It just occurred to me that there are probably people who look at those bombings - after the war was effectively over BTW - not as evil (my view), nor as a regrettable but necessary way to avert American deaths, but as an actual heroic act.
Jesus, how do I live in a world where there are people like that running around having normal lives…?
If you were in the other thread about these bombings yesterday, you’d see that viewpoint is basically what the US teaches in school. It’s disturbing to see that so many people actually believe this was for the good of humanity.
That continues to be my parents’ view (I suspect the same is true for many of our parents). It’ll be a few generations before the fiction around Hiroshima gets wiped away. Hell, the '21 Tulsa massacre is only now getting some actual cultural awareness, and that’s only because it was depicted in the first scene of The Watchmen.
The argument doesn’t just include American deaths, but Japanese deaths as well. You may not agree, but the us just finished in Europe far past the point where the war was effectively over, and there was the belief that the Japanese would always take it further than the germans. Part of it was the japanese war strategy. They wanted the enemy to think they would have to cut through them to the last man woman and child, to get them to give up. There was a belief that maybe a shock would do something, but there was also doubt to that. 7 more bombs were going to be ready to soften up japanese defenses during downfall. They thought they would have to do much more damage.
Edit: I messed up my words in a way that subtlety changed the meaning of a sentence.
It just occurred to me that there are probably people who look at those bombings - after the war was effectively over BTW - not as evil (my view), nor as a regrettable but necessary way to avert American deaths, but as an actual heroic act.
Jesus, how do I live in a world where there are people like that running around having normal lives…?
If you were in the other thread about these bombings yesterday, you’d see that viewpoint is basically what the US teaches in school. It’s disturbing to see that so many people actually believe this was for the good of humanity.
That continues to be my parents’ view (I suspect the same is true for many of our parents). It’ll be a few generations before the fiction around Hiroshima gets wiped away. Hell, the '21 Tulsa massacre is only now getting some actual cultural awareness, and that’s only because it was depicted in the first scene of The Watchmen.
The argument doesn’t just include American deaths, but Japanese deaths as well. You may not agree, but the us just finished in Europe far past the point where the war was effectively over, and there was the belief that the Japanese would always take it further than the germans. Part of it was the japanese war strategy. They wanted the enemy to think they would have to cut through them to the last man woman and child, to get them to give up. There was a belief that maybe a shock would do something, but there was also doubt to that. 7 more bombs were going to be ready to soften up japanese defenses during downfall. They thought they would have to do much more damage.
Edit: I messed up my words in a way that subtlety changed the meaning of a sentence.
That’s not the real reason. It was meant to scare the USSR, Japan was already defeated.
subtly
Removed by mod
They’ve been doing it since at least 2014:
(Sorry for the nyt article, here’s the guardian as well)