Politics: Hiroshima and Nagasaki [!OT]

[mrwiseman]

60 years have passed since the nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who killed more people than most wars in history, including people who hadn't even been born, many kilometers away from it.

The hibakusha, or nuclear victims, still live to fight against war and oblivion. They applaud countries like Germany or Spain, who declined to develop nuclear weapons even when they could, and probably fear some redneck's love for "nuculer" weapons. (Think a monkey with a machine gun, only in a much larger scale.)

What do you think of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukes? My opinion follows.


The United States of America, in the name of freedom, nuked a lesser rival in WW2, even when they had known for months Japan's surrender was a matter of time. Not only nukes were absolutely unjustified and colosally unproportioned, but they were thrown with purposes other than war with Japan: to show the USSR what could they do to them (using the Japanese people -from babies to old ladies- as test subjects of this massacre), as part of the new cold war they had against the USSR, and to get rid of a powerful economic rival. To make matters worse, America humiliated Japan after the war and forced them to modify their culture in parts that were harmless and purposefully confused by the American authorities and press, and thus misunderstood by the American people. As if things couldn't get any worse, one of the reasons why WW2 started was exactly the humilliation of a defeated country in WW1, and the USA, with their renowned skills for international affairs (sarcasm), repeated the mistake, fortunately not leading to a third world war this time - but that could have happened just as easily.

Japan was no saint and they still deserved to lose in my opinion, but not like this. In fact, if I had to rate three possible outcomes: the USA winning a regular war, Japan winning a regular war, or the USA winning with those nukes, the later would be my worst option. Likewise, the USA is no devil otherwise (contrary to what crackpots and other unworthy people claim), but this was indeed terrible and I must point out America has not paid for this, and they should somehow.

Japan is now an ally, and some of their youth have a hardly explainable admiration for American culture. If I were Japanese, I wouldn't hate America at all - much less today's America, which, just like Japan, is different from that of WW2 (*), but still, I wouldn't show devotion for a country that mercilessly nuked mine in a war they had won months before, with evil purposes unrelated to warfare.

(*): On a side note, today's Japan is way more different to what it used to be than America.

[justwildbeat]

How can one expect the US to pay for what those bombs did? One can give formal apologies, monetary reparations, and whatever else but I don't think those really help to give any closure to people that were affected by it. Countries do horrible things to each other (even to themselves), and so people should learn from it.

[One Classy Bloke]

They also rebuilt Japan, giving it a kick start to become the world power it is today.

<font color="#345E81" size="1">[ July 29, 2005 06:05 AM: Message edited by: One Classy Bloke ]</font>

[phaq]

I know this is gonna sound weird, but in actuality it's true. A Korean man name Kim Sin-Nak, adopted the Japanese name of Mitsuhiro Momota(he was living in Japan and at the time there was serious prejudice from the Japanese toward Koreans). After training as a sumo wrestler he became a pro wrestler, calling himself Rikidozan, and by beating up "evil" Americans he started winning back respect in Japan in the eyes of the Japanese people. By doing this this, he knocked I don't know how many years of hatred the Japanese would have had for Americans out of them much earlier. I'm sure there were other factors but this was a surprisingly huge one.

[Cataferal]

I suppose thats proof that sport really is a substitute for war. This is supported furthermore by the intense rivalry shared by england and germany in the FIFA World Cup tournements. Those matches are really quite something.

The Japanese do seem to respect American culture a whole lot more thesedays though. A lot of this is attributed to movies and MTV, which they consider to be accurate representations of the exciting lives americans lead. They also make a lot of homages and references to american culture (and their version of english) in their movies and anime works.

That said, i cant help but wonder if, deep down, the Japanese feel inclined to respect America because they dont ever want to experience a repeat of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Many of the people who could recall it are probably in their graves now, but im sure the historic accounts of the tragedy still intimidate their people to some degree. After all, if any country respects the power of those weapons, and the recklessness of the USA, its Japan.

<font color="#345E81" size="1">[ July 30, 2005 08:21 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]</font>