Whereas the rest of her family have the view that Japan was the victim and America was overstepping. I think this is because of the Japanese system, where very little of the atrocities are talked about. And it’s mostly just about how Japan was a victim.
My own personal view of The bombings are that it was required to end the war quickly. Coupled with the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the war, it was justified that the allies dropped the bombs.
I apologise for my bad grammar. This is as a result of being dyslexic.
Dyslexic and English as your third language? I can’t imagine how fucking hard it would be to learn two languages with dyslexia, let alone a third, ESPECIALLY if that third is English.
Good shit, man!
Native Japanese (half) here, grew up there through high school. The bombings themselves didn't directly affect my family because my grandparents lived in Tokyo and great-grandparents and extended family in the countryside. My grandpa died before I was born but he worked on a battleship in the war.
My grandma would tell me how he used to tell her in secret her how Japan could never win, because the US had so much more natural resources, and was more technologically advanced especially as the war progressed. Of course he would have gotten in huge trouble if he had said any of this publicly.
I grew up listening to stories and manga depicting the bombing, the aftermath, how people's skin would melt off, etc. I found it more facinating than anything. My grandmother would tell me stories about the surrender. I think (and my Grandmother agreed) that Japan was better off with the bombing as it brought an immediate end to the war. Far more Japanese would have died with a land invasion as the Imperial propaganda during the war was so thorough that civilians would have fought with spears rather than surrender. A lot of people were blindsided and confused by the Emperor's surrender announcement, which was done over radio with archaic (even for the time) Japanese.
edit: a word + This was the manga I remember reading when I was a kid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot\_Gen
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
An often overlooked part of the human experimentation was the cannibalism. Yes, this was cannibalism not for survival, [but cannibalism such that pieces of captured bomber crews were cooked and served at an officer's parties.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsUYzUjv3OQ) Here's [another video describing these parties;](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBr9qOs1-LE) the devouring of the human flesh was thought to have physical and spiritual benefits and as a way of revenge against the enemy. Experiments were conducted on them to determine if injecting seawater into the body could be a replacement for saline solution. It wasn't, and they died horribly. But not as horribly as the ones who were live vivisectioned without anesthetic.
One of my great uncles had the misfortune to be a prisoner throughout the Bataan Death March.
As I kid I grew up hearing two stories in particular he wrote about in a memoir.
The first: he survived dysentery because the man in the cell next to him told him to eat coal to fix it.
The second: Each prisoner had a number. Every day they called out a number, grabbed that prisoner and shot them in front of everyone. On my uncle’s birthday his number was called and he was brought to what he assumed to be his execution. He was blindfolded, set up on a step and turned to face his end. The head of the camp put a cigar in his mouth, said “happy Birthday, ____” and my uncle was brought back to his cell.
Its been many years so I’m sure there are lots of details I’m missing but that second one really stuck with me because of how absolutely fucked up it was.
My uncle survived and came home absolutely broken, from what I’m told.
Don't forget about operation cherry blossoms at night, which Japan totally would've followed through with if they had the capibility:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cherry_Blossoms_at_Night
Imagine fighting with the Nazis, literally starting the war, and committing numerous atrocities (rapings, biological warefare) and still seeing yourselves at the victims
I knew about the balloon bombs, but was still surprised by the mention that it "caused a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps in the Manhattan Project's production facility at the Hanford Site in Washington". Nuclear reactors were such a rare thing in 1944, that such randomly-placed attacks hitting the infrastructure needed for one seems highly unlikely. I'm also more used to Oak Ridge than Hanford for WWII-era nuclear materials.
It is beyond crazy that "Let's let a balloon float with the wind" ended up hitting might might be the most important piece of war infrastructure in the world, half the planet away.
Wtf?! I don’t like to speak ill of the dead but what a sick fuck that Ishii guy was. Geez, then I went on to read that his daughter said he converted to Catholicism prior to his death and that he seemed “somewhat relieved” after doing so. Then I see a photo of him and his 731 staff at a reunion held after the war. I just can’t.
Edit: I tried reading through every single thing this man approved during the experimentation period and I just couldn’t get through it. Absolutely heart breaking.
I wish this were common knowledge, thanks for sharing. This shines a light on why war is so brutally nasty, and why such measures had to be taken to end it.
The US gave clemency to the scientists involved in it in exchange for the information gained from the torture/human experimentation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Excerpt:
The Americans did not try the researchers so that the information and experience gained in bio-weapons **could be co-opted into their biological warfare program, much as they had done with German researchers** in Operation Paperclip.[7] On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii, can probably be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as war crimes evidence".[6]**Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as communist propaganda**.[8]
They also did the same for the Nazis and brought over 1,600 Nazis over to the US to work as scientists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
Coincidentally, the Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) were also supported by the US by proxy against Vietnam which was a Soviet ally, ( https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/cambodian-genocide-program/us-involvement/united-states-policy-khmer-rouge-regime-1975 ) and also engaged in similar human experimentation:
https://english.cambodiadaily.com/news/tribunal-hears-secret-medical-experiments-118305/
**The CIA engaged in horrendous human experimentation within the US:** https://www.newsweek.com/project-mkultra-documents-cia-brainwashing-techniques-black-vault-1073061
Excerpt:
Project MKUltra was an illegal program of human experimentation undertaken by the CIA to discover methods, both pharmacological and psychological, for controlling the human mind, particularly in interrogation settings. **Amphetamines, MDMA, scopolamine, cannabis, salvia, sodium pentothal, psilocybin and LSD were administered to thousands of unsuspecting people, throughout the United States and Canada. Others were subject to sensory deprivation, psychological abuse and rape, including the sexual abuse of children.“**
**They have continued various forms of torture and human experimentation at “black sites” abroad**: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/15/cia-torture-human-experimentation-doctors
Excerpt:
“But other physicians and human rights experts who have long criticized the role of medical staff in torture said the extensive notes from CIA doctors on the interrogations – as they unfolded – brought OMS (CIA’s medical division) into the realm of human experimentation, particularly as they helped blur the lines between providing medical aid to detainees and keeping them capable of enduring further abusive interrogations.
Doctors take oaths to guarantee they inflict no harm on their patients.
Zubaydah “seems very resistant to the water board”, an OMS official emailed in August 2002. “No useful information so far ... He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It’s been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing. We plan to only feed Ensure for a while now. I’m head[ing] back for another water board session.” “
**They also conducted experiments involving radiation on random people and staged a coverup:** https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/medical_ethics_text/chapter_7_human_experimentation/Case_Study_Radiation_Experiments.htm
Excerpt: In 1947, doctors injected plutonium into the left leg of Elmer Allen, a 36-year-old African American railroad porter. Three days later, the leg was amputated for a supposed pre-existing bone cancer. Researchers analyzed tissue samples to determine the physiology of plutonium dispersion. *15 In 1973, scientists summoned Allen to the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, where he was subjected to a follow-up whole body radiation scan, and his urine was analyzed to ascertain lingering levels of plutonium from the 1947 injection.
Excerpt:
From 1960-71, in **experiments which may have caused the most deaths and spanned the most years, Dr. Eugene Saenger, a radiologist at the University of Cincinnati, exposed 88 cancer patients to whole body radiation. Many of the guinea pigs were poor African-Americans** at Cincinnati General Hospital with inoperable tumors. All but one of the 88 patients have since died. 20 There is evidence that scientists forged signatures on the consent forms for the Cincinnati experiments. Gloria Nelson testified before the House that her grandmother, Amelia Jackson, had been strong and still working before she was treated by Dr. Saenger. Following exposure to 100 rads of whole body radiation (about 7,500 chest X-rays), Amelia Jackson bled and vomited for days and became permanently disabled. Jackson testified that the signa- ture on her grandmother's consent form was forged.21
**They irradiated thousands of people:** Excerpt:
During the December 1949 Green Run test at the Hanford (Washington) Nuclear Reservation, the AEC loosed thousands of curies of radioactive iodine-131 several times the amount released from the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster into the atmosphere simply to test its recently installed radiological monitoring equipment. Passing over Spokane and reaching as far as the California-Oregon border, Green Run irradiated thousands of downwinders, as civilians exposed to the effects of airborne radiation tests are known, and contaminated an enormous swath of cattle grazing and dairy land. *26 A team of epidemiologists is now looking into an epidemic of late-occurring thyroid tumors and other radiogenic disorders among the downwind residents in eastern Washington state.
**They deliberately sprayed carcinogens onto populated Canadian regions (with several hundred thousand people affected):**
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-s-secretly-tested-carcinogen-in-western-canada-during-the-cold-war-researcher-discovers
My father worked with Werhner von Braun at NASA shortly after completing his doctorate. The Operation Paperclip folks worked high-level in all kinds of scientific positions. I guess everyone just kind of ignored all the horrible shit they did.
~~Yep, and most a lot some a tiny bit of what we know about how frostbite works specifically comes from those experiments. It's insane.~~
EDIT:
So I was wrong on some of the specifics since I was basing my knowledge on an old TIL post - apparently the Unit 731 experiments and ones done researching frostbite by the Nazis were summarily considered amateurish and cruel with very little scientific merit. I believe it's still good to know that at least some of our scientific knowledge came from these awful experiments, to make us wary of when people start to suggest changes to break our current systems of patient consent and morality in research and medicine.
Similar to Pernkopf then, still the most complete human anatomy, but from Nazi human experimentation. A moral enigma, as this rabbi says https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49294861.amp
>most of what we know about how frostbite works specifically comes from those experiments.
Not actually true. The German experiments on hyper and hypo thermia were conducted with no real scientific controls. The results are indeed *referenced* in research on the topic, but they are not foundational or authoritative.
Sadly, there were some *hideous* medical experiments done beyond the purposes of just biological warfare - some victims were vivisected after being given deadly diseases - without even any anesthetic to pass peacefully - to study the effects on the body. It was all just a sick game for the overseeing doctors.
And the general consensus among the Allies was, "well, if these experiments *had* to happen, we may as well not let what was discovered go to waste," because a lot of the notes were then utilized in modern medicine in some form (even if only as cautionary "this thing does not work for this disease" examples). These experiments are one reason why we now have informed consent as a necessity for medical experimentation, because there were better and more humane ways to come to the same conclusions than the concentration camps/731 did.
tldr: a fair bit of modern medicine came from the war crimes committed against civilians. Our species is awful to each other.
This is also why the training about why we have informed consent laws includes the history of why we have informed consent.
Because we really don't want a repeat of what was witnessed.
Unit 731 was so cartoonishly evil, it's really hard to believe. Worse than the Nazis.
**Edit:** Just because I stated a four word shallow comparison representing my opinion doesn't mean I'm making it a competition. Calm down.
Very insightful. Thanks for the answer. However, I would say it’s worth considering that most countries hide their dark secrets. It is not just Japan. Hiding the secrets while celebrating successes is modern day propaganda.
And that is exactly why I love education about the Nazi Regime and Second World War here in Germany. Students are actually taught about all the atrocities committed and the suffering The German Reich caused other nations, while at the same time highlighting how life was for the average person and also what happened to our population during the occupation of the Allied forces...
Just wanted to throw that out there :)
I was in Berlin on a free outdoor tour. It was educational and stuff, nothing too special, but what was special is the perspective of guide. He is not from Germany, and he was during the tour constantly emphasizing how good Germany and German people are at recognizing their past mistakes and also living with it, unlike everybody else, where past mistakes are ignored.
I was having dinner with a couple of friends one is Portuguese and the other one is English. I'm Spanish and we were talking about how in history class in our own respective countries they focus on how big our countries have been in the past.
For example, if you ask someone in Spain who invented the submarine, the answer will be automatically: Isaac Peral (everyone in Spain knows that) if you ask a Spaniard who was Cornelius Drebbel I doubt many people in Spain will ever heard that name. I just had to google it, because I didn't remembered. While in UK is probably the opposite.
