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The Emperor was regarded by the Japanese people as being a God. However despite this he never used his position or authority to curtail the cruelty of his military on the civilian populations of the countries that Japan occupied. Like Tojo and the rest he should have been hanged at the end of the war.
Should have dropped right on top of Tokyo after Nagasaki, and Hiroshima, before offering to accept unconditional surrender.
We had already fire bombed Tokyo and burned alive 100,000 civilians on 9-10 March, 1945. Almost 300,000 buildings were destroyed by this bombing raid of about 300 B-29s. It was the single deadliest air raid of WWII.
There wouldn’t have been much point to hitting Tokyo with a nuke, other than symbolic reasons, perhaps destroying the Emperor’s home.
If the Japanese had refused to surrender, and assuming we went back into production to build more nukes, we likely would’ve chosen other cities. Probably Yokohama, Kyoto, and Niigata would’ve been next.
Many people in our country today like to ignore the atrocities that the Japanese committed and focus solely on what we did, and call us the war criminals, not them.
I don’t understand our country at all. I’ve never seen a people so Hell bent on destroying and disparaging their own country.
What I find interesting is that I can't see how the Japanese of today, of "Hello, Kitty!" could ever do something like that again. Unless I'm wrong.
As someone who has been stationed in Japan for almost 10 years, that was something that I found really bizarre. Japanese people, for the most part, are quiet, well-mannered, honorable, polite, even kind. How in the world could these people be capable of such cruelty?
In fact, I’d even go so far to say that Japanese culture is vastly superior to American culture. We are a country full of useless people, drug addicts laying in the streets, criminals running rampant, massive corruption at our highest levels of government and society, etc.
Anyway, it just doesn’t make sense that these people’s ancestors were capable of such cruelty like torture and killing. Even manipulation.
We were all told the stories how in Okinawa, when the Japanese were about to be over run, they convinced the Okinawan people that the Americans were going to rape all their women and torture all the men, so thousands of them jumped off cliffs en masse. They were convinced that suicide was better than being liberated by the Americans. The Japanese officers surely knew this wasn’t true, but they told those lies anyway and caused tens of thousands to perish for no reason at all.
Obviously, some refused to commit suicide , though. I always wonder what it must have been like for them when the Americans finally did come? The US soldiers and Marines offered the civilians food and water, instead of torturing them all to death.
Here is an excerpt of what happened to one family in Okinawa:
"I heard my sister calling out, 'Kill me now, hurry,"' Mr. Nakamura said, recalling how his 20-year-old sister panicked at the approach of American soldiers. His mother took a rope and strangled her.
"I tried to also strangle myself with a rope," he recalled, lifting his now weather-beaten hands to his neck. "But I kept breathing. It is really tough to kill yourself."
Minutes later, the Americans took them captive.
"The U.S. soldier touched me to check if I had any weapons," he recalled. "Then he gave us candy and cigarettes. That was my first experience on coming out of the cave."
His mother lived into her 80's.
"We talked about the war," Mr. Nakamura said. "But to the end, she never once talked about killing her daughter."
And some people still want us to apologize for the dropping of the atomic bomb....the personal/sick brutality of the Japanese during that time even surpassed the Nazi's. One only needs to read Chang's "The Rape of Nanking".
Of course it wasn't for vengeance, but a strategic weapon to end a bloody war, and actually saved both Japanese and Allied lives. Still, part of me wishes they turned that entire country into melted glass during WWII.
We had blood on our hands too. We carried out "experiments" on Japanese POW's at San Francisco General Hospital, during WWII. I personally knew one of the ambulance drivers (my grandmother.)
We had already fire bombed Tokyo and burned alive 100,000 civilians on 9-10 March, 1945. Almost 300,000 buildings were destroyed by this bombing raid of about 300 B-29s. It was the single deadliest air raid of WWII.
There wouldn’t have been much point to hitting Tokyo with a nuke, other than symbolic reasons, perhaps destroying the Emperor’s home.
If the Japanese had refused to surrender, and assuming we went back into production to build more nukes, we likely would’ve chosen other cities. Probably Yokohama, Kyoto, and Niigata would’ve been next.
Many people in our country today like to ignore the atrocities that the Japanese committed and focus solely on what we did, and call us the war criminals, not them.
I don’t understand our country at all. I’ve never seen a people so Hell bent on destroying and disparaging their own country.
No the Doolittle raid occurred in 1942 and while it was great for American morale, it did little damage.
The other poster is talking about the allied Strategic Bombing Campaign in Japan in late 1944 and 1945. They were indeed very destructive and caused more loss of life than in the Atomic Bombings. They also arguably contributed to the end of the war in Japan (as opposed to the strategic bombing campaign against Germany).
Before anyone equates this with Japanese atrocities it should be noted this was done to a country at war where each civilian was considered part of the Japanese war machine (i.e. total war), while Japanese atrocities were committed generally to a civilian population that had already capitulated/surrendered. And of course, Japanese also conducted Strategic Bombing campaigns in China early in the war.
And some people still want us to apologize for the dropping of the atomic bomb....the personal/sick brutality of the Japanese during that time even surpassed the Nazi's. One only needs to read Chang's "The Rape of Nanking".
Of course it wasn't for vengeance, but a strategic weapon to end a bloody war, and actually saved both Japanese and Allied lives. Still, part of me wishes they turned that entire country into melted glass during WWII.
There’s a lot of people with bloodlust and a superficial understanding of what happened during the war. It’s pretty shocking, honestly.
The reasons for the atomic bombings are complex and still up for debate. Ultimately they were probably unnecessary as Japan had already lost. But punishing a whole country and committing genocide because you think some of their military units crossed the line is…wow.
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