Was the atomic bombing of Japan ethical

Holocaust denial in Japan? I hadn't heard of that actually.

Well the US will never admit that bombing two civilian targets was horrible and the Japanese will never admit that the torture and other things they subjected soldiers to was horrible. We're at a horrible stand still.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Well the main sticky points for Japanese holocaust denial...

a) Nanjing Massacre, also known as "Rape of Nanjing"

b) Sexual slavery and slaughtering of Korean women (there were also lots of Chinese and others, but the majority were Korean), known as "comfort women"

* wiki's operation downfall*

No, that involved a land invasion. My plan wouldn't have that, just reducing the island to unlivable wreck and going home most likely. This, of course ignores any future use like staging stuff against the Soviets. I consider the survival of enemy forces to be a bonus objective, nice if it happens, but nothing to cry over if it doesn't. Forcing them to surrender is just easier for me since I don't have to risk troops killing off the last bits of defense.

Fight smart, not fair.

Neither of that conduct is honestly deplorable. Japanese soldiers brutalized civilians and PO Ws because they were treated pretty awfully as well. The best way to get a group of people to brutalize others is to brutalize them first. I mean, there really isn't serious denial. It's not like normal people go out onto the streets and talk about how these things never happened. Those black vans piss everyone off. It's the fact that nobody seems inclined to grovel for the sake of foreign self-gratification. These atrocities happened as the inevitable results of social, political, and cultural structures that have long since been stamped out of the national structure and have no way to return. There's simply no positive motivations for current generations to ingratiate themselves.

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

There is also the human experimentation that the Japanese conducted although to be fair the United States made some token imprisonments of level guys but hired the head of the project. :V

Someone mentioned Cuba, the difference is that Cuba had the support of a large power that we were not willing to go to war with over Cuba, and Russia wasn't willing to go to war with us over Cuba either, so it was a perpetual stalemate.

The bombing of Nagasaki was done, to my knowledge, because the Japanese military felt that we only had one bomb, and stated that they would resist until every city was burned in an atomic fire.

The only thing my Japanese friend said on the Hiroshima memorial was a vague, "What it says in English is certainly not what it says in Japanese." So I don't know.

There still is an ultra nationalist movement in Japan and they did recently, according to my friend, issue a formal apology in 2010. A bit delayed I guess.

edited 4th Jan '11 9:24:19 AM by saladofstones

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

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Stay on topic, please.

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Meh, they backtrack from their apologies about a month after anyway so it's not worth much. It'd be like Germany chancellor saying sorry about the death camps and then next month go salute Hitler in public. I mean last year or the year before (I forget when), a Japanese cabinet minister said Korean women wanted sex from the manly Japanese soldiers and therefore no mass systematic rape of 100 000s of people ever occurred.

I think the Americans were overreacting to possible Japanese resistance and Soviet capabilities of invading Japan. At the same time, nobody in East Asia (aside from Japan) questions the morality of the atomic bombings simply because they felt it was just dessert. Their only complaint is that not enough bombs were dropped.

In the end, it was a war, Japan started it and the Americans had a decisive victory. If it weren't atomic bombs, it would have been firebombing, not that, it would have been a brutal blockade or a land invasion. No matter what, people were going to die. If you wanted to discuss morality, we should be talking about how the leaders of Japan and Germany should not have gone into wars of aggression against their neighbours.

edited 4th Jan '11 9:38:53 AM by breadloaf

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Neither of that conduct is honestly deplorable. Japanese soldiers brutalized civilians and PO Ws because they were treated pretty awfully as well

...

so you're arguing that something isn't morally wrong if it's been done to you first?

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

{Topic, please. — Madrugada}

Also Japan was certainly cruel to PO Ws because they viewed them as cowards, and the United States certainly did not provoke Japan (beyond what the US did in return to Japanese provocations).

edited 4th Jan '11 10:14:41 AM by Madrugada

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.

^^ No, but too often this is all fitted into the narrative of "oh those evil conformist Japanese, doing horrible things and refusing to apologize", when a lot of these atrocities happened because of social structures that would incite the same reaction in pretty all humans. Instead of people taking these as a lesson to prevent structures that create evil, they localize it to one culture in order to gratify themselves.

The issue of comfort women is pretty complicated because the line between economic and physical coercion is pretty blurry. How do you differentiate between someone who has to enter prostitution due to financial concerns and physical coercion, when both of them are the results of war. After all, there's no massive outrage about widespread prostitution in Japan during the SCAP-era, except in Okinawa but they always find something to whine about.