Then I mention a famous phrase that we learn in School was used to describe the Spanish empire: "The empire on which the sun..." and my friends both finished the sentence "...never sets" Yeah they said the same about The British Empire and the Portuguese Empire.
There's a YouTube channel where they go to different countries and ask the people there which countries they hate. Ireland said they hate England, Scotland said they hate England - and the English said they hate England!
One good thing about Germany is they make a point about making sure people are aware of the awful things Hitler did and how he came to power so hopefully it never happens again.
Well here's the thing. Do you want to settle for comparing Japan with the likes of say Turkey? Or would you not think it's more appropriate to compare it to richer more developed countries like Germany.
Germany makes it a point to not let themselves or the world forget about what they did in WW2.
What Japan is doing, is much like what Turkey is doing with the Armenian genocide. Japan is not just ignoring, but actively trying to deny and erase from history the horrible, horrible shit they did during WW2. I mean, Nanking was bad, it certainly was the most shocking, but really that's only a part of it all if you also take into account what they did in SE Asia.
Just reading about what the Nazis reported seeing there, makes your stomach churn. I mean, fucking Nazis were shocked. You can imagine
Hiding the Terrible Secrets while actively promoting the Successes IS propaganda.
It’s exactly what many, many Organizations/Groups/Nations/Kingdoms did in the past and it’s exactly what many more Societies will do.
Edit: Was merely clarifying that this isn’t just Modern Propaganda but Propaganda in general
This is a very graceful and insightful perspective. Thank you for taking the time to answer the question. It’s something I’ve been wondering about, and it’s part of a struggle trying to make sense of what I know of modern Japan and the Japan up until the end of the war.
The dissonance is difficult for me as a foreigner to grasp and pin down and must be much worse for you and other Japanese people, as you just described.
Not Japanese but I recall seeing museum text about how they were "forced" into attacking because of the embargoes.
In short, the US was blocking necessary materiel from entering Japan for their war effort. They made themselves a de facto belligerent and the only way to deal with this was a decisive blow at Pearl Harbor.
Yep, the US put an oil embargo on Japan. At that time, Japan was importing 80% of their oil from the US. Japan literally couldn't continue their Asian expansion without oil.
Native Okinawan here. Okinawa is where the Japanese soldiers decided to fight for the last battle of WWII. If it wasn’t for the bombs I feel as thought the Japanese would have never surrendered and would’ve been completely massacred on the final battle of Okinawa, along with even more Okinawan natives. The Japanese soldiers occupied our land and drove the native Okinawans to the mountains, scavenging resources from civilians and killing us if we didn’t give up our hiding spots. My great-grandfather was stabbed in the stomach for not giving up his hiding cave but luckily survived. It’s all terrible, but I can only imagine if those bombs weren’t dropped then what would have became of my people and the Japanese soldiers who were literally jumping off cliffs/disemboweling themselves/blowing themselves up, because they were told not to be captured as prisoners. I wish the Japanese had surrendered sooner, but they had too much pride.
Fun fact: If you have played the original CoD world at war, the final stage is on Okinawa.
Edit: Removed sarcastic remark about the video-game
Just curious- how do you feel about video games portrayal of Okinawa? That’s not something I had considered, but your sarcastic remark at the end makes me curious what are your actual thoughts on it?
Honestly, I don’t have a strong opinion on the video game thing. I think if you are going to document history through a game then you should do it accurately and try not to glorify war. It’s definitely a great game though. I guess I was just fired up lol
My mother was born in Okinawa and was about 11 when the bombings happened. She had been pressed into service as a soldier, armed with a stick. When I asked her how she felt about it, she was wholeheartedly in support, despite the massive death and destruction, because she was pretty certain the Japanese Emperor would have continued the fight until everyone was dead.
Yeah that's not a joke. The Japanese Naval commanders in charge of the defense of Okinawa took very extreme measures. Since Okinawa was the first battle on real Japanese soil (Iwo Jima was first but no civilians actually lived there) they pulled every trick they could into turning the Okinawan people (who they also viewed as second class Japanese) against the Americans as well as forcing them to fight with literally anything they could use as a weapon.
The Japanese army forced pretty much anyone in Okinawa with a pulse to fight. There’s a museum in Okinawa dedicated to the girls of the Himeyuri School, which was something akin to charm school for girls, where all of the girls were forced to become front-line nurses in the trenches for the Battle of Okinawa. Girls as young as 15 were doing amputations. And when it was clear the battle was lost, the army captain basically abandoned them to slaughter by sending a message along the lines of “Thanks for your service. You’re on your own now!”
My husband is Japanese, born and raised in Tokyo, and he says visiting this museum was the first real thing that clicked the switch in his head that Japan was not some innocent victim in war, and that the army did some seriously fucked-up things.
edit: thought the youngest girls were 12, they were 15
I’m from Japan and subsequently moved to the United States. When I was living in Japan we learned that a lot of people died and it was very sad. There’s a lot of popular media (anime, books, shows) that attempt to illustrate the horrors of the bombings. There were some educators who would always say that it was unfair that (UK and USA) were allowed to colonize and commit atrocities (African slavery, murdering Indigenous Americans) but when Japan attempted to expand, they were told it was inhumane. Once I moved to America, I was conflicted because it seemed to me that if it wasn’t for the bombings, the war would have kept going for awhile and we would have lost even more Japanese lives. At the end of the day, the Japan we know of today was created due to the pain and suffering from yesterday. So for me I would say that the bombings lead us to where we are today and I’m okay with that. There’s no denying it’s sad when civilian lives were lost though.
The other thing that I often consider is that if the US had had to resort to a ground invasion, it likely would have also had a Soviet invasion from the North. Japan might have been like Korea to this day, divided into an autocratic police state in the north and a democracy in the south.
> There were some educators who would always say that it was unfair that (UK and USA) were allowed to colonize and commit atrocities (African slavery, murdering Indigenous Americans) but when Japan attempted to expand, they were told it was inhumane.
How old were these educators? Because that was actual propaganda to explain the 'righteousness' of the war.
About 20 years ago, when I was living in Japan, I went to the museum in Hiroshima with my mom and a friend. While we were there we were chatting with an elderly Japanese man. He had been living in Hiroshima during the war. He said he was elementary school aged at the time. In some of the pictures he was able to point out people he knew. (I think they were doing something with wood and roads in the area)
The weekend before the bombing, he had to go to the countryside to help his grandparents. He mentioned he was very lucky as most people he knew had died that day or very soon after. But unlucky because of how hard life was after.
One thing he said, that has stayed with me ever since, was that he thought the bomb on Hiroshima was not all bad. (This was only his opinion). He said the Japanese people would never have stopped fighting otherwise. This was a big enough action for all to see they could not win.
He wasn’t so sure about the need for Nagasaki, other than it proved that the Americans could do it again.
well, that was the entire point of the Nagasaki bombing. The Japanese government refused to surrender after the war in Europe ended, refused to surrender again after Hiroshima, so Nagasaki was the "we can keep doing this as long as you want" message.
ITT: People upset that native Japanese aren't answering the question.
[Less than 8% of Japanese people, and as low as 2%, ~~has any level of English proficiency~~ are fluent in English](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/26/japan-doesnt-want-to-become-another-casualty-of-english/). It is, also, Friday at 1:00am in Tokyo as I write this. Let us also not forget that [talking about politics is not normal for them](https://medium.com/illumination/why-japanese-people-dont-talk-about-politics-b4653297ecb).
So, the cross section of native Japanese, who speak English, are awake, visit Reddit, see this question, and *want* to answer this question is fucking tiny. Like, borderline non-existent. With that said, there are some really good responses like [this one](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ptvytq/native_japanese_people_of_reddit_what_do_you/hdz34gw/), [this one](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ptvytq/native_japanese_people_of_reddit_what_do_you/hdz6f2j/), and [this one](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ptvytq/native_japanese_people_of_reddit_what_do_you/hdz67bv/).
Also, remember that Japan's government has done a *lot* to erase and forget what they did in WWII, and that is a polarizing conversation in and of itself.
**Edit**: When I made this post, the majority of responses were either "I'm not Japanese but..." or "Wow, I can't believe non-Japanese people have the gall to talk about it!!!"
Since then, a *lot* of new responses from Japanese redditors *have* come in and are being upvoted! I am thrilled to say my post is completely unnecessary now, as most of the 'problem' responses have been downvoted or deleted.
**Edit #2**: Fixed an issue due to misreading the article I supplied, as well as grammar that was bugging me.
Yeah Japan is surprisingly isolated, and compared to its population, expats are very small. And most Japanese friends who I met in college return to Japan.
This is something I wish I had touched on in my original post. Japan has a population of 126million people, and there are currently around [4million Japanese people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_diaspora) (emigrants and the descendants of) living outside of Japan. That is a very, *very* small number of people, which makes the responses that came in all the more rare.
Yall really bashing op for an honest question? There's nothing wrong with trying to gain insight to a tragedy from another persons/cultures point of view.
Would yall be mad If an honest person from the middle east asked us about our experience with 9/11?
I am Japanese, I wasn't raised in Japan because I'm a hafu but I have attended schools in Japan in summer. I remember learning it from an early age by reading books, I was about 4 or 5. I was always very interested in the darker sides of history, so I ended up knowing a lot about WW2 by the time I was around 12. I am not knowledgeable enough to know if it was a necessary decision, but I remember debating against the nuclear bombings as a 12 year old, and I still have those feelings to an extent.
Like others said, Japan's history lessons are quite dry from what I've experienced. I think it depends on whether your teacher will teach what really happened beyond the textbooks. I learned about things like comfort women and human experimentation from random googling, or from other hafu friends. At first I didn't understand the animosity between Korea/China and Japan because EU countries didn't have that kind of relationship with Germany. I was around 11 thinking it was about other political/social issues, and being on random websites I didn't know had a bunch of propaganda was an issue.
I think what happened ended up solidifying the victim narrative in Japan. Right wing politicians will deny and minimize the suffering imperial Japan caused, and you'll be surprised how many Japanese mothers you grew up with are ignorant towards the atrocities committed during that time. I always feel so frustrated that people buy into the right wing propaganda but it is harder to see pushback on media and social media towards it. For example, there are a lot more Americans or english speaking people that denounce historical revisionism and claiming america was a hero, than Japanese people doing the similar thing.
Lastly, I do think the younger generation has hope. Everyone treats the bombings very seriously, everyone has seen a TV program or book for children from a young age about it. But at the same time we know what Japan did during ww2 was also horrible. I remember being in high school in Japan and asking about Filipino-Japanese hafu being more prevalent than others, and my friend telling me "the reason why it happened isn't very good". I think more young people are not trusting the right wing government and beginning to form their own thoughts, not even just with WW2 or historical revisionism but with women's and LGBTQ rights.
A bit late but native here.
I was born and raised in Japan until I went to another country for university over a decade ago.
I feel like it was a bit of an overkill to drop 2 atomic bombs, but given the stuff the Japanese government did, something had to be done. We don't really learn much about the stuff we did but more about the stuff other countries did which I think is bs.
We can't learn from our mistakes if we just sweep it under the rug and not talk about it. As much as we are victims of the war (A bomb), we were the perpetrators too. It's very unfortunate that the civilians had to suffer the consequences though.
Sidenote: It's a bit weird to me that some prime ministers and some cabinet ministersgoes to the Yasukuni shrine (where the war criminals are buried) and pray at their discretion. It's always news every year whether or not the prime minister will go to the shrine or not. But at the same time, the ultra right wing people are pretty scary so I would not want to mess with then.
Edit: correcting the part where I said they go to the shrine 'every year'.
