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Pre-bombing Hiroshima recreated with computer graphics

A brief clip from this morning’s “Mezamashi TV” showing a CG recreation of what Hiroshima looked like before it was destroyed by an atomic bomb:

The interview the creator of the CG project (who lived near ground zero but was away from the city on the day of the bombing) via telephone and he repeats an opinion one frequently hears about the issue: it is important to teach younger people that nuclear weapons are horrible. By creating a representation of what was lost in the bombing, he hopes to remind people that such a thing should never be repeated.
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42 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - August 7, 2009 at 8:29 am

Categories: General Japan Tags: a-bomb, bombing, hiroshima, nagasaki, nuclear weapons, pacifism, peace

http://www.hormel.com VonSkippy

“it is important to teach younger people that nuclear weapons are horrible. By creating a representation of what was lost in the bombing, he hopes to remind people that such a thing should never be repeated.”

Since it seems like Japan will be using textbooks in school that glosses over the facts, maybe it’s important that this guy create a pre-attack Perl Harbor CG to teach the young kids that starting a war should never be repeated.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Can you direct me to an example of a Japanese textbook that does not mention the attack on Pearl Harbor?

The Overthinker

Sure, I can. I have a copy of a text on the History of the Japanese Empire that doesn’t mention Pearl Harbour. Of course that was because it was written in 1940….
BigBoo

I’ve seen a Japanese math textbook that doesn’t mention Pearl Harbor.

Seriously, ALL of the Japanese history textbooks mention the Nanjing Massacre, even the “Tsukurukai” one. Of course they mention Pearl Harbor.

Why do people decide to make righteous comments on the internet without even looking at the textbooks?

Devian

Of course starting a war should never be repeated but getting away with genocide is something else. Pearl Harbor is a military installation and Hiroshima is a populated civilian city; totally different choice of target.

tokyojesusfist

What genocide? No genocide occured in the war.

Bombing cities was perfectly normal during World War II, and there wasn’t any strict line separating military targets from civilian targets.

Devian

War should never have started but people shouldn’t get away with genocide. Sure Pearl Harbor was an important monument, but it is a military installation and Hiroshima is a civilian city; totally different target.

ZoneDaiatlas

Sorry but Hiroshima was a Military target. It housed Military camps including the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Shunroku Hata’s 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Nagasaki was also a Military target. Nagasaki was well known for its ship building, ordnance and Military equipment.

NY

What you are discussing is one of the most contentious debates in World War II history. Hiroshima alone is contentious, the use of a second bomb at Nagasaki is even more controversial.

From an ethics standpoint, it was perfectly capable within the technology of the time to make more or less surgical strikes, even within a populated city. Using a weapon of mass destruction with known potential to indiscriminately wipe out civilians as well as military personnel is unjustified under any circumstances.

Like the Dresden firebombing which was never prosecuted as a war crime, it’s not fringe opinion that American politicians and military brass should have been tried for war crimes. But of course, victors write history and stand in judgment of the losers, so that’s how it works. History is certainly in the eye of the behonlder.

The Overthinker

Aside from the other issues, reports of how the Japanese treated their American POWS gave the US public very little desire to worry about “ethics” when it came to bombing Japan. Nor was this the first instance of mass destruction of civilians in Japan: just more efficient, with the one bomb.
Kyle M.

“From an ethics standpoint, it was perfectly capable within the technology of the time to make more or less surgical strikes, even within a populated city.”

What was this technology that allowed one to make “more or less surgical strikes” under wartime conditions in Japan? Please, enlighten us.
Nicklas W bjurman

Further more, Japan had already surrendered to USA before the bombs were dropped with merely one condition, that the emperor would still be emperor.

But nooo, USA could not allow conditional surrender, they had to massacre millions of people and the end result still has the emperor being emperor. Nothing but through and through psychopathic acts!
The Overthinker

“What was this technology that allowed one to make “more or less surgical strikes” under wartime conditions in Japan? Please, enlighten us.”

By the closing months of the war, radar had improved to the extent that, starting in August, the next wave of targets were to be bridges and tunnels, destroying the transport infrastructure. However there were only a couple of bombing raids under this new direction before Japan surrendered.
The Overthinker

“USA could not allow conditional surrender”

No. The American public was in no mood to be charitable to Japan or let them off more easily than the Germans. Also, while the Emperor remained on the throne, the system was cut out from under him, which would not have happened with the conditional surrender the Japanese wanted.
Mark

“Further more, Japan had already surrendered to USA before the bombs were dropped with merely one condition, that the emperor would still be emperor”.