Very few legitimate historians in Japan deny stuff like the Nanjing massacre. People quibble about the numbers, but it's really just a peeing contest between Chinese and Japanese historians in an attempt to appeal toward Western sympathies. The only reason people still care about the Nanjing massacre is because Westerners were present and could easily transmit information, and most of the quibbling is really only of interest to nationalists on both sides trying to make themselves look better in the Western gaze. The general historical consensus everywhere is that Japanese troops killed a lot of people, the brutality outraged Westerners into anti-Japan policies, yo pearl harbor, and really, that's the important part.

And honestly, the Japanese civilian leadership didn't really seriously invade any of Japan's neighbors.

edited 4th Jan '11 9:47:51 AM by Tsukubus

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

Didn't seriously invade?

What the fuck.

And all this talk about social structures comes over as apologetic for the fact the Japanese ultranationalist party had the support of the people. They were an imperialist nation and they sought to make Asia its empire. To blame this in social structure is retardation.

edited 4th Jan '11 9:53:47 AM by saladofstones

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

The Japanese government wasn't really responsible for World War 2. The invasion of Manchuria was pretty much engineered by a small military clique. It wasn't even like in Germany, where the Nazi Party was a mass social movement. A couple of officers in the Kantogun just figured Mukden looked good with a Japanese flag. And add in more hyperfascist thinkers in other military cliques collaborating, and etc. Even many of Japan's leading fascist politicians (think Prince Konoe), were pretty opposed to the war in China mostly because as history shows, it was a pretty bad idea. But then shit like the seisen and the imperial cult and shinto-fascism and all of that kicked in, and the civilian leadership was essentially sidelined and replaced by those military cliques. The allied prosecution of the civilian leadership was honestly pretty unfair.

edited 4th Jan '11 9:59:33 AM by Tsukubus

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

The civilian leadership bears the responsibility for what it allows to happen.

The clique of ultranationalism was small but it had, for the majority of the war and for a time after the war, the support of the Japanese people. And it was controlling the direction of the country, to undermine its presence is offensive since it undermines the Japanese imperial ambitions.

Nazi wasn't a mass-social movement in the sense it was liked but it was also anti-communist and a lot of people voted on that. Most people, especially in Urban centers such as Berlin, did not support the Nazis overwhelmingly and a lot of the military, especially the Wehrmacht, was certainly not Nazi.

Hirohito was allowed to maintain his place within Japanese politics but the reality is that the civilian leadership was in part born out of the 1930s culture of "government by assassination."

edited 4th Jan '11 10:05:27 AM by saladofstones

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

Thirty million people die and you don't call that a serious invasion? What the fuck?

The Japanese government had the choice to stop the aggression. They had the choice not to go ahead after the Japanese general pressed against the Nationalist run Chinese regime. They saw a country in a middle of a civil war that was ripe for the taking that kept retreating against their small advances and went ahead with a major invasion. They put in a puppet regime that ultimately culminated in the razing of Nanjing in order to contain the insurgency which turned what was originally an occupation into total war.

I don't think there's much of a blurred line between raping 100 000s of Korean women and raping 100 000s of Korean women. They got raped and then they were killed and then their husbands had to bury them naked and then they were shot afterwards. There's no excuses. It was lucky any of them survived the war.

edited 4th Jan '11 10:14:15 AM by breadloaf

The choice was either stay silent and let the Kantogun do what it wants, or get couped, arrested, shot in the back of the head, and buried in some ditch. It was really a lose-lose situation there.

And there honestly weren't many massacres in Korea and Taiwan. I mean, the Chinese have some legitimate gripes mostly because that war carried a lot of inevitable atrocities (which are still atrocities). I mean, there was a lot of political/cultural repression (which is not good of course), but it was hardly limited to the Korean peninsula and Formosa; the kempeitai operated in the Home Islands too! The occupation of Korea and Taiwan were quite oppressive and demeaning, but there weren't any true crimes against humanity, and even some positive benefits. The South and North Koreans brutalized each other just as badly as the Japanese ever did to Korea, if not worse, and nobody whines about that.

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

A civil war is separate because its a local affair and a lot has been said about NK's brutality its just that in the modern world, NK is already so unstable that any reparations will be largely meaningless.

And beneficial to NK? Granted Korea was used as an industrial base for Japan but the population didn't gain a lot from it. Korea had a lot of reasons to not like Japan, the nature of prostitution and rape by Japanese soldiers was a thing that most of the women were forced into that position even if the Japanese stated otherwise.

The Ultranationalist movement was a long time in the making, but the Nuremberg trials stated that "following orders and retaliation for not following orders" were not defenses for war crimes.

Japan also horribly mistreated captured prisoners of every nation and even attacked Russia, and lost horribly during World War II (despite what they may think).

edited 4th Jan '11 10:44:49 AM by saladofstones

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

1. @ attempts to justify/downplay Axis atrocities in WWII:

2. Aren't we drifting off topic, here?

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I think that you want to look at the on topic conversation in two ways.