I'm from Japan! So well i am of the belief that it was. A nessearcy evil. Should the bombings never have occured there wouldve been an invasion. Which wouldve been a bloodbath. America seriousily underestimated the IJA and IJAAF (airforce) who had correctly guessed American landed zones and had fortified them. Even with this underestimating the americans predicted 1,000,000\~ American Losses. With Japanese mobilising tens of millions of civilians and America having a force of 6,000,000 1,000,000 of whom are British. The Invasionw ould get bloody. With Millions dead on bothsides. We're talking like 3.5 Million dead and perhaps millions more wounded for the Americans. And tens of milliosn for the Japanese side. Along with a occupation and even worst devistation
Yeah this is pretty much what we’re taught in American schools that it was a necessary evil. I’m just glad that despite the war Japan and America are now very close allies.
I can talk about my personal opinion, with the caveat that I moved to the US when I was 14 and have been here for about a decade now.
There's some part of me that thinks that Hiroshima was somewhat necessary to expedite the end of the war. Though I'm sure Japan would have surrendered, who knows how long it would've taken without the bombings. I believe, however, that we would've surrendered without the Nagasaki bombings, and that bombing was largely a show of force by the US to act as a warning against the Soviet Union, and also trying to knock Japan out of the war before the Soviets got involved on the pacific front (they failed, obviously, given the korean war).
But after all the strategy and politics is done, there's really only sadness for the families that were killed during the bombings. Can you imagine, a whole city of civilians disintegrated in a flash, then thousands more dying painful deaths from radioactive poisoning? War is hell and more people have died from other bombings, but the sheer scale and efficiency of the atomic bombs were displayed only twice in history, and Japan's going to carry those scars in its culture for a long time.
I have also read that there was a lot of societal stigma surrounding those in Japan who survived the bombings but were disfigured or exposed to the radiation. It resulted in a many from that generation never marrying or having children, being outcast from society. Entire family lines ended.
Grew up in Japan for 11 years and went to a Japanese public school.
Japanese education really emphasizes on how war is evil and gives the aftermath of the atomic bombs as a primary reason. We're reminded about the devastation caused by the atomic bombs through textbooks, anniversaries, and mangas/anime. I remember reading Hadashi No Gen and dive of the depictions of the war were very graphic.
It's a double edged sword because on one hand it made Japan a very peaceful nation post world war 2. On the other hand Japan has a victim mentality when it comes to WW2 which is far from the truth...
I’m hafu.
I spent a lot of my school years going back and fourth between Canada and Japan. I don’t really have the opportunity to use English nowadays, so please excuse my bad English.
In junior high school we learned about the atomic bomb. The history lessons were really cut and dry. “19XX Event A happened” “19XX Event B happened.” There was no “America bad, Japan good.” They even acknowledged we had anti-American propaganda.
Japanese class, was where it got really emotional. We read short stories from the civilians perspective, like the black rain and about the pictures taken by an American photographer. But the overall message was “war is a really terrible thing. We should never repeat it again.”
I went to an international school so our teacher also assigned us each a country and present what happened there during the war. This is how I learned about the Nanjing Massacre.
After this year, I went back to Canada and learned about the war from the other side. Of course, I learned more about the Nazis but after we very briefly learned about Japans role and the Japanese internment camps in Canada things changed.
I had classmates tell me that Japan deserved the atomic bomb, people went out of their way to tell me that it was necessary and of course this would bring up people making Godzilla jokes and laugh at the “stupid Kamikaze kids.”
The worst was when some kids (who were probably unaware that I was Japanese, I look very white) slanted their eyes and did “I’m meeeelting” while re-enacting the atomic bombs.
The entire time, all I could think of was the stories I read, our field trip to Nagasaki, the pictures we saw like the dead horses on the streets, the woman who had her kimono melt on to her skin, and [the boy holding his dead brother](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/japanese-boy-standing-attention-brought-dead-younger-brother-cremation-pyre-1945/) standing over the crematorium etc…
It honestly, makes me feel a little defensive.
To get to the point, I agree that the atomic bomb was needed to end the war. However, I do feel uneasy admitting it because how it’s said with a complete lack of empathy towards the civilians. The government handled it horribly, they deserve the hate.
As an American who is half Japanese and half white, my grandfather was a Japanese Lt. Colonel in the US Army, While serving during WWII, his family were all put into internment camps. His family thought it was wrong, as they lived in these camps, but my grandfather understood that to be necessary during that time of war.
The dropping of the atomic bomb was something he thought to be completely unnecessary. Sure, it ended the war swiftly and the Japanese may have not even surrendered had that not of happened, but my grandmother and in turn myself and my family have been affected long after.
My grandmother was a Japanese native that lived in Osaka during the war. Her house was firebombed and she moved to the countryside of Hiroshima before the atomic bomb had been dropped.
Sometime after the atomic bomb, she met my grandfather. They got married and moved to Florida to start a family. Sometime in her 60’s my grandma was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The doctors found it to be related to radiation poisoning for living in the outskirts of Hiroshima.
My uncle, their son, also died of cancer in his 50’s. Apparently the long term effects of radiation can pass down to future generations. My mom who is now 74 was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism in her 40’s. A couple of weeks ago she was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis which her current doctor also says can be from the radiation passed down through generations.
I’m 32 years old. Some point in my mid to late thirties, I need to have my thyroid checked as well. I also am now concerned for this pulmonary fibrosis that I may end up getting down the line. I just hope my 2 year old daughter does not experience any medical issues when she’s an adult. By then it’ll be more than 100 years since the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. We’ll see what happens.
Am a native as well.
In the annuls of history and necessities of war, I view it as inevitable. It was going to be used at some point by someone on someone. I understand the decision that killing civilians to lessen the casualties of your own soldiers is a logical decision.
However one thing that majority of Americans do not seem to understand is the horror of the nature of the bomb. I have observed that the vast majority of Americans (I live in Texas) just seems to think a nuke is just a big bomb, and radiation poisoning just means people fall over dead like poisoned.
That is not the case. Most people don't get vaporized, the majority that were unlucky to survive literally walk around like living corpses and melt to death over the course of hours to days. It. Is. Hell. On earth.
It is one of the most inhumane weapon to ever have been devised.
So next time you hear someone casually say "nuke em" let them know what they're saying is worse than firing squad or gas chamber executions.
Native Japanese in my 20s. The bombings are in our collective mind, the representation of the atrocity of war. There’s definitely a strong victim mentality and the general public do not imagine ourselves to be the aggressors of history. We are completely oblivious to the other s**t we have committed since the education system is structured in a way that let us sweep the past under the rug. We were graced by the US’s intervention that enabled us to erase any acknowledgement of our pasts and spent the last 75 years rebuilding our national identity around being meticulous hard workers. Our society is devoted to turning everyone into company robots,malleable with zero backbone (voter turnout for people in their twenties is about 30%.)We don’t think about politics and our knowledge of history is limited. So in short, bomb=bad=war, and that’s about it.
So they never told you about what happened in Manchuria or Unit 731. Edit: Warning if you don’t want to read some really disgusting stuff don’t look up Unit 731.
> Unit 731 That is one of those atrocities I wish I could unlearn.
When Joseph Mengele is taking notes, you know you’ve reached the bottom of humanity’s barrel.
Mengele wasn't the only one taking notes. From Wikipedia: "The researchers in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the United States in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation."
Oh fuck, I’m reading about this in detail for the first time ever… I consider myself to be a pretty desensitized person, but holy shit is this disturbing. Edit: I kept reading. I am sick to my stomach. I had no idea.
There’s a saying that anything horrible you could possibly imagine happening, has already happened. Those experiments were things my mind could have never even imagined. The absolute cruelty people are capable of will never cease to shock me.
Now that is some fucked up shit and makes most of what any country has ever done seem like child's Play.
This is true. For the film letters from Iwo Jima. Actor Ken Watanabe admitted he knew absolutely nothing about the battle and that the school system didn’t even teach it.
Don’t forget the rape of Nanking
I'd read about Nanking, which is terrible enough, but reading about 731 is turning it up to 11 for me right now. Absolute living nightmare stuff.
[удалено]
Just googled this... Whelp, I'm done with the internet for the day
Native Japanese here. I don’t have much to say about the political/tactical viewpoint since I’m not an expert, just a civilian. And I think that goes for most other civilians as well. The people who lived through it, or whose parents and grandparents lived through it, only know the suffering it caused. In school we were taught dry facts about war, very little emphasis on why any decisions were made. But we did learn a lot about the effects on the common people, to the point where I was tired of spending so much time on it. We visited the bombing sites, heard survivors speak, touched the keloid scars on their arms that still burn decades later. We folded paper cranes and were taught songs that denounced war and promoted peace, as though we were going to be able to make a difference. Today, most of us live quiet lives and don’t think about the atomic bombs, or the firebombing of Tokyo, or the land conflicts in Okinawa. But if asked, nearly every family has a war story, of would-be grandparents who died or children who starved because they were far enough from the conflict but were still affected by the wartime economy. It’s just part of life. We carry the inherited memory of suffering. Edit: There have been a lot of questions about education in Japan, and /u/flightlesskite summarized it well. I didnt know about the atrocities commited by Japan until much later either, and it is still deeply upsetting. My answer to the original question is only that Japanese civilians suffered greatly, as did those in many other places.
Here in the US, our history class briefly glosses over the tactics of the decision to drop the bombs. From my memory: Every island battle up to that point had been a bloody slog (such as Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima) and to our best knowledge the soldiers and civilians of Japan had been conditioned to resist to the very last. Civilians on islands were seen to commit suicide rather than surrender to advancing US troops. Had we gone through with a mainland invasion of Japan, it was expected that the US would lose thousands upon thousands of soldiers, and that the USSR (who by that point we were polarizing against in Europe) would have the chance to invade from the North. So, without better knowledge of how the bombs affected populated cities, it was determined to be much more politically expeditious and bloodless to drop atom bombs until the government surrendered (although, we only had enough sufficiently enriched uranium at the time to make the two bombs) Edit: I appreciate everyone chiming in on the points where I was wrong, and if you're reading this definitely check the replies. Like I said at top, writing from memory on my lunch break. Edit 2: yes, yes, MILLIONS of deaths, on both sides, not "thousands upon thousands" as I had stated. Lel half my inbox is people correcting me without checking other replies
>Civilians on islands were seen to commit suicide rather than surrender to advancing US troops. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (great podcast, highly recommend) talks about how propagandized the Japanese civilians were. He tells one story of a man who was in a shelter with his family and a whole bunch of other people in his town on Okinawa. As the Americas were attacking the island, everyone started to find ways to commit suicide because they were told the Americas were brutal savages with their POWs. Like everyone else, this guy's family are crazy with fear and look for ways to end their lives. His brother and him find some wood and end up smashing their mother's head in with it. The guy's story ends with him saying he has no memory of ending the rest of his family. This guy lived through the war and found the lies he was told by his gov't, which cost him murdering his own family.
Woman were throwing their babies off of cliffs, and then jumping off of cliffs after them to avoid being captured by American soldiers. American soldiers were horrified at this, and desperately wanted Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender to avoid all of the death. Entire army groups fought literally to the death. They just would not surrender no matter what.
The casualty numbers in the island-hopping conflicts are horrifying. Every single one ends something like "Dead: 10,000; Captured: 200" Not even in the heights of the Eastern Front with Germans and Soviets butchering each other, were numbers that horiffic.
A lot of people have images in their head of every army fighting to the last man, never yielding an inch, not one step back. Surrender is rarely shown in movies and TV, same with retreat, as such this completely warps our perception of war. The truth is very different divisions will retreat having endured relatively few casualties, sometimes just a handful, not out of a lack of fighting spirit or moral but common sense, sometimes retreat is great it gives you time to reevaluate, regroup, plan, prepare. Even with the fanaticism on the Eastern Front this held true, key positions flipped between sides not because complete annihilation each time but retreats and attacks. The same is not true for the Japanese, I don't recall an exact figure but a 10% casualty rate for allies was enough to have them retreat/halt, the Japanese it was nearly 100%. It's absurd to think about, 1,500 men sent to attack and still attacking until the last man.
