Replies

I've seen interviews with a Japanese survivor of Hiroshima, who was *ahem* getting free medical services in this country. She quite frankly admitted that as a school girl at the time, she was being trained to use sticks to attack American soldiers. Maybe your mother-in-law was out sick that day, or was someplace where they weren't doing that, but it was being done. And she would have been doing it whether or not she was "so inclined."

Gumlegs: Oh, no doubt that the Japanese government wanted to make children attack American troops. My mother (not an in-law) and her peers decided, after years of listening to government lies about Japan "winning the war," that they would not participate in such wrongdoing. I didn't say it didn't happen; I simply said there were Japanese citizens who vehemently opposed the notion.

Would they have been arrested, detained, perhaps even killed by their government? Most certainly. Did they choose to make a principled stand against a policy they thought was wrong? Most certainly.

Oh, no doubt that the Japanese government wanted to make children attack American troops. My mother (not an in-law) and her peers decided, after years of listening to government lies about Japan "winning the war," that they would not participate in such wrongdoing. I didn't say it didn't happen; I simply said there were Japanese citizens who vehemently opposed the notion.

My apoligies for mistaking your mother for your mother-in-law (or vice-versa). No doubt there were those Japanese who were pretty fed up by 1945. But, as you yourself continued ...

Would they have been arrested, detained, perhaps even killed by their government? Most certainly. Did they choose to make a principled stand against a policy they thought was wrong? Most certainly.

So their own government would have "arrested, detained, perhaps even killed" them? I say their lives, and countless others, were saved by the atomic bombings. I say that on balance, winning the war in the fashion we chose was not an immoral act. Please note that I do not claim it is moral, just not immoral. General Sherman's (real) quote is more apt now than ever, "War is all hell."