WaPo: In Japan and America, more and more people think Hiroshima bombing was wrong

Washington Post ^ | May 10, 2016 | Adam Taylor

[Zakeet]

This month, President Obama will become the first incumbent American president to visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945.

That bomb - and a second atomic blast on Nagasaki on Aug. 9 - effectively ended World War II; Japan surrendered six days after the Hiroshima bombing. However, the human costs were huge. Estimates of those killed go as high as 150,000, and even for those who survived, it was a hellish, life-altering experience.

[Snip]

In the first Gallup poll from 1945 just after the bombings, a huge 85 percent of Americans approved the bombings. However, figures from 2005 show a significant decline to 57 percent. Meanwhile, another poll conducted by the Detroit Free Press in the United States and Japan in 1991 found that 63 percent of Americans thought that the bombings were justified in a bid to end the war, while just 29 percent of Japanese did.

[Scrambler Bob]

Pearl Harbor???

It was justified, by looking ahead to the nuke bombings.

I am just applying predictive evolution principles.

[JayAr36]

This is the cause of the snowflakes we now see in the Higher Indoctrination system called colleges these days.

Instead of snowflakes they are really mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed manure.

[servantboy777]

As cruel as the Japs were and how they treated prisoners...If I'd been president, they might-ah gotten an additional blast..smack dab in the middle of Tokyo.

[17th Miss Regt]

Japanese dead would have numbered in the millions

Do you think that would have bothered them? How do you think they feel about blacks? They have continually advocated for the slaughter of 20,000,000 or so of them in the last 40 years. (Not trying to hijack the thread here, just pointing out the moral obtuseness of the liberals.)

[Buckeye McFrog]

My late uncle was a Catholic Priest who worked in the missions in the Philippines. He was taken prisoner when Japan invaded, and rode out the war in an internment camp.

Mind you he was a Christian clergyman whose core teachings were all about forgiving your enemy. He never said anything good about the Japanese the whole time I knew him. Said the military prisoners in the camp next-door had things far, far worse.

[MHT]

And was the attack on Pearl Harbor “right”?

[ataDude]

Back in 1945 we WERE smarter. Millions of other lives were saved including both Allied and Japanese. I call BS.

[bunkerhill7]

WashPosh: In China and America, more and more people think Rape of Nanking was wrong
Washing Posh^ | May 10, 2016 | dunnit

there fixed it

[Heavyrunner]

It’s easy to sit four generations removed from Pearl Harbor and monday morning quarterback, I guess.

The current generation also thinks that having to work for a living, or which bathroom you use is optional - A worldview abetted by a complicit government.

[rktman]

Oh, the war of oppression by some dumb actor who bought his way into the white house. That war.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Just pointing out that I would be stunned if any Japanese actually agreed that the bombings were the correct thing to do.

[rlmorel]

Anyone who thinks the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wrong MUST see this short video by Bill Whittle:

Bill Whittle: The TRUE Story of The Atomic Bomb (Click to View)

Note: the video is about 15 minutes long, but it covers the morality of dropping the bombs, the rationale, and he skewers a few liberals (Jon Stewart, for one) in the process. It is 15 minutes well spent, and Bill Whittle considers this video the best of his work, out of the hundreds he has done. Strong praise.

[hoosiermama]

My dad was with the 13th Air Depot (see posts above). They were to be the jumping off post for the invasion of Japan.
We just discovered he received two bronze stars for work his base did: the development of in air fueling and modifications of air crqft putting machine gun in frant and bombs in rear. Two planes flew in tandem the first with guns afire the second dropping bomb and then reversing positions. I believe they did some notable damage

Dad was in charge of making sure all material, food etc were on base and disbursed from the important depot in the South Pacific. He was also the judicial officer for the base.

[Ouderkirk]

And hindsight is always 20/20 too.

Truman did what he thought was right, and in all honesty it probably was right at the time.

As has been demonstrated in the wars fought since, bring the war to the home front for those on the losing side brings the war to a conclusion much more quickly.

[GingisK]

Smarter and under duress.

[Thank You Rush]

“”This Washington Post article is getting us all ready for Obama’s inevitable apology for Hiroshima””

Let’s write his speech for him. He holds no surprises for us - he really did turn out to be VERY TRANSPARENT! It’s pretty bad when the public knows what a president is going to say BEFORE he says it!

[Billthedrill]

It’s because the people who were involved on both sides are mostly dead now, and the ones who remain are dwindling. Those of us who came after will never be able to see it through their eyes.

[Mr. Mojo]

And unencumbered by the systematic brainwashing of leftist educators.

[vette6387]

“1) Did ANYONE in Japan ever think that the Hiroshima bombing was right?”

From my travels in Japan, I have found that their education system (really an indoctrination process) “teaches” their children that Japan did nothing to warrant being bombed. I’ve had school children corner me in Shinkansen train stations and ask me to promise not to ever bomb their country again. To this day, Japan refuses to accept responsibility for starting WWII in the Pacific. Their kids grow up thinking that America was the agressor.

[Retain Mike]

I have 2,000 word essay broken into four letters about dropping the atomic bombs. Here is the one for the argument I hear least often.

Japanese Intransigence Provoked the Atomic Bombs

The Kokutai principle was critical to surrender. Any influential Japanese lived within a spiritual fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. In subjection to this spiritual and political authority, commoners forfeited individuality for a collective soul defining Japan. As soldiers or civilian militia they awaited the Empire’s ruling oligarchy decrees. With such national unity committed to waging total war, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.

By January 1944 Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat and appointed a Peace Faction. However, he and his government conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.

At impasse the two atomic bombs allowed Hirohito, the Son of Heaven, to speak the Voice of the Crane in the sweltering, underground bunker. The bombs were regarded as a dramatic force of nature; equivalent to an earthquake or typhoon against which human arguments collapsed. Only submission to such a catastrophe could be proportional to the disgrace of surrender following 2,600 years of martial invincibility.

Only Hirohito could submit, because he held the heaven created Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. The War Faction could now relent and no one would lose face. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence the torturous negotiations leading to actual surrender.

Partial bibliography:

Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco

Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni

Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange

The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles

Hirohito, Edward Behr
A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”.

“When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”