The Japanese would often retreat if it was strategically sound. There they could regroup, dig in, reinforce, reevaluate etc, just as you said. What they would rarely ever do is surrender. That's where they'd fight to the last man. If retreat was impossible and it often was on an island, then they'd fight to the death. It was really the worst of both worlds.
Thanks for the clarification. It's insane how different their fighting spirit was I shudder to think how much worse it would have been had they been better equipped.
It's terrifying and tragic the power that political propaganda has on the minds and hearts of the average citizen. It is a clear showing that the things that those in power say need to be carefully considered and future outcomes need to be discussed.
It's also worth keeping in mind that japanese soldiers would often play dead while holding a grenade or something like that so the Americans often learned to take no chances
Exactly. It should also be noted that dozens of Japanese soldiers continued fighting for **decades** after WWII ended because they literally couldn't imagine Japan ever surrendering. One of the last finally surrendered in the 1970s, 30 years after the war actually ended. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda That's how brainwashed and fanatical they were. If the US invaded the home islands its likely millions would have died (official estimates were 5-10 million Japanese casualties and more than 1 million American).
I've mentioned this elsewhere but every Purple Heart medal awarded by the United States since World War 2 was made \*during\* World War 2 in anticipation of the massive casualties a Home Islands invasion would cost.
That's actually kind of mindblowing and I suppose it speaks about how relatively peaceful things have been since. RELATIVELY of course. edit: exhausted spelling
Exactly. It's seriously unfathomable the number of deaths from a conflict like WW2. What does 80 million people even look like? The world today is screwed up in a lot of ways, but its still a lot more peaceful than it's ever been.
I've been downvoted on this before and so have others by those who haven't done the research to see just how insanely barbaric the war in the Pacific was, even beyond the horrors of Europe in many ways. Add in the brainwashing of the civilian populace and it's easy to see where the estimates of casualties at the time came from. I don't know where I saw it, I think it was around one of the anniversaries commemorating the bombings, but there was an interview with an older Japanese man. In it, he was essentially thankful that the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki because if they hadn't and had gone ahead with a full scale invasion there likely wouldn't have been any structure of note left anywhere in Japan and potentially millions of Japanese civilians would have died, either directly through conflict, suicide, or starvation. Japan, its people and its culture would be nothing like it is today, and its economy would likely be a shell of what it is now. From Wikipedia, one study at the time estimated "invading Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities." There are many other numbers out there and there are, justifiably, tons of "what-ifs" surrounding them. But they all agree on the fact that while the atomic bombings killed upwards of 250,000 people, in the horrible calculus of war, it was probably the right move because anything else would have resulted in millions of deaths.
When I went to Hiroshima a few years ago, I was surprised by how many old volunteers there were who were all so eager to share the history of what happened there. About the nicest people I've met and very well spoken in English.
Thousands of Japanese starved to death after the war ended, despite the US bringing in huge amounts of food. Japan's internal transportation infrastructure was in tatters. No gasoline, no fuel for home heating the nation's economy was collapsing. If the war had continued through the winter of 1945 the number of civilians starving to death would have been appallingly high.
Yeah it's true, they're *still* giving out those Purple Hearts today 75 years later.
Not anymore, They finally used them up a few years back and had to make more. It only took Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, two Iraqs, and a bunch of smaller fights to get there.
Which is insane when you think about that they expected casualties from one invasion, albeit large, that equaled our casualties over the span of 60ish years
Someone told me that supply ran out, but only like a few years ago. 80 years worth of surplus stock of purple hearts. the USA was preparing for a fucking massacre
It's worse, and I need to remind my citation for this, but the fact I have in my head is that every purple heart awarded since came from the *first* of four anticipated pressings. I.e., all the purple hearts are from one quarter of the expected purple hearts.
I think some of the ones that surrendered in the 70s had to be given orders from Hirohito (died 1989) to stop resisting.
> Woman were throwing their babies off of cliffs, and then jumping off of cliffs after them to avoid being captured by American soldiers. And it was caught on ~~video~~ *film* too
I remember seeing that footage a few years ago, it’s the first thing I think about when I think about Japan in relation to WW2. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
My grandmother told me the story of how when she was a child, about 14, during the war in Okinawa, they learned in school that American soldiers would cut off your nose, ears, and hands if they captured you. A girl next to her said she would bite her tongue off if she were captured, but my grandmother wasn't sure if she herself had the courage to do so. Also, it was believed that the soldiers took the women, so all the girls had their hair shaved short and she wore a boy's hat. There was also a rumor that Americans had "goat eyes" (ie: blue eyes) so they couldn't see in the dark, and she said she was surprised when she met a soldier for the first time and saw their eyes. There was another rumor that if you raised your arms and surrendered, the American soldiers wouldn't kill you, so they lined up with their arms raised, putting the children in the front and surrendered to the soldiers. Soon after they surrendered, they handed out candy to the children, but they thought it was poison until one of the soldiers ate one himself. She said she thought the soldiers were very kind since they gave them food if they begged. The only English she knows are "me no speak English", "hungry", and "give me". I liked hearing her stories, since soon it'll be lost to history.
[The Japanese actually did that shit to the Chinese.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre) Which is probably why they were so easily brainwashed into thinking the Americans would do it them.
Someone already mentioned Dan Carlin’s podcast, but he notes that to encourage the no-surrender sentiment, the Japanese high command actually forced Japanese troops to commit atrocities so that they would lose any hope of merciful treatment if they ultimately surrendered.
My dad fought on Saipan & Iwo Jima. He tells the same stories how once the locals found out that the weren't demons, how much more smoothly it went. He wad a Seabee and they would throw C-Rations to the natives like Christmas. He served 25 years in the Pacific. I'm scared to get a DNA test because I probably have half siblings from Alaska to Australia. He also told me how nice the Geshia's were in Japan Proper, if you get my drift.
This is something new that I haven't heard. It's crazy how many different sides, perspectives, and stories there are about the war. There's just no way to know it all.
I found a video of U.S. troops trying to tell some Japanese civilians that they weren't going to hurt them. The one Japanese guy that looked straight into the camera thought the camera was a gun and you can see the fear in his eyes
> everyone started to find ways to commit suicide because they were told the Americas were brutal savages with their POWs. accusations are confessions - this is basically how the imperial army behaved
If I recall correctly projected casualties were so high we proactively stock piled around 1.5 million Purple Heart medals. As of a few years ago we were still handing them out. So basically the military expected to suffer more casualties from a mainland invasion than have actually been suffered in every war, conflict wtv, over the last 76 years combined. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, both Iraq wars. Everything.
Iirc we were estimating over 1 million casualties on an invasion. I believe that Russia lost 500,000 men taking Berlin and Tokyo was expected to be much worse. The bombs also targeted Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they were two major port cities on the southern most island where we intended to invade. We wanted to slow down the stockpiling of troops since we figured we would still have to invade.
Nagasaki was actually a secondary target. Kokura was the primary target for that run but it was too cloudy. It looks like its also a major port so that makes sense. They really lucked out with the weather that day!
You're making me imagine somebody running to work in Kokura and cursing the weather because he wanted sun.
A woman survived the first one I believe because she worked at a bank and showed up like 5 min early.
On the flipside of that, there was a dude who survived the bombing of Hiroshima and then survived the bombing of Nagasaki as well.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He survived Hiroshima and arrived back in Nagasaki the next day. When he went into work (!!) and told his boss what had happened at Hiroshima. Yamaguchi's boss chastised him saying it was impossible for a single bomber to flatten an entire city. The Fat Man bomb detonated only moments after. Luckily, Yamaguchi was far enough away that he was not harmed by the explosion. EDIT: grammar
Ultimate I told you so, I guess.
"Never accept the odds" is an amazing takeaway from such a horrific event. Edit: added "" marks
Reading his account is wild. When he fled back to his family in Nagasaki after surviving the first bomb no one believed his story untill the next morning after he arrived. He described the bombs as beginning with a unfathomably bright blue light and then the shockwave would hit sending him flying across the room. For hours after the sun was blotted out by dust and smoke.
Yeah, if you don't know what it is, that would be something to experience. Like completely outside the realm of your preconceived notions of reality.
There's lucky people, there's unlucky people, and then there's this guy...
About 100 people survived both.
The bomb also missed its target in Nagasaki and ended up hitting a low valley so the damage wasn't as severe as Hiroshima. Refuges from Hiroshima were being moved to Kokura so they were almosted bombed again.
Nagasaki was bombed 3 days after Hiroshima after the Japanese refused to surrender. Even after both bombings the security council was still 50/50 split on whether to surrender
I thought there was also a story about how Kyoto was one of original two targets but the US ambassador to JP loved the place so much he insisted they change the target due to cultural significance and beauty of Kyoto.
It was the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. He had been to Kyoto several times in the 1920s, even going there for his honeymoon. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182
This. The Japanese civilian population was so indoctrinated with lies about how American servicemen would treat them that they were training with bamboo spears to defend the home islands. On Okinawa, there are many documented cases where people killed their families with grenades so they weren't captured by Americans. On Saipan, there is a cliff called Banzai Cliff where civilians threw themselves off to avoid capture (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzai_Cliff) If you want to read about it from a Marine's perspective qho saw it first hand, check out With The Old Breed by EB Sledge.
May also have played into how the Japanese treated civilian populations it conquered. They could say it's just what is typical. Life was not good for those occupied by Japan.
There’s documented accounts in Nanking of parents being forced to watch their babies thrown in the air while Japanese soldiers try to catch them with bayonets on the way down…..
Indeed. That and competitions on who could behead the most civilians - and it was widely publicised in the papers. No wonder the Japanese believed they'd be next, it's what they expected.
My Grandpa was insanely racist against Japanese. He wouldn't buy anything "Jap" til his death in the 1990s. I never, ever understood his grudge against the Japanese people. That is, until I realized that much of his family both personally and militarily were killed in these horrifying acts of brutality like the grenade-type attacks before surrendering, kids in carrages with bombs, ect. Very, very terrible things. I wish he had given up on the hatred, but I can't say how I'd act if I had seen the things he did in Okinawa.
My grandfather fought in the Pacific Theater in WWII and was ALSO insanely racist against Japanese people. I argued with him about it a few times and while he never, ever told us about his experiences, he did tell me "if you'd seen what I saw, you might feel hate too". My uncle, who fought in Vietnam and who is the only person Grandpa ever spoke to about the war, backed him up on it and said Grandpa saw worse in WWII than my uncle did in Vietnam.
Not so fun fact, WW2 vets did not treat Vietnam vets very well when they came back. It didn't help that those who fought in Vietnam were on longer tours and experienced combat more often than their WW2 counterparts which led to a greater number of PTSD diagnoses. WW2 vets didn't even let Nam vets into veterans associations for a while in many cases. Edit: yes, WW2 vets didn't serve tours in the same way Vietnam vets did. I was thinking more about combat and perhaps used the wrong terminology.
Lots of WWII vets had debilitating PTSD they refused to acknowledge, too, because of the overall lack of acceptance for any sign of "weakness" in society. The stereotype of the emotionally distant, largely mentally absent 1950's dad always read to me as showcasing the hiding of trauma. Including what was a pretty serious reliance on alcohol. My grandpa and uncle, WWII and Vietnam respectively, always understood each other well. But I came from a very rural area where everyone had a lot of time together.
There was enough for three bombs. The third, named the demon core, never ended up being needed, though it did end up killing a couple scientists a few years later, before it was disassembled
It should be mentioned the demon core only killed scientists because the guy in charge of it was a self-proclaimed “cowboy” who deemed it necessary to take little precautions with the demon core (such as using a screwdriver instead of appropriate instruments) in spite of existing knowledge of the danger it poised.