That is incorrect. Japan had not agreed to surrender or any conditions before the bombs were dropped. Japan’s ministers and the Emperor had dithered over how to respond to the Potsdam Declaration issued on the 26th July. Japan’s leadership did not formally respond with the prime minister dismissing the Declaration at a press conference on the 27th. The war committee sitting in Tokyo preferred the path of national immolation to surrender. It was not until after the second atomic bombing that the Emperor accepted the terms of surrender.

Millions did not die in the atomic bombings; an estimated 70,000 in Hiroshima and 30,000 in Nagasaki. An estimated 200,000 civilians also died in the fire raids.
helical

Mark,

Your numbers seem to be accurate if you just count the number of deaths caused by the immediate blast of the nuclear detonation.
By the end of the year, 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 70,000 deaths in Nagasaki were attributed to effects of the bomb, and the numbers rise to 200,000 for Hiroshima and 170,000 for Nagasaki if you include the people who died from the effects of the bomb up to 5 years after the initial bombing.
Mark

helical,

Thanks for clarifying that, I should have added that those were the estimated immediate casualty figures, not including those who later succumbed to their wounds and radiation.

Joe

As opposed to the bombing of major cities by every single side during the war? Precision guided munitions weren’t exactly the norm in those days. In a war of that length, you’re going to want to take out production facilities. Guess where those were located.

NY

The “lack” of precision munitions of today’s scale doesn’t justified targeting a largely civilian population in that area. It’s indefensible today and was fifty years ago.

The Overthinker

Of course it is defensible. Anything is defensible. The question is whether you accept the defence or not.

HamachiMan

What Japanese officials/governments do or don’t do in regards to textbooks or other non issues are irrelevant. The creator of this project does not mention anything about fault or responsibility for world war 2, pearl harbor, or any other ridiculous non issues. All creator is saying is that nuclear war is a terrible thing and he hopes it never happens again. Anything else is just pure conjecture here.
kevin halse

That looks like a pretty cool game. Does it have destructible terrain?

LB

“That looks like a pretty cool game.”

Yeah, I hear it’s da bomb….
Level3

Yup, it does look cool. Just remember, if you DON’T nuke the city, you will lose 1,000,000 men and also the 1945 Early Mission Clear bonus. But you then have to kill millions more Japanese in conventional fighting. So maybe your net score goes up?

The only sure thing is that whatever you do, leftist whiners will criticize any decision you make as indefensible. They criticize because history proves one of their core beliefs “Violence never solves anything.” is undeniably wrong.

They oppose strategies that yield fewer deaths than the alternative.
They oppose wars that have fewer casualties than the “peace” (of murder, genocide, slaughter, political prisons, gulags)that proceeded them.
They even oppose wars that ended imperialist genocide and yielded liberal democracies.
A belief system that flies in the face of facts, evidence, and just plain basic arithmetic.

Pacifism is no less a religion than believing some guy getting nailed to a cross 2000 years ago makes your life today better, or that some kind of God wants you to blow yourself to bits in a crowded market.
But pacifism IS far more dangerous. It leads to longer wars, worse problems and stronger power-mad dictators through their pacifist appeasement and inaction.

Pacifism kills more than war does.

http://www.squidoo.com/Ryoma-Sakamoto Eric

My my, Level3, you certainly use the word “they” a lot. I would say that your kind of thinking is actually what causes wars: the Us vs. Them mentality.

Anyway, if you really are interested in the question of what would have happened if Truman had decided not to use the bomb, I recommend you read Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s Racing The Enemy. In this book, Professor Hasegawa makes a convincing case that, more than America’s atomic bombs, it was Russia’s entry into the war against Japan on August 8th which was the final straw that convinced Tokyo that they had no choice but to surrender.

The Overthinker

While there is debate on what actually tipped the scale – and the hatred and fear of communism in wartime Japan can barely be overstated – what the A bombs DID provide was the perfect excuse. Look at the surrender announcement: Japan takes the moral high ground in surrendering in order to save humanity.
tokyojesusfist

“My my, Level3, you certainly use the word “they” a lot. I would say that your kind of thinking is actually what causes wars: the Us vs. Them mentality.”

This is the most absurd and inexplicable argument I’ve heard all week. You might as well call him a war-monger just because he repeatedly uses the word “war” in his post.

oro_the_dog

Convincing it is maybe to you Eric, but it’s not fact, and we’ll never know.

What is irrefutable is that the bomb finally ended the war. Surrender and defeat wasn’t in their vocabulary so to speak- indeed they’d rather have pilots doing suicide missions and civilians jump off cliffs than “surrender.”