1) At the time of the war, I think it was justified for the Americans to believe it necessary to use nuclear weapons both as a quick way to end the war and as to lower the number of casualties.

2) I think that in today's 20/20 hindsight, we can see that it probably wasn't absolutely necessary to have used atomic weapons but it's likely the same number of people would have died in any other course of action anyway.

Provocation schmovocation. The war in Asia was fought over the rubber and oil of Asian territories like the Phillipines. We wanted them, they wanted them. Whoever started it, it was going to start eventually given the demands of their respective economies. If we really wanted to avoid war with Japan, as soon as we decided to tangle with Adolf we should have formed some resource sharing agreement with the Emperor. (Not justifying anyone's actions, just stating the realpolitik; calculations like these are why I'm a pacifist.)

You may be comfortable with the fact that around the world there are several big red buttons that might as well read "destroy fucking everything" stamped on them. I'm not. (Frankly, I hope we get fast-breeder reactor nuclear tech up and running so we can start burning that stuff for cheap electricity.) They "continued to fight"? You're making it sound like the second we pulled out the Imperial Army would be back in Nanjing. They were wrecked. They had little to no offensive capability remaining. It would have been a pittance to keep bombing every shipyard and airfield they could build straight into the 50s. We avoided the mistake of WWI by staying to rebuild in Germany, we did the same in Japan, we could have done the same under a different peace agreement. Are you saying that it was necessary to poison civilians with radiation? There were plenty. They just involved making nice with the Soviets, or making nice with Mao, or developing Korea and the Phillipines to defend themselves, or any other number of options. Well, I feel we should have given our adventures in the Pacific a rest, just like our current adventures in the Mideast have gone on more than long enough. But that's a separate argument from the justification of the existence of nukes, which is my bigger concern. There's no damage we did with nukes aside from fallout that we couldn't do with firebombing. Do you mean those big engines of the Japanese war machine like Mitsubishi and Toyota? Good thing we took them apart. I'll grant this, but what kept those countries from defending their own sovereignty and independence? I have a feeling that if we'd put enough effort into developing them (time could be bought with an extended blockade or a cease fire) a weakened Japan wouldn't have been able to assert imperial authority over anything. Besides, when we say "territories", we mean resources like coal and rubber, and a lot of the resources of Asia went into the economic and infrastructural rebuilding of Japan anyways.

Japan would have to deal with its militaristic nationalists anyways. Those guys attempted a coup after the surrender agreement for Christ's sake. They're still dealing with that culture and always will have to. It's the nature of their politics.

That is a sad possibility that I can't contest. People die. Maybe the lives just weren't there to save.

edited 4th Jan '11 11:10:57 AM by RadicalTaoist

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

The problem is that without using them there might have been no real "stop" on people using nukes afterwards when they were much more powerful.

They continued to fight on even as we razed their cities to the ground with firebombing. Iwo Jima, Okinawa, The Philippines campaign were all underway or had just concluded at the time of the firebombings of mainland Japan. The destruction of their cities didn't suddenly force whole IJA army groups to surrender en masse all at once. They kept fighting as one by one their cities burned.

The mistakes of the First World War were not forcing a conclusive end. The breaking of the lines in summer 1918 did not force a conclusive end to the fighting as Germany sued for peace attempting to save face rather than put the war down once and for all. (Then you had the issues of vengeful wingnut idiots in France and Britain setting us up for fail 20 years later) Destroying Japan's military capacity in a conclusive manner ensured there would not be a false peace lasting for barely 20 years before the world flared into world war again. (The Nazi movement gained ground in part because the Kaiserarmee were scorned as defeatists and cowards by the Weimar Republic when the Kaiserarmee troops weren't actually conclusively beaten as their government was saying. The disconnect owing to a lack of conclusiveness led to this and the reason why we had to do what we did to Japan to prevent a repeat of what had happened before.)

Newsflash: In January-August 1945 the Philippines were sovereign US territory, not independent. (That came with our blessing in 1947) Korea from the Yalu River to the Sea of Japan belonged to the Imperial Japanese Government officially, they were not independent either. Chairman Mao was in no position of authority at the time either. That was Chiang Kai-Shek. (Until 1948 anyways on the mainland) The Soviets were about to break pact with us and become our enemies. And worst of all the IJA and IJN had not given up the fight.

There were literally no other options that didn't involve either Nuke 'em or continued battle.

There was: psychological. Nukes are scary.

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@OP: This question depends on whether you believe targeting innocent civilians in hopes of reducing total fatalities is ethical or unethical warfighting behavior. It's a matter of whether you believe any life on the enemy side is in principle forfeit, and wartime ethics consist in overall minimization, or whether only the lives of people aiming weapons at you are forfeit.

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