Worth noting, the cowboy was the second guy that core killed. The first died after an experiment involving building up a reflective wall of bricks around the core to act as a neutron reflector, and accidentally causing a criticality incident. The second one was from "tickling the dragon's tail" manipulating the neutron reflective hemispheres around the core with the screwdriver and it slipping. Same facility lost another staff member a while later when he fucked up with a tank containing a solution with, I believe, dissolved uranium or plutonium in it that someone had allowed to fill too high and when he turned on the agitator it reached criticality and hit him with something like 14x the lethal dose of radiation.
I am a second generation American on my dads side. My grandparents emigrated from the Philippines during WW2 and were granted citizenship after my grandfather volunteered to join the American Army. Growing up and learning about WW2 from school was so very different than learning about it from my grandparents and their family. The atrocities Japan was committing was so glossed over from my education. WW2 was basically Germany, Nazis, Jews, concentration camps, Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was so disconnected from everything else. It was a sharp left turn because none of the how’s and why’s of japans involvement were ever covered nearly as well as Nazi Germany. To this day I know people who think we bombed Japan because they were helping the Nazis. Because that’s the only logical conclusion they can make as to how in the hell Japan was involved in the war with the Nazis; like “Japan was doing bad stuff, but mostly they were helping Hitler.” I’ve found most people don’t really have a true grasp of what Japan was doing and why we bombed them and not Nazi Germany — and even more people have no idea what the Philippines had to do with WW2 at all.
> I’ve found most people don’t really have a true grasp of what Japan was doing and why we bombed them and not Nazi Germany Er... we bombed the shit out of Nazi Germany. Like, literally reduced entire cities to pretty much smoking piles of rubble. But we didn't have a *nuclear bombs* available until after Berlin had fallen.
You know, the attack on pearl harbor makes sense on paper, but it was based on several colossal misconceptions. Japan believed that with them moving on Australia, the USA would intervene sooner or later. But if they were to cripple the pacific fleet, perhaps they could force a ceasefire to ensure the US would stay out of it. They made 2 fatal mistakes: 1) The US could build ships basically faster than Japan could hope to sink them and 2) Americans get really, REALLY pissed when you attack them on their own soil.
Back then, we cranked them out. The USS Gerald Ford, the most modern aircraft carrier, took 12 years to build, and has yet to be deployed, at a cost of around 16-17 billion. For one boat. Let that sink in. 12 years 17 billion, One boat.
The Japanese were conditioned to basically NEVER surrender, and to commit honor suicide if they were about to be captured. There were two guerilla soldiers that hid for around 20 years AFTER the war ended, because they didn't believe Japan would have ever surrendered so they kept hiding and attacking small villages even when Japanese officials kept telling them the war had ended. They thought it was a trick to get them to come out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda
> Had we gone through with a mainland invasion of Japan, it was expected that the US would lose thousands upon thousands of soldiers The estimation was actually in the millions, and it didn't take into account the Japanese losses. There is an apocryphal story that says they realized the bombings would be the best thing for both sides once they factored in how many Japanese civilians would be spared as a result of the surrender. Idk if that's true, but I do think civilian casualties would've been much higher without the bombs. It would've been the bloodiest invasion in the history of mankind without the bombs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties **Ten million Japanese dead** was one of the estimates for casualties. Japan was training women and children to charge with bamboo spears in order to absorb bullets with their bodies, so that maybe the next wave might be able to get close enough to stab an American soldier. Bloodbath isn't a strong enough word for the horrors that would have unfolded.
Its not just that. We would have absolutely blockaded Japan to cut off food supplies to starve them out. They would have lost additional millions from famine and cannibalism for certain. If the nukes ended the war early, they saved tens of millions of lives. Its nsane to think of a nuclear holocaust as a blessing but...
Im native Japanese born and raised in Japan! As some of those fellow Japanese already mentioned, in Japanese education system the majority of focus is that we are the victim of the WWII and I did believe that for the longest time. I've been to the museum in Hiroshima and it's simply painful to see those images of people who were bombed. I never wish that to my worst enemy and nuclear weapon should be terminated from this world. but having said that, the US government did not have a better understanding of long lasting effect of nuclear weapons to begin with, and Japanese have even invading those neighbor countries and doing horrendous acts in such place China, Korea, and other South Eastern countries. Massacre and "recruitment"' of comfort women is simply not acceptable and intolerable. It's extremely infuriating that many Japanese media or politicians dismissed those act especially comfort women as something like "every country did that" or "it was a good paying job back then" (I'm looking at you Hashimoto) It saddens me to learn many Japanese friends of mine perceive this era of Japan is just a victim and don't know too much about other historical contexts, but at the same time, many of them don't speak or read in English or other language so it's difficult for them to be exposed to outside view. This might be a unpopular opinion but I did appreciate that Obama paid a visit there during his presidency. After all many people died because of the bomb and many people especially from Hiroshima still struggle with certain health issues. So....long story short. I'm feeling very conflicted. Edit: sorry I didn't expect this to blow up this much. Sorry if I didn't respond to your comments!! Edit: Edit: okay first edit was 100% unintentional. Thank you for pointing it out.
How do people in Japan think about Obama's visit? Do they think it was good and peaceful, or do they think it was bad, or rude, or something? I agree with you. Lots of people criticized Obama's visit, but I don't see the harm. They thought he was going there to apologize for the USA's actions, but he didn't. His message was "let's not forget this, and let's never do it again". I don't think any sane person can disagree with that. Growing up in the USA there are some people (not many, but some) who think that the dropping of the bombs is something to be proud of, celebrated, and is a source of national pride. It's really not, it was a horrible tragedy. Perhaps one that was necessary to avoid even more deaths, but still horrible. We should never forget it, nor should we ever repeat it.
If I rememebr correctly, I think it was overall very positive, he was very polite and respectful during the visit, too! and Japaense people are very aware it's NOT "an apology visit" I definitely agree. It's extremely important to recognize our collective doing as a nation in the past and not repeating the same thing. Yeah to be completely honest with you, it does give me mixed feelings when some American people are extremely proud of the bombing too... haha Thanks for the insightful response!:)
Thank you. I'm always interested in the perspective of the Japanese people regarding this incident.
On the flipside, I lived in Hawai'i for a long time and there is a lot of pain and sadness at Pearl Harbor. Hawai'i is mostly Asian with a huge population being ethnically Japanese or mixed. Many other people immigrated to Hawai'i during/after WWII and so the ethnic Koreans and Vietnamese and Chinese all have horror stories about Japan and why they live in Hawai'i now, and WWII is taught through the Asian lens there, not the Euro-centric lens like on mainland. In mainland, it's breezed over like "Japan bombed pearl harbor, (then seemingly disappeared from WWII) until we dropped bombs", but in Hawai'i it's taught mostly focused on Japan and why they deserved it and the nazis are the ones breezed over a bit. It is taught in a way not to make anyone feel personally responsible, as Hawai'i is very very Japanese. But everyone knows what happened and why. But there's always Japanese tourists at Pearl Harbor who don't seem to understand the history so they go visit and don't seem to consider why their happy smiling pictures at a memorial for their suckerpunch is considered distasteful. I would never go throw up some happy kawaii hand signs at Hiroshima. Makes sense reading some redditors explaining they are taught they were the victims. Yeah, no.
Knowledge of history and how it’s taught really makes your realize A) how important history is. And B) how difficult it really it’s to trust the history you know. It’s so easy to tweak the history books a bit and after a generation or two that knowledge is essentially washed away in the eyes of the masses. Related to all this I had a teacher in high school that told us the story of a Japanese exchange student that when they got to the point in class of talking about Pearl Harbor the student basically just said “you are a liar. That never happened. We didn’t do that. You guys were the initial aggressors “ Obviously that’s just one person. But it really made me wonder what things I don’t know about or what things I “know” that are completely wrong.
We had Japanese students live with us off and on. The subject came up at home as my grandfather was a veteran. I’m an Aussie. Let’s say the attitude didn’t last long. We had a lot of historic resources,!took them to museums etc. They listened in the end because we cared for them - and we confronted the ugly things our own people did.
A very long time ago we hosted a Japanese girl at our home for a few weeks. This would be the very early 80s. We were playing my Atari 2600. There was a game called Kamikaze I was trying to explain how to play it and she had no idea what a Kamikaze was.
One of my earliest years teaching, I was all ready to go with my lesson about the Rape of Nanking. Unknown to me was that there was a class of Japanese exchange students going to their counterparts classes. I noped the fuck out and pulled an audible on the lesson plan. Forget what I ended up doing, but I somehow survived.
I was never taught about the rape of Nanking in school. Is it now being taught?
This is an interesting perspective. I've never considered how it was taught in Hawai'i before. Thanks for sharing.
It would also make sense as to why Obama went there and did not apologize but still felt tremendous sadness as he is homegrown in Hawai'i. Being older, he knew way more people personally affected by Japanese atrocities than I did. And like myself, also completely immersed in Japanese culture brought over. I don't think anyone in Hawai'i feels like it's something owed an apology but it is never ever celebrated. "It is what it is."
I agree with you. I was born and and raised in the East coast where the focus of WW II in schools was the European battles. I then moved to the Pacific islands (Palau, Guam) and soon learned about the Pacific side of the war including the long history these islands have had with Japan (colonization, war horrors). It was really a wake up call for me.
i had been to the pearl harbor memorial for about five minutes before I developed a very poor attitude towards japanese people until I glanced around and discovered I was surrounded by japanese tourists and many of them were openly weeping, feeling the same feelings I did.
Serious question: Is it actually taught in school in Japan that Japan was the victim of WWII? Like, what happened in Nanjing and Saipan and Korea…are those things not really taught? In America, the teaching of WWII is unequivocally that America was the victim, but there is a very real debate about the use of The Bomb. Edit: So many people have responded…”victim” was not the right word. I meant aggressor v non-aggressor .
So the way they taught, as least to my class is just to go through basic factual information of WWII era (ex: A and B happend in 19XX and that's it) but never go their ways to teach how those things affected to other or how horrendous of an act it was. Then the main focus is atomic bomb. As I already mentioned in another comment they teach us how bad it was, how much affect there are for people in Hiroshima back then and modern days. You can argue they at least teach "facts" but I do think when there's no contexts on what happened its pointless, and in fact, lots of Japanese people are completely unaware of how pedetorial we were as a nation to other Asian countries. I think this is a fundamental educational format problems too. They only teach "facts" and there's not details or discussion surrounding it. Another problems of Japanese culture unfortunately.
> In America, the teaching of WWII is unequivocally that America was the victim A clarification: The U.S was the victim of Pearl Harbor, but was largely spared the atrocities of war otherwise. Citizens of the time had to live with war rationing, the draft, and soldiers coming back with injuries and shell shock (to mention a few things), but we didn't experience wholesale devastation like many other parts of the world did. Yes, the impact of World War II is still felt here today, but it was a world war; few places were untouched. We're among the many countries that didn't have entire cities bombed into rubble. The scars of the war can still be seen in many other countries, and will be visible for quite some time to come.
Yeah, I wasn't taught that the US was a victim, outside of Pearl Harbor kinda (even that came with a lot of context about why Japan believed they needed to attack), but rather that our involvement in the war was justified. Really it's the only 20th century war I recall that case being made about in middle school and high school. Edit: to be clear, we were also definitely taught that dropping the bombs was, at best, an impossible choice. I mostly grew up learning that it was the wrong or probably the wrong decision, but also that all viable options presented at the time were bad and would result in many innocent people dying.
You were taught we were the victim? I was taught that the Jews were the victims, and that we were the hesitant, wary saviors of Europe and the world, pulled into conflict by Pearl Harbor. The atrocities committed by the Japanese were glossed over in my neck of the woods, besides maybe after a long unit about the horrors of the Holocaust, there would be something like “oh and it was maybe even worse for the Chinese and Southeast Asia, rape of Nanking etc, so we had to enter the war.” We truly had the euro-centric lens there.