It cleansed Asia – australia, malaysia, philippines, china and ended the suffering of many, many people where the japs thought it is their birthright to conquer.

http://www.squidoo.com/Ryoma-Sakamoto Eric

Well, if you haven’t read the book, then you’re not in a position to judge whether the arguments made in it are convincing or not.

The historical record indicates pretty clearly that Truman intended to use the atomic bomb from the first time he heard about it, not long after April 13 1945, when he was sworn in as president. He had two reasons: revenge, and to let the Soviets know that the US had the bomb.

I agree with what I think you’re saying in your second paragraph–that America was facing an insane enemy. For example, the way the banzai charge, or gyokusai, that Colonel Yamazaki led on Attu was glorified strikes me as completely nuts.

I can’t agree with your third paragraph though. Nothing was “cleansed” by the atom bombs. Most of the people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just ordinary people, no better or worse than anybody else.

Also, from a practical point of view, using the bomb was a mistake because, as The Overthinker mentioned, it allowed Japan to take the moral high ground. It’s one of the main reasons that the question of war guilt is still controversial in Japan. I’ve been told by a number of older Japanese that the bomb made everything even (the problem with that argument of course is that it leaves all the countries Japan invaded out of the equation).
http://www.samuraikurisu.blogspot.com Kirbz

It wasn’t as much as a “birthright to conquer” as the same thing could have been said by imperialistic Europeans when they discovered the new world. Many scholars during the Meiji period felt Japan came late to the table and had to catch up to impress other world powers and later to become a world power. Some later took this as “owning other territory = becoming a world power”. That, and the search of raw materials drove much of the expansion during WWII.

The Overthinker

“Many scholars during the Meiji period felt Japan came late to the table and had to catch up to impress other world powers”

This was also something encouraged by the Western powers – until Japan started stepping on their toes at least.
http://www.squidoo.com/Ryoma-Sakamoto Eric

“It wasn’t as much as a ‘birthright to conquer’ as the same thing could have been said by imperialistic Europeans when they discovered the new world.”

Let’s be fair, but not too fair. The problem with this kind of apologia is that it’s very condescending towards the Japanese.

The Japanese have never needed any lessons from Europeans on how to be arrogant. Haven’t you heard what Motoori Norinaga had to say about how superior the Japanese were to the Chinese, and everyone else on earth? Japanese imperialism was never a case of monkey-see, monkey-do.

helical

Not sure if my reading comprehension and interpretation is up to par, but the Google link you posted doesn’t seem to mention that Motoori Norinaga specifically looked down on the Chinese and everyone else.
I think it just says that he thought Japanese culture was of a different nature than Chinese culture so the teachings of Confucianism wasn’t helpful for Japanese culture, and that there was a certain spiritual sensibility that formed the core of traditional Japanese literature.

Unless you consider thinking one’s self unique as being arrogant in itself…
http://www.samuraikurisu.blogspot.com Kirbz

True, there has been quite a few scholars in the past advocating similar beliefs in the past (believing the history presented in the kojiki as pure fact) that were taken up by some aspects of the government at the time, but generally other aspects of modernization and ideals of imperialism came from European powers at the time. Though, my comparison to earlier European expansion is probably not close to actual conditions of Japanese expansion however.

bakarocket

“Surrender and defeat wasn’t in their vocabulary so to speak- indeed they’d rather have pilots doing suicide missions and civilians jump off cliffs than “surrender.””

It really depends who you mean by “they” here. Government? Sure. Japanese public? Not really. Pilots seem to have been forced into the Tokkotai (see Wings of Defeat), and those Okinawans were forced to jump by the Japanese armed forces (according to pretty much every Okinawan.)

Sorry for the threadjack. I just wanted to point out that “their” is a pretty broad possesive pronoun.

helical

Isn’t there a debate on whether the mass suicides were forced by the military or not?
I recall somebody came forward (again) recently to confess that the military commanders stationed in Okinawa falsely and knowingly took the blame for the voluntary mass suicides so that the surviving civilians could be eligible for compensation later on.

There seems to be many individual witnesses that say the military commanders actually asked the people to live and fight, but the civilians were determined to die rather than risk being captured, taking the “death before dishonor” propaganda to heart.
Googling turns up the problem that the debate is quickly drowned out by a faction of the Okinawans who are quick to blame any doubters that they are trying to deny the fault in inflicting the deaths on their families, adamant to keep their de facto status as purely the victims.

I think I’ve seen pattern this before…

oro_the_dog

moral high-ground, schmoral high ground. All my interest was that the japanese military- and they were in every nook and cranny of the the far east- be driven back to their homeland. No more slave labor (building railways etc.), no more comfort women (hmm i wonder if someone will contest that), etc. …just no more of this cruel, sadistic sh*t that pretty much everyone in asia had to endure. If i want to get a taste of that (nowadays) though, i watch jav (?!).

