News Report About The American Education System Teaching About Hiroshima

I don’t feel I was encouraged to believe the atomic bomb was a good thing at all whatsoever.

I went to schools in Orlando FLorida, And I was always told facts about the war; If the teacher did what you are saying, the PTA would have gone crazy.

Now if this was being taught in the south… well I wouldn’t be surprised.

> it was obvious that the atomic bomb was the reason the war ended.

That’s not right. Soviet’s invasion was the direct reason. The US army’s research said so.

And Japenese gov. back then was worried that the Imperial House of Japan, which has existed for 1200 years, would come to end if they accept the unconditional surrender.

The firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 or so. The atomic bombs definitely killed more than that. And the US had already firebombed pretty much every major city they could reach from their base on Guam.

The idea of ‘death before defeat’ is not really a Bushido thing, though it may be idealised in the Bushido that developed after the bushi were actually doing any real fighting, stemming from the ideas of seppuku and such. It really only became a prominent aspect of the Japanese military in the 1932 Shanghai Incident, and we can blame General Araki Tadao’s lionising of Major Koga’s suicide, plus the hype over the Three Human Bombs, for that sort of thing.

I do have this nasty feeling that if the Russians had got a foothold in Japan that they would have kept it, like East Germany (and North Korea, even though the Japanese communist party was quite forcefully repressed), and Japan would have been divided, either at Hokkaido or Tohoku. Well, it still is in a way – the Russians still hold the Northern Territories….

It’s quite easy to passively talk about how one thinks about the war on one side or other is justified (“numbers of death is miniscule etc. . .”) until you find someone who was (in one form or another) involved. Those who perish in war have families and friends. With their loss their families and descendants carry resentment towards those who caused that death. That is all the more reason people (particularly government) shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

Actually, historical documents have shown Japan’s military had no intention of surrender. Their plan was to repel a US invasion with civilians. Most of the leaders were of the opinion that every single Japanese should be killed before surrendering the holy land to foreign invaders. A book called “Hirohito: the War Years” by Paul Manning explains this.

Remember in this era Japan was the land of the gods and the Emperor himself was a god. They had divine right to fight to the death. How else could “leaders” still plan on fighting after the first bomb was dropped?

Japan, Germany and the US were all developing the a bomb. MacArthur was worried Japan was going to develop one first and use it on the US Navy.

“Justify” tends to mean whatever those with the power to justify things want it to mean. That’s the problem with trying to morally judge history.

Hmph. Another one of those “civilians are valid targets in war” people.

Let’s see. You say civilians are just as “valid” targets as soldiers? Then what the heck are we still worrying about civilian casualties for? When nations are at war, they should just target every citizen of the opposing nation, shouldn’t they? Why don’t they just have a real war of extermination and have done with it, eh?

Sheesh.

And another thing. You say that civilians are valid targets as well in wartime, yet you say that hiding as a civilian in the enemy country’s civilian population and THEN killing them is terrorist? What the hell does that mean? That if you kill civilians openly it’s not terrorist but if you killed them in secret it is? What’s the difference? They’re just as dead in either case!

How convenient. I notice that Western countries have usually killed civilians openly, as through air bombing in war. But the West’s current enemies, Islamic fundamentalists, have been known to hide in the civilian population during peacetime. Now, isn’t this difference the REAL reason for your belief? The West just can’t do anything wrong, can they?

Now, here’s a little problem with your logic. You say civilians can be targeted during wartime. But not only bin Laden but even Bush himself has said that America and her allies are at war! So why the heck are you and your ilk whining so loudly about 9/11? By your logic, that’s just an act of war, right? Or does it only apply when it suits your side?

And the US has been killing a lot of civilians too, I see. Yet their deaths really can’t be justified under your system, because the US is at war with organizations, not countries! Too bad, huh?

Even though, as a Filipino, I think the Japanese were the “bad guys” in the war, and certainly they should have lost; I’m against the atomic bombings. There were so many other ways the US could have forced a surrender. If they had to use the bombs, why drop them on cities? Couldn’t they have dropped them on military bases or just on the Japanese countryside, just to impress the Japanese with its power? The Americans even dropped the bombs on cities that hadn’t been bombed yet! That proves they were trying to maximize casualties!

I could give a much more comprehensive explanation of my views on this, but I don’t feel like it right now…[so the commenter posted insults that were deleted by the admin. Please care to read the "Discussion Policy" link on the top bar. Consider this a warning.]