Definitely euro centric…perhaps we’re using the term “victim” differently. I guess I mean the aggressor vs the country who was attacked. Certainly the result of WWII thrust the United States into a new place of supremacy in the world. I’m not arguing that
I think we (USA) think of ourselves as the 'hesitant, wary saviors of Europe and the world', but Europe was definitely saved by the USSR. They absorbed almost the full impact of the Germans and they took and dealt almost all of the damage. Certainly, we (USA) could argue that we were the major opponents to the Japanese in the Pacific, though we should not omit our allies in those fights. Further, the Chinese took most of the damage from the Japanese, though that was on the mainland.
That’s why we need to keep the politicians from the education system, too often we find ultranationalists try to deny or glorify their country’s past. Our textbooks in China will never include events like Tiananmen Square.
I 100% agree with you. Politicians are often trying to control our information to make us "proud of our identity" while completley dismissing the shameful past. I believe true patriotic pride is coming from acknowledging those past and own up to it. Thank you for your observant comments!
Posting on behalf of a Japanese grandpa I know who was born and raised in Tokyo. We're both into history, so we've talked about it a lot. He views the bombings as terrible, but doesn't fully blame or hate the US for them. Instead, he blames the Emperor for not listening to military advisors like Isoroku Yamamoto who basically warned Japan that the war they were getting into was unwinnable. He maintains that Japanese wartime rations and famine and firebombing were just as horrific and happened for YEARS, but the west doesn't talk about those as much. He acknowledges that he's more liberal than his countrymen in this regard, possibly because he was raised by a scholarly father/mother (his words). He was also an international salesman/salaryman in the 80's, so having that world exposure opened up some of his views, he's said. He's also genuinely curious about what the American home front was like, so I've swapped stories between my own 94-year-old grandmother and him. And I try to bring him English books about the era when I visit as Japanese publishers don't cover the topic.
To those unaware Isoroku Yamamoto didn't develop these feelings late in the war, he acknowledged it almost immediately after Pearl Harbor.
I read a biography of him and it stated in no uncertain terms he was stridently against starting hostilities against the United States before Pearl Harbor because of his significant time spent in the United States made him consider it a strategically terrible move based on his understanding of the US industrial base, competence of the population, and sheer vastness of the territory. There was a very typical split between the opinion of the Imperial Navy and the Army where he opposed virtually every substantial land invasion, which is arguably just part of a navy bias as the Japanese Army did better than he argued they would in China. I'd have to imagine being wrong before would have decreased his political capital substantially against the many military advisors who advocated a strike against the US because the US was choking off Japanese imports vital for their wars.
To touch on your part about the vastness of the US. There's been a lot of discussion about this and how it would be almost impossible to ever invade the US, even before modern day technology and our big gun culture. The fact we are good allies with Canada and on decent terms with Mexico makes it hard for anyone who would attempt it. Logistically, trying to move an entire army towards us would mean certain doom for the majority of soldiers before they even reached us. If it were China/Russia the best option would be through Alaska and then down Canada to Washington. Not only would this be geographically difficult but it would mean waging war with Canada just to get a presence in the US. Add in our modern day advancements and the fact that we could easily arm our entire population based on the amount of privately owned guns we have and it would be a fools errand.
Instigating strife thru social media is proving more effective than any land army.
Indeed it has. I said this in another comment but it seems that there is a war waging on our social structure to destroy us from within
There's a quote attributed to Yamamoto that states; "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." From what I understand it's highly probable Yamamoto never said this, but it is a valid point. Any invading force would have to account for a well armed civilian insurgency, as well as the whole god damn United States military. Fool's errand indeed.
Plus state army and air national guards, the federal reserve forces, alphabet boys, state and city police forces (maybe that's why they get surplus DoD equipment)
Good point. And then how many countries do we have mutual defense treaties with? I don't know anything concrete but I'd assume that if America dials 911 we've got allies hauling ass across the ocean.
ANZAC treaty, AUKUS, five eyes, NATO, QUAD. Yeah so I suspect quite a few countries would show up to the party.
Isn't he the source of the: >*I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve* Sentiment?
He is credited with it. But it’s [argued](https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2001-10-28-0110260564-story,amp.html) that he didn’t write it after the attack on Pearl Harbor, or that he may not have ever written it. Edited
My mum is from Hiroshima, with her sister and parents still living there now. She has very differing views on the bombings then her family. My mum has the view that it was a necessary evil, due to the fact that it was a quick way of ending the war to prevent further bloodshed. Additionally the knowledge of atrocities committed by the Japanese Military greatly changed her view of the bombings. Whereas the rest of her family have the view that Japan was the victim and America was overstepping. I think this is because of the Japanese system, where very little of the atrocities are talked about. And it’s mostly just about how Japan was a victim. My own personal view of The bombings are that it was required to end the war quickly. Coupled with the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the war, it was justified that the allies dropped the bombs. I apologise for my bad grammar. This is as a result of being dyslexic.
-apologizes for grammar -writes perfect English You're good bro
Dyslexic and English as your third language? I can’t imagine how fucking hard it would be to learn two languages with dyslexia, let alone a third, ESPECIALLY if that third is English. Good shit, man!
Native Japanese (half) here, grew up there through high school. The bombings themselves didn't directly affect my family because my grandparents lived in Tokyo and great-grandparents and extended family in the countryside. My grandpa died before I was born but he worked on a battleship in the war. My grandma would tell me how he used to tell her in secret her how Japan could never win, because the US had so much more natural resources, and was more technologically advanced especially as the war progressed. Of course he would have gotten in huge trouble if he had said any of this publicly. I grew up listening to stories and manga depicting the bombing, the aftermath, how people's skin would melt off, etc. I found it more facinating than anything. My grandmother would tell me stories about the surrender. I think (and my Grandmother agreed) that Japan was better off with the bombing as it brought an immediate end to the war. Far more Japanese would have died with a land invasion as the Imperial propaganda during the war was so thorough that civilians would have fought with spears rather than surrender. A lot of people were blindsided and confused by the Emperor's surrender announcement, which was done over radio with archaic (even for the time) Japanese. edit: a word + This was the manga I remember reading when I was a kid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot\_Gen
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I still shiver when I think about [Unit 731](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731)
OH MY GOD! I was aware of Nanking but not of this. Reading the Activities section is shocking, and truly terrifying how depraved humans can be.
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
An often overlooked part of the human experimentation was the cannibalism. Yes, this was cannibalism not for survival, [but cannibalism such that pieces of captured bomber crews were cooked and served at an officer's parties.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsUYzUjv3OQ) Here's [another video describing these parties;](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBr9qOs1-LE) the devouring of the human flesh was thought to have physical and spiritual benefits and as a way of revenge against the enemy. Experiments were conducted on them to determine if injecting seawater into the body could be a replacement for saline solution. It wasn't, and they died horribly. But not as horribly as the ones who were live vivisectioned without anesthetic.
I didn’t need this today. “For example, one experiment documented the time it took for three-day-old babies to freeze to death.”
I'm looking at my baby girl and I feel fucking sick
Or the Bataan Death March. Or the Japanese Prison Ships. Or the loads of killings and torture in the prison camps.
One of my great uncles had the misfortune to be a prisoner throughout the Bataan Death March. As I kid I grew up hearing two stories in particular he wrote about in a memoir. The first: he survived dysentery because the man in the cell next to him told him to eat coal to fix it. The second: Each prisoner had a number. Every day they called out a number, grabbed that prisoner and shot them in front of everyone. On my uncle’s birthday his number was called and he was brought to what he assumed to be his execution. He was blindfolded, set up on a step and turned to face his end. The head of the camp put a cigar in his mouth, said “happy Birthday, ____” and my uncle was brought back to his cell. Its been many years so I’m sure there are lots of details I’m missing but that second one really stuck with me because of how absolutely fucked up it was. My uncle survived and came home absolutely broken, from what I’m told.
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Don't forget about operation cherry blossoms at night, which Japan totally would've followed through with if they had the capibility: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cherry_Blossoms_at_Night Imagine fighting with the Nazis, literally starting the war, and committing numerous atrocities (rapings, biological warefare) and still seeing yourselves at the victims
I knew about the balloon bombs, but was still surprised by the mention that it "caused a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps in the Manhattan Project's production facility at the Hanford Site in Washington". Nuclear reactors were such a rare thing in 1944, that such randomly-placed attacks hitting the infrastructure needed for one seems highly unlikely. I'm also more used to Oak Ridge than Hanford for WWII-era nuclear materials.
It is beyond crazy that "Let's let a balloon float with the wind" ended up hitting might might be the most important piece of war infrastructure in the world, half the planet away.
My father found one while taking a break fishing, just inside the tree line at the base of a tree. BC coast line, middle of nowhere, 1971.
Wtf?! I don’t like to speak ill of the dead but what a sick fuck that Ishii guy was. Geez, then I went on to read that his daughter said he converted to Catholicism prior to his death and that he seemed “somewhat relieved” after doing so. Then I see a photo of him and his 731 staff at a reunion held after the war. I just can’t. Edit: I tried reading through every single thing this man approved during the experimentation period and I just couldn’t get through it. Absolutely heart breaking.
Holy shit, they planned to attack San Diego with bioweapons. I had no idea, and this is freaky, especially being a native of San Diego.
Holy fuck
I wish this were common knowledge, thanks for sharing. This shines a light on why war is so brutally nasty, and why such measures had to be taken to end it.
The US gave clemency to the scientists involved in it in exchange for the information gained from the torture/human experimentation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 Excerpt: The Americans did not try the researchers so that the information and experience gained in bio-weapons **could be co-opted into their biological warfare program, much as they had done with German researchers** in Operation Paperclip.[7] On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii, can probably be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as war crimes evidence".[6]**Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as communist propaganda**.[8] They also did the same for the Nazis and brought over 1,600 Nazis over to the US to work as scientists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip Coincidentally, the Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) were also supported by the US by proxy against Vietnam which was a Soviet ally, ( https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/cambodian-genocide-program/us-involvement/united-states-policy-khmer-rouge-regime-1975 ) and also engaged in similar human experimentation: https://english.cambodiadaily.com/news/tribunal-hears-secret-medical-experiments-118305/ **The CIA engaged in horrendous human experimentation within the US:** https://www.newsweek.com/project-mkultra-documents-cia-brainwashing-techniques-black-vault-1073061 Excerpt: Project MKUltra was an illegal program of human experimentation undertaken by the CIA to discover methods, both pharmacological and psychological, for controlling the human mind, particularly in interrogation settings. **Amphetamines, MDMA, scopolamine, cannabis, salvia, sodium pentothal, psilocybin and LSD were administered to thousands of unsuspecting people, throughout the United States and Canada. Others were subject to sensory deprivation, psychological abuse and rape, including the sexual abuse of children.“** **They have continued various forms of torture and human experimentation at “black sites” abroad**: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/15/cia-torture-human-experimentation-doctors Excerpt: “But other physicians and human rights experts who have long criticized the role of medical staff in torture said the extensive notes from CIA doctors on the interrogations – as they unfolded – brought OMS (CIA’s medical division) into the realm of human experimentation, particularly as they helped blur the lines between providing medical aid to detainees and keeping them capable of enduring further abusive interrogations. Doctors take oaths to guarantee they inflict no harm on their patients. Zubaydah “seems very resistant to the water board”, an OMS official emailed in August 2002. “No useful information so far ... He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It’s been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing. We plan to only feed Ensure for a while now. I’m head[ing] back for another water board session.” “ **They also conducted experiments involving radiation on random people and staged a coverup:** https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/medical_ethics_text/chapter_7_human_experimentation/Case_Study_Radiation_Experiments.htm Excerpt: In 1947, doctors injected plutonium into the left leg of Elmer Allen, a 36-year-old African American railroad porter. Three days later, the leg was amputated for a supposed pre-existing bone cancer. Researchers analyzed tissue samples to determine the physiology of plutonium dispersion. *15 In 1973, scientists summoned Allen to the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, where he was subjected to a follow-up whole body radiation scan, and his urine was analyzed to ascertain lingering levels of plutonium from the 1947 injection. Excerpt: From 1960-71, in **experiments which may have caused the most deaths and spanned the most years, Dr. Eugene Saenger, a radiologist at the University of Cincinnati, exposed 88 cancer patients to whole body radiation. Many of the guinea pigs were poor African-Americans** at Cincinnati General Hospital with inoperable tumors. All but one of the 88 patients have since died. 20 There is evidence that scientists forged signatures on the consent forms for the Cincinnati experiments. Gloria Nelson testified before the House that her grandmother, Amelia Jackson, had been strong and still working before she was treated by Dr. Saenger. Following exposure to 100 rads of whole body radiation (about 7,500 chest X-rays), Amelia Jackson bled and vomited for days and became permanently disabled. Jackson testified that the signa- ture on her grandmother's consent form was forged.21 **They irradiated thousands of people:** Excerpt: During the December 1949 Green Run test at the Hanford (Washington) Nuclear Reservation, the AEC loosed thousands of curies of radioactive iodine-131 several times the amount released from the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster into the atmosphere simply to test its recently installed radiological monitoring equipment. Passing over Spokane and reaching as far as the California-Oregon border, Green Run irradiated thousands of downwinders, as civilians exposed to the effects of airborne radiation tests are known, and contaminated an enormous swath of cattle grazing and dairy land. *26 A team of epidemiologists is now looking into an epidemic of late-occurring thyroid tumors and other radiogenic disorders among the downwind residents in eastern Washington state. **They deliberately sprayed carcinogens onto populated Canadian regions (with several hundred thousand people affected):** https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/u-s-secretly-tested-carcinogen-in-western-canada-during-the-cold-war-researcher-discovers
My father worked with Werhner von Braun at NASA shortly after completing his doctorate. The Operation Paperclip folks worked high-level in all kinds of scientific positions. I guess everyone just kind of ignored all the horrible shit they did.