Anyway, so there, a continent clean of japanese soldiers.

My grandmother, am her first and therefore most fave grandkid- she suffered through the war, so much so she named me after Truman even though my parents objected. She never did talk about what she went through, unlike these conquering losers.

Bakarocket, have you read “the unbearable lightness of being” btw? It would go well with your ‘forced’ pilots argument. Milan kundera was saying how come Oedipus felt guilty slaying his father when he can justify/absolve him self easily since he didn’t know! Accountability was strong on that one.

Hence, your “not really.” is not good enough for someone like me who’s embraced a philosophy of “the buck stops here.”

http://bakarocket.blogspot.com bakarocket

“Anyway, so there, a continent clean of japanese soldiers.”

Very true. It was too bad that the Koreans, Aussies, and the US took over from the Japanese once they were out. Those comfort women probably didn’t feel like there was much of a difference. The Korean, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Cambodian public certainly didn’t feel like anything had changed. It probably got worse.

(Just saying. The Japanese army was horrible during the war. But so was everyone else who came after.)

I haven’t read the book, but it sounds interesting and I’ll pick it up soon.

On the forced pilots issue, I’m not implying that the Japanese public were especially susceptible to government pressure. I’m implying that pretty much everyone is. Had the US been the country that was losing the war, you would have seen a lot more Corsairs being flown into aircraft carriers.

On top of this, government records show that the vast majority (+90%) of the pilots were seconded from the Air Force Academy and University courses after a long (failed) propaganda campaign looking for volunteers.

People do extreme things when there peers are doing the same. That’s how we get wars in the first place.

To Helical: I hadn’t heard about the debate about the suicides, but the people I heard it from are Okinawan so I’m not surprised. I’ll look it up, but the “commanders took the heat” thing seems a bit…like the black van brigade in action.

bakarocket

As a further edit, helical, I should say that I don’t doubt that there were people who committed suicide during the invasion. I don’t think they were the norm, though.

(This argument is also applicable to the comfort women question. Whichever side you are on. )

helical

I did a bit more googling, and it seems there are numerous examples.
I’m too lazy to find English sources, so I’m just going to link to a Tsukurukai article which gives at least two examples.

沖縄集団自決の「軍命令」は創作だった
http://www.tsukurukai.com/07_fumi/text_fumi/fumi58_text02.html

Miyagi Hatsue, the leader of the Girls Youth Group at the time, confessed in 1977 that Major Umezu in charge of troops stationed on Zamami Island did not order the mass suicides. In fact, she’d gone to ask for ammunition so that the islanders could commit suicide by the orders of the vice leader of the village, but was declined.
She confessed that when she was interviewed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare as to whether there was any coercion at the time, she said “yes” under the direction of the village elders, as the presence of it was one of the preconditions on receiving post-war compensation from the government.

A similar conclusion was reached for Major Akamatsu on Tokashiki Island, but here it’s revealed that the Major actually signed the documents saying he gave the orders for suicide, upon repeated pleas from the village representatives.
This was revealed, previously in an anonymous confession, and a new confession in a 2006 television interview by Teruya Nobuo, this time showing his name and face. He worked as a government employee who researched the circumstances of death of the islanders to determine if they qualified for compensation, but was complicit in submitting a false report.

.

As for the comfort women issue — and this will probably open a whole new can of worms — I believe the claim that the majority of cases were that the circumstances brought on by invasion and occupation would have indirectly “coerced” people into working as prostitutes to earn a living.
But though there probably were no specific orders to go and round up the women, yes, there very well may have been incidents where orders weren’t followed and women were forced into sexual slavery.

http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com Brian

Look, war is bad. That’s the message.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragedies, and you have to be a cold human being to deny that. But no matter how we slice it, the message remains: war is bad. What’s the difference between killing 100,000 in a single blast, or between killing 100,000 on some battlefield? What’s the difference between wiping out a city with one bomb, or with destroying it with thousands of bombs over several days? What’s the difference between your government leading you into war in 1933 and between your government leading you into war in 2002? The message is: war is bad.

The Overthinker

You left out the “mmmkay?”

One assumes the 100,000 on a battlefield are soldiers, not civilians.
Assuming you mean Iraq by the “2002″ comment, the big difference there is that it is a long way away, and also there is no conscription. At least not for the “Coalition of the Bootlicking.” So we can comfortably ignore it, knowing that the only people it affects are third-world people with different religions and cultures, and continue shopping at the mall and watching South Park on our widescreen TVs.

Pre-bombing Hiroshima recreated with computer graphics

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