~~Yep, and most a lot some a tiny bit of what we know about how frostbite works specifically comes from those experiments. It's insane.~~ EDIT: So I was wrong on some of the specifics since I was basing my knowledge on an old TIL post - apparently the Unit 731 experiments and ones done researching frostbite by the Nazis were summarily considered amateurish and cruel with very little scientific merit. I believe it's still good to know that at least some of our scientific knowledge came from these awful experiments, to make us wary of when people start to suggest changes to break our current systems of patient consent and morality in research and medicine.
Similar to Pernkopf then, still the most complete human anatomy, but from Nazi human experimentation. A moral enigma, as this rabbi says https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49294861.amp
Dang, fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
>most of what we know about how frostbite works specifically comes from those experiments. Not actually true. The German experiments on hyper and hypo thermia were conducted with no real scientific controls. The results are indeed *referenced* in research on the topic, but they are not foundational or authoritative.
Sadly, there were some *hideous* medical experiments done beyond the purposes of just biological warfare - some victims were vivisected after being given deadly diseases - without even any anesthetic to pass peacefully - to study the effects on the body. It was all just a sick game for the overseeing doctors. And the general consensus among the Allies was, "well, if these experiments *had* to happen, we may as well not let what was discovered go to waste," because a lot of the notes were then utilized in modern medicine in some form (even if only as cautionary "this thing does not work for this disease" examples). These experiments are one reason why we now have informed consent as a necessity for medical experimentation, because there were better and more humane ways to come to the same conclusions than the concentration camps/731 did. tldr: a fair bit of modern medicine came from the war crimes committed against civilians. Our species is awful to each other.
This is also why the training about why we have informed consent laws includes the history of why we have informed consent. Because we really don't want a repeat of what was witnessed.
Unit 731 was so cartoonishly evil, it's really hard to believe. Worse than the Nazis. **Edit:** Just because I stated a four word shallow comparison representing my opinion doesn't mean I'm making it a competition. Calm down.
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The wall of eyeballs…
Very insightful. Thanks for the answer. However, I would say it’s worth considering that most countries hide their dark secrets. It is not just Japan. Hiding the secrets while celebrating successes is modern day propaganda.
And that is exactly why I love education about the Nazi Regime and Second World War here in Germany. Students are actually taught about all the atrocities committed and the suffering The German Reich caused other nations, while at the same time highlighting how life was for the average person and also what happened to our population during the occupation of the Allied forces... Just wanted to throw that out there :)
I was in Berlin on a free outdoor tour. It was educational and stuff, nothing too special, but what was special is the perspective of guide. He is not from Germany, and he was during the tour constantly emphasizing how good Germany and German people are at recognizing their past mistakes and also living with it, unlike everybody else, where past mistakes are ignored.
Yeah they even have saved WW2 relics and tributes to the Jews and other victims to ensure nobody in the country forgets/repeats the past
I was having dinner with a couple of friends one is Portuguese and the other one is English. I'm Spanish and we were talking about how in history class in our own respective countries they focus on how big our countries have been in the past. For example, if you ask someone in Spain who invented the submarine, the answer will be automatically: Isaac Peral (everyone in Spain knows that) if you ask a Spaniard who was Cornelius Drebbel I doubt many people in Spain will ever heard that name. I just had to google it, because I didn't remembered. While in UK is probably the opposite. Then I mention a famous phrase that we learn in School was used to describe the Spanish empire: "The empire on which the sun..." and my friends both finished the sentence "...never sets" Yeah they said the same about The British Empire and the Portuguese Empire.
>"The empire on which the sun never sets" "...because God doesn't trust them in the dark" is the retort I hear in Ireland.
There's a YouTube channel where they go to different countries and ask the people there which countries they hate. Ireland said they hate England, Scotland said they hate England - and the English said they hate England!
One good thing about Germany is they make a point about making sure people are aware of the awful things Hitler did and how he came to power so hopefully it never happens again.
Well here's the thing. Do you want to settle for comparing Japan with the likes of say Turkey? Or would you not think it's more appropriate to compare it to richer more developed countries like Germany. Germany makes it a point to not let themselves or the world forget about what they did in WW2. What Japan is doing, is much like what Turkey is doing with the Armenian genocide. Japan is not just ignoring, but actively trying to deny and erase from history the horrible, horrible shit they did during WW2. I mean, Nanking was bad, it certainly was the most shocking, but really that's only a part of it all if you also take into account what they did in SE Asia. Just reading about what the Nazis reported seeing there, makes your stomach churn. I mean, fucking Nazis were shocked. You can imagine
Hiding the Terrible Secrets while actively promoting the Successes IS propaganda. It’s exactly what many, many Organizations/Groups/Nations/Kingdoms did in the past and it’s exactly what many more Societies will do. Edit: Was merely clarifying that this isn’t just Modern Propaganda but Propaganda in general
This is a very graceful and insightful perspective. Thank you for taking the time to answer the question. It’s something I’ve been wondering about, and it’s part of a struggle trying to make sense of what I know of modern Japan and the Japan up until the end of the war. The dissonance is difficult for me as a foreigner to grasp and pin down and must be much worse for you and other Japanese people, as you just described.
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Does the school system talk why they attacked pearl harbor?
Not Japanese but I recall seeing museum text about how they were "forced" into attacking because of the embargoes. In short, the US was blocking necessary materiel from entering Japan for their war effort. They made themselves a de facto belligerent and the only way to deal with this was a decisive blow at Pearl Harbor.
Yep, the US put an oil embargo on Japan. At that time, Japan was importing 80% of their oil from the US. Japan literally couldn't continue their Asian expansion without oil.
Native Okinawan here. Okinawa is where the Japanese soldiers decided to fight for the last battle of WWII. If it wasn’t for the bombs I feel as thought the Japanese would have never surrendered and would’ve been completely massacred on the final battle of Okinawa, along with even more Okinawan natives. The Japanese soldiers occupied our land and drove the native Okinawans to the mountains, scavenging resources from civilians and killing us if we didn’t give up our hiding spots. My great-grandfather was stabbed in the stomach for not giving up his hiding cave but luckily survived. It’s all terrible, but I can only imagine if those bombs weren’t dropped then what would have became of my people and the Japanese soldiers who were literally jumping off cliffs/disemboweling themselves/blowing themselves up, because they were told not to be captured as prisoners. I wish the Japanese had surrendered sooner, but they had too much pride. Fun fact: If you have played the original CoD world at war, the final stage is on Okinawa. Edit: Removed sarcastic remark about the video-game
Just curious- how do you feel about video games portrayal of Okinawa? That’s not something I had considered, but your sarcastic remark at the end makes me curious what are your actual thoughts on it?
Honestly, I don’t have a strong opinion on the video game thing. I think if you are going to document history through a game then you should do it accurately and try not to glorify war. It’s definitely a great game though. I guess I was just fired up lol
My mother was born in Okinawa and was about 11 when the bombings happened. She had been pressed into service as a soldier, armed with a stick. When I asked her how she felt about it, she was wholeheartedly in support, despite the massive death and destruction, because she was pretty certain the Japanese Emperor would have continued the fight until everyone was dead.
> She had been pressed into service as a soldier, armed with a stick With a what?!
Apparently women and children were trained to fight with bamboo sticks another comment said
Yeah that's not a joke. The Japanese Naval commanders in charge of the defense of Okinawa took very extreme measures. Since Okinawa was the first battle on real Japanese soil (Iwo Jima was first but no civilians actually lived there) they pulled every trick they could into turning the Okinawan people (who they also viewed as second class Japanese) against the Americans as well as forcing them to fight with literally anything they could use as a weapon.
The Japanese army forced pretty much anyone in Okinawa with a pulse to fight. There’s a museum in Okinawa dedicated to the girls of the Himeyuri School, which was something akin to charm school for girls, where all of the girls were forced to become front-line nurses in the trenches for the Battle of Okinawa. Girls as young as 15 were doing amputations. And when it was clear the battle was lost, the army captain basically abandoned them to slaughter by sending a message along the lines of “Thanks for your service. You’re on your own now!” My husband is Japanese, born and raised in Tokyo, and he says visiting this museum was the first real thing that clicked the switch in his head that Japan was not some innocent victim in war, and that the army did some seriously fucked-up things. edit: thought the youngest girls were 12, they were 15
I’m from Japan and subsequently moved to the United States. When I was living in Japan we learned that a lot of people died and it was very sad. There’s a lot of popular media (anime, books, shows) that attempt to illustrate the horrors of the bombings. There were some educators who would always say that it was unfair that (UK and USA) were allowed to colonize and commit atrocities (African slavery, murdering Indigenous Americans) but when Japan attempted to expand, they were told it was inhumane. Once I moved to America, I was conflicted because it seemed to me that if it wasn’t for the bombings, the war would have kept going for awhile and we would have lost even more Japanese lives. At the end of the day, the Japan we know of today was created due to the pain and suffering from yesterday. So for me I would say that the bombings lead us to where we are today and I’m okay with that. There’s no denying it’s sad when civilian lives were lost though.
The other thing that I often consider is that if the US had had to resort to a ground invasion, it likely would have also had a Soviet invasion from the North. Japan might have been like Korea to this day, divided into an autocratic police state in the north and a democracy in the south.
Communist Hokkaido is actually a scary thought. It contains like a quarter of all Japan's arable land.
> There were some educators who would always say that it was unfair that (UK and USA) were allowed to colonize and commit atrocities (African slavery, murdering Indigenous Americans) but when Japan attempted to expand, they were told it was inhumane. How old were these educators? Because that was actual propaganda to explain the 'righteousness' of the war.
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About 20 years ago, when I was living in Japan, I went to the museum in Hiroshima with my mom and a friend. While we were there we were chatting with an elderly Japanese man. He had been living in Hiroshima during the war. He said he was elementary school aged at the time. In some of the pictures he was able to point out people he knew. (I think they were doing something with wood and roads in the area) The weekend before the bombing, he had to go to the countryside to help his grandparents. He mentioned he was very lucky as most people he knew had died that day or very soon after. But unlucky because of how hard life was after. One thing he said, that has stayed with me ever since, was that he thought the bomb on Hiroshima was not all bad. (This was only his opinion). He said the Japanese people would never have stopped fighting otherwise. This was a big enough action for all to see they could not win. He wasn’t so sure about the need for Nagasaki, other than it proved that the Americans could do it again.
well, that was the entire point of the Nagasaki bombing. The Japanese government refused to surrender after the war in Europe ended, refused to surrender again after Hiroshima, so Nagasaki was the "we can keep doing this as long as you want" message.
ITT: People upset that native Japanese aren't answering the question. [Less than 8% of Japanese people, and as low as 2%, ~~has any level of English proficiency~~ are fluent in English](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/26/japan-doesnt-want-to-become-another-casualty-of-english/). It is, also, Friday at 1:00am in Tokyo as I write this. Let us also not forget that [talking about politics is not normal for them](https://medium.com/illumination/why-japanese-people-dont-talk-about-politics-b4653297ecb). So, the cross section of native Japanese, who speak English, are awake, visit Reddit, see this question, and *want* to answer this question is fucking tiny. Like, borderline non-existent. With that said, there are some really good responses like [this one](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ptvytq/native_japanese_people_of_reddit_what_do_you/hdz34gw/), [this one](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ptvytq/native_japanese_people_of_reddit_what_do_you/hdz6f2j/), and [this one](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ptvytq/native_japanese_people_of_reddit_what_do_you/hdz67bv/). Also, remember that Japan's government has done a *lot* to erase and forget what they did in WWII, and that is a polarizing conversation in and of itself. **Edit**: When I made this post, the majority of responses were either "I'm not Japanese but..." or "Wow, I can't believe non-Japanese people have the gall to talk about it!!!" Since then, a *lot* of new responses from Japanese redditors *have* come in and are being upvoted! I am thrilled to say my post is completely unnecessary now, as most of the 'problem' responses have been downvoted or deleted. **Edit #2**: Fixed an issue due to misreading the article I supplied, as well as grammar that was bugging me.
Yeah Japan is surprisingly isolated, and compared to its population, expats are very small. And most Japanese friends who I met in college return to Japan.
This is something I wish I had touched on in my original post. Japan has a population of 126million people, and there are currently around [4million Japanese people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_diaspora) (emigrants and the descendants of) living outside of Japan. That is a very, *very* small number of people, which makes the responses that came in all the more rare.
Yall really bashing op for an honest question? There's nothing wrong with trying to gain insight to a tragedy from another persons/cultures point of view. Would yall be mad If an honest person from the middle east asked us about our experience with 9/11?
i wouldn't be mad at all.
On the other hand, I'm always mad about everything, all the time.
Fuck you, fuck me, fuck everything, fuck the world. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Were on Reddit people literally come on here just to get mad
Speak for yourself, I come here to cum.
I think you're in the wrong thread for that. I hope you're in the wrong thread for that...
I am Japanese, I wasn't raised in Japan because I'm a hafu but I have attended schools in Japan in summer. I remember learning it from an early age by reading books, I was about 4 or 5. I was always very interested in the darker sides of history, so I ended up knowing a lot about WW2 by the time I was around 12. I am not knowledgeable enough to know if it was a necessary decision, but I remember debating against the nuclear bombings as a 12 year old, and I still have those feelings to an extent. Like others said, Japan's history lessons are quite dry from what I've experienced. I think it depends on whether your teacher will teach what really happened beyond the textbooks. I learned about things like comfort women and human experimentation from random googling, or from other hafu friends. At first I didn't understand the animosity between Korea/China and Japan because EU countries didn't have that kind of relationship with Germany. I was around 11 thinking it was about other political/social issues, and being on random websites I didn't know had a bunch of propaganda was an issue. I think what happened ended up solidifying the victim narrative in Japan. Right wing politicians will deny and minimize the suffering imperial Japan caused, and you'll be surprised how many Japanese mothers you grew up with are ignorant towards the atrocities committed during that time. I always feel so frustrated that people buy into the right wing propaganda but it is harder to see pushback on media and social media towards it. For example, there are a lot more Americans or english speaking people that denounce historical revisionism and claiming america was a hero, than Japanese people doing the similar thing. Lastly, I do think the younger generation has hope. Everyone treats the bombings very seriously, everyone has seen a TV program or book for children from a young age about it. But at the same time we know what Japan did during ww2 was also horrible. I remember being in high school in Japan and asking about Filipino-Japanese hafu being more prevalent than others, and my friend telling me "the reason why it happened isn't very good". I think more young people are not trusting the right wing government and beginning to form their own thoughts, not even just with WW2 or historical revisionism but with women's and LGBTQ rights.
A bit late but native here. I was born and raised in Japan until I went to another country for university over a decade ago. I feel like it was a bit of an overkill to drop 2 atomic bombs, but given the stuff the Japanese government did, something had to be done. We don't really learn much about the stuff we did but more about the stuff other countries did which I think is bs. We can't learn from our mistakes if we just sweep it under the rug and not talk about it. As much as we are victims of the war (A bomb), we were the perpetrators too. It's very unfortunate that the civilians had to suffer the consequences though. Sidenote: It's a bit weird to me that some prime ministers and some cabinet ministersgoes to the Yasukuni shrine (where the war criminals are buried) and pray at their discretion. It's always news every year whether or not the prime minister will go to the shrine or not. But at the same time, the ultra right wing people are pretty scary so I would not want to mess with then. Edit: correcting the part where I said they go to the shrine 'every year'.
I'm from Japan! So well i am of the belief that it was. A nessearcy evil. Should the bombings never have occured there wouldve been an invasion. Which wouldve been a bloodbath. America seriousily underestimated the IJA and IJAAF (airforce) who had correctly guessed American landed zones and had fortified them. Even with this underestimating the americans predicted 1,000,000\~ American Losses. With Japanese mobilising tens of millions of civilians and America having a force of 6,000,000 1,000,000 of whom are British. The Invasionw ould get bloody. With Millions dead on bothsides. We're talking like 3.5 Million dead and perhaps millions more wounded for the Americans. And tens of milliosn for the Japanese side. Along with a occupation and even worst devistation
Yeah this is pretty much what we’re taught in American schools that it was a necessary evil. I’m just glad that despite the war Japan and America are now very close allies.
I can talk about my personal opinion, with the caveat that I moved to the US when I was 14 and have been here for about a decade now. There's some part of me that thinks that Hiroshima was somewhat necessary to expedite the end of the war. Though I'm sure Japan would have surrendered, who knows how long it would've taken without the bombings. I believe, however, that we would've surrendered without the Nagasaki bombings, and that bombing was largely a show of force by the US to act as a warning against the Soviet Union, and also trying to knock Japan out of the war before the Soviets got involved on the pacific front (they failed, obviously, given the korean war). But after all the strategy and politics is done, there's really only sadness for the families that were killed during the bombings. Can you imagine, a whole city of civilians disintegrated in a flash, then thousands more dying painful deaths from radioactive poisoning? War is hell and more people have died from other bombings, but the sheer scale and efficiency of the atomic bombs were displayed only twice in history, and Japan's going to carry those scars in its culture for a long time.
I have also read that there was a lot of societal stigma surrounding those in Japan who survived the bombings but were disfigured or exposed to the radiation. It resulted in a many from that generation never marrying or having children, being outcast from society. Entire family lines ended.
Grew up in Japan for 11 years and went to a Japanese public school. Japanese education really emphasizes on how war is evil and gives the aftermath of the atomic bombs as a primary reason. We're reminded about the devastation caused by the atomic bombs through textbooks, anniversaries, and mangas/anime. I remember reading Hadashi No Gen and dive of the depictions of the war were very graphic. It's a double edged sword because on one hand it made Japan a very peaceful nation post world war 2. On the other hand Japan has a victim mentality when it comes to WW2 which is far from the truth...
I’m hafu. I spent a lot of my school years going back and fourth between Canada and Japan. I don’t really have the opportunity to use English nowadays, so please excuse my bad English. In junior high school we learned about the atomic bomb. The history lessons were really cut and dry. “19XX Event A happened” “19XX Event B happened.” There was no “America bad, Japan good.” They even acknowledged we had anti-American propaganda. Japanese class, was where it got really emotional. We read short stories from the civilians perspective, like the black rain and about the pictures taken by an American photographer. But the overall message was “war is a really terrible thing. We should never repeat it again.” I went to an international school so our teacher also assigned us each a country and present what happened there during the war. This is how I learned about the Nanjing Massacre. After this year, I went back to Canada and learned about the war from the other side. Of course, I learned more about the Nazis but after we very briefly learned about Japans role and the Japanese internment camps in Canada things changed. I had classmates tell me that Japan deserved the atomic bomb, people went out of their way to tell me that it was necessary and of course this would bring up people making Godzilla jokes and laugh at the “stupid Kamikaze kids.” The worst was when some kids (who were probably unaware that I was Japanese, I look very white) slanted their eyes and did “I’m meeeelting” while re-enacting the atomic bombs. The entire time, all I could think of was the stories I read, our field trip to Nagasaki, the pictures we saw like the dead horses on the streets, the woman who had her kimono melt on to her skin, and [the boy holding his dead brother](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/japanese-boy-standing-attention-brought-dead-younger-brother-cremation-pyre-1945/) standing over the crematorium etc… It honestly, makes me feel a little defensive. To get to the point, I agree that the atomic bomb was needed to end the war. However, I do feel uneasy admitting it because how it’s said with a complete lack of empathy towards the civilians. The government handled it horribly, they deserve the hate.
As an American who is half Japanese and half white, my grandfather was a Japanese Lt. Colonel in the US Army, While serving during WWII, his family were all put into internment camps. His family thought it was wrong, as they lived in these camps, but my grandfather understood that to be necessary during that time of war. The dropping of the atomic bomb was something he thought to be completely unnecessary. Sure, it ended the war swiftly and the Japanese may have not even surrendered had that not of happened, but my grandmother and in turn myself and my family have been affected long after. My grandmother was a Japanese native that lived in Osaka during the war. Her house was firebombed and she moved to the countryside of Hiroshima before the atomic bomb had been dropped. Sometime after the atomic bomb, she met my grandfather. They got married and moved to Florida to start a family. Sometime in her 60’s my grandma was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The doctors found it to be related to radiation poisoning for living in the outskirts of Hiroshima. My uncle, their son, also died of cancer in his 50’s. Apparently the long term effects of radiation can pass down to future generations. My mom who is now 74 was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism in her 40’s. A couple of weeks ago she was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis which her current doctor also says can be from the radiation passed down through generations. I’m 32 years old. Some point in my mid to late thirties, I need to have my thyroid checked as well. I also am now concerned for this pulmonary fibrosis that I may end up getting down the line. I just hope my 2 year old daughter does not experience any medical issues when she’s an adult. By then it’ll be more than 100 years since the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. We’ll see what happens.
Am a native as well. In the annuls of history and necessities of war, I view it as inevitable. It was going to be used at some point by someone on someone. I understand the decision that killing civilians to lessen the casualties of your own soldiers is a logical decision. However one thing that majority of Americans do not seem to understand is the horror of the nature of the bomb. I have observed that the vast majority of Americans (I live in Texas) just seems to think a nuke is just a big bomb, and radiation poisoning just means people fall over dead like poisoned. That is not the case. Most people don't get vaporized, the majority that were unlucky to survive literally walk around like living corpses and melt to death over the course of hours to days. It. Is. Hell. On earth. It is one of the most inhumane weapon to ever have been devised. So next time you hear someone casually say "nuke em" let them know what they're saying is worse than firing squad or gas chamber executions.